I'm not going to fight with you, Es99, so you can stop trying to taunt me.

ROTFLMAO! OK then!

I've been trying to lose weight. Do you think that ROTFL could really help me get some of MAO?

Maybe...but then you'd have to choose another part of your anatomy to talk out of ;-)

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Reality Internet Personality

Go get him girls... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

May I play too?

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me@rescam.org

Marines fight to save two battleships

ROBERT D. NOVAK
THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

September 11, 2006

The U.S. Navy's last two battleships appeared in December 2005 to have seen their final combat, on their way to being museum pieces. That's not necessarily so. A decision to be made on Capitol Hill this week will determine whether the Iowa and Wisconsin are ready for a possible naval confrontation in the Persian Gulf with Iran.

Advocates of maintaining the World War II-vintage warships as troop-support firing platforms fell short nine months ago in efforts to block a provision in the Defense Department authorization bill sending the vessels to museums. Overlooked then was the bill's conference report requiring that the battle wagons be returned to active duty if the president declares a national emergency. But they will be useless relics unless this year's Defense authorization prohibits changes in the battleships that “would impair their military utility.”

That language is opposed by a formidable array: the Navy high command, Defense Department bureaucrats, major defense contractors – in short, the whole military-industrial complex, which prefers expensive, futuristic weapons over two generations-old standbys. The Marines, in a rare break from official Pentagon policy, are fighting for the battleships as their only naval surface support. What makes the Marines' cause more compelling than it was last year is the rise of Iran as a potential nuclear power.

A new unpublished House report contends that “a show of force” by the battleships could be “ultimately crucial in maintaining control of the strategically critical Persian Gulf” while “significantly bolstering our clout in dealing with increasingly troublesome Iran.” Retired senior Foreign Service Officer William Stearman, a former naval officer and longtime National Security Council aide who has been fighting to save the Iowa and Wisconsin, points to the “vulnerability of U.S. 5th Fleet ships.” He contends “the very large Iranian inventory of deadly anti-ship missiles” offers Iran an opportunity to dominate the Gulf. Stearman told me that an answer to this menace would be dispatching the two battleships to the Gulf. Indeed, the Iowa's presence was leveraged against Iran in the 1988 “Tanker War.”

At issue in the conference to resolve Senate and House differences on the authorization bill (continuing to meet this week) is language in the House Armed Services Committee report. It would require that the battleships “must not be altered in any way that would impair their military utility” and “must be preserved in their present condition.”

“I hate to see these old systems go away,” Rep. Duncan Hunter, the Armed Services Committee chairman, told me. Hunter, dealing with dozens of contested provisions in the authorization bill, specifically referred to saving B-52 bombers, stealth aircraft of Gulf War renown and the carrier John F. Kennedy. He indicated he is leaving the battleships to a subcommittee chairman, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett. That is good news for the Marines, for Bartlett is an admirer of the great ships.

Bartlett considers the battleship an incomparable weapons system that could not be produced today. Its 16-inch, 50-caliber guns, capable of ranging 24 nautical miles, are the longest-range guns in the fleet. Why, then, is the Navy so insistent on dismantling the battleships to rely on the planned DD(X) destroyer that may not be ready before 2015 (costing over $23 billion)? The DD(X), slower and more vulnerable than battleships, never will satisfy the Marines' stated needs for fire-support.

“The Navy wants shiny new equipment,” Bartlett told me. That desire comports with intimate ties between defense contractors and senior naval officers, who may be looking forward to retirement jobs. The Navy brass' antipathy toward battleships dates back to destruction of the big ships by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. Over objections by the admirals, battleships have served effectively in the Korean, Vietnam and Gulf wars.

The House committee report's indictment of the Navy is unusually explicit: “The Navy has foregone the long-range fire support credibility of the battleship, has given little cause for optimism with respect to meeting near-term developmental objectives and appears unrealistic in planning to support expeditionary warfare in the mid-term. The committee views the Navy's strategy for providing naval surface fire support as 'high risk.' ” That argument poses a test this week even for the mighty military-industrial complex.

