I feel a rant coming on. Be assured it is not directed specifically at you, who have been quite reasonable so far.

I don't know from "deserve" or not. I do know that we are told over and over again that the government is the source of all that is good and wise in our nation, and that they are the only thing keeping ravenous rich people, corporations, and businessmen from raping us to death.

In fact, a simple look at the numbers, or the world around us, shows us that without the people who create a great deal more wealth than they need, without that surplus wealth, we would be in very deep shit.

There are countries where the only millionaires are the government leaders. They don't have private jets crowding their airports, or tens of thousands of big houses in the hills. They have a few palaces, and a lot of hovels. I don't want to live in such a place.

I want to live in a country with a lot of people richer than I am. I am grateful that somebody is paying a lot of my freight, not only in taxes but in investing in and building new technology, new medicines, and new ways to make my life better.

I go down to the new libary, the new university buildings at Stanford, the new downtown city hall here, and the new hospital where my wife works. They all have lists of names on display somewhere. Sometimes they're carved into arrays of bricks. Sometimes they're printed on brass plaques. Sometimes there's one name on the building. In my wife's hospital the list of names is on lit plastic signs in the lobby. These are the names of people who have a lot of money. Much more than I've got. And they have enough to spare to help build things like this, and many other things. Do you remember where Stanford University came from?

And our political leaders shit on them.

Microcephalic politicians who, if their lives depended on it, could not build so much as a lead pencil.

Funny thing, as an aside, but I was looking up NPR's funding when this "fired commentator" flap happened. Interestingly, most of their money does not come from the government. There are donations, and 20 percent comes from corporations. A few years back, they got something like $200 million from the estate of the widow of Ray Kroc. Founder of McDonalds. You know, that filthy rich creep who raked in ill-gotten gains by selling greaseburgers to helpless widows and orphans?

Hilarious, really. That's twice their annual budget. For at least two years, the great liberal NPR was hanging off Ronald McDonald's tit.