Usa Thread

[cavanami]

Go to the USA for a holiday...NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Great PR for the USA...the local business people have to be thrilled...NOT...

 

Tourists kicked out of landmark US parks

 

http://news.yahoo.com/tourists-face-shutdown-deadline-leave-us-parks-175126117.html

 

For many people it is the trip of a lifetime. But thousands have been left angry at being locked out of landmark US national parks due to the government shutdown.

Hundreds who were lucky enough to already be staying in places like Yosemite and the Grand Canyon faced a deadline Thursday to leave, 48 hours after the shutdown went into force due to a budget standoff in Washington DC.

"We grew up seeing pictures of it in books," said Clare Cogan from Cork, Ireland, on honeymoon with her husband Mohally but locked out of Yosemite National Park, shuttered since Tuesday...

 

...

"We came all the way from England to climb and get to the top of El Capitan, but now we won't get the chance," Tim Larrad, a 52-year-old retired police officer from Worcester told the Contra Costa Times newspaper at his campsite.

"It's very disappointing. This climb was lifetime stuff. The trip took a lot of time to plan and prepare for," he said...

[cavanami]

Tom Clancy Questioned 9/11

 

http://www.infowars.com/tom-clancy-questioned-911/

 

Iconic author Tom Clancy questioned the Bush administration’s claim that they knew nothing about the 9/11 plot in advance because he had written a book 7 years beforehand based around that very premise, his co-author Steve Pieczenik told the Alex Jones Show.

 

Clancy died in hospital yesterday at the age of 66. He was the author of numerous high profile books, many of which were turned into movies, including The Hunt For Red October and Patriot Games.

Steve Piezcenik is a former deputy assistant secretary of state under four different presidents who also co-authored around 30 books with Clancy.

Piezcenik confirmed that Clancy was “suspicious†about 9/11, noting that he had written a book which depicted a similar attack years before. The plot of Clancy’s 1994 novel Debt of Honor revolves around a Japanese terrorist hijacking and crashing a jetliner into the US Capitol.

“So when Condoleezza Rice responded in front of the 9/11 Commission that nobody had ever thought of this concept that a plane could have been attacking any one of our buildings….Tom had already written about this almost ten years beforehand and it was well known,†said Piezcenik, adding that fictional plots revolving around terrorism had to first be cleared with national security officials.

Pieczenik also said that Clancy was a regular listener to the Alex Jones Show...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu5PqNWnAYY&feature=player_embedded

[unit731]

Scam lawyers. Scam doctors. Scam judges.

 

Some of the large name tele law firms - have doctors full time in the law firm offices.

 

 

"This week, Steve Kroft reported on the U.S. disability fund, which is on track to become the first government entitlement program to run out of cash.

 

Kroft and his team, 60 Minutes producers James Jacoby and Michael Karzis, found that the disability program has become a "secret welfare system."

 

"A lot of it is just people gaming the system," says Kroft. "If you're 50 years old and you've got a bad back, what are you going to do? Are you going to try and take a minimum wage job with no health insurance? Or are you going to try and get on disability?"

 

When it began back in the 50s, the disability fund was a small program, intended only for people who were unable to work because of illness or injury. Today, the 60 Minutes team reported, the disability fund serves nearly 12 million people, up 20 percent in the last six years alone. But perhaps the most surprising figure in Kroft's story is the overall size of the program: it has a budget of $135 billion -- more than the government spent last year on the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Labor Department combined.

Why the sudden surge in disabled people in this country? Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who is leading a Senate investigation of the disability program, says millions of people are gaming the system:

 

TOM COBURN: Probably a third of everybody on disability, there's no way that they're disabled.

 

STEVE KROFT: They're scamming the system?

 

TOM COBURN: Yes--it's nauseating."

 

LINK

[unit731]

Obama’s barricades won’t stop the greatest generation

 

 

 

 

"Conflict over the responsibility for the government shutdown got personal at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. Wednesday when a member of Congress confronted a U.S. Park Service Ranger over access to the closed park land.

 

The congressman was Randy Neugebauer, a Republican representing Texas. He confronted the ranger in the middle of a crowd of tourists as she was keeping most of the public out of the closed World War II memorial.

 

The Park Service has been allowing World War II vets who have traveled from all over the country to enter the memorial, even though it's closed during the government shutdown; the rangers say they are exercising their First Amendment rights as they let the veterans in.

 

But they are keeping the rest of the public out of the facility, which is officially closed. And that did not sit well with the congressman, reported News4's Mark Segraves, who witnessed the confrontation.

 

"How do you look at them and... deny them access?" said Neugebauer. He, with most House Republicans, had voted early Sunday morning to pass a funding measure that would delay the Affordable Care Act, a vote that set up a showdown with the Senate and President Barack Obama. With the parties unable to agree on how to fund the federal government, non-essential government functions shut down Tuesday.

