Topic: America is a whore!!!

This is nothing you guys aren't already aware of... but I just thought it was a good article about what's happening right now in the USA.

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=482

Since it began to give credit ratings to nations in 1917, Moody’s has rated the United Statesw triple-A. U.S. Treasury bonds have been seen as the most secure investment on earth. When crises erupt, nervous money seeks out the world’s great safe harbor, the United States. That reputation is now in peril.

Last week, Moody’s warned that if the United States fails to rein in the soaring cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the nation’s credit rating will be down-graded within a decade.

Our political parties seem oblivious. Republicans, save Ron Paul, are all promising to expand the U.S. military and maintain all of our worldwide commitments to defend and subsidize scores of nations.

Democrats, with entitlement costs drowning the federal budget in red ink, are proposing a new entitlement—universal health coverage for the near 50 million who do not have it—another magnet for illegal aliens. Moody’s is telling America it needs a time of austerity, while the U.S. government is behaving like the governments we used to bail out.

California has already hit the wall. With an economy as large as a G-8 nation, the Golden State is looking at a $14 billion deficit in 2009 and a $3 billion shortfall in 2008. Gov. Schwarzenegger has called for slashing prison staff by 6,000, including 2,000 guards, early release of 22,000 inmates, closing four dozen state parks and a 10 percent across-the-board cut in all state agencies. The Democratic legislature is demanding tax hikes, which would drive more taxpayers back over the mountains whence their fathers came.

Meanwhile, Washington drifts mindlessly toward the maelstrom. With the dollar sinking, oil surging to $100 a barrel, the Dow having its worst January in memory, foreclosures mounting, credit card debt going rotten, and consumers and businesses unable or unwilling to borrow, we appear headed into recession.

If so, tax revenue will fall and spending on unemployment will surge. The price of the stimulus packages both parties are preparing will further add to the deficit and further imperil the U.S. credit rating. This all comes in the year that the first of the baby boomers, born in 1946, reach early retirement and eligibility for Social Security.

To stave off recession, the Fed appears anxious to slash interest rates another half-point, if not more. That will further weaken the dollar and raise the costs of the imports to which we have become addicted. While all this is bad news for the Republicans, it is worse news for the republic. As we save nothing, we must borrow both to pay for the imported oil and foreign manufactures upon which we have become dependent.

We are thus in the position of having to borrow from Europe to defend Europe, of having to borrow from China and Japan to defend Chinese and Japanese access to Gulf oil, and of having to borrow from Arab emirs, sultans and monarchs to make Iraq safe for democracy.

We borrow from the nations we defend so that we may continue to defend them. To question this is an unpardonable heresy called “isolationism.”

And the chickens of globalism are coming home to roost.

We let Europe to get away with imposing value-added taxes averaging 15 percent on our exports to them, while they rebate that value-added tax on their exports to us. Thus, the euro has almost doubled in value against the dollar in the Bush years, as NATO Europe begins to bail out on Iraq and Afghanistan.

We sat still as Japan protected her markets and dumped high quality goods into ours and China undervalued its currency to suck jobs, technology and factories out of the United States. Now, China and Japan have $2 trillion in cash reserves. The Arabs have an equal amount of petrodollars. Both are headed here to spend their depreciating dollars snapping up U.S. assets—banks, ports, highways, defense contractors.

America, to pay her bills, has begun to sell herself to the world.

Its balance sheet gutted by the subprime mortgage crisis, Citicorp got a $7.5 billion injection from Abu Dhabi and is now fishing for $1 billion from Kuwait and $9 billion from China. Beijing has put $5 billion into Morgan Stanley and bought heavily into Barclays Bank.

Merrill-Lynch, ravaged by subprime mortgage losses, sold part of itself to Singapore for $7.5 billion and is seeking another $3 billion to $4 billion from the Arabs. Swiss-based UBS, taking a near $15 billion write-down in subprime mortgages, has gotten an infusion of $10 billion from Singapore.

Bain Capital is partnering with China’s Huawei Technologies in a buyout of 3Com, the U.S. company that provides the technology that protects Pentagon computers from Chinese hackers.

This self-indulgent generation has borrowed itself into unpayable debt. Now the folks from whom we borrowed to buy all that oil and all those cars, electronics and clothes are coming to buy the country we inherited. We are prodigal sons, and the day of reckoning approaches.

