Perhaps these almost exclusively chickenhawk warmongers had or would participate in the wars they so concientiously avoid and keep their children out of they could avoid this oh so unpleasant withdrawal, or better yet be killed and not bother the rest of us anymore!
I watched the interview of Snowden, who seemed articulate and sincere. Then the cut to Kerry (the kept man) calling Snowden a coward and all I could think is "what an asshole," and rebuked myself for ever voting for him and his slimebag womanizing VP candidate, Edwards. Of course the only other option was Bu$h and Dickhead Cheney, - and that's my excuse!
Why doesn't the Democratic Party point out, over and over again, that Benghazi doesn't evern begin to equal the attacks on US Embassies and Marine Barracks in the Middle East under their demi-god Ronnie Raygun's watch.
I can't help but think about how the US, when occupying Baghdad, took care to protect files of the Oil Ministry, but ignored looting and destruction of the museums that held the artifacts from the "cradle of civilization."
"Consider, for instance, the rise of the warrior cop, of increasingly up-armored police departments across the country often filled with former military personnel encouraged to use the sort of rough tactics they once wielded in combat zones."
This is exactly what 60 Minutes' first segment was about last night as an Iraqi veteran's use of techniques from the war in Springfield, Mass. was glorified with the assistance and cheerleading of Leslie Stahl.
The "self created reality" a commenter referred to above and the billions of assistance supporting it rendered by Rupert Murdoch, Faux Snews, the Koch evil twins etc. etc. and an apparently failing education system all help explain why it is so easy to take American (and Canadian) eyes off of the things that actually matter.
If you keep folks worried about what sexual practices are happening next door, they won't notice that you sent their job to China and you MIGHT get on part time at Wally Mart.
"because with out full effort now the Earth will die.. Flat out die and no not for a little while or in a fictional way."
I beg to differ, the Earth will be just fine thanks! Indeed, once we have made it uninhabitable for our own short sighted and greedy species, it will likely be a lot better for those species that manage to survive, and some will. Whichever species do manage to survive will find it difficult, if not impossible to be as self destructive and stoooooooopid as we (with our supposed intelligence) are proving ourselves to be! And I must admit, that as an ex-pat myself, the United States of America is truly an exceptional nation, exceptionally retarded and hazardous to the health of the rest of the world.
Juan, I love your image of the Vatican having a secret condom factory.....it is really apt to the situation you describe. As a native born Californian who spent time as a child in Detroit in the late forties and early fifties and happily returned to the west (and was so happy to get out of there) where I belong to matriculate at the University of California, you and Marcy Wheeler make me almost wish I had been a Wolverine.
Of course you and Marcy would have been fellow students at best, or in elementary or secondary school when I went to college. But props for the post above, I really like your blog and the clarity it provides about the issues you care about and discuss.
I'm not defending Maher, but he did get in hot water, and lost his show, 'Politically Incorrect' for giving the hi-jackers props for at least having courage.
Perhaps we should remember Ghandi's response to the question of what did he think of Western Civilization?
To which he replied something like "It sounds like a good idea, somebody should try sometime!"
"Meanwhile, Muslim-majority nations, those whose flags display stars, crescents, and swords, can’t compete with a nation like South Korea in contributing to global scientific research, or invent anything to save their lives."
As the first commenter pointed out, the Muslim world was the intellectual light of the planet. Without the influence of the Muslims on the West we might be still using Roman numerals, imagine building computers or exploring space with that level of math. It reminds me of the joke about why didn't the Italians put a man on the moon? Answer - They ran out of scaffolding!
" Since that time the two cultures have taken completely different trajectories."
It seems that the Christian Fundamentalist United States may be starting to follow the same trajectory. When you have schools teaching that evolution isn't necessarily so and the rest of the fundie anti-science hogwash, is it any wonder that the US is in danger of losing its position as a fountain of innovation if it hasn't already?
