From my inbox.
Feb. 24th, 2007 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nolawitch58He wrote:
I responded:
The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some poll data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true given the source, right?
The Newsweek poll alleges that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed and 69 percent of the country is unhappy with the performance of the President. In essence 2/3s of the citizenry just ain't happy and want a change.
So being the knuckle dragger I am, I started thinking, ''What are we so unhappy about?''
Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter? Could it be that 95.4 percent of these unhappy folks have a job? Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time and see more food in moments than Darfur has seen in the last year?
Maybe it is the ability to drive from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through each state? Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter? I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just not good enough. Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provide services to help all and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.
Perhaps you are one of the 70 percent of Americans who own a home. You may be upset with knowing that in the unfortunate case of a fire, a group of trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top notch equipment to extinguish the flames thus saving you, your family and your belongings. Or if, while at home watching one of your many flat screen TVs, a burglar or prowler intrudes , an officer equipped with a gun and a bullet-proof vest will come to defend you and your family against attack or loss. This all in the backdrop of a neighborhood free of bombs or militias raping and pillaging the residents. Neighborhoods where 90 percent of teenagers own cell phones and computers.
How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we enjoy that are the envy of everyone in the world? Maybe that is what has 67 percent of folks unhappy.
Fact is, we are the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats the world has ever seen. No wonder the world loves the U.S. ...yet has a great disdain for its citizens. They see us for what we are. The most blessed people in the world who do nothing but complain about what we don't have , and what we hate about the country, instead of thanking the good Lord we live here.
I know, I know. What about the President who took us into war and has no plan to get us out? The President who has a measly 31 percent approval rating? Is this the same President who guided the nation in the dark days after 9/11? The President that cut taxes to bring an economy out of recession? Could this be the same guy who has been called every name in the book for succeeding in keeping all the spoiled ungrateful brats safe from terrorist attacks? The Commander in Chief of an all-volunteer army that is out there defending you and me? Do you hear how bad the President is on the news or talk shows? Does this news affect you so much, make you so unhappy that you can't take a look around for yourself and see all the good things and be glad? Think about it...are we upset at the President because he actually caused us personal pain OR is it because the " Media" told us he was failing to kiss our sorry ungrateful behinds every day!
Make no mistake about it. The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have volunteered to serve, and in many cases may have died for your freedom. There is currently no draft in this country. They didn't have to go. They are able to refuse to go and end up with either a ''general'' discharge, an ''other than honorable'' discharge or, worst case scenario, a ''dishonorable'' discharge after a few days in the brig.
So why then the flat-out discontentment in the minds of 69 percent of Americans? Say what you want but I blame it on the media. If it bleeds, it leads...and they specialize in bad news. Everybody will watch a car crash with blood and guts. How many will watch kids selling lemonade at the corner? The media knows this and media outlets are for-profit corporations. They offer what sells , and when criticized, try to defend their actions by "justifying" them in one way or another. Just ask why they tried to allow a murderer like O. J. Simpson to write a book about how he didn't kill his wife, but if he did he would have done it this way... Insane!
We need to stop buying the negativism we are fed everyday by the media. Shut off the TV, burn Newsweek, and use the New York Times for the bottom of our bird cage. Then start being grateful for all we have as a country. There is exponentially more good than bad.
WE ARE THE MOST BLESSED PEOPLE ON EARTH
I responded:
I cannot speak for everyone else, but I can say why I am unhappy with the direction of the country. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. We who were formerly the middle class are being pushed down as our earning power dwindles. Wages are not keeping pace with inflation. Corporate America is more capricious than it has ever been with its workforce, outsourcing their jobs, slashing their benefits and no longer guaranteeing pensions. That is not good for the country. Economic feudalism didn't work as a long-term strategy in the Middle Ages either.
Politicians have been smugly corrupt. They are robbing the treasury of our tax dollars while decrying entitlements for the poor they so revile. What example is there for the populace at large to be law-abiding when the sinister cabal who run the country refuse to abide by laws? To have them trample our Constitution the way they have is repulsive.
Yes, the military is volunteer. That doesn't mean we should consider them a disposable as a tissue. That we rail against the waste of their blood for an unjust cause doesn't make us ungrateful. The Bush Administration is like a patrician Roman feast with excess eating, vomiting and more eating interspersed with drinking and debauchery all while the plebes and their children are hungry. I do not object to the correct use of our troops; I object to the abuse of their blood for the moron in the White House's poorly chosen war. I object to the lies that led us into the war for the glory of the right wingnutters of the Project for a New American Century. If it were a just cause, such as World War II, I wouldn't be the least bit angry. As it is, there are more parallels with Vietnam, which historical perspective and much correct sentiment at the time has proven to be an idiotic venture.
