Category: US Politics
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Sunday, December 30, 2012
No More Left-Right Politics / Politics / US Politics
TRASH POLITICS - THE DEFAULT CHOICE
The morph of old-style politics in almost all Western countries brings daily proof of how far the rot has gone. The end result is NAP-No Alternative Politics, an amorphous New Left-New Right mess hiding the basic refusal to govern: for this, voters and taxpayers are supposed to be thankful.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Empires of Illusion and the Credibility Trap / Politics / US Politics
I came across a nice, compact interview with Chris Hedges which illuminates his thesis of the decline of the American Empire and the illusory thinking that accompanies it. Can the shock and meltdown of Karl Rove on election night be any better contemporary illustration of the power of selective thinking to delude a group of seemingly rational people to their own downfall?
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Friday, December 28, 2012
I love guns. God bless America / Politics / US Politics
I want Americans to be armed to the teeth. In addition to practical and constitutional reasons for wanting an armed citizenry, I admit to having an emotional attachment to America’s gun culture. I’ll just come out and I say it: I love guns.
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Friday, December 28, 2012
Fiscal Cliff Chicken / Politics / US Politics
Talk show hosts and other bloviators have spent hours giving their versions of the fiscal cliff. In fewer than 750 words, I’ll explain the truth.Taxes and the deficit are intertwined. If Congress can’t come up with a plan to solve those problems, the U.S. will jump into the abyss of a deeper recession than existed under the latter years of the Bush–Cheney administration.
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Wednesday, December 26, 2012
The Hilarious Comedy Behind John Boehner's Fiscal Cliff "Plan B" / Politics / US Politics
Shah Gilani writes: I am laughing right now, really.
I am laughing because of what happened last week. I am laughing that House Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B" for the Fiscal Cliff wasn't even voted on.
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Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Gun Control and Genocide / Politics / US Politics
Sunday, April 24th marked the 90th anniversary of the first genocide of the twentieth century: the Turkish government's slaughter of over a million unarmed Armenians. The key word is "unarmed."
The Turks got away with it under the cover of wartime. They suffered no greater postwar reprisals for this act of genocide than if they had not conducted mass murder of a peaceful people.
Other governments soon took note of this fact. It seemed like such a convenient international precedent.
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Wednesday, December 26, 2012
The Government's Most Dangerous Threat to Your Privacy / Politics / US Politics
Three powerful forces have come together to dismantle the privacy of U.S. citizens...
First, government programs and regulations have formed the foundation of a massive tracking grid for all individuals. It has passed laws that give it sweeping "snooping" authority... It can now legally peer deeper into our daily lives than ever before.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Toxic Nationalism Or Natural Reaction? / Politics / US Politics
THE RENTACROWD LIBERALS SAY
In a recent 'Wall Street Journal' opinion piece, Robert Kaplan wrote: "Western elites believed that universal values are trumping the forces of reaction. They wax eloquent about the triumph of human rights, women's liberation, social media, financial markets, international and regional organizations and all the other forces that are breaking down boundaries separating humanity". He went on to say this is great for producing Me Tooism - but only for elites - on a global scale. Calling nationalism and national identity "regressive and exclusivist", Kaplan then sheds liberal tears for what happened to the hoped-for liberal western smartphone-enabled 'revolution' that Western journalists thought was happening in Cairo, Tunis, Benghazi and other Arab capitals nearly two years ago, at the start of 2011.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
The Fiscal Cliff Is Not the Problem, Looking on the Bright Side / Politics / US Politics
It is Christmas and not the time for long letters – just a brief note on why the fiscal cliff is not the End of All Things, and to point out a worthy cause led by some good friends of mine who are helping people who truly have no options in life. And we’ll start things off with a movie review of sorts to launch us into a positive take on the year behind and the year ahead.
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Monday, December 24, 2012
Ron Paul on Gun Control, Why Government Security is Just Another Kind of Violence / Politics / US Politics
The senseless and horrific killings last week in Newtown, Connecticut reminded us that a determined individual or group of individuals can cause great harm no matter what laws are in place. Connecticut already has restrictive gun laws relative to other states, including restrictions on fully automatic, so-called "assault" rifles and gun-free zones.
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Sunday, December 23, 2012
Fiscal Cliff Reality / Politics / US Politics
Political Washington theater continues. Republicans and Democrats agreed years ago to erode America’s social contract en route to eliminating it altogether.
Crisis conditions create opportunities. Former White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, explained.
