I tend to agree. There certainly will be a president in four years, but I = think the U.S. has turned a corner. Mostly because we're nearly bankrupt. = We are still a major player in the world economy, certainly, but only beca= use we consume the goods the world creates, particularly China. Our export= s are basically agricultural products and raw materials such as cotton and = wood that others formulate into finished goods. A driving force in this is= , surprisingly, Walmart. By putting downward pressures on prices, they for= ce factory closures in the U.S. because we simply can't compete with Chines= e costs of production. The world does have a stake in keeping us afloat so= we can buy their goods, but we're buying mostly on personal credit. If so= meone had said 30 years ago that the mighty Soviet Union would collapse, th= ey would have been thought a raving lunatic. We won't collapse. We'll jus= t fade away, along with our empty treasury, as other countries become wealt= hier. An empty treasury and a debt ridden economic base is not pessimism. = It's fact. Andy -----Original Message----- From: Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Dec 31, 2004 8:59 PM To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Priorities > To paraphrase and reapply Nixon's famous exit line, you're going to have > Bush to kick around for four more years! Actually, no. Have you noticed nobody seems to care anymore about the White House? Nobody= discusses the=20 issues anymore: the environment, unemployment, the deficit, the wars, the l= ack of foreign=20 policy, etc. Nobody cares, because we know it's a waste of time. Bush is putting lightweights into the cabinet: Rice, Gonzales, and others. = Whatever. The=20 cabinet positions have become so irrelevant that it doesn't matter if a nob= ody is in that=20 position. The cabinet is irrelevant because Bush insists on loyalty. As for foreign relations, the Bush White House has essentially abandoned th= e global=20 leadership role of the USA. Nobody took it away; the Bushies simply walked = away from it.=20 China and the ASEAN countries are busy at setting up a European Union struc= ture for Asia;=20 the USA has no part whatsoever in this. One can quite seriously say that th= e USA has no=20 foreign policy whatsoever now. Even Denmark has a foreign policy. But not t= he USA. Bush's=20 first reaction to the tsunami? He didn't care, and he didn't see why he sho= uld care. So, will we kick Bush around for four more years? Like, who cares? He's irr= elevant. He made=20 himself irrelevant. Will Hillary be president afterwards? Of what? In the next few years, the B= ushies will have=20 demolished so much that the next president, if we even have a next presiden= t, will preside=20 over very little. Let's see what happens at the inauguration. Last time, the Bushies sent out= tens of=20 thousands of invitations, and perhaps a quarter of the seats were embarrass= ingly empty.=20 Those had to be covered up, to prevent TV cameras from showing empty stands= . Meanwhile there=20 were massive demonstrations and his limosine was pelted with eggs. Bush was= unable to walk=20 down Pennsylvania Avenue. This time, the demonstrators plan to line the path and turn their backs on = Bush. yrs, andreas www.andreas.com=20 ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html