Voice of America

Americans seem to have accepted dysfunctional government as unavoidable.

Another president, another congress will soon come to power.

Amid the noise, the blaring trumpets, the delirium that ushers another president into office, is the quiet acceptance that whatever the new guy does it won’t be done for ordinary Americans.

During the Bush Administration, many Americans have been innocently unaware of the quiet, insidious changes that were calculated into their lives.

Some like to think the next president will restore the Constitutional Rights that were taken from them.

They are fully aware that the Bush Administration has taken an ax to the foundations of democracy.

They’ll look hopefully to the new president to restore those rights, and put things back.

But there are some things that once they are gone can’t be brought back.

The failing economy, the decaying infrastructure, the apparent indifference that Americans seem to feel about their kid’s futures are accepted as a matter of course."
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print/13773

How many things do you figure can go wrong all at once, and still be managed?

I understand that your plate is pretty full already,
with the war going poorly,
the economy imploding,
polar ice sheets collapsing due to global warming and all.
Some days it all seems too much. So we avert our gaze and focus on our lives, families and communities, hoping "someone" will deal with the global issues.

When several things go wrong at once the media and politicians seem able to focus on only one at a time. Remember, it was only a few months ago that the war was "issue No. 1," with voters. Then global warming jumped into the lead for a short time. Now the economy is "issue No. 1," which means the war and environment, both of which remain growing problems, have been put back on the shelf -- again.


Someone asked the retiring journalist, "Do you think we'll make it? Do you think mankind will survive?"

He thought for second and replied.
"Yes...but just barely. The history of mankind is that we walk right up to the edge before we react.
Then we do what needs getting done and survive, just barely."

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print/13755

Of course in USA English is the language and most of the voters speak better English than their elected representatives.

Rama, can you even read the articles you're posting? Before you criticize other people's English and all...

I wish not to cross sword with you.
Please expose my ignorance with your Milton/ shakesphere language.
I am here to expose hypocracy and uphold emocracy

And here is a sane sensible voice of an American.


"The President of the United States has openly, proudly admitted that he approved the use of interrogation methods that are by every measure -- including the measure of United States law -- criminal acts of torture. It is one of the most brazen and scandalous confessions of wrongdoing ever uttered by an American leader -- and it has had no impact whatsoever. No scandal, no outcry, no protest, no prosecution.

This pattern has recurred over and over throughout the Bush Administration. Bush and his minions commit crimes and atrocities in secret; they move heaven and earth to conceal their filthy deeds; they squirm and squeal like panicked rats when their some small portion of their evil comes to light; they belch forth a relentless series of self-contradictory lies to cover up, obfuscate or explain away the crimes; and when at last their malefactions can no longer be denied, they trot out the president himself to say: "Yeah, we did it; so what?" And then....nothing happens.

And now nothing is happening again. It is an astounding phenomenon. Bush is the most widely despised president in modern times. The war he launched on false pretenses against Iraq is deeply unpopular, and is plainly bankrupting the country. His economic policies have plunged millions into ruin, want and insecurity. The opposition political party controls the Congress -- a bastion they could have used as a bully pulpit to rally the public and as a battering ram to bring down an openly criminal, shamelessly unconstitutional, dangerous, illegitimate regime. And yet....nothing happens.

There has never been a condition of such deep, virtually catatonic civic paralysis in American history -- and few such instances in world history. There will be no good issue from all of this. No saving grace in the last act, no life-enhancing "lessons learned," no character growth in the story arc, no deus ex machina, no redemption. There will only be -- at best, in the very best-case scenario imaginable -- a long, slow agonizing slog through the ruins, a hard, interminable labor of waste disposal and reclamation, in a much-diminished world.

And yet the sleepwalking goes on. For not only is Bush never chastened or hobbled by revelations that ordinarily would topple even the strongest government in any nation with even a tincture of democracy -- he and his cronies simply move on from each exposed outrage to even greater crimes. And that is what is happening today. Even as Bush was telling ABC News about his approval of the White House torture meetings -- where the nation's most august figures of state watched CIA men act out torture techniques for them -- he and his minions were also bolting the last rivets onto their latest war machine: the engine of murder and destruction they have prepared for Iran.

The same process of deception and fearmongering that led to the Iraq invasion is being played out again. And once again, the Establishment press is playing an indispensible role in formenting a new act of mass murder. Once again, the media mandarins are shoveling horseshit directly from the White House down the gullets of the American people.

