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The Untied States of America
Re: The Untied States of America
by emersonbiggins » Wed 21 Dec 2005, 10:30:59
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Seadragon', 'T')his state is so red I don't even recognize it anymore. You, Emerson, are living in the last bastion of blueness. Oh sure, there may be a few patches in the big cities (there always are) but the vast majority here are SUV-driving, gun-toting, tract house-owning, Bush-voting, football-watching, megachurch-worshipping religious fundies who hate gays, whole wheat anything, evolution, and democrats.
Yeah, although I think the redness is particularly characteristic of the suburbs like Frisco and Plano, though. I don't think most of rural Texas is as red as those areas. Not that any of this matters much, though, because votes are going to go the way of the candidate that promises continued 'bread and circus,' as Ludi pointed out. That's more likely a democrat than a republican, though. Remember, TX is LBJ (entitlement) country, too...
"It's called the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it."
George Carlin
George Carlin
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Re: The Untied States of America
by Seadragon » Wed 21 Dec 2005, 11:44:30
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')Dunno where ya live. I'm in a semi-rural county, slowly becoming rather suburbanized, reddish, but in the HEB we have plenty of organic produce, whole wheat thisnthat. There's a Democratic Women's club which meets in public *gasp* (I'm not a member, not being a Democrat)...so yeah, dunno where you live.....
must be some other "Texas"
')Dunno where ya live. I'm in a semi-rural county, slowly becoming rather suburbanized, reddish, but in the HEB we have plenty of organic produce, whole wheat thisnthat. There's a Democratic Women's club which meets in public *gasp* (I'm not a member, not being a Democrat)...so yeah, dunno where you live.....
must be some other "Texas"
North end of San Antonio...watched the redness increasing over the last 20 years as I lived in various parts of the state (Gulf Coast, North Texas, Austin). The last five years have been the worst. It seems that the congeniality in politics and social issues is pretty much gone. Civil liberties (or, the lack) make this state a national embarassment. As far as state expenditures on welfare, education, mental health care, etc., we're right on the bottom with Mississippi, Lousiana. Environmental protection is a joke--we still have state agencies that are "captives" of the corporations they're supposed to be regulating.
Exporting oil is an act of treason"-- Heitor Manoel Pereira, president of AEPET in Brazil, January 06, 2006
come see me sometime... http://www.sonofchaos.blogspot.com/
come see me sometime... http://www.sonofchaos.blogspot.com/
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Re: The Untied States of America
by Petrodollar » Wed 21 Dec 2005, 14:11:45
Retired Lt Gen. William Odom, a Vietnam veteran, former head of the National Security Agency (NSA), and respected geostrategist on foreign affairs and other issues had the folllowing things to say recently at Princeton Univ...
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Iraq fight threatens American power, retired general says
11/25/2005 PacketOnline News - By David Campbell
The U.S. empire is eroding and may be on the verge of collapse, according to William E. Odom
The decision to invade Iraq represented a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of American power, and today threatens to erode and possibly even topple it completely, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William E. Odom warned during a lecture Tuesday at Princeton University.
Lt. Gen. Odom, who gave his lecture, titled "Strategic Drift and Dwarfish Leaders," at the university's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and a professor at Yale University.
Recently, Lt. Gen. Odom's outspoken opinions about the war in Iraq — and his recommendation that the United States withdraw its troops — have placed him in the center of the ongoing debate among politicians in Washington.
"My basic proposition is that we are in a time of drift in which this inadvertent empire of the United States that was built after World War II is eroding, and maybe is on the verge of collapse," Lt. Gen. Odom told his Princeton audience.
He argued that U.S. foreign policy, unlike domestic matters, has no formal system of checks and balances other than the wisdom of the leaders carrying them out. He said that today, foreign policy is threatened by "small-minded" American leadership and by "dwarfish" leaders in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.
The cause of this drift, he continued, is a failure to understand the character of this American "empire." Among its attributes are that it is ideological, not territorial, and that that ideology is liberalism, not democracy; that it is a moneymaking empire, not a money-losing empire; and that other countries fight to get in and not out — until now, after the Iraq invasion, he argued.
