MORE LICKSPITTLE RANTINGS

NED IS BEGINNING TO BEHAVE LIKE MAUNA LOA.
That great Hawaiian volcano (which Ned was privileged to observe up close and personal last January, defying the Oregon rains to do their worst), always begins an eruption with a series of deeply-buried earthquakes. After weeks the earthquake swarm gets shallower and shallower until the volcano erupts a mass of molten basalt.
Ned's responses to those who wish to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich are much like Mauna Loa, and his eruption (no, NOT erection--this is a family blog after all) has begun.
Ned recalls from a history of the '30s how Roosevelt felt it was his duty (as a plutocrat himself, but one with a sense of noblesse oblige) to free poor and working class Americans from the necessity of begging from the sneering filthy rich for their daily bread, or working as children under dangerous conditions a 14-hour day so some fat plutocrat could buy several mistresses and amass more money than he could possibly spend, or, set up a "foundation" with his ill-gotten gains so he could tell Americans how the wealth he stole from them was going to be disbursed.
Roosevelt set up social security which the Republicans rabidly opposed. He also proposed a national health care plan, which, unfortunately, got nowhere. He set up several federal agencies to police the private sector, only because it was unwilling or unable to police itself.
Now, the vipers, snakes-in-the-grass, crocodile teat shedders, and cave-dwellers have re-emerged from hibernation (or zombiedom) to propose "privatizing" social security, and "health savings accounts."
But worse, they want to eliminate taxes on the rich, especially inheritance (or "Paris Hilton") taxes. Ned feels anyone who supports such nonsense is foolish and illogical, and perhaps even depraved and immoral, and doesn't deserve to call himself (or herself) an American. This country was not founded as a monarchy or aristocracy: far from it. But there has always been a class of materialist, soul-less people who are not happy unless they have someone's ass to kiss that they think is "better" or "more successful" or "classier" than they are. This, then, is the basis of most Republican support: ass-kissers, selfish narcissists, religious cultists, and neo-racists (since the greatest Republican stronghold is in the segregationist deep south), all clothed in sanctimonious hypocrisy and empty platitudinous Newspeak ("less" government", etc).
Ned is sick of them all and wishes they would crawl back under the rock they came from, and leave the rest of us in peace.