Unfortunately my home of Canada is following the US into ignorance rather than the example of Western European countries like Iceland or Germany when it comes to developing sustainable renewable energy source. If we continue to follow this trend perhaps North America will become like a giant real life set of Mad Max, Mexico is already leading the way to that kind of world and the desolated parts of the US, like the places Chris Hedges writes about like Pine Ridge, Camden NJ and West Virginia aren't far behind.
This morning in Bibi says that the Iranians are six months from 90% of something, maybe his brain is seized up!
Then they had that sorry excuse for a human, Darth's daughter Liz Cheney, blaming Obama for everything wrong with the world. She never mentioned her evil daddy's role as Preznit with VeePee Bu$h the Lesser. What a waste of broadcast time.
"5. Romney’s poorly-planned and vague convention gave him no bounce, whereas the DNC in Charlotte appears to have put Obama up in Ohio by 5 points. Ohio is pretty much a must-take state for the Romney campaign."
unfortunately Obama might need 10-12 points in Ohio to compensate for the intense voter suppression activities being pursued in this rust bucket excuse for a state.
12. Bolton was Ambassador to the UN, which he had suggested should be blown up!
But 9 and 10 are most classic. It is telling that last week at Tampa both Bu$h the Lesser and the Evil Dickhead Cheney were milk carton material.....the Repubs aren't dumb enough to risk reminding folks of the first eight years of the millennium.
"They claimed that the traditional donors will not want to continue to give money to the party because they will not want their money being used to support Tea Party candidates within the Republican Party."
Traditional donors hardly matter in the new Citizens United universe where approximately 50 billionaires are attempting to buy the government that suits them and their greed. Like Erikk Red above points out the billionaires are perfectly willing to use the Tea Party idjits as astroturf organizations as long as their are willing to be stupid.
If spending is such an issue with Tea Baggers, how come they didn't really spring up during the immense unfunded spending of the Bu$h-Cheney years? Oh yeah, they don't mind spending on wars and bailouts, just the poor lazy folks down the street.
Juan, you produce one of the very best blogs anywhere, I am amazed at the quantity of top notch commentary you share with us. Do you ever sleep?
Reading the extraordinary list of suggestions above is kinda like having a beautiful dream, but then I wake up and realize I am still stuck in this troubled world that is being fucked over daily by the greed bags. But I certainly appreciate your input.
"Once all the services of a hospital were controlled by the hospital. Now services like cleaning and sanitation are out-sourced, less accountable and standards have declined. This has coincided with an increase in outbreaks of in-hospital infects. This may or may not be cause and effect."
The neo-liberal Gordon Campbell government here in British Columbia has done the same thing, fired the unionized cleaning and maintenance employees and contracted out to exploitive "free enterprisers" who offered half the wages for twice the work and outbreaks of hospital acquired infections and deaths have sky rocketed in the last decade. I have no doubts about the cause of the effect. At this rate pretty soon we will be back to Victorian Era standard where the rich NEVER entered a hospital, bringing doctors to their home and even the poor avoided the hospitals of the day as long as they could, since they were not so much treatment centers as waystations on the way to the grave. without the palliative care of a hospice!
Having grown up in the US (I even lived in Detroit for awhile as a young lad) I feel fortunate to live in Canada where we have a civilized health care system that costs about half per capita what America spends on a system that leaves out a large chunk of the population.
Our relatively efficient health care system is under attack by our copy cat Republican wannabes on the federal level, especially under Herr Harper and here in BC under the BC Liberals (more appropriately labeled the BC neo-liberals).
It is almost, or in actuality as if they want to degrade the existing system to a degree that would make us want to emulate the useless American model. Fortunately for myself I don't even use the health system, except for the occasional chain saw incident, being fortunate so far with my genes or lifestyle. But I certainly do feel good knowing that it is there for me, if I should need it and have no qualms about paying a bit of taxes to see it there for me and my family.
I'm not impressed with Obamacare, as it seem more aimed at the health and welfare of insurance companies. But even though I still have lots of friends and relatives south of the 49th I cannot understand why they have been so bamboozled into thinking that a single payer system like we here in the Great White North and most other civilized and industrialized nations have is some kind of socialistic attack on "freedom."
