The American Dream - You Have to Be Asleep to Believe it - George Carlin

America Is Not the Greatest Country in the World Anymore

Three Reasons to not Live in the United States

1. Obesity.

My own observations recently were chronicled in this post. I believe the condition is actually contagious. When so many people are obese in your daily comings and goings, it's that much easier to accept a bit of overweight in yourself. Over time, this leads to ever more cases. It's a terrible spiral going down with no indication of letting up any time soon. 

The real problem, I suppose, is the fast food industry, and the hormones and additives they put in processed food. More recently there's the controversy of genetically modified foods.  The portions in restaurants and diners are incredible large.  The waste is awful.

Everything is geared towards more and more obesity.


 2. Prescription drugs. 

The drug addiction among young adults and teenagers seems to be worse than ever. Several documentaries I watched explained how the new synthetic heroin-like painkillers are so prevalent that entire new demographic groups are being affected. When the prescriptions run out, buying the pills on the street is extremely expensive.  Many turn to heroin which a 10 times cheaper.

We already knew about the when assigning The Crown to Florida, partly because it is the hub of this deadly business, but on my recent visit I saw the devastation with my own eyes.

 
 3. Gun availability. 

The dreaded phone call from school that there's been a shooting is about 100 times more likely in the US than it is in Italy, for example. Easy access to guns makes life there a little bit more risky than it should be. 

In one thing I agree with the gun-rights folks.  It's the violence of the people that's the real problem. When walking down the street in the US towards a group of young men, the potential for violence is there. This has nothing to do with guns.  But, to use that as an excuse for making guns easily available is insanity.  Guns make whatever violence is already there that much worse. What could be more obvious than that.

One of the funny things about the gun control argument is that most of the vocal gun-rights guys are jingoistic rah-rah Americans, yet they embody these problems, in some cases all three.

What's your opinion?  Please leave a comment.

The Downward Spiral of America as a Leader of Democracy

via Fuck Conservatives

Where Is It All Heading?

America is (not) #1

via Zero Energy Construction

(click once to make bigger)

iPhone Patriotism

ScienceBlogs reports

on the business decision by Apple to earn 64% profit on the iPhone rather than just 50%.

For the sake of discussion, they assumed that assembly line wages in the U.S. are ten times higher than in China. Given that Chinese production workers earn roughly $1 an hour, that is not an unreasonable assumption. The higher wages would mean that the total assembly cost per phone would rise to $65 and the total manufacturing cost would approach $238. If Apple continued to sell the iPhone for $500, the company would still earn a very respectable 50% profit margin.

George Carlin's American Dream

click on image to read words

click here for the video

via Tim's Scared Stiff

Censorship in America

Cenk on the Election Results

History of America

Via Southern Beale.

George Carlin's American Dream

via Menopausal Stoners. No one said it better than old George.

America and Soccer

Thanks to the Opinione Blog for some good laughs. This was my favorite.

The Most Exclusive Club

Opinione published a fascinating article about the U.S. Senate. I don't often hear the things The Prince describes.

Sometimes described as “the world’s most exclusive club”, the United States Senate is perhaps one of the least known and understood institutions in the American government. A close examination of the composition and structure of the United States Senate helps explain how America has transformed from an agrarian republic envisioned by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, to a financial aristocracy favored by Alexander Hamilton.

Further giving credibility and weight to the statement that American democracy has evolved into a plutocracy ruled by the wealthy are to include the list of millionaires in the lower House of Representatives, where 240 legislators were worth at least $1 million. The richest representative was likely Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, who was worth an estimated $251,025,020 in 2008. The average net worth across the House was $4,670,831.

If American voters cast their votes in the 2010 Senate races based on their pocketbook and not based on their gun holster or union card, then and only then would you really see the interests of hard working American people be represented in Washington DC.

I find it very interesting that so many Americans are struggling financially yet these career politicians are, for the most part, on the other end of the spectrum. Do you think there's a problem with that? Can wealthy men truly represent the regular folk?

Did you like the Prince's advice to not vote with your gun holster or your union card but rather with your pocketbook? Do you think gun owners tend to vote for gun friendly politicians at the expense of other issues?

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

The Existentialist Cowboy wrote a wonderful post comparing America to Rome.

Like the U.S. today, the Rome economy was 'militarized', the empire over-extended, the battles fought by mercenaries. The currency might get you into the Coliseum for the 'games' but little else. Thus --bread and circuses were popular. When the Praetorian Guard auctioned the Roman Empire to Didius Julianus the sale was completed in Greek Drachmas --not worthless Roman Sesterices.

