July 2 2008
Well gang, as of yesterday we are 232 years old, and we are in one hell of a mess.
By this time as a nation, you would have thought that we would have gotten the hang of things.
Now the war stuff is not anything that anybody can do anything about. There have always been wars, and there will always be wars. The average person can expect to go through three, maybe four wars in their lifetime. Except for when the French and the English, who once had a war that lasted thirty years and another that lasted a hundred years. They really knew how to manage a war in those days, and nobody lived long enough to go through more than one or two.
Then there’s the matter of the money system that keeps getting us in trouble.
Lots of people keep saying that they understand it, they call themselves economists. But understand it all they may, greed of some kind always upsets the apple cart. Whether it’s a Savings and Loan Scandal, or an Enron Scandal, or the Sub-prime Real Estate Scandal, or the Credit Card Scandal, that’s the one that charges interest rates that makes the "Vig" on the street corner look reasonable, there is just no accounting for greed. Can’t do anything about that either.
But the lust for power, maybe the lust for power thing is where America has got it right. We don’t have to accept a leader just because he is the son of a previous leader. We vote for the guy that we figure is the best for the country. And if we vote for a guy that ruins the economy, gets us into an unnecessary war or two, and just generally messes up, why, we just don’t vote for him again.
And if we do vote for him again, well, we get what we deserve.
That’s why we only let presidents serve two terms. Because we know that the electorate, that means us, is just stupid enough to keep on electing a nincompoop until he dies in office of old age. So we’ve got that right.
But we’re pretty much the same as everybody else in the world, except that we’ve been a democracy a little longer than they have.
Two hundred and thirty two years.
Happy birthday gang.
And,..uh. . .think democratic.

Till next week
Helga Biermeister
Secretary