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me@rescam.org

Africa outperforming Latin America

ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
THE MIAMI HERALD

September 12, 2006

Just when Latin America is waking up to the fact that China, India and Central Europe have surpassed it in the global race for investments and economic growth, they may soon have to add a new region to the list – Africa.

Only months after U.N. figures showed that Africa's economy grew faster than Latin - America's last year, a new report from the World Bank shows that Africa – while still behind in overall business friendliness – has overtaken Latin America in a ranking of world regions that have shown the most progress in creating a good business environment.

The report, “Doing Business 2007,” co-authored by the International Finance Corp., measures among other things the pace of business-friendly reforms in 175 countries. It shows that – with few exceptions, such as Chile and Mexico – most Latin American countries are advancing at a much slower pace than the rest of the emerging world.

“Latin America is losing ground,” Caralee McLiesh, the coauthor of the World Bank's report, told me in a recent telephone interview. “If the current trends continue, within a couple of years Middle Eastern and North African countries could have a better business environment than Latin America. And if (sub-Saharan) Africa continues reforming at the current pace, it may overtake Latin America, too.”

Consider some of the report's highlights:

- While Latin America still ranks ahead of Africa in its current business environment, Africa is reforming at a much faster pace. This year, Latin America descended from third place to fifth place in the report's ranking of the regions that are making the most progress in cutting red tape, strengthening property rights and making it easier to trade with the rest of the world. Meantime, Africa jumped from last place to third, behind Eastern European countries and industrialized nations.

- In a separate ranking of the world's countries that offer the best business environment, the report says South Africa (29) and Namibia (42) rank higher than any Latin American country except Chile (28). In addition, Botswana (48) ranks better than Peru, El Salvador, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela.

- Even communist China, which ranks 93 in the business environment ranking, is more business friendly than Argentina (101), Brazil (121), Ecuador (123), Bolivia (131) and Venezuela (164).

- While it takes only two legal procedures to open a new business in Australia, five steps in the United States, nine in South Africa, 10 in Namibia and 13 in China, it takes 14 bureaucratic steps in Ecuador, 15 in both Argentina and Bolivia, 16 in Venezuela and 17 in Brazil and Paraguay.

- While it takes two days to comply with the red tape to open a new business in Australia, 11 days in Hong Kong and 35 days in South Africa, it takes 44 days in Colombia, 72 days in Peru, 141 days in Venezuela and 152 days in Brazil.

- While in a half-dozen African countries, employers pay virtually no non-wage labor costs to hire a worker, in Chile they have to pay 3.4 percent of the worker's salary, in Peru nearly 10 percent, in Argentina 23 percent, in Mexico 24 percent and in Colombia 27 percent.

- To fire a worker who has held a job for 20 years, an employer pays virtually nothing in the United States. He would have to pay 24 weeks of salary in South Africa. But the same employer would have to pay 31 weeks in Uruguay, 47 in Venezuela, 52 in Chile and Peru, 59 in Colombia, 74 in Mexico and 139 weeks in Argentina.

My conclusion: If Latin America could overcome its peripheral blindness and pay more attention to what is happening in the rest of the world, it would discover that China, Vietnam, India, Eastern European countries – and now, it seems, Africa – are drawing investments, growing faster than ever and reducing poverty at record rates. But, fooled by reactionary populist politicians, many Latin American countries are not getting the message.

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me@rescam.org

Connecting Iranians and Americans

DAVID IGNATIUS
THE WASHINGTON POST

September 15, 2006

What would President Bush say to the Iranian people if he had a chance to communicate directly with them? I was able to put that question to Bush in a one-on-one interview in the Oval Office Wednesday. His answer made clear that the administration wants a diplomatic solution to the confrontation over Iran's nuclear program – one that is premised on an American recognition of Iran's role as an important nation in the Middle East.