When I immigrated about forty years ago to Manitoba, one of the first communications I got was from the province telling me that now that I was a resident I had to join the health care plan, and if I couldn't afford premiums they would be subsidized and I was thrilled.
My American relations couldn't believe when one of my sons was born prematurely with a herd of doctors attending the birth and mom and baby both hospitalized for two weeks my out of pocket expenses amounted to forty dollars. He is in his thirties now pumping out grand children, and incidental costs are a bit more, but, hey you can't beat it. Doctors still are well (and deservedly so) compensated, but spared the trouble of chasing down patients for payment.
The South West and Great Basin used to have a time of year called fire season. Current trends would suggest that it will be a year round situation soon.
Wonderful piece Juan. When I was young and a white boy living in a primarily black neighborhood in Detroit, we were relatively unaware of "race" until a certain age, and I had left Michigan to return to the West Coast where I had been born before I reached that racially aware age. However even in grammar school days I figured the solution to racism and racial conflict etc. would ultimately be when folks finally became so inter-mixed no one could tell the difference.
However I think you make a great point with "over time economic eliteness tends to produce racial eliteness in the US."
"By the way, Apartheid South Africa declared Japanese to be ‘white.’"
If I'm not mistaken, the Nazis also created some special "Aryan" class for their Japanese Axis allies during WWII.
Wow, old Seymour is like a gift that just keeps on giving. Too bad he is such a rarity and endangered species in what passes for media in the Excited Snakes of Imperialism!
Juan, as one who has cared for (and shorn) sheep, let me point out that sheep don't mind being shorn, especially in the spring if they live where the summers are hot. They are happy to share their wool annually, but they hate turning into lamb chops or mutton!
" GOP leaders are having war withdrawal"
Perhaps these almost exclusively chickenhawk warmongers had or would participate in the wars they so concientiously avoid and keep their children out of they could avoid this oh so unpleasant withdrawal, or better yet be killed and not bother the rest of us anymore!
I watched the interview of Snowden, who seemed articulate and sincere. Then the cut to Kerry (the kept man) calling Snowden a coward and all I could think is "what an asshole," and rebuked myself for ever voting for him and his slimebag womanizing VP candidate, Edwards. Of course the only other option was Bu$h and Dickhead Cheney, - and that's my excuse!
Why doesn't the Democratic Party point out, over and over again, that Benghazi doesn't evern begin to equal the attacks on US Embassies and Marine Barracks in the Middle East under their demi-god Ronnie Raygun's watch.
I can't help but think about how the US, when occupying Baghdad, took care to protect files of the Oil Ministry, but ignored looting and destruction of the museums that held the artifacts from the "cradle of civilization."
"Consider, for instance, the rise of the warrior cop, of increasingly up-armored police departments across the country often filled with former military personnel encouraged to use the sort of rough tactics they once wielded in combat zones."
This is exactly what 60 Minutes' first segment was about last night as an Iraqi veteran's use of techniques from the war in Springfield, Mass. was glorified with the assistance and cheerleading of Leslie Stahl.
The "self created reality" a commenter referred to above and the billions of assistance supporting it rendered by Rupert Murdoch, Faux Snews, the Koch evil twins etc. etc. and an apparently failing education system all help explain why it is so easy to take American (and Canadian) eyes off of the things that actually matter.
If you keep folks worried about what sexual practices are happening next door, they won't notice that you sent their job to China and you MIGHT get on part time at Wally Mart.
" even though Scots were not thought of as Anglo-Saxons)."
Of course not and don't call me one, cuz I'm Celtic and my name starts with a Mc. Wonderful piece Juan........
Dale above said:
"because with out full effort now the Earth will die.. Flat out die and no not for a little while or in a fictional way."
I beg to differ, the Earth will be just fine thanks! Indeed, once we have made it uninhabitable for our own short sighted and greedy species, it will likely be a lot better for those species that manage to survive, and some will. Whichever species do manage to survive will find it difficult, if not impossible to be as self destructive and stoooooooopid as we (with our supposed intelligence) are proving ourselves to be! And I must admit, that as an ex-pat myself, the United States of America is truly an exceptional nation, exceptionally retarded and hazardous to the health of the rest of the world.