“You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste,” he said. “What I mean by that is that’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”
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Thursday, December 20, 2012
Obama's Last Chance To Become A Great President / Politics / US Politics
Barack Obama has one last, fleeting chance of becoming known to posterity as a Great President.
His first four years were nothing to write home about, but with the burden of seeking re-election gone, you could argue that he can now throw off the shackles that held him back - and down - since January 20, 2009, and at last show his true face and intentions.
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Thursday, December 20, 2012
NRA BE DAMNED! / Politics / US Politics
Several days after the tragic shootings of December 14 in Newtown, Connecticut, I spoke to another writer and asked him to share his thoughts and feelings about this horrible event. He, an avowed enemy-of-the-people in the eyes of American Conservatives because he is committed to "Peace"; he, who never owned a gun and wrote occasional pleas advocating controlling the most dangerous of these firearms that George Bush and like-minded Republicans unleashed from restrictions; he, who has given every inch in justifying the Constitutional "rights" of everyone, including gun owners, replied: "The next time I hear someone yell '2nd Amen!' and recite specious propaganda or endlessly repeat conspiracy theories produced for gain by the NRA, I'm going to put down my pen, go out, buy a gun, and I'm going to shoot him! NRA? 2nd Amen? Be damned!"
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Thursday, December 20, 2012
Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition, Slaughter of the Innocents / Politics / US Politics
New York, New York: The late December holidays in America used to be known as “the season to be jolly,” with our streets festooned with bright lights, groups caroling, shopping galore, gift-giving and cheer.
This year, there’s a pall over all the light heartedness because of the horrific violence that claimed the lives of 20 young school children and their teachers in a still unexplained shooting incident in Connecticut, the latest of a string of similar events involving widely available deadly weapons often in the hands of mentally ill people.
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Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Al Capone And The Bible, Newtown-Type Terror And Economic Terror / Politics / US Politics
According to Dr. John R. Lott, described as one of the USA's leading gun experts, banning gun-free schools, or gun-free zones inside schools, and allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons at all times "could help eliminate mass shootings at schools". For Lott, gun-free schools or zones inside them are like smaller and weaker nations. They become “a magnet” for deranged killers and World Tyrants who hope to burn their names into history books by running up the highest-possible body count.
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Tuesday, December 18, 2012
American Gun Culture of 2012 / Politics / US Politics
Jan. 8, 2011, Tuscon, Ariz.: A man had gone to a political town meeting at a supermarket, with the intent to murder Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. He killed six and wounded 14, including Giffords, who was shot in the head. On Jan. 25, 2012, Giffords, still in recovery from the shooting, walked onto the House floor to a standing ovation. Congress and the President have no plans to restore the assault weapons ban that expired under the Bush–Cheney Administration or to tighten gun laws.
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Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Mass Murders in American State Schools / Politics / US Politics
In my early life [born 1937] I lived all over the U.S. I saw lots of guns. I was present at various gun incidents in arguments and fights. Few ever ended in shootings. My mother's employer threatened my stepfather with a pistol to stop his beating my mother. He stopped. I did know people who were shot or shot other people. A younger brother shot the husband of one of my mother's sisters near the heart to stop him from beating our aunt. [It was a 22. He lived with the bullet in place. My brother was sent to a minimum security camp for months and eventually walked away and came to live with us.] The employer of that aunt caught a robber in the act where she worked and shot him to death with a shot gun.
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Monday, December 17, 2012
Obama Questions Extrajudicial Killings / Politics / US Politics
DOUBLE STANDARDS
President Obama told the nation it faces "hard questions" in the aftermath of the Newtown, Connecticut elementary school massacre. He pledged to "seek answers" in the memory of the 20 children and six adults killed. He added the comment that any society is judged by how well it can keep its children safe and able to lead a normal life.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Obama, Sympathy from the Devil / Politics / US Politics
William Norman Grigg writes: "They had their entire lives ahead of them – birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own," intoned the murderer of 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki as he began the liturgy of official mourning for the victims of the Newtown massacre.
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Sunday, December 16, 2012
U.S.S. Titanic To Face More Icebergs than the Fiscal Cliff / Politics / US Politics
2012 has been the l00th anniversary of the famous Titanic disaster. The Captain of that “unsinkable” ship was warned that there were icebergs ahead but he was too busy, out to set a speed record on the way to New York.
The warnings were ignored and we know what happened. What we don’t know is why other urgent warnings go unheeded.
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