“I would say to the Iranian people: We respect your history. We respect your culture. We admire the entrepreneurial skills of your people. I would say to the Iranian people that I recognize the importance of your sovereignty – that you're a proud nation, and you want to have a positive future for your citizens,” Bush said, answering quickly and without notes.

“In terms of the nuclear issue,” he continued, “I understand that you believe it is in your interest – your sovereign interest, and your sovereign right – to have nuclear power. I understand that. But I would also say to the Iranian people, there are deep concerns about the intentions of some in your government who would use knowledge gained from a civilian nuclear power industry to develop a weapon that can then fulfill the stated objectives of some of the leadership (to attack Israel and threaten the United States). And I would say to the Iranian people that I would want to work for a solution to meeting your rightful desires to have civilian nuclear power.”

“I would tell the Iranian people that we have no desire for conflict,” Bush added.

He expressed hope that Iran would help stabilize Iraq, but he said the best channel for this dialogue would be through Iraq's new prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who has been in Tehran this week. And he called for a new program of cultural and educational exchanges between the United States and Iran, as a way of encouraging greater contact and trust.

Bush's comments were a clear public signal of the administration's strategy in the confrontation over Iran's nuclear program. In recent days, the Washington rumor mill has been bubbling with talk that the administration is planning military options for dealing with the crisis, perhaps in the near term. But Bush's remarks went in a different direction. His stress was on reassuring Iran that the United States recognizes its ambitions to be an advanced nation, with a robust civilian nuclear power program and a role in shaping the Middle East commensurate with its size and power. The red lines for America involve nuclear weapons, military threats to Israel or the United States, and Iran's links to terrorist groups.

Bush's comments tracked the offer the United States and its allies have made to Iran if it agrees to suspend its enrichment of uranium. He proposed that the West supply enriched uranium to Iran and other countries, and collect the nuclear waste. He argued that this global program “would be a solution that would answer a deep desire from the Iranian people to have a nuclear power industry.”

On Iraq, Bush said al-Maliki's visit to Tehran was “aimed at convincing the Iranians that a stable Iraq is in their interest. They have said so many times, and I think Prime Minister Maliki is now attempting to find out what that means, and how the Iraqi government can work with the Iranians to create a sense of stability.”

Bush said he had read commentary criticizing al-Maliki's trip. “I disagree. Prime Minister Maliki should go to Iran. It is in Iraq's national interest that relations with Iran be such that there are secure borders and no cross-border issues, including the exportation of equipment that can harm Iraqi citizens as well as coalition troops, and the exportation of extremism that can prevent this young (Iraqi) democracy from flourishing.”

Our discussion followed the 12-day visit to America by Iran's former president, Mohammad Khatami. I asked Bush why he had approved this visit by a high-level Iranian, and what he thought it had accomplished. “One of the dilemmas facing (American) policymakers is to understand the nature, the complex nature of the Iranian regime. And I thought it would be beneficial for our country to receive the former leader, Khatami, to hear what he had to say. And as importantly for him, to hear what Americans had to say.” He wanted Khatami to understand that on the nuclear issue and Hezbollah's attacks on Israel, “It's not just George W. Bush speaking.”

The Khatami visit “said that the United States is willing to listen to voices,” Bush explained. “And I hope that sends a message to the Iranian people that we're an open society, and that we respect the people of Iran.” Clearly, the White House wants to reach out to segments of Iranian opinion beyond the hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I asked Bush what next steps he would favor in opening dialogue with Iran. “I would like to see more cultural exchanges,” he said. “I would like to see university exchanges. I would like to see more people-to-people exchanges.”

“I know that the more we can show the Iranian people the true intention of the American government,” Bush concluded, “the more likely it is that we will be able to reach a diplomatic solution to a difficult problem.” I came away with a sense that Bush is serious about finding a peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis, and that he is looking hard for ways to make the connections between America and Iran.

