The deficit

I try to avoid writing about politics, as you know if you've been following this blog awhile.

But I have to ask, does anyone really think we're going to reduce the deficit? I don't. I think that what will happen, if anything, is that we will temporarily reduce the deficit by cutting services to citizens (what are often called 'entitlements'), then find some reason to run it up again in a way that will principally benefit the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street and elsewhere. We'll invade Iran, or Venezuela, or some other place.

I personally believe the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dragged on so long because so much money is being made off them by defense contractors.

Taoism is rather anti-political. The ancient masters lived in an era when China was divided into constantly warring kingdoms, and the price of failure at court was often death. The Taoists stayed in small towns and rural areas, and let the Confucianists go to the big cities and get beheaded for their trouble.