Hmm. With Vonnegut, that makes 17 Americans I've found who are not stark raving braindead insane. Keep that big mo going, America!

Edited by author 05-14-2003 01:39 PM
Gee, DaveW, with insightful assinine generalizations like that, you must be a Liberal...

Actually, I'm shocked and awed by the pointlessness of it all. The Capital Fund for the Mark Twain House had raised $20 million by last December -- much of it from corporate contributors. That's a hell of a lot of money for construction of a museum dedicated to a single author.

And why did they begin construction on this addition last year if there was some question as to whether they'd be able to raise the remaining $10 million? (And that after spending millions in the 1990s restoring a house Twain lived in for just 20 years -- the funny thing is there are a number of Twain House/Museums that show up on a Google search. Better preserve every one!)

Vonnegut seems to have an impressive degree of insight into the political leanings of various corrupt corporate officials. I wonder where he got that?

Yet Liberals want to raise taxes and let the Government take over MORE of our income... Whoopee!

And the "Squandering" of the public funds has nothing to do with the recession, I'm sure, that started under Clinton. I mean, after all, you double the number of unemployed people, especially adding formerly highly-paid tech people to the unemployed, and what happens? They aren't paying taxes, so drop the tax contributions, and they are on unemployment or welfare, so increase the drain against our tax money, and what happens?

If the Recession never hit we'd still have a major budget surplus. The Republicans didn't start the Recession, and I don't even blame Clinton, I blame them BOTH because it was consumer confidence (caused by the bickering leading up to the election, lots of doom and gloom) plus overvalued stocks that lead to the recession, NOT anything either party did directly.

"Vonnegut on "Shock and Awe"
Kurt Vonnegut's stirring address at Mark Twain house in Connecticut is a wry, sharp indictment of war and the Bush presidency."

Because we need more indictments of the war and Bush. There just has not been enough. So luckily this old (talented writer) and liberal has come to the rescue?


"I note that construction has stopped of a Mark Twain Museum here in Hartford -- behind the carriage house of the Mark Twain House at 351 Farmington Avenue.
Work persons have been sent home from that site because American "conservatives," as they call themselves, on Wall Street and at the head of so many of our corporations, have stolen a major fraction of our private savings, have ruined investors and employees by means of fraud and outright piracy."

Eeesh, that is poor, as if no "liberals" on Wall Street or in corporations are responsible for fraud and piracy? And where was the "liberal" administration for the last 8 years while all this went on? Shame on you Cory for posting such nonsense. I miss the "stirring" part of it. But hey it's your blog.

"And now, having installed themselves as our federal government, or taken control of it from outside, they have squandered our public treasury and then some. They have created a public debt of such appalling magnitude that our descendants, for whom we had such high hopes, will come into this world as poor as church mice."

Because Clinton was giving the money back to the people? Boo, hiss Mr.Kurt.

"What are the conservatives doing with all the money and power that used to belong to all of us? They are telling us to be absolutely terrified, and to run around in circles like chickens with their heads cut off. But they will save us. They are making us take off our shoes at airports. Can anybody here think of a more hilarious practical joke than that one"

Yeah, because the former "liberal" administration failed to upgrade our airport security in 8 years we lost 3,000 people in a matter of minutes. Great joke.

"Smile, America. You're on Candid Camera."

In similitude to Allen Funt who started out with a funny idea and then turned into a perv in his old age, Vonnegut had relevance in the McCarthy and Nixon era. Unfortunately, like most of the "liberal" whining "do-nothings" today, it is a pointless and outdated ideology. The world has changed, and partisan politics is just a way to divide the people of America, don't pander to either side of this nonsense. Be free.

> Yet Liberals want to raise taxes and let the Government take over MORE of our income... Whoopee!

The difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is a simple one to spot:

Democrats raise our taxes so they can spend it.

Republicans spend money we don't have and let someone else figure out where it's going to come from.

Both suck, but which is worse?

"Yeah, because the former "liberal" administration failed to upgrade our airport security in 8 years we lost 3,000 people in a matter of minutes. Great joke."

They tried. The airlines weren't keen on it, because they would have to pay the bill. Create a new federal agency to monitor airport security? Conservatives wouldn't have liked that one.

The biggest problem I see here is a lack of logic. If you consider the Internet bubble to be the result of 'fraud and piracy', which I gather he does (an arguable but certainly fairly defensible position), then the *source* for much of the original $20M was in fact the 'fraud and piracy' that he bemoans - corporations taking advantage of sky high stock prices to raise more and more cash, which they were then free to use for items such as donations to the Mark Twain museum. Charitable donations boost the CEO's ego and raise his profile in the community, but generally do very little for investors. Much better, IMHO, to have the rich individuals give directly (ala Rockfeller, Carnegie, etc) rather than through their firms.

So it makes more sense to look at the original $20M as the problem, not the lack of the additional $10M. After all, the main problem with corporate management isn't that they ran the economy itself into the ground - it's that, once the good times ended, they claimed that things at their company were great even as they were sucking, in order to keep the stock prices up for as long as possible.

Welcome to an economic downturn, Kurt. Unless you think that Wall St and America's CEO's are responsible for the economic cycle itself, then get used to reduced charitable donations when times are bad, and be thankful for increased donations when times are good.

(I will agree that the new 'improved' airport security as well as much of the rest of domestic security is a complete waste of time and money for all involved. There he is right on.)