I detest the pResident for what he's said and done, not for what the media have showed him to be. Early in his first term, the media fawned over his stammering stupidity and made him out to be a regular Joe. He's an asshole for asking poor people's kids to fight and die the way he avoided during the Vietnam era by having a rich daddy get him into the National Guard, which he didn't even bother completing his duty at the time. He's a smirky frat boy with no sense of honor, duty or what average people endure in life. He's been bailed out of every one of his failures and has an unpleasant odor of entitlement since his family is old money. Old blood money. His great grandfather was in business with Nazis making money off the millions of deaths of Europeans and Americans during that war. At least the Kennedys made their money bootlegging liquor which may have contributed to individual fights and deaths, but not on the scale the Germans managed.
Not everybody considers being able to be dragged to the hospital by First Responders to be a good thing. Many would rather die than spend ten or twenty years trying to pay off the bill for a catastrophe. It's different if you are one of the people who has no health insurance. First the injury, then the insult of being charged twice and three times what others are charged for the same services, then the ignominy of having to declare bankruptcy since you can't pay the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges.
How can you think that we have religious freedom when there are people who cannot claim that they are Wiccans where they work for fear of being fired? In large cities, it might not matter; in small towns, being the wrong religion will get you ostracized at the least and killed at the worst. And we're certainly not free from the more insidious aspects of certain types of fundamentalists. Do you realize that the national policy of sex education is based on the Christian fundamentalists' abstinence-only method, which doesn't work? I for one cannot wait until those jerks get their fingers out of government policy. It's happening slowly. Kansas finally tossed their nutters who didn't want to teach evolution in science classes out. Probably because there were people who were unhappy with the direction that policy was going.
We have electricity. We have supermarkets. We have cable TV. Our lives are great and wondrous by the standards of a sub-Saharan African or the average Pakistani or Chinese. Too many are infantile in their self-gratification demands. We want it all, we want it now and we won't take no for an answer.
Yeah, we have it good. So what? Does that mean we shouldn't give a shit about anybody else? Misery and suffering are a negative energy that bring us down as a culture. Most people really don't care. They'll sit on their couches, eating Hot Pockets and watching American Idol without protest. Those of us who actually give a shit about making the world a better place, and that includes not letting the fuckwits in charge make things shittier for more people, have an absolute RIGHT to protest. Nay, we have an OBLIGATION. From our comfort, from our full bellies and warm homes, we are less than despicable if we fail to speak for those who are in hard places, hungry and cold. That makes us better than sociopathic creeps who care only for their own selves.
Part of our problem as a culture is that we only care about a situation if it affects us directly. You see the people in commercials saying things like, "I never knew anything about Cerebral Palsy until my daughter was born with it seven years ago." Christopher Reeve didn't care about stem cell research until he broke his neck falling off that horse. Michael J. Fox didn't care about Parkinsons until he started showing symptoms. Those celebrities championing causes have always rubbed me the wrong way for some reason. It's a bigger person who cares about something on principle because it's the right thing to do, not because he or she might suffer because of it.
That's the way I feel about it. I'm not in any way indicative of the population at large since I'm such an anomaly. I'd rather be on the progressive side of change fueled by white hot rage against the machine than blithely unconcerned about the injustice and wrongdoing being perpetrated in our names with our money.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 03:44 am (UTC)And, I'm afraid, much more politely than I would have.
Well done.
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Date: 2007-02-25 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 03:58 am (UTC)Way to go for cutting through the bs and getting to the actual issue that the poll respondents were referring to and that fuels the disapproval ratings.
thats a worry ...
Date: 2007-02-25 04:14 am (UTC)From the outside, I see middle-Americans who lack more than high school education who do not know enough geography ("You live in Aus .. thats next to Italy, right? How come you speak english?"), do not know any history outside their own country (and possibly not that), lack basic knowledge of economics or political science, and thus do not have the information to evaluate what they see in the media (assuming, of course, that they watch the news (CNN being what it has been, not believing what they say is understandable) and so swallow whole anything that they are told.
