Is this great Empire coming to its end?

Denerick

I was once rather pro American in my own way. I've always admired American innovativeness and optimism, their writers and comedians I rank among my favourites. But the present troubles, brewed up by a few schoolchildren who seem to exist on a diet of insanity and populism, is leading me to think the US is incapable of governing itself effectively or taking the necessary measures needed to ensure its long term prosperity. The Bush tax cuts were certainly decadant and unwarranted, and have done great damage to the American treasury. Great Empires crumble more often than not for want of coin. Yet a decades worth of bad policies, following on from a decades worth of good policies, has culminated in the present disaster.

I've said it before but I'm beginning to think mere human beings have no right to exist on this planet, since we're so woefully incompetant and stupid. Better for us all if the US and China blow each other up in Nuclear armageddon and put us all out of our misery.

In 2012, perhaps

Overheal

The collapse of entitlements perhaps.



Not sure if this was actually approved but it gives you an idea of how the government spends our money in general. Note the cost of Homeland Security, in contrast to the "Defense" budget. Theres trillions to be shaved off there. And if the House and Senate can't make the cuts, they need to make the revenue.

It's their failure to agree on these things that will cause trouble.

Right now we have the situation we're in because the House, the Senate, and the Office of the President signed in a budget that has more expenses than it has revenues. They essentially passed a vote to borrow more money. And now we're having another vote about whether we should pay back what we agreed to borrow. Thats how ridiculous this situation is.

karma_

If history teaches us anything, it teaches us that empires rise and then they fall.

Also enjoyed this political cartoon I found on reddit this morning;

silja

Overheal, where did you get that graphic from? I like it.

Overheal

http://www.google.com/search?q=us+budget&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1920&bih=913

Seloth

That cartoon really highlights how History repeats it's self across the world.

Amerika

Guess who had the best commentary regarding the recent US rating downgrade...

http://www.facebook.com/notes/sarah-palin/conquering-the-storm/10150260905388435

Overheal

You know I don't like her :P what were your favorite quotes in that?


The Real Problem remains and will forever be the partisan politics. Republicans when faced with a minority in the 111th Congress, blocked and filibustered so much legislation that they became The Party of No. The Democrats meanwhile are also guilty of being stubborn about legislation they want passed, in the 110th Congress they gunked up the system in demand of a troop withdrawal deadline.

This isn't how this country was founded; it's not how our Constitution was Engineered. It's Gang Mentality. What the Reds want must be bad for the Blues. Without the partisan politics there would have been no problem passing a budget that fixes the problem. But you have one side that isn't willing to do this and another that isn't willing to do that. They're all so concerned with getting re-elected.

And even here in the ****ing forum we can't escape it. "Oh if you agree with this you must be a Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/Liberal/etc" when in reality most people who even bother to enter these discussions are independent and moderate. I doubt anybody here agrees with 100% of the platform of any of our two choices: Republicans and Democrats. But therein lies the problem.

The country is split in two. It will fail, if this continues. And what good is blame? They're all to blame. They all need a blank page.

gargleblaster

And here we are graced with yet another version of 'both sides are equally to blame'.

Unbelievable. After weeks of Democrats bending over backwards to compromise on this budget disaster.

After years of Bush's agenda being advanced due to what? Oh yes, that's right, Democrats compromising.

And now we have years of Obama's agenda being stymied at nearly every turn.

I'd love to see a tally of party-line votes over the past 40 years. It is true that the Democrats ran roughshod over Republicans in the 70s. One would think that Republicans had had enough payback by now.

Apparently not, and apparently very few are willing to call the situation what it is. It is not balanced. Not by a damn sight.

Overheal

OK Gargle, you just keep on playing the partisan blame game. At least I'll know what I'm missing when I put you on ignore.

Sub Prime Mortgages were a Democrat project. Bush Taxes were a republican project. Now we're all ****ed. Thanks to all of them. But who's interested in accepting the situation and solving it, and who is just interested in pointing fingers?

gargleblaster

Overheal wrote: »

OK Gargle, you just keep on playing the partisan blame game. At least I'll know what I'm missing when I put you on ignore.

Sub Prime Mortgages were a Democrat project. Bush Taxes were a republican project. Now we're all ****ed. Thanks to all of them. But who's interested in accepting the situation and solving it, and who is just interested in pointing fingers?

