#66688 by Douglas Chalmers on 4/27 at 3:53 am
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But the “...cronyism, neglect, corruption, rigidity and plain stupidity—perpetrated by figures who had billed themselves as the geniuses of our time...” makes him and his kind more like burrowing insects in their behaviour and the awful consequences of a white-anted state are now about to be visited on us all!
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http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=f_TGa.18248$ Gm4.1588076@news20.bellglobal.com
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America often reminds me of something that happens in nature, where a small insect succeeds in parasitically embedding its eggs into a much bigger one. As the eggs hatch, the emerging larvae begin to feed off the big insect from within, leading eventually to its death. Watching the spectacle, one can see the body of the host insect beating violently from the feeding frenzy within it. Even in nature I find the ordeal grotesque and abominable.
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#67227 by basho on 4/30 at 12:22 am
(46 comments total)

#67204 by Douglas Chalmers on 4/29 at 5:56 pm
(210 comments total)

‘Things were much more primitive for the ordinary person in monarchist Europe and Britain.’

interesting point of view, not supported by fact. traveled around the u.s. much?

<Snicker!>

Let’s see . . . oh, right: Virginia was named for Britain’s “Virgin Queen”.  So Virginia Tech. is located in Britain.

That’s the ticket . . .

Everywhere you look, well almost everywhere except at Fox News, you hear the collective disdain the american people now have for this administration. Bu$h has remained in the 30 percentile in his popularity for over a year now and Cheney would be hard pressed to get an approval half of that and yet he and Cheney remain at the helm. Scandle after scandle is brought forth showing the corrupt nature of the whole of this administration from Cheney’s former company Halliburton’s bilking of our treasury ( which profits Cheney handsomely thru his stock holdings in the company ), to a justice department that is nothing more then bu$h’s mall lawyer, neither of them even understanding or caring about the principals of our constituion.Americans are dying every day in a war of bu$h’s choice, not to help the Iraqi people, but for their oil. How many of you out there still believe we are a functioning democracy where the people are in charge? How come we still have a President, Vice President and Secretary of State that we all know lied to us over and over and continue to lie to us each day ? What is it going to take, an american military coup ?

#67204 by Douglas Chalmers on 4/29 at 5:56 pm

The USA has never stopped putting its worst foot forward. “Over-sexed and over here”

how did we get here?

#67204 by Douglas Chalmers on 4/29 at 5:56 pm
(210 comments total)

‘Things were much more primitive for the ordinary person in monarchist Europe and Britain.’

interesting point of view, not supported by fact. traveled around the u.s. much?

#67165 by basho on 4/29 at 12:11 pm>>...and it is a tremendous loss for both. Over the last 14 years, i have watched America go from the peak to the pit in the perception of people in Europe. >>It may be a bit of an exaggeration but Americans literally ‘walked on water’. Everyting, in a sense was forgiven. There was, in America, and by extension, in Americans, a sense of freedom that most Europeans could only dream of.......”

That was certainly true and the stories of the older generation support that. Things were much more primitive for the ordinary person in monarchist Europe and Britain. The US-led invasion of Nazi-dominated Western Europe was also the cause of the English language being as popular as it is today.

Sadly, though, the invasions never stopped either there or in Japan. The USA has still not learned its lesson after Korea (1950’s) and Vietnam (1960’s-70’s). The USA has never stopped putting its worst foot forward. “Over-sexed and over here” and the rot started a long time ago - “Uncomfortable truth: U.S. troops ignored sex slave atrocity, used Japanese-run brothels” - After its surrender—with tacit approval by U.S. occupation authorities—Japan set up a similar “comfort women” system for American GIs.  http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/features/news/20070426p2 g00m0fe037000c.html

response to: Joe Conason part 2

“With the advent of the Bush administration, however, our luck has obviously run out. Neither allies nor adversaries pretend to believe that the ludicrous characters sent forth by the president to represent us are statesmen. Not only
does nobody much care what we think, but most people are now inclined to distrust and oppose us on principle.”

