I don't think you're far off the mark in terms of our country. It's a changing, living thing, this American experiment. Unfortunately, as Rummy said, there are known unknowables, er whatever, that nobody can predict. This gang has taken us down the road to fuckhouse. The corporate media and sending American jobs to india and china have justg enabled the decline. We certainly can't go back again. The corporate fascists have taken over. I'm thinking that to save our country, we need to make ourselves "unavailable" to the corporate machine and business as usual as much as possible. It's easy to be pessimistic, faced with these craven ghouls. Keep writing.
Posted by have skunk at January 28, 2007 01:39 PMUSA Today has a story about an Arizona grandmother who got busted with 214 pounds of marijuana in her car. Jesus save us, 214 pounds!
Damn paradox, you know those bingo grannies are the scourge of the earth! They gave her 3 years!
Posted by Seven of Six at January 28, 2007 02:12 PMSeven of six, I feel safer already.
Employee based health care insurance is on it's way out, if Bush has anything to say about it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/us/28health.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=97f3dc4b3af34e5e&hp&ex=1169960400&partner=homepage&oref=slogin
Posted by Judith at January 28, 2007 03:43 PMNew estimate, 70,000 not 30,000 wounded or mentally impaired. It's just the cost of war, as my Republican friends say.
Question, of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, can anyone tell me if those deaths are by our hands or the Iraqis? Can one tell?
Posted by Judith at January 28, 2007 03:51 PMYour tone was fine. It's time more people, especially the press and bloggers start getting mad as hell and yelling from the rooftops about the insanity of the US policy and positions. I changed my blog name to World Gone Mad for that very reason. Every time I turn around there is some new insanity in the news.
The American people are complacent, spoiled, and want someone else to take care of all of their problems. As long as the suffering and sacrifice does not pass over their doorsteps, they could care less. Californians are the worst. A bunch of pampered brats who have actually elected not one but two movie actors as governor. (I am an American who lived in California for 54 years)
Living outside of the US now for nearly 4 years and reading the foreign press has been an eye opener. I have news for the American people.
You are not better than everyone else.
You are not smarter than everyone else.
You don't have the best system of government (obviously)
George Bush being elected president twice, 9-11 and the following invasions, the quagmire and death in Iraq, the loss of freedoms, the absolute corruption of government, even the criminal fraud of fixing elections is all a result of the compacency, egotism and "me first and only" attitude of the American people.
So don't feel bad about your tone, it was fine. It was just too late.
Posted by expatbrian at January 28, 2007 03:57 PMI just started Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony Or Survival, America's Quest For Global Dominance" and I've only gotten to page 17. Already the book expresses that what you're talking about is nothing new (though the recent extremes are threatening our very survival as a species). I think the rose colored glasses we all were raised with have just been smashed to smithereens by RepubFuckUpicans. At least for the 70% who are semi-paying attention. The elites have always considered the rest of us the "enemy at home" who needs to be controlled through propaganda.
Thanks Al Gore for helping to bring the internet to "the people"
Gore/Kucinich 2008
I just started Noam Chomsky's "Hegemony Or Survival, America's Quest For Global Dominance" and I've only gotten to page 17.
One of the astonishing things about Chomsky is that he manages to say things that are wildly out of line with mainstream U.S. ideology--things that really should be shocking--in the boringest fashion imaginable. Just an incredibly dull stylist.
Posted by dj moonbat at January 28, 2007 04:51 PMNature is suffering in the drug war too. A few months ago the SF Chronicle had articles about how national forests, national parks and state parks are being used to grow pot, typically with large doses of pesticides and chemicals. When the crop is ready, they just leave the containers and residue behind. And, of course, there is massive spraying of herbicide by government agencies to fight the drug producers (or the poor peasants who don't have much choice in the matter).
Or, in Mexico, drug traffickers are preventing scientists from doing their work in nature preserves (link):
Posted by Meander at January 28, 2007 05:39 PM
[...]
Drug production and trafficking can damage sensitive ecosystems, and some projects, such as those run by Nichols, are undermined by epidemics of addiction among local people. In other cases, biologists and officials who should be enforcing environmental laws are kept away by the threat of violence.
[...]
Officials employed to prevent poaching of turtles and other marine species live in fear of the drug runners, who want to keep government boats out of the water. "They've had gunfire over their homes at night, flattened tires or smashed windshields on their vehicles -- things that have made them back off from doing their job," Nichols says.
[...]
Just an incredibly dull stylist.
Look at his pubs and examine the work he was doing in the 50's. That explains his terse, almost APA style. This piece from 1967 explains his activism. Noam is cited in every general psychology, developmental psychology, and most speech texts on this planet because of his theories on the aquisition of grammar as part of an innate capacity of all humans.
phid, I'd say that the piece you linked to is much, much more dynamically written than the other Chomsky I've encountered. Thanks.
But his Universal Grammar stuff is kind of weird. Much less plausible than his political work, IMO.
Posted by dj moonbat at January 28, 2007 07:40 PMThe Az granny won the Mary Jane Bale Toss held last fall in Strawberry, Az.
At the same event, 7 came in 6th.
Posted by TIKI AL at January 28, 2007 09:10 PM