:pac:

If you only realized how telling that phrase is. You don't think I actually believe that you're a centrist or in any way non-partisan, do you?

As for sub-prime mortgages being a "Democrat project", oh what a gross oversimplification. If you actually care to do more than shove your head deeper into the sand, look into deregulation. Have fun with that.


In closing - don't get it twisted. I'm not pointing fingers. I'm acknowledging reality. Something damn few people seem interested in doing. Go on, read about it - just Google 'false balance politics'. I'm not making it up. It's actually been happening for a long time now.

Many pundits view taking a position in the middle of the political spectrum as a virtue in itself. I don’t. Wisdom doesn’t necessarily reside in the middle of the road, and I want leaders who do the right thing, not the centrist thing.

But for those who insist that the center is always the place to be, I have an important piece of information: We already have a centrist president. Indeed, Bruce Bartlett, who served as a policy analyst in the Reagan administration, argues that Mr. Obama is in practice a moderate conservative.

Mr. Bartlett has a point. The president, as we’ve seen, was willing, even eager, to strike a budget deal that strongly favored conservative priorities. His health reform was very similar to the reform Mitt Romney installed in Massachusetts. Romneycare, in turn, closely followed the outlines of a plan originally proposed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. And returning tax rates on high-income Americans to their level during the Roaring Nineties is hardly a socialist proposal.

True, Republicans insist that Mr. Obama is a leftist seeking a government takeover of the economy, but they would, wouldn’t they? The facts, should anyone choose to report them, say otherwise.

So what’s with the buzz about a centrist uprising? As I see it, it’s coming from people who recognize the dysfunctional nature of modern American politics, but refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the one-sided role of Republican extremists in making our system dysfunctional. And it’s not hard to guess at their motivation. After all, pointing out the obvious truth gets you labeled as a shrill partisan, not just from the right, but from the ranks of self-proclaimed centrists.

But making nebulous calls for centrism, like writing news reports that always place equal blame on both parties, is a big cop-out — a cop-out that only encourages more bad behavior. The problem with American politics right now is Republican extremism, and if you’re not willing to say that, you’re helping make that problem worse.

Overheal

You don't think I actually believe that you're a centrist or in any way non-partisan, do you?

I could not care less. Though, I would love to hear what you think I am, and then have you prove it by perusing my user history.

So what’s with the buzz about a centrist uprising? As I see it, it’s coming from people who recognize the dysfunctional nature of modern American politics, but refuse, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the one-sided role of Republican extremists in making our system dysfunctional. And it’s not hard to guess at their motivation. After all, pointing out the obvious truth gets you labeled as a shrill partisan, not just from the right, but from the ranks of self-proclaimed centrists.

The irony of this statement is that the author recognizes the failure of the political system but then pitches himself against the Republican Party as the bearer of blame. Which in itself is Partisan, and in itself perpetuates the problem with American Politics. I'm not here defending Republicans, but I'm tired of the Us vs. Them mentality.

gargleblaster

What else do you expect?

You yourself have acknowledged that only one side offered to compromise in this budget deal. You made mention of something that the Democrats stymied progress on, but I forget what it was - however, simply viewing the amount of blocked legislation, the record-setting numbers of filibusters that Republicans are guilty of using, for no other reason than to deny Obama any chance at making progress - what do you expect other than us vs. them?

Do you think Democrats are not attempting to cooperate and reach bi-partisan agreements? Do you think they're stubbornly sticking to their guns and preventing the country's business from getting done?

What is the alternative to us vs. them, at this point? Just allowing the Republicans to do whatever they like, and not bother to challenge them at all?


As for your not caring about my perception of your political stance - I don't care if you don't care. :pac:

My point is not who cares about what. If I'm reading you wrong then mea culpa, but it seems to me that you go to some effort not to appear to be partisan. When you use such loaded terms, you show your ass. Maybe you genuinely don't realize the significance of using "Democrat" in place of the grammatically correct and non-partisan "Democratic". There is great significance, whether you realize it or not. If you truly do not realize this, then that shows that the extreme right-wing in this country has been very, very successful in pushing their beliefs into the mainstream. (Which really, I already knew, but it's still sad.)

Amerika

Overheal wrote: »

You know I don't like her :P what were your favorite quotes in that?