>>Not only are they not stateswo/men ...they are liars. They are liars and the world sees it as so. And by extension, they are passing those attributes on to every American.

“The latest example of American decline is… Paul Wolfowitz......”

>>Then there was; Bolton, Rumsfeld, Powell to name a few. And then there is Quantanamo, the prisons in Iraq, the kidnapping of European citizens and related ‘renderings’, the Palestinians, and on and on.

>>Wolfowitz is a real piece of work. He should also be remembered for his work on the 1992 neocon manifesto. Googling his name brings up so much sh*t about this man that you know he only survives because he is wired in at the top.

“… his own promotion to the World Bank presidency was mystifying.”

>>Is it still mystifying? He got ‘out of harm’s way’ or was gotten out of harm’s way. In 2003, he and Rumsfeld admitted publicly that Iraq was a failure.
http://www.utne.com/web_special/web_specials_2003-08/a rticles/10739-1.html

>>or maybe it was the beginning of ‘the changing of the guard’, maybe the war was already won ala Patriot Acts I & II ? This is what the world is seeing, the start of a totalitarian state.

“It was all going to pay for itself with Iraqi oil revenues”

>>Well, one can spin this in another direction. History shows us numerous examples of - that when the economy of a country is about to collapse, because it is bankrupt, that country goes to war and stays at war. Iraq fit the agenda,
for a number of reasons, oil being only one of them.

>>Economically America is bankrupt. It is printing $$ so fast that the FED is no longer reporting M3. The 30 yr bond, a bellweather for the state of the economy, was scrapped. The CPI figures are so distorted that no one knows what
they measure. (If you want sources, just ask . Gold the ultimate measure of the value of a currency has gone from a low in 2001 of 225$/oz to 678.90$ on last Friday’s close. The $$=82 cents and is forecasted to fall even further. The ARM debacle is the most recent crack-in-the-wall.

>>When one looks at; the monumental debt that America has acrued, the negative savings rate, the time (5-6 yrs ago) when it took only 95 cents to buy a 1€ contrasted to now where it costs 1.36$ to buy a 1€, the billions being pored
into the military, one is amazed at how much longer this spin can go on. Unfortunately, the world sees it to. America is probably the first nation on this planet that has bought it’s way into slavery with a credit card.

“Hypocrite is far too inadequate an insult to describe these people.”

>>’Hypocite’, is that the best you can do, label it as hypocritical? Isn’t this impeachable behavior?
They gave you ‘scooter’ and almost rove but not much more.

“With its endless procession of tawdry scandals and buffoonish antics, the Bush administration often looks and sounds like a sitcom.”

>>An argument can be made for the observation that; - these ‘buffoonish antics’ are proceeding as planned. As for the sitcom analogy, yes, but for the fact that you are the sitcom.

“In retrospect, as America and the world confront terror, disease, poverty and environmental peril, it will be recognized as a tragedy.”

>>That’s the way it goes with Empires.
.........
Take it for what it’s worth.

response to: Joe Conason

“Not so long ago, the United States was known as the “indispensable nation,” the one that could be relied upon to lead in times of crisis. That forfeited reputation is not only the world’s loss, but ours as well.”

>>...and it is a tremendous loss for both. Over the last 14 years, i have watched America go from the peak to the pit in the perception of people in
Europe.

>>It may be a bit of an exaggeration but Americans literally ‘walked on water’. Everyting, in a sense was forgiven. There was, in America, and by extension, in Americans, a sense of freedom that most Europeans could only dream of. When i talked to people, they would tell me about their trips to the Grand Canyon NP, to California. Others would talk about MIT, New York, New Orleans. Still otherswould tell you about going from the East Coast to the West Coast in a camper. They would go on and on through at least 2 liters of bier. I got to ‘see’ places in the U.S., I had never been to. Many of them were planning another trip there. It was the freedom and it was exotic stuff. Many of them had family members, near and distant, that had ‘moved’ to America. They were ‘envied’ for having ‘gotten to America.’

