The US is a failed empire. The definition of a successful empire is when the wealth is exploited from the colonies and enriches the colonizer. A failed empire is when the wealth of the colonizer is sent to the colonies, this is the Soviet model where the wealth of the Russian Republic was used to prop up the other Soviet Republics. Now the government admits to at least 25 BANKS TOO BIG TO FAIL, which means they are propped up by the government with tax monies paid by individual taxpayers. This is Fascism, when the government collect tax monies for the purpose of doling it out to the CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS. Reagan started this with his huge Federal deficits in the 1980’s, $300,000,000,000 BILLION per year. Federal deficits are financed with bonds and the proceeds of these bonds are then doled out to the CORPORATE WELFARE KINGS and the interest and principle paid by individual taxpayers. Remember Reagan virtually eliminated corporate taxes to ensure they didn’t have to finance the loan proceeds they received.

The real question we should be asking is when will we be pulling out of Ahfganistan not Iraq. I suspect we will be in that country far longer.

THE FUTURE - BLACK, NATURALLY - IT IS GORE VIDAL AFTER ALL

RIGHT
@ Steppin’ Razor, July 24 at 2:02 pm #
> This so sad. My country has in ever respect become a colonial empire and we have only one use a people. To serve the Empire with our taxes and manpower. Of course We The People get nothing in this arrangement. NOTHING! I am afraid it will take a bloody revolution to change this status quo. Very bad days are ahead and
> Welcome to Servitude to the Corporate Elite and Goodbye to Self Government by The People.

THE LAST ENEMY - US
Gore Vidal, interviewed by Patt Morrison in 1995 -

‘When bankrupt, the only enemy left for the government (the US Military Industrial Congressional complex) - a permanent wartime government - is ... the US people.’ With two million people in jail and five million involved in the criminal justice system; “a disgrace.” 2.3 million jailed, 7.3 million on parole, in 2009.

It didn’t come to pass as he direly predicted then. Cheney had a _darned_ good try - we do not yet know why the Neocons went away - possibly Laura Donohue’s AI systems to forecast each individual’s actions - after TIA, TALON programs - did they show civil war and defeat for the Neocons? Or was it simpler - the threatened indictment of Cheney, Rove et al, if they didn’t leave peaceably, after the sorry mess they made of the Empire?

We hope that it won’t come to pass so now either. But it is worth bearing in mind that Gore Vidal foresaw that it could, in 1995.

He explained Timothy McVeigh, and the Oklahama bombing as payback for a US government that is the enemy of its people, based on Ruby Ridge and Waco. McVeigh, he thought, didn’t know he was killing children; ‘he did it in a fit of rage.’ ‘He was a first class soldier, who won medals in Iraq 1991. But he had to be portrayed as a madman’. In fact, based on his writing, he was ‘a brilliant kid, who would have made a good constitional lawyer.’ Paraphrased.

The extreme militia types are ‘the future of the country - the men with the flags and the guns.’ “This is just the very start of the violence.” ‘If the government had a brain it would leave these people - who hate the government, as much as I do, alone. But, oh no, they have to go in and kill them.’

Even more fascinating was his view that ‘there has been a quiet exodus of middleclass Americans who don’t want their children to grow up here.’ Where there was ‘no education system for the poor.’

That the people don’t realise that they are ‘getting screwed; that the US is highly taxed, considering that, unlike Europe, they get so little for their money, with no state medical system, no welfare state, terrible public education system’. Taxes; ‘it all goes for war and has done for fifty years’.

Prescient indeed. Gore Vidal interviewed by Patt Morrison from 1995. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L54H8HUNZZs

Laura Donohue - Stanford Law -TIA, TALON programs. One Stasi-style informer per fifteen or twenty citizens - implemented. -

http://fora.tv/2008/09/11/Laura_Donohue_The_Consequences_of_Counterterrorism#chapter_01

2.3m jailed, 7.3m on parole - 2009 - http://www.itwire.com/content/view/23556/1066

WRONG
> the dirty little secret is the whole World is against US. Only our military power keeps the wolves at bay.
This _50_plus_percent_ of the economy is purely a subsidy to rich Neocons. Who had ripped off $10-12T (T as in Trillion). But the bankers’s take is now said to have gone from $6T to ‘possibly $23T’, so that should read $27T to $29T (T as in Trillion).

Wonder if we’re still paying out huge sums of money to Iraqi political/religious factions in hopes that they’ll get their acts together. Also wonder if we leave do the payoffs stop?

Some old history might indicate that our present ‘mission’ to ‘convert’ the greater ME will take forever only to finally fail.  Two-hundred years of Crusades still didn’t manage to wipe out the Muslim population - but, hell, they tried.

Surprise! We’re stayin’ here forever!

This so sad. My country has in ever respect become a colonial empire and we have only one use a people. To serve the Empire with our taxes and manpower. Of course We The People get nothing in this arrangement. NOTHING! I am afraid it will take a bloody revolution to change this status quo. Very bad days are ahead and the dirty little secret is the whole World is against US. Only our military power keeps the wolves at bay.
Welcome to Servitude to the Corporate Elite and Goodbye to Self Government by The People.

I suspect he was paid by the Pentagon to say this.