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me@rescam.org

Adhere to the rules
Geneva protections should not be weakened

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

September 16, 2006

For more than half a century, the Geneva Conventions have set international standards for the treatment of prisoners of war. Because of the treaties, civilized nations are expected to adhere to humane norms in dealing with captured enemy soldiers – including, of course, American military personnel.

The rules laid out by the Geneva Conventions are far too important to be summarily discarded in the war on terrorism. This is why Senate Republican leaders, backed by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, are right to oppose President Bush's bid to weaken the international protections. Bush's proposed changes would undermine America's moral standing in the world and jeopardize the humane treatment of U.S. soldiers when they fall into enemy hands.

Common Article 3 of the treaties grants captured personnel the right to medical treatment and protects them from torture or “outrages upon personal dignity.” The Bush administration insists it does not torture terrorist suspects, but the coerced interrogation methods used by the CIA may indeed violate Common Article 3's prohibition against assaults upon personal dignity. Accordingly, the administration wants Congress to narrow the definition of “outrages upon personal dignity” in order to allow the CIA to continue what it calls “alternative interrogation practices.”

Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., along with other Republican and Democratic senators, have courageously stood up to the president on this crucial issue. McCain, who was held as a POW for five years in Vietnam, earlier pushed through legislation over the Bush administration's opposition making it clear that the torture of prisoners by the United States is prohibited.

The president is plainly wrong on this issue – on legal grounds, on moral grounds, on common-sense grounds. The Republican senators should not yield to Bush's demands.

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me@rescam.org

Why not Africa?
World Bank neglects TB where carnage is worst

SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

September 16, 2006

Governors of the World Bank gather for annual meetings next week in Singapore, with their agenda focusing in large measure on the need to scale up development assistance, especially in Africa. That's good news. And we've got some free advice for the bank's governors.

It is time – indeed, it is a moral imperative – that the bank finally begin to do for Africa what it has already done for China and India. It must begin to finally place the proper financial priority on combating tuberculosis, an unacceptable public health nightmare that is needlessly killing 590,000 Africans every year.

The bank spent a virtually meaningless $3.5 million last year directly on TB programs in Africa, only 0.6 percent of its health-sector investment funds, according to a new report by the advocacy group RESULTS International.

That level of World Bank neglect is inexplicable given the success of its previous investments elsewhere in the world. The bank spent $130 million helping China with its TB program in the early 1990s, leading to a 37 percent decline in TB deaths within 10 years, according to RESULTS. And it spent $140 million in India to train 600,000 new health care workers, treat more than 5 million TB patients and save more than 1 million lives. An additional $170 million loan for the second phase of India's program was recently approved.

It is also inexplicable given the fact that Africa is the only continent in the world where the rate of tuberculosis infection is still increasing. And it is inexplicable given the fact that TB treatment is so cheap – $10-$16 per patient – and so cost-effective, with an economic rate of return of $60 for every $1 spent in China.

The World Bank is certainly not ignorant. Nor is it cold-hearted. It has provided $1.2 billion to fight AIDS in Africa since 2000. But it simply must now address the African carnage caused by tuberculosis.

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me@rescam.org

Exit Blair, America's best friend

By Reginald Dale; a Washington-based writer and senior fellow in the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

September 17, 2006

LONDON - For the Bush administration the most distressing aspect of Blair's departure is the main reason for it – mounting nationwide anger at his support for the war in Iraq.

Now that Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain has confirmed he will leave office next year, Americans must get used to the prospect that relations with their closest ally are likely to become markedly less intimate.

For the nearly 10 years that Blair has been prime minister, America has grown used to relying on British political and military support in virtually every international crisis, ranging from wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq to the worldwide struggle against terrorism and radical Islam.

Twice this summer, Blair joined President George W. Bush at the White House and eloquently pledged Britain's total backing for U.S. policies – first in Iraq and then in Lebanon. The image was that of the two great World War II allies once again resolutely taking up arms against a sea of troubles while others held back. But this comforting image of Anglo-Saxon solidarity is about to be shattered.