2 (edited by SirLoin 2008-01-16 16:45:02)

Re: America is a whore!!!

Fantastic. Straight to the point, mocks a gluttonous culture and finishes off by targeting the conceited self indulgent generation(http://youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE) with a jab about a financial crisis that most likely won't be paid by these retards.

On the topic of the generation that will be unable to pay back debt to cultures they may consider inferior I had an experience taking the bus back home today. After noticing an increase of ten people who don't regularly ride the route the bus driver ordered these non regulars to leave. Because no one did she called security to take care of everyone. When they arrived and ordered a punk ass looking kid to get off he exclaimed it was bullshit. "Hey man your a f*cking idiot! There's room everywhere". He walked past the guard and walked away like hot shit. This guy threw the book at him outside and the kid just walked off anyway.

ARGH! He would get expelled instantly in any other country, hopefully shot in some of the better ones. Stupid people all over my city! Stupid idiots all over the place! Undisciplined morons talking on their cell phones and buying crappy clothes at Target. Things here suck! Leave while you can.

A suspicious mind is a healthy mind

Re: America is a whore!!!

Wow, Sirloin lighten up a little. The "punk ass kid" was right to be pissed off for being kicked off the bus. What exactly did he do to be kicked off the bus besides not being a regular? Sounds like a bullshit call on the drivers part to me. This is public transportation we're talking about here? isn't it? And by the way standing up against authority is much healthier than bowing to it.

I'd also like to know what other types of behavior you find so offensive as to warrant capital punishment.

Re: America is a whore!!!

SirLoin wrote:

Fantastic. Straight to the point, mocks a glutonous culture and finishes off by targeting the concieded self indulgent generation(http://youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE) with a jab about a finantial crisis that most likely won't be paid by these retards.

On the topic of the generation that will be unable to pay back debt to cultures they may consider inferior I had an experience taking the bus back home today. After noticing an increase of ten people who don't regularly ride the route the bus driver ordered these non regulars to leave. Because no one did she called security to take care of everyone. When they arived and ordered a punk ass looking kid to get off he exclaimed it was bullshit. "Hey man your a f*cking idiot! There's room everywhere". He walked past the guard and walked away like hot shit. This guy threw the book at him outside and the kid just walked off anyway.

ARGH! He would get expelled instantly in any other country, hopefully shot in some of the better ones. Stupid people all over my city! Stupid idiots all over the place! Undiscliplined morons talking on their cell phones and buying crappy clothes at Target. Things here suck! Leave while you can.

How can you possibly go on about all the stupid idiots all over the place.....with THAT many spelling errors in your post???

Just wondering.

"Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "Holy shit ... what a ride!"  - Anonymous
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"I get by with a little help from my (higher density) friends."
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Re: America is a whore!!!

Oh this thread is getting much funnier than I anticipated!!! 

Sir, I do agree with you as far as the self-indulgent generation becoming an increasingly large problem.... however I'm in total agreement with marklar as far as the boy on the bus.  To say that he deserved to be shot seems ridiculous.  Maybe there's something I'm not understanding about how it all went down - but that just sounds insane. 

I don't like stupid people anymore than you... and there's definitely plenty of them but we've got to at least try to be tolerant enough to come to some kind of mutal understanding before we can expect to overcome the stupidity.  I think fighting against it by doing stuff like shooting people you see as stupid or self indulgent is only going to breed more ignorance and separation.

6 (edited by SirLoin 2008-01-16 17:10:21)

Re: America is a whore!!!

I know I have bad gramrar. I don't actually support capital punishment but it wasn’t obvious it seems even though I made it sound stupid at the end so it might be considered more funny than serious. Overall I just dread dumbass kids infatuated with their image and cell phones who yell F*ck at security guards then go home and do meth ( I live in Oregon ) then get their girlfriends (both of them) pregnant and get their first and last job at Safeway where they will take 2 hour lunch breaks and piss off their boss eventually confirming their existence is unnecessary.