>>Then there was the American soldiers, sailors, and airmen that had freed Europe, not so long ago, then there was the Berlin Airlift, and on and on. This store of goodwill, respect, may i say ‘love’ that the wo/man on the street had
for Americans was incalcuable.

>>This is gone. But it did not go immediately. It began going in the 1st years of the Bush administration. The citizens of Europe began to see a pattern of government they knew only too well. There was no condemnation, there was sorrow
for the American people. And whenever they expressed that sorrow many of them would add ‘but they will see it and this man won’t be elected again. They are Americans.’ That all changed when America voted to give Bush 4 more years.

>>It is not unusual to hear stories of how many of them were refused entry without cause. Well, they are not going to the U.S. anymore. The draconian requirements imposed an traveling to the U.S. is something Europeans know very well.

“Cronyism, neglect, corruption, rigidity and plain stupidity—perpetrated by figures who had billed themselves (and were billed by the mainstream media) as the geniuses of our time—have exacted an awesome toll on the inheritance we
received from previous generations.”

>>My question to this statement is: What comes first; ‘Cronyism, neglect, corruption, rigidity and plain stupidity’ or; the lethargy of a society that allows ‘Cronyism, neglect, corruption, rigidity and plain stupidity’ to take
place?

>>As to the Mainstream Media, it is amazing what Americans do not hear about what is going on in the world. CNN as Warner Bros’s. replacement for Looney Tunes is an abomination in the field of journalism and an insult to anyone that professes to have a brain that functions.

“Our heritage of world leadership in the last century was built not upon military power alone, but arose from economic, diplomatic and moral foundations that somehow survived despite many earlier mistakes and even crimes.”

>>Absolutely!

#67077 by JNagarya on 4/28 at 8:51 pm: “...#66634 by DennisD on 4/26 at 6:45 pm

“Bu$h, for all his arrogance, certainly doesn’t believe in the buck stops here philosophy.”

Only because the denomination is insufficient.......”

He’s waiting for his clever domestic economic policies to take effect combined with the terrorists he has created with his clever foreign policies bombing oil refineries so that the USA will have inflation then recession - and only then will the $US be cheap enough to allow the buck to stop at the (not his but everybodys’) doorstep!

#66634 by DennisD on 4/26 at 6:45 pm
(Unregistered commenter)

“Bu$h, for all his arrogance, certainly doesn’t believe in the buck stops here philosophy.”

Only because the denomination is insufficient.

“...With its endless procession of tawdry scandals and buffoonish antics, the Bush administration often looks and sounds like a sitcom....”

Instead of the expected image of a CEO, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz appears more like Dracula’s depraved manservant in some archaic b+w horror movie set in the Carpathian Mountains of Transsylvania!

But the “...cronyism, neglect, corruption, rigidity and plain stupidity—perpetrated by figures who had billed themselves as the geniuses of our time...” makes him and his kind more like burrowing insects in their behaviour and the awful consequences of a white-anted state are now about to be visited on us all!

But Bush still trusts Wolf as a most loyal servant of this administration.

#66542 by dale Headley on 4/26 at 5:47 pm
(Unregistered commenter)

“Alberto Gonzales was a stark example of why the Bush White House is self-destructing when he demonstrated so spectacularly that he is incompetent.  Is it any wonder that agencies in this government, from FEMA to the “Coalition Provisional Authority” in Baghdad, have performed like Keystone Kops, when the only qualification for their jobs was their opposition to abortion?”

They are not incompetent at what they are about: Bushit praised Gonazles’ stiffing of Congress because it was a competent performance of an ongoing deceit.

They have not been incompetent at undermining elections, subverting the rule of law, and emptying the treasury.

Incompetent at governing?  They don’t care about government or governing.  They hate gov’t—rule of law—as intensely as they hate all regulation/law.  Why do you expect a form of competence from those who did not bully and steal their way into office in order to perform angelic miracles.

They are competent at what they are about—including the ledgerdemain of making you believe they are incompetent, so that they don’t know what they are doing.  And while you call them incompetent, they have you blocked with feint and are continuing their competent destruction of the country.