Lt. Gen. Odom warned that the Iraq quagmire in which the U.S. now finds itself threatens to push the system into "precipitous freefall," and called the invasion possibly the greatest military disaster in the country's history.
He said President George W. Bush squandered the international support and good will the United States enjoyed following Sept. 11, 2001.
Among the alleged missteps the president made were his "axis of evil" comments in his 2002 State of the Union Address, in which, the lieutenant general noted, the president added Iraq, Iran, Syria and North Korea to the nation's list of enemies following the 2001 attack by al Qaeda; falsifying the claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction; and the "preposterous" claim that toppling Saddam Hussein would spur democratic reforms in Iraq.
He claimed the Bush administration turned its back on its allies with the invasion; the Army is stretched to the breaking point in Iraq; public support for the war is waning; and that the administration is pretending there is an Iraqi constitution in place while a civil war in the country rages on.
"The basic reason we are in this mess is that our leaders misunderstand the basis of American power," Lt. Gen. Odom said, arguing that the support of allies is what that power is built upon.
He said the nation's nuclear nonproliferation policy is unsupportable as long as it permits some countries to possess fissionable material while denying others; that the so-called global war on terror cannot be won (noting that terror is a tactic, not an enemy); and that while a war on al Qaeda is justified, to generalize it as a war on terror is a mere propaganda ploy to get other nations on board.
He said the danger is that this puts the U.S. in a position of supporting causes that may not be in its best interests, such as Russia's fight against separatists in Chechnya, whom the Russians have labeled "terrorists." The notion of a global terror war also marginalizes and discriminates against Muslims, he continued, and raises the specter of hypocrisy, because he said the U.S. itself uses terror as a tactic.
Lt. Gen. Odom said these policies have pushed the nation into Iraq, and that there is now the risk that the U.S. will drift into other disasters in the future. He said the nation's involvement in Iraq will end with withdrawal and failure. He said Iraq will likely fragment with an independent Kurdistan, and that the Sunni-Shiite fight could spread. Former Soviet countries and Europe will come under greater threat from radical Islamists, and North America could become increasingly isolated.
"The first thing you do when you're in a hole is to stop digging," he noted during questions and answers following his lecture Tuesday.
Lt. Gen Odom is an expert in military, strategic and intelligence issues; Asian economic and security issues; Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian studies; and European politics and military issues. He has written many books, including most recently "America's Inadvertent Empire," published in 2004 by Yale University Press, and "Fixing Intelligence For a More Secure America," which came out in 2003 from Yale University Press.
Lt. Gen. Odom's articles have been published in Foreign Affairs, World Politics, Foreign Policy, Orbis, Problems of Communism, The National Interest, The Washington Quarterly and Military Review. He is a frequent radio and television commentator, and has appeared on programs and networks including "The PBS News Hour," CNN, ABC's "Nightline," NBC News, C-SPAN and BBC's "The World Tonight."
Source: PACKETONLINE News
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Iraq fight threatens American power, retired general says
11/25/2005 PacketOnline News - By David Campbell
The U.S. empire is eroding and may be on the verge of collapse, according to William E. Odom
The decision to invade Iraq represented a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of American power, and today threatens to erode and possibly even topple it completely, retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William E. Odom warned during a lecture Tuesday at Princeton University.
Lt. Gen. Odom, who gave his lecture, titled "Strategic Drift and Dwarfish Leaders," at the university's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and a professor at Yale University.
Recently, Lt. Gen. Odom's outspoken opinions about the war in Iraq — and his recommendation that the United States withdraw its troops — have placed him in the center of the ongoing debate among politicians in Washington.
"My basic proposition is that we are in a time of drift in which this inadvertent empire of the United States that was built after World War II is eroding, and maybe is on the verge of collapse," Lt. Gen. Odom told his Princeton audience.