Last week, the Bush Regime used the Establishment house organs, the Washington Post and the New York Times, to announce that Iran is now the main U.S. enemy in Iraq. Both reports were laden with the usual unchallenged, unfiltered, unquestioned spin from the usual unnamed "senior U.S. officials" about Iran's "malign influence" in arming, training and directing deadly Shiite militia attacks against U.S. forces.

For two years now, Bush and his accomplicies have been methodically laying the groundwork for another specious casus belli ("Iran killing American troops!); manipulating the ever-eager-to-be-manipulated corporate media and Congress into swallowing every shift in the propaganda line; conducting their training for bomb runs on Iran (including scenarios for "tactical" nuclear attacks); moving attack fleets into the Persian Gulf and elsewhere within easy striking distance of Iran, building outposts on the Iranian border; running covert ops inside Iran (with the assistance of a terrorist cult once used as enforcers by Saddam Hussein). Now, with the aid of stories like those above, they are "rolling out the product," getting the "Iran is the Enemy" story front and center, no longer building it from the edges but making it the propaganda focus for the final act of Bush's bloodsoaked Grand Guignol.

One could write yards of exegesis on these articles, unpacking the outright lies, the skewed, misinformed -- and misinforming -- "analysis," the innumerable false assumptions built on old lies swallowed long before: "lies that no longer know they are lies, because they are the children and grandchildren of lies." This kind of exercise has great value, of course -- if only to demontrate, to ourselves and to future generations, that not everyone was willing to gobble down horseshit at the order of killers and torturers, and their simpering courtiers. [For an excellent example, see Juan Cole's takedown of the lies of the scribes and courtiers here: Iran Supported al-Maliki Against Militias.]

But ultimately, on the ground, it will not change a thing. The sharpest truth, shouted like a trumpet blast, will not wake the sleepwalkers now. Nothing has pierced the shadows and fog so far, nothing has roused their moral sense, their legal sense, their political sense; nothing has stirred them to take action against the torture, the secret prisons, the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, the ludicrous farce and deadly tyranny of the "Unitary Executive" cult -- and the never-ending act of mass murder and rape that is the war in Iraq. Will they stir now to stop another war crime in Iran?
http://www.chris-floyd.com/

"Over the previous two centuries, the chains of the Constitution eroded and no longer bind the men in power. The mischief certain men do today to our country, and the world is unconscionable. We have old sayings, such as "all power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely;" (1) and, "for what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?" (2) Apparently, it brings great riches and unbound power, especially for men without sympathy or care for the rest of humanity who were not in the right time and in the right place, especially certain wombs in certain families.

As for propaganda, the Founders created the Fourth Estate as free to "tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," which is now a game in Washington, D.C., to hide any and all truths. Sound bites are thought up by think tanks, lobbyists, and politicians mainly for money from the United States Treasury, also known as the Federal Reserve Bank. These sound bites are not truth per se; they attempt to pass for truth.

Today, it is as if our Constitution was elbowed over a cliff and dashed to death on the old foundations by the current men of mischief. They have found the secret of the Holy Grail -- IOU's, known as Treasury Bonds, backed by the People's taxes. They can cleverly loot the People's general welfare by cutting back on the programs that benefit individuals, such as the old, the sick, the soldier, the children, the states, the women.

In this age of failings, there are the planet's atmosphere warming, the dependence on technologies to transport too many humans on a planet built for -- maybe -- two billion, but actually containing seven billion people who double faster and faster. Water is wasted, polluted, full of unnecessary chemicals and there are plans for more chemicals, more usage. Trees are cut down to send endless pieces of advertising and junk mail again and again for donations none of us have enough money for any more. Trees are cut to grow other crops. We seem to have forgotten that trees bring needed rain. Profit is more important than rain.

The stripping of mountaintops, dumping them into the surrounding areas for profit, lifeless and dangerous to animal life, including ours, will go on until the resources run out. Melting ocean ice changes the entire planet. The extra water released wrecks homes foolishly built on the edges for the view and the ambiance. The infrastructure of bridges, roads, buildings, treatment plants, town centers are all aging and need replacement, failings without end and without any will or funds to correct the problems. Take a look at the latest pictures from downtown Las Vegas when the remodeling stopped.