 

"It's difficult," responded the Park Service employee.

 

"Well, it should be difficult," replied the congressman, who was carrying a small American flag in his breast pocket.

 

"It is difficult," responded the Park Service employee. "I'm sorry, sir."

 

"The Park Service should be ashamed of themselves," the congressman said.

 

"I'm not ashamed," replied the ranger.

 

At that point, a crowd of onlookers got involved. "Ask those questions of the people who aren't passing the budget," shouted a voice from the crowd. "That's who you need to ask these questions to." "

 

 

LINK

 

 

As Alex Jones does . . . only paints the parts of the picture that fits his agenda.

[Flashermac]

"As Alex Jones does . . . only paints the parts of the picture that fits his agenda."

 

Unfortunately, that is true of most "news sites" these days, both right and left. Whatever happened to the days of journalists at least trying to be somewhat even handed, except in editorials? Nowadays, I have to turn to the BBC or elsewhere to find out what is really happening in the USA.

[think_too_mut]

Flasher, you would remember the pictures and videos of Bill Clinton being a "friend" with Boris Yeltsin? Bear hugs, smiles, handshakes.

 

That guy (Yeltsin) would not have earned a minute of Clinton's time had he not held a masssive nuclear potential that could go elsewhere.

 

Same now: China and Russia are mild, knowing that US bankrupcy would wipe out all their reserves in US bonds.

Like going around a child who has acquired some dangerous toy, how to take it off him? The child does not know how serious it is.

 

Even if this is resolved, the credibility in economical, political and life-style image of the US has been eroded, perhaps, never to recover.

 

It's an Asian century. You and me won't see the end of it. To see it through, my daugthter would be almost a 100 years old woman in 2100. If we could only get her posts while down there.

[waerth]

Flash I am looking with bewilderment at the situation in the US. A small group within one party manages to hold their own party hostage, whom in turn hold the whole country hostage. And by extension you could say the world, as when the US defaults it is gonna be a worldwide problem!

 

And all because they disagree with one law which was even upheld by your own courts! So just because they didn't get the toys they wanted to play with they are willing to threaten to blow up the whole pram if they do not get their way. These people are dangerous nutcases. extremely dangerous.

[cavanami]

Time for them to be removed

[Flashermac]

The 13 reasons Washington is failing

 

 

The government is shut down. Confidence in Congress is at all-time lows. The American people haven't believed the country to be on the right track in almost a decade. Congress might do something truly crazy and default on the national debt.

 

At this point, it's almost cliche to say Washington isn't working. But the truth is harsher: Washington is actively failing. It's failing to craft policies that make the country better. And it's failing to avoid disasters that make the country worse.

 

It's nice to imagine these failures are temporary or aberrational. It's comforting to believe that they're the result of bad people, or dumb people, or incompetent people. But the truth is more unnerving: The American political system is being torn apart by deep structural changes that don't look likely to reverse themselves anytime soon. A deal to reopen the government won't fix what ails American politics.

 

And so we need to look deeper than just this battle. The sooner we recognize that something is wrong with Washington, the sooner we can begin the hard work of fixing it. Here, then, are 13 of Washington's problems — ordered, subjectively, from small to big — and there are, of course, many more.

 

...

 

11) There is no "Republican Party"

 

The last time the Republican Party forced a government shutdown was 1996 and Speaker Newt Gingrich was clearly in charge of congressional Republicans. He had led the Republicans to their gains in the 1994 midterm election. He was the lead architect of the post-election strategy. He negotiated with President Bill Clinton. And when it came time to cut the deal, he could deliver the votes.

 

Today's Republican Party is far more splintered. Like the 1994 midterm elections, the 2010 midterm elections saw Republicans beating Democrats, but before that happened, it saw Tea Party Republicans beating incumbent Republicans — a psychological trauma that cows most Republican politicians even today.

 

Speaker John Boehner isn't in charge of today's Republican Party. Mainstream elected Republicans live in fear that a Tea Party primary challenger will end their career, as happened to Senator Bob Bennett and Congressman Mike Castle and Senator Dick Lugar. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is facing a tea party challenger. Boehner was forced to shut down the government by Ted Cruz.

 

It now seems totally reasonable for Business Week to run a cover like this one:

 

 

 

"The Man Who Does" is Jim DeMint, the senator most closely identified with the Tea Party's strategy of mounting primary challenges against Republican incumbents, and now the head of the Heritage Foundation. DeMint doesn't run Congress. But he's part of the reason Boehner and McConnell don't, either. And this ongoing civil war inside the Republican Party is making the Republican Party both more extreme and less predictable.

 

...

 

 

 

 

http://www.washingto...ton-is-failing/

[cavanami]

John Boehner Bonehead