BS: Is the US doomed???...

Subject: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Bobert
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 09:12 PM

Given the current corrupt administration and a system that is also very corrupted and broken, can the US survive itself???

And, if so...how????

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Alice
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 09:16 PM

Take a deep breath and ... vote.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 09:21 PM

No, it's not doomed. It's just heading for some major setbacks and the loss of a few grand illusions. This has happened before to other military empires, and I'm pretty sure it will happen again.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 09:55 PM

Doomed? No. About to be disillusioned big-time? Yup.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Big Mick
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 10:01 PM

C'mon, Bobert. Get serious. We are reeling right now, and we have before. But Jane and Joe Average are figuring out that they have been lied to, and we are on the verge of voters rebellion. I believe the great middle has had it. They have been lied to on values, they have been lied to on diplomacy, they have been lied to with regard to their pocket books, and they are figuring it out. We are a hard headed lot, but ultimately it comes to us.

We will be a long time fixing what has been done of late, but we will.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 10:05 PM

Right, Mick. Exactly.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 10:12 PM

And the price of gas is still way down... Hmm. Looks like someone's trying desperately to get votes to me. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Bert
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 10:12 PM

I hope Mick is right, but if there's a drop in gas prices just before the election I wouldn't bet on it.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 10:21 PM

Yup, voting is a good idea, but my faith in fair US elections is zilch (Google Princeton +Diebold +virus). The evidence is now overwhelming that elections are rigged. But, maybe someday soon, our hackers will be better than their hackers.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 10:25 PM

Consider this story from the Financial Times exactly one week ago. Consider the "interest-only" mortgages held by many people. Consider the ARMs which are now "coming due" with higher payments which must be made.

I see the jumbo-sized SUVs -- the Excursions, the Suburbans, the Ford 350 pickups -- with the for sale signs in the window. Yesterday a man told me that he knows people who are right now, with lower gas prices, paying US $135.00 and more to fill their gas tank.

I think the US middle-class is waking up to the fact that it's an endangered species.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Ebbie
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 10:25 PM

And if the midterm elections show no change from the last two? What then? (Sorry, the bug in the salve does scare me.)

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 10:29 PM

There's either prayer or revolution....

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 10:54 PM

Like all imperialist powers, the U. S. A. will eventually slide back in power, much like Great Britain has given way, etc.
In 50 years, China will be the major power in the world, trying to get others to follow its lead (and who will eventually overtake them? India?)

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 11:09 PM

Q is correct. China, quite literally, owns a huge chunk of the USA. If they call in their debts, we are sunk. Which may be a good thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Sorcha
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 11:17 PM

It says right there in the Contitution, it really is OK to have a revolution...
(Brewer and Shipley)

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Amos
Date: 11 Oct 06 - 11:21 PM

Doomed? Hell no.

Dumber than two boxes of rocks trying to have a conversation?

Yeah, sometimes.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 03:00 AM

The US is not doomed because it will always find someone else to blame and someone else's ass to kick. And enough of the American people are dumb enough to patriotically believe the BS.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 05:32 AM

I think in terms of being the world's superpower, it is inevitable - as others have indicated, all empires fall. The question to me is more one of is it falling "now"?

Let's put it this way. I really do not know the answer to that but if it did, it would not come as a complete and utter shock to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Ron Davies
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 07:02 AM

"middle class is doomed"--last night on Jon Stewart, Lou Dobbs was there with his new book "War On the Middle Class".

Jon pointed out that war on the middle class might be good for the middle class--after all, when we've declared war on other things, they've done quite well. War on Drugs, War on Poverty.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Ron Davies
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 07:04 AM

Excuse me. "an endangered species", not "doomed"

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: kendall
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 08:42 AM

Nothing lasts forever, except the national debt.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 08:59 AM

Futurists, and I mean those who know what they're talking about, predict that in 2010 India will be in a rear-end collision with China economically and educationally. Both are already graduated far more engineers and in other technical fields than the US. The US will wake up and enact all sorts of educational acts, much like it did after Sputnik.

The question is whether or not it will be enough and on time. Many think not, especially since the predictions are that by 2020 the whole danged world will be in a post-petroleum energy culture...the energy sources very possibly invented and replaced by technicians in India and China.