So you can’t bring yourself to read it because you don’t like her, or can it be you're actually interested in what I think? :eek:

I like the entire piece, but here’s the Cliffsnotes version for the conservative woman-haters club.

The piece is simple, direct, comprehensive, and provides real solutions to the problem. She recognizes we are in a crisis, it’s profound significance, and how big the problem really is. She correctly recognizes that if we don’t resolve to taking immediate necessary steps to square ourselves away, China and some European countries -- who we rely upon to purchase our securities, will come knocking at our door telling us how much, and on what, we can spend. And she gives answers to getting out of this mess… grow the economy by relaxing the government regulatory strangleholds (particularly in the energy sector), immediately cut government spending (not years from now), and reform entitlements (and she recognizes that reforming entitlements won’t be easy, but knows that's what is ultimately necessary).

Basically, cut spending and let the economy grow without government interference. And she does it with the attitude it can be accomplished.

IMO, if President Obama would have given her piece (but taking out her points as to how he had made matters worse and doesn't recognize the crisis, and of course taking credit for her ealier predictions) as his speech the other day to the rating downgrade, it would have been touted by the mainstream media as his greatest speech ever, and would have catapulted him in their eyes above even JFK or FDR.

Overheal

Amerika wrote: »

So you can’t bring yourself to read it because you don’t like her, or can it be you're actually interested in what I think? :eek:

If I actually used Safari, I would have placed this in my Read Later pile

Just wasnt in the disposition this morning to sit and read it but I'll get to it.

without government interference

Without or with less? I don't think Gov should have the keys to some economic sectors but looking at say, coal, they've used up their grace cards and have violated regulation after regulation to damaging consequence, especially in West Virgina. and some sectors that have oligopoly structure like Cable and Internet need to still be looked at too.

I'm sure theres plenty of regulations to ease up on but not all of the reigns should go loose.

Hayte

Overheal wrote: »

Sub Prime Mortgages were a Democrat project.

What? No they weren't. Sub prime lending became big business because of decades of financial deregulation beginning with Reagan's presidency. In 1994 the Democrat controlled Congress passed the Home Owner Equity Protection Act (HOEPA). In 1995 the Republicans took control of the House and Senate and rolled out financial deregulation at a rampant pace (culminating in the repeal of Glass Steagall by a Republican majority). They also failed to enforce HOEPA in any way, shape or form and took the Presidency in 2001.

In 2003, The Republican sponsored Renewing the Dream Tax Credit Act was referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means where it (thankfully) appears to have died a quiet death, but it would have allocated billions in tax credits for affordable housing development in poor areas.

In 2004 Dubya nominated Alphonso Jackson to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development which then mandated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase financing to low income home buyers.

In 2008 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac blew the f**k up as a result of massive losses in the sub prime mortgage market and to date have cost US tax payers hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money.

Lets call a spade a spade and not buy into middle ground fallacy.

sarumite

Amerika wrote: »

Guess who had the best commentary regarding the recent US rating downgrade...

http://www.facebook.com/notes/sarah-palin/conquering-the-storm/10150260905388435

Whom? you can't keep us in suspense like this. You tell us that you know who had the best commentary and instead of letting us know, you post a link to Sarah Palin's FB page.

Amerika

Hayte wrote: »

What?Lets call a spade a spade and not buy into middle ground fallacy.

Yeah... Lets!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

Overheal

^

Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis.

At a 2004 hearing see Democrat after Democrat covering up and attacking the regulations to protect Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (their Cash Cows) that are now destroying our economy because the Democrats let them cheat.

Amerika

sarumite wrote: »

Whom? you can't keep us in suspense like this. You tell us that you know who had the best commentary and instead of letting us know, you post a link to Sarah Palin's FB page.

Hmmmm... I'll just quote Mark Twain... “Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.”

Amerika

Overheal wrote: »

Just wasnt in the disposition this morning to sit and read it but I'll get to it.Without or with less? I don't think Gov should have the keys to some economic sectors but looking at say, coal, they've used up their grace cards and have violated regulation after regulation to damaging consequence, especially in West Virgina. and some sectors that have oligopoly structure like Cable and Internet need to still be looked at too.

I'm sure theres plenty of regulations to ease up on but not all of the reigns should go loose.