He argued that U.S. foreign policy, unlike domestic matters, has no formal system of checks and balances other than the wisdom of the leaders carrying them out. He said that today, foreign policy is threatened by "small-minded" American leadership and by "dwarfish" leaders in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.
The cause of this drift, he continued, is a failure to understand the character of this American "empire." Among its attributes are that it is ideological, not territorial, and that that ideology is liberalism, not democracy; that it is a moneymaking empire, not a money-losing empire; and that other countries fight to get in and not out — until now, after the Iraq invasion, he argued.
Lt. Gen. Odom warned that the Iraq quagmire in which the U.S. now finds itself threatens to push the system into "precipitous freefall," and called the invasion possibly the greatest military disaster in the country's history.
He said President George W. Bush squandered the international support and good will the United States enjoyed following Sept. 11, 2001.
Among the alleged missteps the president made were his "axis of evil" comments in his 2002 State of the Union Address, in which, the lieutenant general noted, the president added Iraq, Iran, Syria and North Korea to the nation's list of enemies following the 2001 attack by al Qaeda; falsifying the claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction; and the "preposterous" claim that toppling Saddam Hussein would spur democratic reforms in Iraq.
He claimed the Bush administration turned its back on its allies with the invasion; the Army is stretched to the breaking point in Iraq; public support for the war is waning; and that the administration is pretending there is an Iraqi constitution in place while a civil war in the country rages on.
"The basic reason we are in this mess is that our leaders misunderstand the basis of American power," Lt. Gen. Odom said, arguing that the support of allies is what that power is built upon.
He said the nation's nuclear nonproliferation policy is unsupportable as long as it permits some countries to possess fissionable material while denying others; that the so-called global war on terror cannot be won (noting that terror is a tactic, not an enemy); and that while a war on al Qaeda is justified, to generalize it as a war on terror is a mere propaganda ploy to get other nations on board.
He said the danger is that this puts the U.S. in a position of supporting causes that may not be in its best interests, such as Russia's fight against separatists in Chechnya, whom the Russians have labeled "terrorists." The notion of a global terror war also marginalizes and discriminates against Muslims, he continued, and raises the specter of hypocrisy, because he said the U.S. itself uses terror as a tactic.
Lt. Gen. Odom said these policies have pushed the nation into Iraq, and that there is now the risk that the U.S. will drift into other disasters in the future. He said the nation's involvement in Iraq will end with withdrawal and failure. He said Iraq will likely fragment with an independent Kurdistan, and that the Sunni-Shiite fight could spread. Former Soviet countries and Europe will come under greater threat from radical Islamists, and North America could become increasingly isolated.
"The first thing you do when you're in a hole is to stop digging," he noted during questions and answers following his lecture Tuesday.
Lt. Gen Odom is an expert in military, strategic and intelligence issues; Asian economic and security issues; Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian studies; and European politics and military issues. He has written many books, including most recently "America's Inadvertent Empire," published in 2004 by Yale University Press, and "Fixing Intelligence For a More Secure America," which came out in 2003 from Yale University Press.
Lt. Gen. Odom's articles have been published in Foreign Affairs, World Politics, Foreign Policy, Orbis, Problems of Communism, The National Interest, The Washington Quarterly and Military Review. He is a frequent radio and television commentator, and has appeared on programs and networks including "The PBS News Hour," CNN, ABC's "Nightline," NBC News, C-SPAN and BBC's "The World Tonight."
Source: PACKETONLINE News
http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=10692
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Re: The Untied States of America
by Ludi » Wed 21 Dec 2005, 15:06:28
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Seadragon', '
')North end of San Antonio...watched the redness increasing over the last 20 years as I lived in various parts of the state (Gulf Coast, North Texas, Austin).
')North end of San Antonio...watched the redness increasing over the last 20 years as I lived in various parts of the state (Gulf Coast, North Texas, Austin).
Hmm, well, as I say, my experience is different. It seems in many ways this part of Texas is more liberal than it was 20-odd years ago, but I wasn't so interested in politics then as I am now.
- Ludi