Some two decades ago, it was decided by the global financial elites that the framework for the global economy shall consist of:

1) A global derivative-based financial system, controlled by the US Federal Reserve Bank and its associate global banks in the developed countries.

2) The re-location from the West to the East in the production of goods, principally to China and India to “feed” the developed economies.

The entire system was built on a simple principle, that of a FED-controlled global reserve currency which will be the engine for growth for the global economy. It is essentially an imperialist economic principle. Once we grasp this fundamental truth, Bernanke’s boast that the “US can produce as many US dollars as it wishes at no cost” takes on a different dimension.

What do you think? Is the American Empire on the decline? Il Principe has often written about this. Here's one example.

Got to. This America, Man

Thanks to Kottke and John Cole.

Suspect: I’m sayin’, every Friday night in an alley behind the Cut Rate, we rollin’ bones, you know? I mean all them boys, we roll til late.
McNulty: Alley crap game, right?
Suspect: Like every time, Snot, he’d fade a few shooters, play it out til the pot’s deep. Snatch and run.
McNulty: What, every time?
Suspect: Couldn’t help hisself.
McNulty: Let me understand you. Every Friday night, you and your boys are shootin’ craps, right? And every Friday night, your pal Snot Boogie… he’d wait til there’s cash on the ground and he’d grab it and run away? You let him do that?
Suspect: We’d catch him and beat his ass but ain’t nobody never go past that.
McNulty: I gotta ask you: if every time Snot Boogie would grab the money and run away… why’d you even let him in the game?
Suspect: What?
McNulty: Well, if Snot Boogie always stole the money, why’d you let him play?
Suspect: Got to. This America, man.

President Bush's Last Day

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

John Farmer wrote a piece for the Star-Ledger Editorial page which I found both comprehensive and convincing. He pointed out, as have many others these days, that Bush is being blamed for a number of serious problems: the Katrina incompetence, reckless spending-and-borrowing, a politics-driven Justice Department, the Iraq war with its legacy of torture and global disapproval, the economic collapse. But according to Farmer, there is one issue which stands out above the others.

Bush's great event was the world-altering 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. But in the days and months that followed, Bush and his political consigliere, Karl Rove, employed it to divide the country along ideological and political lines rather than unify the nation as they might have done bringing Democrats into a war-time government of national unity.

It was the great missed opportunity of the Bush presidency.

My own opinion is a little stronger than that, not that I think I'm a political analyst or anything. I agree with those who have pointed out that after 9/11 there was a calculated and systematic program to raise the fears of Americans in order to elicit support for a war that we had no business engaging in. It worked extremely well, but turned into such an unwieldy debacle that public opinion gradually and consistently plummeted.

The outgoing president is extremely unpopular. Yet his supporters are not shy about commenting, just take a look at the remarks generated by John Farmer's article.

What's your opinion? Was Bush really that bad? Did he mean well at least? If suspicions about what his administration did after 9/11 are true, that they manipulated the American public in order to drum up support for the war, a natural question would be, "why?" Was it because they sincerely believed it was best for the country and the world, or was there a more sinister motive? Did they act to solidify personal power or to enrich themselves and their friends? Did they perhaps act out of some exaggerated American-centric ideology?

What do you think?

One Nation, Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All

Alonzo Fyfe writes very eloquently on his blog Atheist Ethicist about an issue that I haven't followed very closely. Over the last couple years I've seen it in the news, I've received countless unsolicited e-mails from the conservative religious folks, but I could never get too worked up about it. The point seems to be, according to some, the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and the phrase "In God We Trust" on the money, are a problem.

The Pledge says that supporting a nation under God is as important – as American – as supporting a nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. In doing so, it equates atheism with rebellion, tyranny, and injustice. The national motto simply says, "If you don't trust in God, you are not one of us."

In his statement Alonzo makes reference to fanatical comments made by President Bush about the kind of Supreme Court Judges he'd appoint, only ones who believe in God, and he mentions some extremist comments made at a Veteran's Day ceremony attended by his dad, a disabled vet.

But isn't taking issue with these traditional words equally extremist? Isn't saying that teaching children the Pledge of Allegiance encourages bigotry a bit of an exaggeration? When the religious right makes statements like only God-believing Americans are real Americans, shouldn't we just ignore them? Is it really necessary to remove these words? I don't think so. What about you?

Another idea that comes to me is perhaps we don't need to put a microscope on each and ever word in our traditional American writings. When "Liberty and Justice for all" was coined, we probably still had slavery and denied women the vote. Now, all of a sudden, we have to get so literal with the God phrases?

What's your opinion on this?