Superb as usual......I haven't seen a better exposition of the back story to the ongoing "War on Terror."
I was aware of most of this background but could never have explained it with such an economy of verbiage. Bravo Dr. Cole!
Juan, I love your image of the Vatican having a secret condom factory.....it is really apt to the situation you describe. As a native born Californian who spent time as a child in Detroit in the late forties and early fifties and happily returned to the west (and was so happy to get out of there) where I belong to matriculate at the University of California, you and Marcy Wheeler make me almost wish I had been a Wolverine.
Of course you and Marcy would have been fellow students at best, or in elementary or secondary school when I went to college. But props for the post above, I really like your blog and the clarity it provides about the issues you care about and discuss.
I'm not defending Maher, but he did get in hot water, and lost his show, 'Politically Incorrect' for giving the hi-jackers props for at least having courage.
Perhaps we should remember Ghandi's response to the question of what did he think of Western Civilization?
To which he replied something like "It sounds like a good idea, somebody should try sometime!"
"Meanwhile, Muslim-majority nations, those whose flags display stars, crescents, and swords, can’t compete with a nation like South Korea in contributing to global scientific research, or invent anything to save their lives."
As the first commenter pointed out, the Muslim world was the intellectual light of the planet. Without the influence of the Muslims on the West we might be still using Roman numerals, imagine building computers or exploring space with that level of math. It reminds me of the joke about why didn't the Italians put a man on the moon? Answer - They ran out of scaffolding!
" Since that time the two cultures have taken completely different trajectories."
It seems that the Christian Fundamentalist United States may be starting to follow the same trajectory. When you have schools teaching that evolution isn't necessarily so and the rest of the fundie anti-science hogwash, is it any wonder that the US is in danger of losing its position as a fountain of innovation if it hasn't already?
Unfortunately my home of Canada is following the US into ignorance rather than the example of Western European countries like Iceland or Germany when it comes to developing sustainable renewable energy source. If we continue to follow this trend perhaps North America will become like a giant real life set of Mad Max, Mexico is already leading the way to that kind of world and the desolated parts of the US, like the places Chris Hedges writes about like Pine Ridge, Camden NJ and West Virginia aren't far behind.
This morning in Bibi says that the Iranians are six months from 90% of something, maybe his brain is seized up!
Then they had that sorry excuse for a human, Darth's daughter Liz Cheney, blaming Obama for everything wrong with the world. She never mentioned her evil daddy's role as Preznit with VeePee Bu$h the Lesser. What a waste of broadcast time.
"5. Romney’s poorly-planned and vague convention gave him no bounce, whereas the DNC in Charlotte appears to have put Obama up in Ohio by 5 points. Ohio is pretty much a must-take state for the Romney campaign."
unfortunately Obama might need 10-12 points in Ohio to compensate for the intense voter suppression activities being pursued in this rust bucket excuse for a state.
12. Bolton was Ambassador to the UN, which he had suggested should be blown up!
But 9 and 10 are most classic. It is telling that last week at Tampa both Bu$h the Lesser and the Evil Dickhead Cheney were milk carton material.....the Repubs aren't dumb enough to risk reminding folks of the first eight years of the millennium.
The last "white" guys to be called to account for war crimes were Nazis at Nuremburg, which apparently doesn't count as any kind of precedent!
"They claimed that the traditional donors will not want to continue to give money to the party because they will not want their money being used to support Tea Party candidates within the Republican Party."
Traditional donors hardly matter in the new Citizens United universe where approximately 50 billionaires are attempting to buy the government that suits them and their greed. Like Erikk Red above points out the billionaires are perfectly willing to use the Tea Party idjits as astroturf organizations as long as their are willing to be stupid.