And China is not "going to be" a world power. China already IS a world power in every way that matters. The "West" simply can't admit it.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Amos
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 09:04 AM

Well, you just not only admitted but asserted it, and you live in Pocatello, and that's pretty West.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Big Mick
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 09:30 AM

The fact is that the future of the US lies square in the Chinese bank vaults. Should they decide to call in the notes of ours that they hold, we are in the tank. If the US falls, it won't be to an armed invader. It will be to our own fiscal irresponsibility.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 09:55 AM

Just paid the bills, Mick. I owe on the house and one car. The car is mostly paid off and I have money in the bank to pay off the house if I have to (the mortgage interest is a substantial tax deduction, though, one of the few left to middle class folks). Lemme tell ya, it ain't been easy to get here.

And that's what the US really must do. Pull back from billions-wasting foriegn involvements, consign the borrow-and-spend ideas to oblivion, and start paying for things that are needed (I'd much rather tax-and-spend, because at least things are getting paid for in the present!). Things like restoring Reagan's "social safety net" and assuring that people who really need it have some sort of health assurance and providing the veterans the "back pay" they deserve in the way of health care and educational benefits and such. Oh, and the next time someone uses the term "family values," please ask them to define them, for I'd really like to know what they are.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: GUEST,He who shall not be named
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 10:31 AM

Ron Davies and bobert. Continuing to live the Un-American dream. Outsiders looking in and no more than that will you ever be.

Ron, keep watching Comedy Channel for your politics. It goes with how seriously you can be taken.

bobert, it must be such an unhappy life you lead, day after day, month after month, year after year hating yourself for being a stoned, old hippie. Time to cough up some phlegm again, isn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Amos
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 04:34 PM

Voldemort Gibson with his pro-life death-wish rides again.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 05:19 PM

The US is not domed you twits. It would require too much material.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 05:36 PM

And what if US does default on or confiscate CHinese debt? Do the CHinese send a gunboat?

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Oct 06 - 05:54 PM

Yeah, Guest, but what a great missile defence system!

Richard, the US economy is riding upon a fiction...namely that the country is economically healthy and solvent. It isn't. The Chinese could pull the rug out from under the USA, but if they did so they would lose the American middle class customer for all those consumer goods they are filling North America's malls with. So...I'd say it's in the interests of both at the moment to maintain the fiction that the USA is solvent.

Meanwhile, time is on the side of China, and they know it. They're the ones whose economy is modernizing and expanding and they're the ones who are on the upswing. The USA is wasting its talents and its resources on military spending, foreign wars, and high tech weaponry. That's a short-sighted policy which leads nowhere useful.

Interestingly enough, China spends a comparatively higher percentage of its annual budget on defence than most countries...but still a far smaller percentage than the USA does. The USA spends more on the military than all the other countries in the world put together.

And just LOOK at the love and respect it is winning for Americans all over the world! ;-) (that was a joke...)

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: NH Dave
Date: 13 Oct 06 - 01:17 AM

We've gone from a nation with a small surplus to one with a huge deficit in a few short years, mostly due to our military excursions in Afghanistan and Iraq. We went into Iraq with no idea how to stay there, our troops that would have possessed those skills having been allowed to leave the military as their units were rendered redundant by fiat from above.

I can't speak to which country or countries own the most of the US, or what they might do, for lack of specific knowledge on that subject.

We are bringing our wounded and maimed troops home to be treated in a Veterans Administation hospital system that doesn't have enough funds to treat the disabled and medically retired veterans of former wars, let along the new casualties of the middle east. In spite of lobbying on the part of veterans and their representative groups, funding for the VA's medical hospitals is still on an optional rather than a mandatory basis, which means that Congress MAY fund these facilities at their desire or whim, as opposed to having to meet the expanding costs of caring for the current disabled veterans as well as the seriously wounded veterans returning from the war.

BUT, we're coming into an election in less than a month, one that could allow for most of our elected officials in Washington to be replaced by irate voters, if there are enough unhappy folks in the US these days. Although the gas prices have dropped almost a dollar in the last month or so, there should be enough of us who still remember $ 3.00 prices that we could make a real difference, if we can get motivated enough to vote.