When Blair goes, his foreign policy will go with him. Even before then, he is bound to lose political clout now that the end is near. And for the Bush administration the most distressing aspect of Blair's departure is the main reason for it – mounting nationwide anger at his support for the war in Iraq, recently exacerbated by his backing for the pro-Israeli U.S. position on Lebanon.

In a poll in mid-August, more than eight out of 10 Britons said Britain should split from the United States in the war on terrorism. Many normally sober members of the British elite are incandescent with rage that Bush and Blair, as they see it, are turning the Middle East into an ever-more-lethal powder keg, endangering their own lives and those of their families.

In global, and particularly trans-Atlantic, affairs, Blair has increasingly operated as a one-man band, running British foreign policy according to deep personal convictions not shared by the majority of either his country or his Labor Party. He has done nothing to ensure the continuity of those policies under his successor, widely expected to be Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer.

In his last Cabinet reshuffle, in May, Blair could have named a new foreign secretary who both shared his world views and stood a chance of staying on under Brown. Instead, he tapped the unfortunate Margaret Beckett, then-secretary of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who did not want the job and knows nothing about foreign policy. It is difficult, thankfully, to imagine her surviving in a new Brown Cabinet.

Not that anyone really knows what Brown thinks about foreign policy or how he would approach trans-Atlantic relations. He is personally pro-American, spending his vacations on Cape Cod, and, as Britain's finance minister, his admiration for America's economic success has risen as his respect for the low-growth euro zone has diminished.

But Brown is a colder fish, more intellectual and calculating than Blair. He lacks Blair's charisma and deeply felt convictions about world affairs. He will find it hard to duplicate Blair's personal chemistry with Bush, and, for domestic political reasons, he will want to create some distance between London and Washington. Following Blair's fate, no British prime minister is likely to join America in major military ventures for the foreseeable future.

Brown does not share with Blair the passionate desire to remake the world that helpedto cement the Bush-Blair relationship. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Bush and Blair have reached virtually identical conclusions about the Middle East and the war on terror. Both believe that their many critics are missing “the big picture,” which is the drive by totalitarian, radical Islamists to fight the West on all fronts, including Israel, in order to assert the rule of their distorted, nihilistic version of Islam as widely as possible.

Right or wrong, the two leaders are totally sincere in their analysis, which is why the jibe that Blair is “Bush's poodle” is unfair. Blair did not join the invasion of Iraq because Bush asked him to, but because he believed, and still does believe, that it was right.

The forthcoming revision of trans-Atlantic policy in London will not mean the end of the “special relationship” between the two countries, which is less political than civilizational. It will rather mean that Washington can no longer count on virtually automatic British support for its global endeavors, a potentially severe blow to its international credibility.

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me@rescam.org

The costs of action and inaction on Iran

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
THE WASHINGTON POST

September 17, 2006

In his televised address on the events of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush said we must not “leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons.” There's only one such current candidate: Iran.

The next day, he responded thus (as reported by Rich Lowry and Kate O'Beirne of National Review) to a question on Iran: “It's very important for the American people to see the president try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force.”

“Before” implies that the one follows the other. The signal is unmistakable. An aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy. With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option.

The costs will be terrible:

Economic. An attack on Iran would likely send oil prices overnight to $100 or even to $150 a barrel. That would cause a worldwide recession perhaps as deep as the one triggered by the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Iran might suspend its own 2.5 million barrels a day of oil exports, and might even be joined by Venezuela's Hugo ChÁvez, asserting primacy as the world's leading anti-imperialist. But even more effectively, Iran would shock the oil markets by closing the Strait of Hormuz through which 40 percent of the world's exports flow every day.

Iran could do this by attacking ships in the Strait, scuttling its own ships, laying mines or just threatening to launch Silkworm anti-ship missiles at any passing tanker.

The U.S. Navy would be forced to break the blockade. We would succeed but at considerable cost. And it would take time – during which the world economy would be in a deep spiral.