You could always become a conform trooper in Obama's War On Coal.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_war_on_coal_zVrf0OxP4RcUfmymSsDcOJ

Overheal

Amerika wrote: »

You could always become a conform trooper in Obama's War On Coal.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/obama_war_on_coal_zVrf0OxP4RcUfmymSsDcOJ

Did ya ever see that one on youtube, Burning our Future? It's on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5veLKY7Azc sorry about the quality. You can watch it hi def for free on amazon with a trial signup.

There's two sides to coal. Theres the Jobs. The lots of Jobs. Then theres the environment. It's a lose lose scenario. But, jobs are easier to replace than the Appalachians.

In general, Energy sucks. Coal has it's issues. Oil and Gas have their issues (whether you want to talk about the middle East, Alaska, or Off-Shore) and Nuclear and Renewables have their issues.

nyarlothothep

I don't America is finished as a world superpower, I think the problem is that Washington is basically owned by financial interests which often don't have the interests of the country at heart and the system has become corrupted and decadent at the highest levels with the doctrinal worship of de-regulation, not taxing the richest, bailing out banks which failed etc. Imo that is the most obvious sign of the rot, the fact that these insitutions which made losses dictate economic policy through the bailouts which then become the taxpayers burden invariably. The financial system was saved in 2008 with these measures but I think its just delayed the inevitable. I think there will be riots, revolutionary movements, reactionary authoritarianism from the oligarchs, chaos essentially. Corporations like Apple, (who made more money this year than that held by the government) are making profits in this recession but its not filtering into the wider economy.There is a severe schism between the people and the political/business classes at the top of the social heirarchy, so long as the current state of affairs continues to exist America will slowly decline as a world power. I think that there may even be a meeting point between the US and China in terms of a significant conflict of interest with regards to power/control tied to economic interests in various regions.

I think the Bush admin did a lot to damage America, they were nothing better than imperialists high on power and getting the states embroiled in 2 wars simply ridiculous. While they may have avoided prosecution for the crimes under their administration like sanctioning torture, phone tapping citizens and stealing elections I hope future generations/history will judge them harshly for the utter incompetent fools that they are. In addition Obama is weak in office, maybe there is only so much he can do in a tightly controlled political system, but I think he's a good times president rather than a crisis president and essentially a puppet of Wall Street. i Regardless he should have kept his pledges and pulled the plug on Afghanistan and Iraq occupations.

Manach

Whilst America is an empire (a good one IMHO), when judged against similar historical norms such as the British or Athenian, I don't believe it is in a terminal decline. For instance based on their leadership in areas in intellectual property capital, they still are a significant force in the high tech industry and in spite of the venom of current Democrats vs. Republicans, they are not resorting to violence. Empires go through phases and transform themselves into other entities (as mentioned in "After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000" by John Darwin). So we will not see America's end for a while yet.

Sand

Overheal wrote: »

You know I don't like her :P what were your favorite quotes in that?


The Real Problem remains and will forever be the partisan politics. Republicans when faced with a minority in the 111th Congress, blocked and filibustered so much legislation that they became The Party of No. The Democrats meanwhile are also guilty of being stubborn about legislation they want passed, in the 110th Congress they gunked up the system in demand of a troop withdrawal deadline.

This isn't how this country was founded; it's not how our Constitution was Engineered. It's Gang Mentality. What the Reds want must be bad for the Blues. Without the partisan politics there would have been no problem passing a budget that fixes the problem. But you have one side that isn't willing to do this and another that isn't willing to do that. They're all so concerned with getting re-elected.

And even here in the ****ing forum we can't escape it. "Oh if you agree with this you must be a Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/Liberal/etc" when in reality most people who even bother to enter these discussions are independent and moderate. I doubt anybody here agrees with 100% of the platform of any of our two choices: Republicans and Democrats. But therein lies the problem.

The country is split in two. It will fail, if this continues. And what good is blame? They're all to blame. They all need a blank page.

IIRC, Fareed Zakaria's book, "The Future of Freedom" noted that its undeniable that modern American politicians are undeniably better than the politicians of previous eras (Far less racists and bigots and slave owners for starters), but the results are worse (divisive, bitter, intensely hostile politics where the moderates are dominated by the fringe).