Let's not forget, also, the dirty atmosphere and the dirty lakes, rivers, and the oceans polluted beyond belief by our throwaway societies. The salmon have lost their edge; so, we will kill the seals in some twisted fit of recompense for our creations that killed the salmon. No one has bothered to reclaim or collect the plastic, swirling dump in the Pacific Ocean yet. Birds and fish have tried and they died. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." (3) Deceit is the dishonor of today and tomorrow.

http://www.swans.com/library/art14/carenc33.html

Yet another tedious and boring monologue from Ramadamadingdong, the chief bore and waster of space in the cybersphere.

Isn't there another rock somewhere that you can crawl under ?

Of course sir.
I ahave umpteen stage to sing my song.
But Able2know is my first priotity.

Learn English from an American.
project not your prejudice.
Here is one more American voice( a cut and paste of the few paragraphs)


"Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.


It is worth noting that no one ever needs to identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, atheism is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to never doubt the existence of God should be obliged to present evidence for his existence and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: Most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.

We live in a world where all things, good and bad, are finally destroyed by change. Parents lose their children and children their parents. Husbands and wives are separated in an instant, never to meet again. Friends part company in haste, without knowing that it will be for the last time. This life, when surveyed with a broad glance, presents little more than a vast spectacle of loss. Most people in this world, however, imagine that there is a cure for this. If we live rightly—not necessarily ethically, but within the framework of certain ancient beliefs and stereotyped behaviors—we will get everything we want after we die. When our bodies finally fail us, we just shed our corporeal ballast and travel to a land where we are reunited with everyone we loved while alive. Of course, overly rational people and other rabble will be kept out of this happy place, and those who suspended their disbelief while alive will be free to enjoy themselves for all eternity.

We live in a world of unimaginable surprises--from the fusion energy that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of this lights dancing for eons upon the Earth--and yet Paradise conforms to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn’t know better, one would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image.

Consider the destruction that Hurricane Katrina leveled on New Orleans. More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend.

Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm of biblical proportions would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. Nevertheless, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80% of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.

As Hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran: Their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence; their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace.

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is--and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.

One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the world’s faith. The Holocaust did not do it. Neither did the genocide in Rwanda, even with machete-wielding priests among the perpetrators. Five hundred million people died of smallpox in the 20th Century, many of them infants. God’s ways are, indeed, inscrutable. It seems that any fact, no matter how infelicitous, can be rendered compatible with religious faith. In matters of faith, we have kicked ourselves loose of the Earth.

Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If he exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/
Read all and dare to retort.
Rama

Television pundits, commentators, news columnists share the same common trait. They invent and distort for ratings. The bottom of the barrel types, like Limbaugh, Hannity and Colmes, the foul mouthed Ann Coulter, try their best to discredit anyone who is not onboard with the ideals, such as they are, of conservatism. This bunch simply manufactures vicious, ugly lies with which to belittle whoever they believe hasn’t conformed to conservative tenants. The truth is simpler. If they could find a larger liberal audience as fantastically uninformed, naïve and willing to accept the label "Ditto Head as flattery and not a testament to their stupidity, they’d change party affiliations in a second. It’s about ratings and money - nothing more. Such is network coverage of the presidential candidates.

Why do we insist on choosing people to lead us who are blindly ambitious and self serving? Who are proven to be liars time after time? Why do we tolerate candidates who don’t run for the exclusive benefit of Americans but are driven by a belief that they somehow deserve high office and once they attain it no longer consider it their obligation or responsibility to serve Americans with honesty and sincerity? Americans can plainly see the results of their political process - how the remedial decisions of their leaders have constricted growth, besmirched the nation’s international reputation, savaged the economy, and perhaps above all, encouraged the divisive feelings among the opposing parties faithful. This loss of camaraderie among Americans has cost the nation dearly in terms of citizen’s contempt for government, and politicians in general.

Americans heard from the Bush campaign that Bush was a good ol’ boy. He was exactly like many white, middle class Americans, and understood what their hopes were - what they believed. Nothing could have been further from the truth but that didn’t matter. In spite of the abundant information that suggested other wise, many Americans would not be swayed from their fondly held belief that Bush was one of them. The shameless media took every opportunity to cast Bush in a favorable light, while disparaging Gore in any dishonest means they thought the public would buy. And buy they did. But finally, and in spite of their efforts, Americans elected Gore.

Network Media’s insincere attempts at reporting news became obvious to many as it ignored the Supreme Courts arrogant and unconstitutional interference in an election that was clearly won by someone who didn’t share the justice’s political affiliation. Americans respect for their highest institutions took another step down as the winner was declared the loser and Americans realized their votes no longer counted.