It is scarey when your young people dont enrol to vote, dont understand how their country is governed, and, along with large numbers of your minority groups, do not enrol or vote, because they think their vote doesnt make any difference (given the way your government works, Im not sure I dont agree with them ... ).
It is worse when your, presumably well-educated politicians visit my country, force us to close down half a city to ensure their "safety", and force us to cause our police to seriously reduce our civil right to demonstrate our difference of opinion in case a demonstrator gets too close to their hotel. Australia is not the US - we dont shoot politicians here, we ignore them - or, as is threatening to happen in WA, indict them for infringements of the code relating to government officials.
Having Cheney tell us how to behave in our own country, and having Gore tell us about conservation (no doubt a wonderful film) like we didnt already know, when weve been trying to get the rest of the world to think about it - do they really think we are as ignorant and as under educated as they must clearly believe their own people are?
But then, since Cheney clearly believes that the US has jurisdiction in Afghanistan (or how else would he justify charging Hicks with ... whatever trumped up charge they are trying this week ... when it all happened in Afghanistan, not it the US - so nice to think that he understands national sovreignty) no wonder he thinks we need to have our security forces amplified by the use of US secret service staff to secure his motorcade, and of course we must stop the traffic and close the roads to "protect" him. I suspect he really doesnt "get" Australia.
America has it good - for those that have - and you all can go on living in ignorance, but when you start importing that ignorance into another country, and involving other countries in what turns out to be illegal - and when you are the only country left in the world with the money and firepower to enforce your point of view, then it is the responsibility of every person in the US to take notice and responsibility for the actions of your government. And you can only do that by actively pushing for improved education, social welfare, and political reform (please dont tell me you have democracy - you clearly dont when it needs a multimillionaire to become president and lobbying motivates legislators). You are governed by those with the most money, whether individuals or corporations. You need legislative change, and it will be hard to win and will take a long time.
Please dont take this rant personally. Im sure you personally are not one of the ignorant who dont think about these things. Its just that people outside the US get very fed up with the US telling us how to live in our own countries when you clearly dont have half as much as you think you have - your welfare is appalling, your medical system is almost as bad as the UK (and they have the excuse of too many people and not enough $$), I have a feeling your education system is not what you might think it is (why else would US unis think Aus PhDs are so wonderful?), and you spend billions making war with a defence force that gives criminals a get-out-of-jail card for 5 years of their life, and sends reservists to fight overseas on 3 months training (ours dont go for years ... even the regulars dont go immediately after training). You have to forgive us for thinking that the US hasnt really got its priorities right.
Re: thats a worry ...
Date: 2007-02-25 04:30 am (UTC)You're right, though. Too much boils down to who's got the most money. I can't stand many of my countrymen who are smugly ignorant fucks. I hate the superiority of idiots saying, "We're number one!" when we really aren't at the top of the lists of good things at all. I want to beat the shit out of idiots who spout that might-makes-right horseshit. The planet would be a lot better off if a pandemic of bird flu swept a good chunk of those morons into their graves.
For the record, I'm only for exporting ignorance if it's to send Bush and his minions to Mars where they can't fuck this planet up anymore.
*lol*
Date: 2007-02-25 04:43 am (UTC)O/T - I hope your friend is ok snd that it all works out for her.
Re: *lol*
Date: 2007-02-25 04:49 am (UTC)I'm serious about sending the ignorant to Mars or having a nice pandemic. Get them the hell away from defiling the Earth one way or another.
Re: *lol*
Date: 2007-02-25 08:58 am (UTC)What religious freedom that everyone else admires? religious freedom is guaranteed and enforced, and the difference welcomed and celebrated in Aus. We even coped with an imam demanding violence - his own community shut him up :)
Did he sit thru Katrina blind and deaf? does he think that is the epitome of good emergency response? I was in tears watching how badly they managed it - we did better with Tracey 10 years ago in Darwin - 2000 miles away from any help.
Does he not realise that in other countries we dont get billed for all that super emergency help? (well, insurance covers ambulance, but helicopters? no bill) Of course, we rescue stupid American tourists who want to "find themselves" in our desert 1000 miles from civilisation - do they get a $40,000 bill for it? No - the RAAF, police and emergency services treat it as an exercise ...
Does he not realise that living in the US requires an unfortunate number of people to behave just as if they were living in Baghdad? with guns and assorted safety features? Does he not realise that in the rest of the western world we mostly dont *have* to own a gun? much less a machine gun or a cannon sized magnum!