And herein lies our biggest problem. So many people are so disillusioned with our election procedures that they don't even take the time to try to make their voices heard by filling out and submitting a ballot. As a result, most elections have been decided with much less than 50% of the registered voters even bothering to come to the polls. On the other hand in a recent primary, the Republican[think Tory] candidate for our governor, who was running unopposed, only received 40% of the votes cast. The rest of those voting in the Republican primary cast their votes for candidates in the Democratic [think Labor] race, as write in votes. Since there was no opponent running in the Republican race, there was little else they could do.

This gives me some hope that we could elect a solidly Democratic Congress, one that could block any of Bush's pipe dreams, and run through legislation that could amass enough votes to override a presidential veto. This would give the Democrats enough standing that they could field a viable candidate in 2008, who might start pulling us out of the hole into which we have allowed ourselves to be dug. And while it may be an impossible job, remember that it was a Democratic president that left Bush an economy with a small surplus.

Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Bobert
Date: 13 Oct 06 - 08:36 AM

Yeah, ya' can't borrow your way outta debt...

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Oct 06 - 09:20 AM

Sure ya can, Bobert. I get ads for it all the time on my email. And in the long run either that nice man in Nigeria who needs to get that money out of the country or the nice lady in London who says I've won the Gigundo-Super-Duper Eurolotto will send me money.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Oct 06 - 12:49 PM

Just musing here... When China or any other power demands payment for the long string of debt- if the US refuses to pay, what then?

When there is war between two nations that own businesses in each other's country, what happens to those companies? Surely they are co-opted and closed or kept operating and their monies confiscated?

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 13 Oct 06 - 03:49 PM

China's largest bank just made a stock offering. The share price has gone up but still a good buy according to many analysts. The Hang Seng exchange has hit almost 18,000. (Hong Kong based, but more and more Shanghai controlled).
A major world bank, HSB (Hong Kong and Shanghai) operates world-wide, branches here in Alberta but I don't know about US operations.
(And simple-minded Lou Dobbs calls China 'communist').

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Oct 06 - 04:41 PM

The nations involved in a war seize whatever assets they have in each other's country, including ships, aircraft, factories, and so forth.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 04:09 AM

Now there's a strategy to appeal to GW - he can declare war on China, and seize a whole lot of assetts, without even having to go to a furrin place to do the seizin...

But, of course, if the USA merely defaults on foreign debt, then the ability to continue to run a deficit will vanish, and the IMF will insist on fiscal rectitude as a condition of loans, resulting in a HUGE recession in the USA.

And if that happens, what happens to the world economy?

If the USA is doomed, it may be that the rest of the world is doomed too...

Alternatively, the oppressed workers in the tiger economies may seek political reform, resulting in the inability of the tiger economies to continue outward investment.

Knife edge stuff..

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 09:21 AM

"the IMF will insist on fiscal rectitude"

That sounds like a good idea, until you realise that the USA IS the IMF...

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Ron Davies
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 12:54 PM

At this point, this scenario requires suspension of disbelief.   The US is a huge market for Chinese goods--it's not to their advantage to force default.

We'll see what happens later--and it's obvious the US has to bring its house into order.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: catspaw49
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 01:04 PM

The USA is the IMF and we want fiscal rectitude? Are you saying we're butt-fucking the entire world or what?

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 01:39 PM

IMF website

THe IMF comprises 184 countries and the USA votes 17.08% of the votes. More than anyone else, but a long way off absolute control.

The UK votes a sizeable bloc, about 5%, and in the Wilson era got well shafted by the IMF.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: katlaughing
Date: 14 Oct 06 - 10:03 PM

Countries never pay off their debts to one another. It will be business as usual until we see some major changes in the political realm, the IMF, energy sources, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Oct 06 - 09:00 PM

It's not a matter of debt repayment as much as it is the IMF "hit men" who set up the same ol' 3rd world countries, keep them enslaved and then go on to the next one....

Meanwhile, the beat goes on...

But the beat has been missin' a few beats of late and I'm not sure that this formula to rip off the 3rd World will continue to work... Not should it, I might add... It is, afterall, exploitation...

(But, BObert, at least it ain't expolitin' out folks...)

Oh yeah, tell that to the guy who is makin' minimum wage 'cause he's told that if he don't take the job for the minimum that his job is going overseas....

Hmmmmmmmmmmm???

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Don Firth
Date: 15 Oct 06 - 09:12 PM

Economic hit man.

For your information.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Is the US doomed???...
From: Peace
Date: 16 Oct 06 - 11:19 AM

And people deny there is a Neocon agenda?