Why don’t we elect obviously intelligent people? Thinkers, novelists who understand the complexities of human strengths and weaknesses. No matter how anyone feels about lawyers, the fact remains that they are very bright people. They have spent years of careful study examining the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Their minds are trained to a complete understanding of inverse and deductive logic. They are able to effectively argue or discuss whatever issues or questions come before them. Why in the world would Americans elect someone who’s understanding of “My Favorite Goat” is suspect? The good news is, they wouldn’t. The 105th Congress, for the first time in American history, was composed of more businessmen than lawyers. What would any reasonably intelligent person expect them to do? Regulate themselves?

It didn’t take long to find out what a Congress composed of businessmen would do. Reagan pushed deregulation and the S&L’s immediately collapsed, costing taxpayers billions. The businessman Congress gave away the nation’s communication network in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Lower cable prices! Greater competition! Let the market rule! As soon as it was passed the mergers began. Today, Clear Channel owns over 340 radio stations. Verizon & AT&T have merged and today dominate the cellular phone industry. California deregulated their electrical power industry and Californians are still paying for the rip off. Each time that another industry is deregulated the promises are always the same - lower prices through increased competition and if only that pesky government will get the hell out of the way it’s full speed ahead, damned the torpedoes, and everyone gets rich. Except of course, the poor sods stuck with bailing out the next corporate failure.

Today’s housing crisis comes to mind as subprime mortgage loans come due with higher interest rates. Thanks to the deregulated, magic market, 2.2 million homes were foreclosed on last year. This year an estimated 8,000 homes a day are entering into foreclosure proceedings. Congress has voted to give the house building industry 25 billion in tax rebates. Another 4 billion will be spent on refurbishing the foreclosed homes so they may be put on the market. The home owners? They’ll get a grand total of 100 million to pay for counseling to help them deal with the trauma of losing their homes. Earlier this year, Bear Sterns, a Wall Street investment house that’s apparently full of genius investors and money managers, had to be bailed out by the taxpayers to the tune of 30 billion dollars. Oh, yes. Let the free market roll. When corporations fall on their ass, as they so often do, the American tax payer will be there to pick them up. Back to the S&L’s, when the taxpayers saved their bacon, today’s banking lobby, returning the favor, convinced Senate republicans to block a measure that would allow changes in bankruptcy law to help families keep their homes. Is jus’ bidness folks!

Now another election looms large. Republicans consider Hillary the easiest candidate to beat, so Obama will be increasingly subjected to questions of race and this tactic will effectively keep him in a defensive position, unable to discuss the agenda he would initiate if he were elected. Geraldine Ferraro has already demonstrated the tactic to great effect. Before resigning from the Clinton campaign she said, "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." So, Obama is lucky to be black, and owes his success to that. Geraldine goes on to say that she’s very resentful and angry that she was “attacked” by the Obama camp. Defiantly, said she, “I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?" CNN reports, “The Clinton camp has released a memo insinuating that Barack Obama is playing the race card.” And so the die is cast, as if anyone could have been surprised.

Keep the race card in play in every possible way and Obama is in trouble unless he can force the network media to refocus on the issues. But no one is going to let him do that. Not his republican opponent, and certainly not network media. Watch for them to find a way to remind Americans of Willie Horton. Watch them help Americans remember James Byrd, the Blackman dragged to death behind a pickup truck in Texas. They’ll talk about lynching in the not so old south, and how that could never happen today, thank God. They’ll discuss the fact that a majority of the nation’s criminals are black. These will only be innocent observations, you understand. It will be a strange and distorted version of “If it bleeds, it leads” and it will work to marginalize Obama and his message. Obama will end up looking like a Blackman who’s lucky to be alive, or a Blackman who’s anger and pain is in public evidence, and probably both.

The people who populate the networks are asses. They are not at all disposed to informing, or in any way helping, to provide insight into the choices that Americans must make. They are like rodeo clowns, who provide a diversion to take the audience’s attention away from such events they’d rather it doesn’t see. Such is their dishonesty, and such is their betrayal. Obama will not win the nomination, and barring any serious mistakes, McCain will almost certainly be elected. Hillary will give her concession speech in as conciliatory a way as possible, then she’ll resume her service to New York as its freshman senator, plotting her next run for the prize. Obama will walk away wishing he’d done things differently but sadly, he was doomed from the beginning. The power brokers are not going to let a black JFK into office.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print/13983