I shall stop ranting ... must go do useful things like mow the lawn ....
Re: *lol*
Date: 2007-02-25 10:01 am (UTC)Cheney "experienced turbulence" after leaving Sydney
Go weather!
Re: *lol*
Date: 2007-02-25 11:52 am (UTC)Go weather indeed. Thanks for the laugh ;-).
Re: *lol*
Date: 2007-02-25 02:53 pm (UTC)Re: *lol*
Date: 2007-02-25 05:37 pm (UTC)Re: *lol*
Date: 2007-02-25 05:42 pm (UTC)Re: *lol*
Date: 2007-02-25 05:45 pm (UTC)I agree with you, btw.
Re: *lol*
Date: 2007-02-25 03:47 pm (UTC)Perhaps they should get billed. Stupidity should be painful.
"Does he not realise that living in the US requires an unfortunate number of people to behave just as if they were living in Baghdad? with guns and assorted safety features? Does he not realise that in the rest of the western world we mostly dont *have* to own a gun? much less a machine gun or a cannon sized magnum!"
So, how do you guys deal with all those outlaw biker gangs and seminude villains in dune buggies?
Re: *lol*
Date: 2007-02-25 04:09 pm (UTC)Re: *lol*
Date: 2007-02-25 04:37 pm (UTC)The only way they can atone for that is send Gigi Edgley to me personally.
*we* dont deal with them ..
Date: 2007-02-26 12:31 pm (UTC)And theres more ways to skin a cat than shoot it ... bikies have a tendency to - drive without helmets (illegal in this country), have illegally modified bikes, forget to pay their licences, forget to pay fines (results in suspended licences until the fines are paid), and assorted other offences.
So, think large police force with road block, long line of bikies on a ride ... booze bus to check for alcohol offences, checking every bike, every rider .. they have got it down to a fine art these days.
Bikie gangs are also inclined to be part of organised crime - so, large CIB force backed up by TRG raids bikie enclave ...regularly :) Take away illegal guns (sawn-off shotties mostly ... occasionally other interesting weapons), occasionally take away disgruntled looking bikie. Take away bags of weed, interesting plackie bags of coloured lollies ....
Seminude villains? wha????
Re: *we* dont deal with them ..
Date: 2007-02-27 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 06:35 am (UTC)Ditto.
Date: 2007-02-25 10:20 am (UTC)Thank you.
Date: 2007-02-25 07:56 am (UTC)While it is probably not all wrong to be happy with a privileged life, it does look a lot different from the outside, as the dragon lady said. I, for one, am just rather grateful that there are these two thirds of citizens who have their doubts, at least... And it's quite the other way around. We might like the american people, definitely the tourists, and our personal friends. But in no way do we admire that government. It gives us the creeps, in fact.
Tages-Anzeiger on Friday, Bernhard Odehnal, Vienna, translation by me:
"In November 2008 the Americans are electing their president, in the spring of 2009 the Iranians will do the same. In both countries, there is a fair chance of some pragmatic leaders coming into power. People who will aim for personal contact instead of threatening air strikes. Until then, almost two years are left in which the diplomats of the EU, the IAEA and UN will have to produce huge quantities of hot air. Schedule conferences. Set ultimata. Prolong ultimata. Threaten sanctions. Relieve sanctions. Dangle trade treaties and technical help: All means should be allowed to deny the lunatics in Washington and Tehran an excuse to attack."
If *some* of these "spoiled brats" can take their eyes away from super sized hamburgers and car commercials long enough to take notice of the reputation their country is acquiring these last years, I'm all for it :-).
And Mr. America is warmly welcomed to travel through Europe for a while - just as an example that other people have electricity, too!
General wondering thought reply:
Date: 2007-02-25 08:51 am (UTC)As Americans, we often don't appreciate what we have - no doubt very true
As Americans, our politicians are on the payroll of special interest - truer all the time, and it's showing more all the time
I've always thought that if everyone would just take care of "their own" that a lot less welfare would be needed. By "their own" I mean just that, their own circle. Families, friends, religious organizations, possibly neighbors. The Family structure is falling apart in this country, and I don't mean divorce. Parents ignoring their own kids, kids who hit the trail and don't respect their parents because of that. Adults aren't growing up anymore, causing childishness between adults, which in the end is the root of what breaks up most marriages and many crimes. We've urbanized and suburbanized to such a degree we no longer have true communities anymore (think village).