Zakaria put it down to American politics being far more open - voters can now track exactly how their representitives voted on every single issue. It seems like a good, progressive idea but the average voter is very small fry in the game of who gets elected and who doesnt. The open nature allows for very vocal, very organised, well funded fringe lobby groups to track and target individual politicians - either forcing them to vote on their lines, or funding politicians and attack ads against them. Hence, politicians are afraid to moderate their views because theyll then be isolated and picked off. A less transparent system allowed for politicans to be simultaneously for a position privately, whilst railing against it publically - satisfying both the need for thoughtful leadership and appeasing the baying mob.

I agree with the general concept that the average voter is actually protected by the political system being less transparent because that means the real sharks cant see anything either so they dont have the chance to exercise their far greater wealth and organisation. However, its practically impossible to reverse course on that. Only extremely heavy handed restrictions on campaign financing or political advertisements would reduce the incentive for politicians to be ****ing crazy so they get financed by the ****ing crazy.





That said, and to the OP - I dont think America is going to vanish as a global superpower. If you looked at the US in the late 1970s you might have assumed that this sucker was going down - faced by a seemingly invincable Soviet Union which any day was going to send a horde of armour through the Fulda gap, massive inflation, Watergate, 2 attempted presidential assassinations, nuclear disaster at Three mile Island, the Arab oil crisis, humiliating and costly defeat in Vietnam, the debacle of the Iranian hostages and their bungled rescue...

It looked pretty bad, but by the early 1990s they had to invent the term hyperpower to describe the dominance of the US globally because superpower was deemed insufficient.

Now we come to 2011: The USA quite simply faces no rivals for global military, economic or cultural dominance. Europe is old and broke and getting older and broker. Russia is a quasi-totalarian basket case. China is the new Japan. India has intense internal issues. And thats about it. If there seems to be more problems in the US its because they are quite open about identifying, addressing and solving problems. The US looked weak in the 70s, the Soviets looked invincable but you wont find the Soviet Union on a map today.

Hiding a problem under a rug and hoping it stays hidden is not solving it. The debacle of the US subprime mortgage has cost the US taxpayer a lot less in per capita terms than it has cost the Irish taxpayer to deal with what were small, boring banks. The horror at allowing the humiliation of an Irish bank failure focused on saving embarrasment, but it cost us a lot more money in the end.

And internally, whilst US domestic politics might be bitter and divisive, theyre still relatively speaking civil - afterall, theres no chance of the South asking for a re-run of the American Civil War for old times sake.

RichieC

Amerika wrote: »

Guess who had the best commentary regarding the recent US rating downgrade...

http://www.facebook.com/notes/sarah-palin/conquering-the-storm/10150260905388435

She didn't write that.

Overheal

RichieC wrote: »

She didn't write that.

Plausible, but can't be proven. Either way she endorsed it.

pissants

it doesn't matter. It's the usual misnomers about spending and entitlements, and the always laughable 'drill baby drill!'.


Proposals here make no mention of increasing tax revenues or reform of the existing system - which was half S&P's cited reason for the downgrade, but of course this is mentioned nowhere!

Cutting alone here does nothing but work to continuously impoverish middle and working America - which has the cyclical problem of killing off consumer spending, making things even worse for business in the long run.

irishh_bob

Overheal wrote: »

OK Gargle, you just keep on playing the partisan blame game. At least I'll know what I'm missing when I put you on ignore.

Sub Prime Mortgages were a Democrat project. Bush Taxes were a republican project. Now we're all ****ed. Thanks to all of them. But who's interested in accepting the situation and solving it, and who is just interested in pointing fingers?

sub prime mortgages were a wall st banks project

pissants

playing the blame game here with partisanship is a red herring. There's maybe three people across all branches of the US government who aren't bought (and Obama isn't one of them). Here's how you distinguish: the democrats want to screw you over, the republicans are honest about screwing you over, and the tea party want to raze everything to the ground. screwing you over is incidental.

unless the two-party system changes, money is taken out of politics, or a left-leaning third party movement to compliment the tea party shows up (laffo because the left has let itself become demonised and is is completely incapable of delivering an ideologically coherent message) to offset the overton window screaming to the right at mach 5, there's really very little anyone can do by participating within the system as-is.

Overheal

irishh_bob wrote: »

sub prime mortgages were a wall st banks project

http://www.cnbc.com/id/28892719