If you want to know my national policy views, they’re pretty much identical to those of Ron Paul.

— John Seiler

You are right, of course, that G.W. Bush was the worst president of our lifetimes–maybe of all time. And I honestly believe that Limbaugh, Hannity, etc., have done serious harm to this nation by destroying any possibility of bipartisanship, tolerance and cooperation.

You are taking for granted, of course, that I blindly support the war in Afghanistan. Like you, I have deep concerns about it. I am not a hypocrite. But I also don’t think that everything is in black and white. At least Afghanistan is, in some way, trying to confront the people who attacked us on 9/11. I shudder when I think of the thousands of lives–American and Iraqui–and billions of dollars spent on an unnecessary and inept war.

Domestically, I understand that not all tax cuts are bad. But I also know that not all tax increases are bad and that cuts can’t be the only way to deal with deficits. They hurt too many people.

What we need in this state is an honest debate about what services we need for our citizens. When we decide what we need, we have to find the revenue to pay for it. Those things we decide we don’t need, we should eliminate.
But we cannot have this debate as long as the Rabid Right refuses to allow any discussion of raising revenue. To say we can’t close tax loopholes in a budget crisis, to say we can’t tax oil production (like every other state does) when we are closing schools and cutting back on health care and fire and police protection is absurd.

I wonder what our California Man of Mystery was saying about RR back around 1981-86, when Reagan was cutting taxes.

And as stevefromsacto might have noticed, I’m not part of the “Rabid Right,” and oppose Limbaugh, Hannity, Bush, Cheney, et al. I always have opposed their wars, their deficits, their debt, their inflation, their wild spending, their Bush Depression. Bush was worse than any Democrat going back at least to Lyndon “Bombs Away” Johnson, whose undeclared war killed 58,000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese and bankrupted America. See: “Vain Hopes, Grim Realities: The Economic Consequences of the Vietnam War,” by Robert Warren Stevens, for the economic details.

Actually, as a good Democrat, stevefromsacto has to support Obama’s wars, which are just continuations of Bush’s wars; wars still supported by stevefromsacto’s fellow Rabid Righters, Limbaugh and Hannity.

— John Seiler