Military. Iran would activate its proxies in Iraq, most notably, Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Al-Sadr is already wreaking havoc with sectarian attacks on Sunni civilians. Iran could order the Mahdi army and its other agents within the police and armed forces to take up arms against the institutions of the central government itself, threatening the very anchor of the new Iraq. Many Mahdi would die, but they live to die. Many Iraqis and coalition soldiers would likely to die as well.

Among the lesser military dangers, Iran might activate terrorist cells around the world, though without nuclear capability that threat is hardly strategic. It would also be very difficult to unleash its proxy Hezbollah, now chastened by the destruction it brought upon Lebanon in the latest round with Israel and deterred by the presence of Europeans in the south Lebanon buffer zone.

Diplomatic. There would be massive criticism of America from around the world. Much of it is to be discounted. The Muslim street would come out again for a few days, having replenished its supply of flammable American flags most recently exhausted during the cartoon riots. Their governments would express solidarity with a fellow Muslim state, but this would be entirely hypocritical. The Arabs are terrified about the rise of a nuclear Iran and would privately rejoice in its defanging.

The Europeans would be less hypocritical because their visceral anti-Americanism trumps rational calculation. We would have done them an enormous favor by sparing them the threat of Iranian nukes, but they would vilify us nonetheless.

These are the costs. There is no denying them. Equally undeniable, however, is the cost of doing nothing.

In the region, Persian Iran would immediately become the hegemonic power in the Arab Middle East. Today it is deterred from overt aggression against its neighbors by the threat of conventional retaliation. Against a nuclear Iran, such deterrence becomes far less credible. As its weak, non-nuclear Persian Gulf neighbors accommodate to it, jihadist Iran would gain control of the most strategic region on the globe.

Then there is the larger danger of permitting nuclear weapons to be acquired by religious fanatics seized with an eschatological belief in the imminent apocalypse and in their own divine duty to hasten the End of Days. The mullahs are infinitely more likely to use these weapons than anyone in the history of the nuclear age. Every city in the civilized world would live under the specter of instant annihilation delivered either by missile or by terrorist. This from a country that has an official Death to America Day and has declared since Ayatollah Khomeini's ascension that Israel must be wiped off the map.

Against millenarian fanaticism glorying in a cult of death, deterrence is a mere wish. Is the West prepared to wager its cities with their millions of inhabitants on that feeble gamble?

These are the questions. These are the calculations. The decision is no more than a year away.

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me@rescam.org

The costs of action and inaction on Iran

The decision is no more than a year away.

god save us all . . .

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many
others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal Democrat, and
was very much in favor of the redistribution of wealth.

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch
Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures
that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a
professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil,
selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher
taxes on the rich and the addition of more government welfare
programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors
had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father.

He responded by asking how she was doing in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA,
and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she
was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying,
which left her no time to go out and party like other people she
knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really
have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, "How is you friend Audrey doing?"

She replied, "Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy
classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so
popular on campus, college for her is a blast. She's always invited
to all the parties, and lots of times she doesn't even show up for
classes because she's too hung over."
Her wise father asked his daughter, "Why don't you go to the Dean's
office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your
friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA, and
certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA."

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily
fired back, "That wouldn't be fair! I have worked really hard for my
grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey
has done next to nothing toward her degree. She plays while I work my
tail off!"

The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, "Welcome to the
Republican Party."

"That wouldn't be fair! I have worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She plays while I work my tail off!"

You're assuming that most who have money have earned it rather than inherited it... From my experience, this is simply not the case... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

"That wouldn't be fair! I have worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She plays while I work my tail off!"

You're assuming that most who have money have earned it rather than inherited it... From my experience, this is simply not the case... ;)

You're assuming I wrote this myself.

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me@rescam.org

You're assuming that most who have money have earned it rather than inherited it... From my experience, this is simply not the case... ;)

Your experience fails you. Almost entirely the rich in this country earn what they have. Few indeed are those who are "rich" because of inheritance.

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...