We're idiots farming more idiots. We idolize big stars, we watch their every move, we emulate them, we dedicate hours and hours of news time to them. We chose the worst ones of the bunch to do this with. Those of us who don't do this are seen as the strange ones.
We force kids to stay kids in many ways longer than they should through laws and legislation, then, when they're no longer children legally we make them adults all at once and turn them out. Adulthood is an arbitrary number considering nothing of the individual.
Our education system is a joke. We are so concerned about political correctness we can't teach real history, we can't separate students into various groups they prove most talented in, because another student might be offended by that. Forced education puts many in classrooms who don't want to be there disrupting the education of those who might benefit from it. The goal of the school is to get as many students, many who don't care, to pass standardized tests as possible. Instead of teaching, they focus on getting students to memorize information long enough to get through a standardized test. Our schools have become propaganda machines for whoever is in power at the time the books are purchased. Very few Americans now know why our own civil was was fought, the real reasons. Fewer care.
Our law enforcement rarely has anything to do with protecting the people anymore. It has to do with handing out as many fines as possible to finance the local governments that hand out the fines!
Bah, it's late, I'm tired, enough brain dumping in reply. I'm not even sure I made anything coherent or relevant in there.
Re: General wondering thought reply:
Date: 2007-02-25 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 11:55 am (UTC)Velvet sent me this response via email:
Date: 2007-02-25 02:57 pm (UTC)After Enron, oil prices soaring, a war purely to protect our oil interests and to give an even larger 'delayed bonus' to the VP, from Haliburton, who managed to land the no bid contracts to EVERYTHING.....in an environs of 'who's your Daddy' and How's your Wallet?" The middle class are disappearing...Osama is still very much free, alive and managing to get dialysis on the run...yep...major and daily medical care, while in the Bedouin version of 'Witness Protection'.
First Responders get paid crap, as do teachers, while Christian Faith groups get funding and tax exemptions. Our laws are still primarily based on Biblical standards, as though somehow decency, the spirit of a law and what it is meant to protect, can't cover that issue.....voting American Citizens, due to religious ethics, cannot in most states, adopt children or often cannot keep their own, thru court battles, inherit or marry, or have the legal privileges of a spouse, because 'ALMIGHTY GOD' designed them to be gay...or Native American...wanted to put lol after that statement, but it is sadly TRUE. We commit paper genocide by deciding just what % of blood kinship is now Native and wipe bunches out of the genetic base. Yet another case of altering the 'books'...just as our friends in the military can't get their Purple Heart, for injuries sustained in a war zone...alter the stats again.....Iraq is absolutely screwing us, without the benefit of a cocktail first...the 'Democracy' is actually Theocratic...they are not compliant with their own funding agreements for recovery....it is now civil war...and as for volunteering...I say join to get out of a life of poverty, can be essentially coercion of the cruelest kind. Most citizens of this Nation would answer a call to arms if our country were truly in peril...now we probably are. Our Middle Eastern Americans are feared and hated now....we can all be subject to search, seizure and police invasions of our home without cause...this regime murdered our civil liberties in cold blood....hey, I am tired, stressed and depressed, for reasons well known to some...and this week I get to do the 'prison tour', to fight for continued or new rights for Inmates who seek the Goddess. And gosh dammit, we have the most incarcerated citizens IN THE WORLD!!!! Except for the rich kids who can afford to use and deal 'pharmaceuticals'...they get REHAB. Most of our prisons are now privately owned and for PROFIT! WHICH MAKES ARRESTING citizens who really need treatment for drug abuse...and generally are THE POOR and MIDDLE CLASS...a commodity, kinda like SLAVES. I see it all the time. a well funded mental health system might help. Many of us cannot afford treatment. I have insurance and still must pay $9000 BECAUSE I NEARLY HEMORRHAGED TO DEATH 'OUT OF NETWORK'!
I could go on all night...but I will stop here...everyone gets an opinion...I respect that...just that these are facts, that I can cite, and it is THIS for which I am unhappy with the Nations DIRECTION.
Susan, feel free to forward. Vel
Aw, hell,
Date: 2007-02-25 04:53 pm (UTC)Our laws are still primarily based on Biblical standards,
NO. Plain and simple. Either you do not know the laws, or you do not know the Bible.
