Usa Thread

[Flashermac]

Or Willie Sutton. He only robbed banks, not the citizenry.

 

 

 

Ah, Willie Sutton ... one of my childhood heroes. He even escaped from prison by using a "gun" he had carved from soap. The man had more intelligence and integrity than most of our politicians. He also worked a lot harder to "earn" his money and did far less damage to the country.

[kamui]

 

 

 

It doesn't matter anymore. The country has so many problems we just can not get out of our financial crisis situation.

 

Even if a Republican should come forth, he/she has no plan. About all the Republican party wants to do is see Obama fail no matter what the consequences will be. Sad.

 

Yep, HH's answers shows, that including him many Americans still don't understand the momentousness of the failure of the US political class and businesses involved in the past 10-15 years.

It's not about a single president anymore (the absolute hatred against Obama is very difficult to understand anyway), but how the USA deals with its complete failure to bring the economy back on a solid base. During a failed decade the USA has lost first it's cultural influence (first in Muslim nations, then all over Asia and now in Europe as well), second it's military predominance (a bunch of middle age tribes with WWII weapons and custom build bombs keeps the best army in the world in check in Afghanistan), and third finally it's _self inflicted_ economic downfall which culminated in the world crises in 2008 and now in its downgrading

By the way Obama wasn't involved in any of these disasters except the downgrading. But of course the Dems a) supported failed project that every American should be able to buy a house and b.) didn't do much to oppose the Iraq war...

 

As I understand the battle has already started who is responsible for the downgrading and I expect that the upcoming months until the day of the election will become more ugly than the last election campaign - even though the last election had been very dirty already.

 

PS: While we all talk about Wall Street, e.g., it is extremely sad to see how deep rooted the financial crisis in fact is: cities and counties all over the USA can't provide the essentials of public service anymore - policemen, firefighters, teachers, health workers get fired, towns even have to declare bankruptcy. I guess soon smaller towns will look like in the Wild West in the 19th century, where a bunch of local rich guys run the cities - without paying taxes of course, because this is bad for the economy.

I wonder what has been left over of the American Dream.

[Steve]

I've went from a conservative, socially moderate-ish Libertarian to a practically out and out Liberal. I do have some Libertarian ideals still.

 

Why?

 

I saw a Republican on TV saying the way out of this mess is to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy. I used to buy that. I used to buy the 'they create the jobs' thing. Haven't thought that in a while.

 

The corporations that were failing, the banks, airlines, etc. weren't failing from onerous regs and high taxes. Yes, there are some bad regulations, especially in certain industries. No, they failed because they f*ked up. Pure and simple. These same corporations were nickel and diming the common man. Airlines charging for using what they built anyway. Cargo space on planes. Banks raking in tons of fees for anything they could think of. A lot of these companies moved production overseas and jobs overseas. They made money and got greedy. Normal economic cycles where you had to have a downturn after a climb. Econ 101. We all learned that economies are not linear. They go up and down while trending up. Every freshman can tell you that. However, they use those downturns to say they are over regulated out of profits. Ford and others making SUVs and thinking short term and then when gas prices go against them its some how the fault of too much regulations and high taxes. Pure and utter bullsh*t. Bankruptcy laws changed to make it harder for the common man to declare bankruptcies but corporations can do it willy nilly and get empathy when they have to but for you and I, a social stigma? WTF?

 

How does Paris Hilton create jobs? She's worth tens of millions. She's gonna hire an extra publicist if we cut her taxes?

 

The reason for the hatred of Obama is because he's not their man. Simple as that. The reasons we were given on why he would not be a good president didn't come to fruition. He was too young and inexperienced. He's a flaming liberal. He hasn't done some things well but it has NOTHING to do with him being over awed by the job or too far left. He's establishment now. Got that way during the election when he could buy and sell McCain's campaign war chest. He's centrist. He's smart as hell too. Gotta give him his due. He went down the wrong road with health care and didn't go far enough left on a few issues. The left is upset with him because he's a centrist. To be fair, the same goes for Bush. The reasons we were warned about wasn't what happenened. He wasn't too dumb. He was just too religious for one and starting equating his faith with what is best for all of us and putting his faith above the constitution. Hypocritically the same constitution he swore on a bible to uphold. Nah, his problem was he was far in the pocket of big oil and the defense industry.

 

NOTHING will get done because the parties aren't arguing ideology. They're arguing for the special interest. The passion and harsh rhetoric is about keeping the money going. Some of them have lied to themself so much they actually believe the bullsh*t.

[kamui]

deleted

[Flashermac]

CS - I don't think you are old enough to remember when airports in California made travellers pay to use the hong nam! There you were paying who knows how much for an airline ticket, maybe buying their overpriced airport food and drinks while you were stuck there waiting, and on top of that they wanted you to pay to take a dump! I even saw an attendant assigned to watch the stalls at South San Francisco airport to make sure nobody tried to sneak in without paying. The state finally passed a law to ban charging for toilet facilities in public places. The fee wasn't that much, but it used to burn me up just on principle.

[Guest lazyphil]

spend a penny aka take a leak!

[Flashermac]

This was more like spend a pound to take a poop. The urinals were free. Maybe the attendant at SFO was to keep guys from crapping in the urinal. Would have served the airport right.

[Flashermac]

 

(a bunch of middle age tribes with WWII weapons and custom build bombs keeps the best army in the world in check in Afghanistan)

 

 

 

Western military forces have yet to figure out how to defeat a nation except in a conventional war. You cannot occupy a country forever, if the people (some of them anyway) are determined enough to sit you out. The US military did not lose a single battle in the VN War, but finally ending up going home and watching Hanoi overrun the South. The Russians learnt their lesson in Afghanistan, just as the Brits had before them. So when is Washington going to get the message?

 

If you want to go back to the beginning of the USA, Frederick the Great (Friedrich der Grosse of Prussia) looked at the American Revolution and pronouncd that the British would lose. All the rebellious colonials had to do was wait. The British military had to transport everything across the sea for the war, including men and horses. Even if the British captured every American city, the "rebels" only had to withdraw into the interior. Although the French "interference" made "Patriot" victory more likely, what really happened was the British government after nearly 8 years finally decided the war wasn't worth continuing. I recall from my East Asian history classes long ago that Chou En Lai (or maybe it was Mousey Dung) carefully studied the tactics of George Washington. Maybe the US military should too.

[Bangkoktraveler]

News claims if the USA's rating drops again the country will be in the same league as Spain.

 

I don't fore see anything being done by Congress till Obama is finally 'beaten and humiliated' which means the country's rating may have to drop to Spain's rating level. Sad.

[Flashermac]

No hay problema. Put your money in pesos, gringo.