Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

Kind of amazing! Can't remember how to resize pictures, sorry but it does kinda emphasize the overwhelming results.

The US has slipped 11 points in a decade in rankings of world's democracies – below Argentina and Mongolia – according the latest report by a democracy watchdog.

The US has fallen to a new low in a global ranking of political rights and civil liberties, a drop fueled by unequal treatment of minority groups, damaging influence of money in politics, and increased polarization, according to a new report by Freedom House, a democracy watchdog group.

The US earned 83 out of 100 possible points this year in Freedom House’s annual rankings of freedoms around the world, an 11-point drop from its 94 ranking a decade ago. The US’s new ranking places it on par with countries like Panama, Romania and Croatia and behind countries such as Argentina and Mongolia. It lagged far behind countries like Germany (94), the United Kingdom (93), Chile (93), Costa Rica (91), France and Slovakia (both 90).

From Crisis to Reform: A Call to Strengthen America’s Battered Democracy
(>Countries and Territories<)

The fact that we have fallen this far...is so disheartening, it tears at my soul.

Such societies may be called Acquisitive Societies, because their whole tendency and interest and preoccupation is to promote the acquisition of wealth. The appeal of this conception must be powerful, for it has laid the whole modern world under its spell. Since England first revealed the possibilities of industrialism, it has gone from strength to strength, and as industrial civilization invades countries hitherto remote from it, as Russia and Japan and India and China are drawn into its orbit, each decade sees a fresh extension of its influence. The secret of its triumph is obvious. It is an invitation to men to use the powers with which they have been endowed by nature or society, by skill or energy or relentless egotism or mere good fortune, without inquiring whether there is any principle by which their exercise should be limited. It assumes the social organization which determines the opportunities which different classes shall in fact possess, and concentrates attention upon the right of those who possess or can acquire power to make the fullest use of it for their own self-advancement. By fixing men's minds, not upon the discharge of social obligations, which restricts their energy, because it defines the goal to which it should be directed, but upon the exercise of the right to pursue their own self-interest, it offers unlimited scope for the acquisition of riches, and therefore gives free play to one of the most powerful of human instincts. To the strong it promises unfettered freedom for the exercise of their strength; to the weak the hope that they too one day may be strong. Before the eyes of both it suspends a golden prize, which not all can attain, but for which each may strive, the enchanting vision of infinite expansion. It assures men that there are no ends other than their ends, no law other than their desires, no limit other than that which they think advisable. Thus it makes the individual the center of his own universe, and dissolves moral principles into a choice of expediences. And it immensely simplifies the problems of social life in complex communities. For it relieves them of the necessity of discriminating between different types of economic activity and different sources of wealth, between enterprise and avarice, energy and unscrupulous greed, property which is legitimate and property which is theft, the just enjoyment of the fruits of labor and the idle parasitism of birth or fortune, because it treats all economic activities as standing upon the same level, and suggests that excess or defect, waste or superfluity, require no conscious effort of the social will to avert them, but are corrected almost automatically by the mechanical play of economic forces.

But the "Conclusion and recommendations" (see in above link) look promising for positive change:
• "Lower barriers to voting as part of a comprehensive effort to address racial injustice."
• "Curb the influence of money in politics by tightening campaign finance laws."
• "Reduce political polarization and extremism by establishing independent redistricting commissions."

WELL WE DO HAVE SOMEONE SANE IN THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER A FOUR YEAR HIATUS. one can always hpe/

I don’t think those individuals learn that way. They’re more concerned with what keeps them in the good graces of their donors.

If we see improvement, it will be something that’s forced on them.

t hese people would be just as dead if they were killed with knives o

When you come up with a semi-automatic kinife with a 30 knife magazine feed that can point and stab from ten feet awy from the victim at a dafe distance from him for yoou. and work it with a mere flick of the finger, and it becomes the most purchased weapon in the country, then you MIGHT have a case.

Until then, you've got bupkus

MontereyJack wrote:

When you come up with a semi-automatic kinife with a 30 knife magazine feed that can point and stab from ten feet awy from the victim at a dafe distance from him for yoou. and work it with a mere flick of the finger, and it becomes the most purchased weapon in the country, then you MIGHT have a case.

I have a case right now.

MontereyJack wrote:

Until then, you've got bupkus

Wrong. I have the fact that people who are murdered with knives are just as dead as people who are murdered with guns.

WELL WE DO HAVE SOMEONE SANE IN THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER A FOUR YEAR HIATUS

Quote:

WELL WE DO HAVE SOMEONE SANE IN THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER A FOUR YEAR HIATUS

Dude, he can't even read an auto-prompt without forgetting what the **** he's talking about. His "party" won't let him speak to the public, or answer questions that aren't scripted with the "press".

You know you can't make the argument that knives are just as effective as high-powered rifles with large capacity magazines because you know that's ludicrous, so you just keep repeating a stabbed person is just as dead as a shot person.

This is why it's stupid to try to reason with you.

You don't make good faith arguments

and you drag every discussion down to the brain-dead **** show you like.