Our legal system is based on English Common Law, which, in turn, is based on the Roman law, which is not at all Biblical. Of the 10 Commandments only three are laws, and some others would be unconstitutional if they were.
we can all be subject to search, seizure and police invasions of our home without cause...this regime murdered our civil liberties in cold blood
Nope. You've been subject to all that for the better part of the last 20 years. Where've you been? With IRS and BATFE you are guilty until proven innocent. And $deity_of_your_choice help you if you are a suspect in a drug case...
And a response via email from Rollie:
Date: 2007-02-25 02:59 pm (UTC)So far Iraq has cost about 350 Billion dollars. Thats $350,000,000,000 and no cents
That could have paid the one year salary of 6-7 Millon new school teachers. It could have paid the entire 30 year career of 250,000 to 300,00 teachers. That's 5000 extra teachers for each state. About a 10% increase nation wide.
Similarly it could have paid for 5 million new cops for one year, or 200,000 plus equipment for 30 years. That 4,000 more for each state.
At an average cost of 10 million per school, it could have built 700 new schools ...... IN EACH STATE !!!!!
The U.S just passed 300 million people in population. Which means that every single man, woman and child living here has now owes $1,200 on Iraq.
We could have bought 3 to 4 years of good, not just basic, medical insurance for the estimated 40 million that don't have medical insurance. 5 or 6 years years if we bargained with the insurance companies.
What else could we have paid for ??
How about the 12 billions dollars in CASH that has disapeared over there, YES 12 BILLION Dollars and NO RECEIPTS, just gone, unaccounted for, missing. I have to wonder how much wound up in Bush's off shore account ???
I can only hope that some PFC grabbed a few pallets and is quietly handing it out our troops. BTW with $12 Billion, we could give every soldier a $100K bonus !!!!!!!!
NOW to add insult to injury, the person CONVICTED by Kuwait (in absentia) for the 1983 bombings of the U.S and French Embassies in Kuwait, is a MEMBER of the IRAQI Parliment and is under immunity. The parliment will have to have a special vote to remove his immunity.
Hows that for a big fat screw you America ????????????????
And lastly let's talk about the real reson for the war. PETRO DOLLARS.
NUFF SAID please follow the attached link and you will understand.
http://fergusonreport.myonlinepublication.com/article.asp?pop_id=161&article_id=69
How about after spending years bashing Clinton about not taking bin Forgotten out in 94 it turns out that BUSH failed to take him out as well.
See the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDvVZ2Gn-9g
I for one have lived and traveled out side the country, NO ONE needs to remind me about how good we have it compared to the rest of the world, HOWEVER, the middle class is being systematically irradicated. Our civils right have been more seriously eroded since 9/11 than any other time in our history. Only the McCarthy era comes close. That we are unhappy about the way the country is going is perfectly understandable. Maybe you make a million a year and so were beneficiary of the last round of tax cuts, (4 times the rate for millionaires) but for the rest of us $2-$3 for gas hurts, even if you don't drive a big SUV, everything is more expensive because of oil prices. My food bill has nearly doubled in the past 3 years, but the government says there is no inflation so wages aren't keeping up. DO we have it better than most of the world, yes, does that mean we are willing to see OUR standard of living decline HELL NO.
How about the fact that we DID NOT set up a democracy in Iraq, but an Islamic Theocracy, didn't it occure to OUR people to insist on something resembling a first amendment, WE CERTAINLY WEREN'T USING OURS AT THE MOMENT they could have borrowed it to make a copy. Now our troops are caught in the middle of a religious civil war.
Rollie
no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 08:09 pm (UTC)I think it was via the Oil-for-food programme or similar.
Which explains the US Government's response of "So what?" when asked about it.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 04:03 pm (UTC)Talk about bad maths. You have 2/3 unhappy people. You have 2/3 employed people.
Could it possibly that they're not the same two thirds, and that half of those unhappy people are unhappy because they're the 1/3 unemployed? ;P
no subject
Date: 2007-02-25 04:12 pm (UTC)Re: And a response via email from Rollie:
Date: 2007-02-25 04:35 pm (UTC)That is incorrect. The current civil rights abridgment started in the 1970s with The War On Drugs (TM). If you read the Patriot Act, you will see that what it mostly consists of is amendments to existing laws, expanding the application of these laws to terrorists. And what kind of laws are those? Why, drug laws. Nobody minded those very much, because "druugs aaare baaad". And it's for the children.
The responsibility for it is shared by the parties. They both went out of their way to make new and interesting laws.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-06 07:37 pm (UTC)