Yes that's hopefully an exaderation but you need to see it to believe it. This wasn't a big event, it was one of the small things wrong with this place that may add up together and let reality catch up to an undisciplined populous. Sorry it's misunderstood, I don't actually believe most the things I say if it's the things I say that sound unrealistic. Yes the word gramrar was intentional. If you want to know why the people in this place irritate me it's because of the medical quagmire, McDonalds, spending issues, lack of dedication to tradition, and everything else bad that can be reduced through willpower or common sense.

A suspicious mind is a healthy mind

Re: America is a whore!!!

SirLoin wrote:

I know I have bad gramrar. I don't actually support capital punishment but it wasn’t obvious it seems even though I made it sound stupid at the end so it might be considered more funny than serious. Overall I just dread dumbass kids infatuated with their image and cell phones who yell F*ck at security guards then go home and do meth ( I live in Oregon ) then get their girlfriends (both of them) pregnant and get their first and last job at Safeway where they will take 2 hour lunch breaks and piss off their boss eventually confirming their existence is unnecessary.

Yes that's hopefully an exaderation but you need to see it to believe it. This wasn't a big event, it was one of the small things wrong with this place that may add up together and let reality catch up to an undisciplined populous. Sorry it's misunderstood, I don't actually believe most the things I say if it's the things I say that sound unrealistic. Yes the word gramrar was intentional. If you want to know why the people in this place irritate me it's because of the medical quagmire, McDonalds, spending issues, lack of dedication to tradition, and everything else bad that can be reduced through willpower or common sense.

Then move.

Problem solved. 

Next.

I was in Portland Oregon for four months, and hell or high water, I knew I was getting out of there.  I was not going to get trapped and stuck in the venus fly trap of the northwest.  Even if it meant taking my last $20 and using it to fill my gas tank to get my ass back down to SoCal, where I would then live out of my car, I wasn't going to wind up stuck there.  I would rather have been homeless in Cali than be stuck in the northwest vortex.

Needless to say, I got out of there.  But despite the negativity of Oregon, while I was there I had a blast.  Took 10 rolls of pictures and was always exploring.  Whether it was heroin foil, needles and homeless people's poo and vomit on the sidewalks of the downtown industrial district and the poverty and destitution surrounding me, or hiking up the mountain of Multnomah Falls or watching the flaming red orange sunrise over snow capped Mt. Hood every morning from the downtown office building where I temped, I had fun and always had this sense of adventure.  I relished those treks around the battleship gray skied ghetto industrial district where old spray painted garbage trucks had been converted into makeshift shelters, just as much as driving east on the 30 past the snowy Cascade mountains.

In the end life is what you make it.  And if you have a shitty attitude, then it won't matter where you live, because wherever you go, there you are.  And by the looks of some of the thread titles you've started there's definitely an attitude issue going on.  "Orlando Florida Sucks", "Big List of Bullshit Disseminated by Conceited Society", "Something That Pisses Me Off."  Etc.  So you could be on the tropical beaches of south Florida or the Caribbean and probably still find something to rage about, ranting that people need to be "lined up and shot."  It isn't about what's going on outside, it's what you are and how you feel and react on the inside.  I could care less about "idiot punk ass" guys who get several girls knocked up by the time they're 21, working at a Safeway in Oregon.   Why do you?   I have my own living to do.  Do you?

Change your attitude on the inside and the world around you will feel different. 


"You are where you are today because you've chosen to be there." - Harry Browne

"Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "Holy shit ... what a ride!"  - Anonymous
-----
"I get by with a little help from my (higher density) friends."
-----

Re: America is a whore!!!

Someone had wanted a quick easy explanation of how and why the US economy is failing but I couldn't find the post so I decided to put it here.  I needed this article as much as that person and am glad I found it smile

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/74262/

9 (edited by LightningEye 2008-01-20 20:06:07)

Re: America is a whore!!!

"You are where you are today because you've chosen to be there." - Harry Browne

Excellent quote, Lyra. Sounds a lot like taking responsibility for your own life with a dash of YCYOR for good measure.

As for America, who wants to place bets as to when it collapses? I don't know, I think 236 years would be a good run for something that almost collapsed or got split apart so many times.

Lyra, have you ever read any of Harry Browne's books. I was just looking at his Wikipedia page and noticed "How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World." Intrigued, I actually found a free ebook download at ebookee.com

What a weird internet. Magical.