If spending is such an issue with Tea Baggers, how come they didn't really spring up during the immense unfunded spending of the Bu$h-Cheney years? Oh yeah, they don't mind spending on wars and bailouts, just the poor lazy folks down the street.
Juan, you produce one of the very best blogs anywhere, I am amazed at the quantity of top notch commentary you share with us. Do you ever sleep?
Reading the extraordinary list of suggestions above is kinda like having a beautiful dream, but then I wake up and realize I am still stuck in this troubled world that is being fucked over daily by the greed bags. But I certainly appreciate your input.
"Once all the services of a hospital were controlled by the hospital. Now services like cleaning and sanitation are out-sourced, less accountable and standards have declined. This has coincided with an increase in outbreaks of in-hospital infects. This may or may not be cause and effect."
The neo-liberal Gordon Campbell government here in British Columbia has done the same thing, fired the unionized cleaning and maintenance employees and contracted out to exploitive "free enterprisers" who offered half the wages for twice the work and outbreaks of hospital acquired infections and deaths have sky rocketed in the last decade. I have no doubts about the cause of the effect. At this rate pretty soon we will be back to Victorian Era standard where the rich NEVER entered a hospital, bringing doctors to their home and even the poor avoided the hospitals of the day as long as they could, since they were not so much treatment centers as waystations on the way to the grave. without the palliative care of a hospice!
Having grown up in the US (I even lived in Detroit for awhile as a young lad) I feel fortunate to live in Canada where we have a civilized health care system that costs about half per capita what America spends on a system that leaves out a large chunk of the population.
Our relatively efficient health care system is under attack by our copy cat Republican wannabes on the federal level, especially under Herr Harper and here in BC under the BC Liberals (more appropriately labeled the BC neo-liberals).
It is almost, or in actuality as if they want to degrade the existing system to a degree that would make us want to emulate the useless American model. Fortunately for myself I don't even use the health system, except for the occasional chain saw incident, being fortunate so far with my genes or lifestyle. But I certainly do feel good knowing that it is there for me, if I should need it and have no qualms about paying a bit of taxes to see it there for me and my family.
I'm not impressed with Obamacare, as it seem more aimed at the health and welfare of insurance companies. But even though I still have lots of friends and relatives south of the 49th I cannot understand why they have been so bamboozled into thinking that a single payer system like we here in the Great White North and most other civilized and industrialized nations have is some kind of socialistic attack on "freedom."
When I immigrated about forty years ago to Manitoba, one of the first communications I got was from the province telling me that now that I was a resident I had to join the health care plan, and if I couldn't afford premiums they would be subsidized and I was thrilled.
My American relations couldn't believe when one of my sons was born prematurely with a herd of doctors attending the birth and mom and baby both hospitalized for two weeks my out of pocket expenses amounted to forty dollars. He is in his thirties now pumping out grand children, and incidental costs are a bit more, but, hey you can't beat it. Doctors still are well (and deservedly so) compensated, but spared the trouble of chasing down patients for payment.
The South West and Great Basin used to have a time of year called fire season. Current trends would suggest that it will be a year round situation soon.
Wonderful piece Juan. When I was young and a white boy living in a primarily black neighborhood in Detroit, we were relatively unaware of "race" until a certain age, and I had left Michigan to return to the West Coast where I had been born before I reached that racially aware age. However even in grammar school days I figured the solution to racism and racial conflict etc. would ultimately be when folks finally became so inter-mixed no one could tell the difference.
However I think you make a great point with "over time economic eliteness tends to produce racial eliteness in the US."
"By the way, Apartheid South Africa declared Japanese to be ‘white.’"
If I'm not mistaken, the Nazis also created some special "Aryan" class for their Japanese Axis allies during WWII.
Wow, old Seymour is like a gift that just keeps on giving. Too bad he is such a rarity and endangered species in what passes for media in the Excited Snakes of Imperialism!
Juan, as one who has cared for (and shorn) sheep, let me point out that sheep don't mind being shorn, especially in the spring if they live where the summers are hot. They are happy to share their wool annually, but they hate turning into lamb chops or mutton!