Thoughts

Got a few quick snippets of thought / opinion to throw out there:

1) Pakistan - Attn: General Musharraf and Ms. Bhutto - both of you need to take a step back and talk about things. You are a nuclear armed nation and I'm afraid the Crazed American and a billion Indians (not to mention a billion or so Screamin' Red Chinese) are paying real close attention to your arguments. General, I know for face saving reasons you can't speak openly with her, so call her on a damn cell phone. Work it out already. I say again, you're making me (a non nuclear power) and The Indians (a nuclear power that hates you anyway) and the Chinese (those nuclear armed people downwind for fallout purposes) are all getting nervous the longer your little power shuffle takes. Talk amongst yourselves, or kill the other one - just get it done and please be a tad more stable in the future.

2) Iraq - seems to be going a little better. I fervently hope for continued success in the future.

3) Iran - got a lot more quiet out of them since Israel showed the Syrians that Russian Air Defence Artillery systems are still overpriced and under effective. The silence is 'a- thunderous"

4) I can't stand Hillary Rodham Clinton. Barack Obama seems to be an old fashioned naive socialist, but he can give a good speech. John Edwards is laughable. Which takes us to:

5) Republican Candidates - I'm not thrilled with Rudolph Giuliani, or Mitt Romney (due to their questionable records on Second Amendment issues - I like both of them much more than I like HRC). Still like Fred Thompson, but I do wish he'd up the intensity of his campaign, just a little. Ron Paul is not my cup of tea, but again, if it was him vs. Hillary, it'd be him.

6) The United States Congress (Democratic Leadership) - what a bunch of whining, ineffectual losers. Will their Bush Derangement Syndrome extend to the next President of the United States if he is a Republican?

7) Jeb Bush candidacy in 2012 - I for one am a tad tired of the whole Clinton - Bush thing. You mean to tell me that in a country of almost 400,000,000, there aren't more than two families who can put people up to run effectively for president? This will go doubly true if Hillary wins the White House in Nov 08.

8) Illegal Immigration - still a major problem, still nothing done. Simple, step - shut the damn border down (like any other country on the face of the earth). Set up plenty of legal ports of entry. Guest worker program or expand the current visa programs. Then deal with addressing those currently in country.

9) Taxes - something has got to be done to streamline the US Tax code. Flat tax, consumption tax, whatever. Real progress has to be made on this issue

10) US Debt - something has GOT to be done. The budget has got to be set so there can be some debt relief, and soon. Attention US government, if you do not have the revenue for a program, cut the damn program. If the debt went down, the rest of the world might stop their flight from the US dollar which is making it more expensive for every American to live. If the American economy collapses, then the world economy isn't going to do that much better.

Here's a plan:
After Bush's tax cuts, US federal revenue is around $2,000,000,000,000 per year. Decide that the US government will spend $600,000,000,000 on debt reduction, cap expenditures on defense at $500,000,000,000, spend $600,000,000,000 on Social Security, and run the rest of the government on $300,000,000,000. No more deficits. If some bureaucrats have to lose their jobs, sorry. I'd also incentivize budget reduction inside the federal government. Let's say a manager of a department in the Health and Human Services department can figure out a way to reduce his budget by $2,000,000 per year, while still doing the department's job. I'd throw that bureaucrat a bonus of 1% of the savings - that's $20,000 he gets - tax free.

Somethings got to give - I just hope it's the debt and not the overall American economy.

Well, that's all I've got at the moment. Thanks for reading this today.

Crazed American, out.