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“Generational Warfare!” declares Digby, condemning the president’s plans for Social Security.
Listen kids. Here’s your choice. Either keep social security as it is or plan to have your parents — people my age — living with you for the last twenty years of our sick, decrepit lives … as you’re putting your kids through the privatized school system and saving for medical expenses with your “medical savings account” while putting something aside for your kids’ college and your own meager retirement. Good luck with that. That’s the “choice” you’re getting here.
Oh, and by the way, kids. You’ll be the ones stuck with the gazillions of dollars in debt this whole useless scam is going to cost. Don’t be fools.
Mathew Gross at Deride and Conquer wonders why anyone is worried about Social Security when what’s really scary about the future is a lack of trout and salmon. He’s obviously seen this dire warning about the consequences of global warming. By 2042 — the year the White House says (erroneously, as CJR Daily readers know) that Social Security will go “bankrupt” — the rise in temperatures will be wreaking environmental havoc.
Substantial losses of Arctic sea ice will threaten species such as polar bears and walruses, while in tropical regions “bleaching” of coral reefs will become more frequent — when the animals that live in the coral are forced out by high temperatures and the reef may die. Mediterranean regions will be hit by more forest fires and insect pests, while in regions of the US such as the Rockies, rivers may become too warm for trout and salmon.
Says Gross: “But my primary concern will be a mere 70 percent payout of my Social Security benefits?”
Cori Dauber at Ranting Profs lives up to her blog’s name. Her beef is with the Washington Post‘s Style columnist Tom Shales and his critique of the State of the Union speech.
“I’ll ask again,” writes Dauber, “why does the Post let their TV critic write about political events?” (Possible answer: Shales is no longer the Post‘s TV critic; he’s now a general interest columnist.)
[A]s he demonstrates over and over again, every time they let him up from the kid’s table to write about the big kid stuff, the serious grown-up stuff, he hasn’t a clue about politics, political history, political communication, presidential rhetoric, or any of the topics that inform meaningful criticism of presidential performances.
Her assessment of Shales’ turn at the big table: “[S]nark, in fact snark on steroids.”
Nick Gillespie at Reason‘s Hit and Run has obviously been spending too much time Googling, trying to find, as he says “the true state of the union.” In his quest, he stumbled across an entirely new form of product placement — ads on foreheads and pregnant bellies (the photos are worth the clicks). But he’s still in a quandary:
“Does it mean anything that this sort of thing seems to be a Red State phenomena?”
We’ll let you decide.
–Susan Q. Stranahan
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