In regards to Wolfowits, it is unfortunate that this type of corruption occurs within an organization that is attempting assist in the development of nations. While the World Bank is far from upstanding in their policies, there needs to be more effort in assisting in the growth of undeveloped countries if the issues that face the world today are to be addressed: global poverty, disease, global warming etc.

Politics should not be made part of organizations that are seeking to help developing countries.  If more was done to support the UN Millennium Development Goals, there would certainly be a drastic difference in what this world will look like in ten years. According to the Borgen Project, just $19 billion annually can end starvation and malnutrition. Put into perspective, we have spent over $340 billion on the Iraq war without any positive outcome.

America has moved a big step down from the great country it used to be, thanks to the Bush administration. Bush has forgotten about diplomacy, foreign aid and humanitarian causes that benefit all involved. To restore those values should be a top priority.

TAO Walker (http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/putting_our_worst _foot_forward/#66564) puts things in proper perspective. 

We non-Indians actually brought TWO competing civilizations to this continent.  The first, inspired in part by Christ, is based on reciprocity and the Golden Rule and spiritual life.  The second, inspired by Mammon and Moloch, is based on domination, enslavement, hypocrisy, moralism, and spiritual death.  The second long ago triumphed over the first, but now it is sucking air—so we may someday be forced to resurrect the first.

Today, we’re witnessing a “civilization swap”.  Iran, of all places, advocates freedom of speech, while our own regime embraces torture.

http://www.freeforum101.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2827& mforum=times—civilizations trade places

The situation is not entirely bleak.  The collapse of our deranged empire creates opportunites for alternatives.  As the first become last, the last finally become free to speak the truth and act with wisdom.

Joe Conason’s rose-colored view of America’s storied past is not so widely shared (here in Indian Country and its many extensions out into the arbitrarily designated “third world” similarly raped and pillaged), as he and his fellowamericans seem so eager (desperate?) to believe.  It looks to us, rather, like the rogue regime on the Potomac is only one among many just desserts being visited finally upon this make-believe “nation” of aiders-and-abettors to a vicious criminal enterprise now in “the throes” of its own dying days here.

The awful truth is that the Europeans who washed-up on the Sunrise shores of Turtle Island four hundred winters ago began pissing-away their already diminished reserves of human integrity from the moment they got here.  They lied shamelessly, for example, about both their motives and their designs.  In “New England” they murdered the native people who’d just fed them through what would’ve been a winter fatal to the whole gangbanging bunch of ‘em.

William Penn and his “Quakers” thought themselves real clever when they abused an offer of “as much land as a man could walk around in one day,” by sending their “most fleet of foot” to run around considerably more of it, instead.  Giving everybody else “the business” and “the runaround” has been the allamerican m.o. ever since.

So it is no mystery to us Heathen Savages how theamericanpeople come to be paddle-less up “shit crick” today, their paper canoe of a “Constitution” shredded beyond even recognition let-alone repair, and a virtual tsunami of karmic justice surging into every nook-and-cranny of the allamerican “lifestyle.” In what Gore Vidal calls “the United States of Amnesia,” the chicken-hawks are coming home to roost with a vengeance.

Conason’s lament here about the depradations to the “homeland” being wrought by its own home-grown predator classes is too little too late, especially coming as it does from someone who’d been only too glad to share in the spoils shipped back from their privateering assaults on other lands and peoples, or stolen in broad daylight from the native nations here.  Theamericandream has for two-and-a-half centuries been much of the rest of the world’s nightmare....but “....the World Turns,” and a pampered people so accustomed to giving us all “the finger” is now in the early stages of getting its own long-overdue come-uppance.

Whining about “....tawdry scandals and bufoonish antics....” in the crumbling corridors of illusory americanpower will in no way lessen the intensity of what is dead-sure to be a very painful lesson.  It’ll have quite the opposite effect, most likely.

Time to grow-up or git gone, America.

HokaHey!