Nero Bush is playing the guitar while Rome is burning.

[KlatooBNikto]

All the talk about abortion, evolution,filibuster and people getting worked up over trivia while our jobs are disappering, our industrial infrastructure is close to ruins and we are unable to compete in world markets reminds me of Nero fiddling while Rome was burning.Our latter day Nero has no idea what is happening and, worse, he doesn't care. He has his media attack dogs on the ready to squelch any serious examination of issues and he has the election mechanism all rigged up to his advantage.

The impenetrable ignorance and apathy of our people appalls me.

[acmejack]

1. Who would have dreamed it could come to this?

Honestly, I have my doubts as to whether our countrymen are deserving of the handiwork of Jefferson and Madison. It is stunning...

[rodeodance]

2. and according to a Wa Post poll--his numbers are slipping more

today.

[KlatooBNikto]

4. Don't worry.He still gets to count the votes.

[Lone Pawn]

7. No, he'll never be in another election again.

The *Republicans* may be able to count the votes. Bush has no more potential. Note how it's now Frist who's suggesting the future of the American political scheme, while they keep Bush off on his Soc. Sec. fool's errand.

[KlatooBNikto]

11. Have you heard of another man Jeb waiting in the wings? He was the one

who got to count the crucial votes that elevated this good-for-nothing to the Presidency.

[Lone Pawn]

13. I doubt Jeb will run.

He seems pretty cool to the idea. He's a bit too proud to ride Georgie's coattails, I think.

[KlatooBNikto]

15. So we on the Democratic Side have your assurance that the same

shenanigans that deprived Al Gore and Kerry will not be repeated by these power hungry men? You must not merely be omniscient but clairvoyant as well.

[Lone Pawn]

16. Of course the same shenanigans will occur.

They just won't occur with Jeb.,

[KlatooBNikto]

17. Why? Is Jeb not interested in seeking higher office?What makes you

privy to Jeb's desires?

[Lone Pawn]

20. He says he won't, first of all.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=173616&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
"I'm not going to run for president in 2008. That's not my interest," Bush told ABC's "This Week." "I'm going to finish my term."

Next, Poppy agrees.

"WASHINGTON (AFP)- Former US President George H.W. Bush said in an interview made public Sunday he was convinced his younger son, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, will not run for president in 2008 to replace elder brother President George W. Bush.
Speculation about Jeb Bush's 2008 ambitions were fueled by his high-profile trip to South Asia in the wake of the December tsunami at the head of a US government delegation, whose task was to assess damage and draft US relief plans.
Some saw the trip as a White House attempt to increase the Florida governor's media exposure ahead of a campaign."
http://nation.com.pk/daily/mar-2005/7/latest.php

And even the freepers are convinced that not only won't he run, he shouldn't run.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1357399/posts

[Deja Q]

5. Which suggests more people are waking up.

That or they're just whinging over gas prices, oblivious to decades of light sweet crude deceit.

[ramapo]

3. Appalling

I sure never imagined that society would've regressed to the extent that we've witnessed over the past 30 years. Growing up in the sixties gave me the false impression that, despite the many problems so evident then, there would be a gradual improvement. After all, the environmental movement was just getting off the ground, Nixon had declared war on cancer, segregation had ended. The future actually looked pretty exciting. Amazing events had transpired, topped by the moon landings, which were such remarkable achievements.

The depth of our apathy is remarkable. But as bad as it is, I don't believe we're any worse than societies that have proceeded us.

I'm reading "The Little Ice Age", which goes into the effect that climate had on European history. There were apocalyptic famine in France during 1693-94. Here's part of what one French official wrote, "There were bread riots, but few peasants related their hunger to the action of their rulers. This indifference was an authoritarian government's strongest weapon."

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

[Lone Pawn]

8. So you're saying that

you can pin a famine caused by climate shift on the landlords?

[KlatooBNikto]

10. If you had even bothered to read the premise of that book you would

have known that it was not the climate shift that caused the famine but the poor distribution of food stocks to the needy.That was, as is true in many countries, due to the indifference of the ruling classes to the suffering of the masses.

[Lone Pawn]

12. Oh, I see.

So the ruling class was responsible for the "Year Without A Summer" in which Germany was still frosted in July? Or would such an event not cause famine?

How about the great famine of 1315, caused by a weather pattern almost identical to the one the French aristocracy is blamed for? Did the French aristocracy create this one, centuries before their rise to dictatorial power? Or, perhaps, did local lords all collude to starve their employees?

Or the famines of the 1590s? Wow, these aristocrats get around, what with their creating famines--on years with particularly bad weather!

How about the utter destruction of Greenland and Iceland in the Little Ice Age? Or did the nobles there decide the best way to rule was to starve to death?

What we appear to be complaining about in this book is that the European nobility, starting in the medieval period and moving forward, did not consider the possibility of large-scale public storages during years of plenty, to be called upon in years of famine. How negligent of them to not think up any revolutionary social security system to relieve subsistance farmers hundreds of years before anyone else did.

[KlatooBNikto]

14. That there were plenty of stocks available for distribution during those

years in France is documented in that book.It was only the callousness of the upper classes that created the famine.

[Lone Pawn]

6. You're just a little bit alarmist.

First of all, jobs are not "disappearing." The unemployment rate is still dropping, and jobs are continuously being added to the US economy. Not great jobs, but jobs.

The industrial infrastructure is simply not "close to ruins." US industrial output is not only greater than the European Union's, but is increasing at a faster rate. That's just outright alarmism.

And I'm not *entirely* certain how you can call the world's largest economy "unable to compete."

Next on the list, I find it shocking that you at once proclaim that the Republicans are ruining America, but that it's "trivia" that the sole weapon the Democrats have with which to defend America may be destroyed.

[KlatooBNikto]

9. I may or may not be an alarmist but I do not intend to be pollyannaish

either. I see jobs in professional classes in engineering, law,medicine, research,accounting moving overseas reducing opportunities for our children.I see GM and Ford on their death beds.
I see low quality jobs abounding while the better quality jobs that we were supposed to retain are leaving.

I have seven children and it is their future that concerns me.

[Doctor_J]

18. actually, when things get messy,

he tends to throw a baseball. Nero had his fiddle, Smirk has his baseball.

[KlatooBNikto]

19. I would like to dress him up in a toga and give him a fiddle.That way

the comparison with the cruel and indifferent Nero will become apparent to everyone.