Capitalism has cancer, both political parties and their corporate puppet masters. Thank you corporate whore servants of power and greed for selling out this country. Treasonous cretin filth!
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35018&s=rcmpA Decade of Self-Delusion
by Patrick J. Buchanan
12/29/2009
About the first decade of what was to be the Second American Century, the pessimists have been proven right.
According to the International Monetary Fund, the United States began the century producing 32 percent of the world's gross domestic product. We ended the decade producing 24 percent. No nation in modern history, save for the late Soviet Union, has seen so precipitous a decline in relative power in a single decade.
The United States began the century with a budget surplus. We ended with a deficit of 10 percent of gross domestic product, which will be repeated in 2010. Where the economy was at full employment in 2000, 10 percent of the labor force is out of work today and another 7 percent is underemployed or has given up looking for a job.
Between one-fourth and one-third of all U.S. manufacturing jobs have disappeared in 10 years, the fruits of a free-trade ideology that has proven anything but free for this country. Our future is being outsourced -- to China.
While the median income of American families was stagnant, the national debt doubled.
The dollar lost half its value against the euro. Once the most self-sufficient republic in history, which produced 96 percent of all it consumed, the U.S.A. is almost as dependent on foreign nations today for manufactured goods, and the loans to pay for them, as we were in the early years of the republic.
What the British were to us then, China is today.
Beijing holds the mortgage and grows impatient as we endlessly borrow on equity and refuse to begin paying it down. The possibility exists of an eventual run on the dollar or even a U.S. debt default.
Who did this to us? We did it to ourselves.
We sold ourselves a lot of snake oil about the Global Economy, interdependence, free trade and "it doesn't make any difference where goods are produced." The George W. Bush Republicans ran up the deficit with tax cuts, two wars and a splurge in social spending to rival the guns-and-butter of the Great Society.
Abandoning its role as the fellow who comes and takes away the punch bowl when the party's getting good, the Fed kept the money flowing fast and free, creating the tech bubble that burst in Y2K and the stock and housing bubble that burst at decade's end.
To pull us back from the cliff's edge, over which we were headed a year ago, the Fed doubled the money supply, while the administration ran up deficit spending to the highest level since World War II.
Unlike World War II, however, there is no end in sight to these deficits.
The stock market, which flat-lined over the decade, had to surge 50 percent in 2009 to retrieve the worst losses since the Depression.
Everyone, it seems, except for Washington bureaucrats and Wall Street, for whom the bonuses never seem to stop, has been hammered by the sinking home values and shrinking portfolios.
After Sept. 11, the nation was united behind a president as it had not been since Pearl Harbor. But instead of focusing on the enemies who did this to us, we took Osama bin Laden's bait and plunged into a war in Iraq that bled and divided us, alienated Europe and the Arab world, and destroyed the Republican Party's reputation as the reliable custodian of national security and foreign policy.
The party paid -- with the loss of both houses in 2006 and the presidency in 2008 -- but the nation has not stopped paying.
With nearly 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and another 30,000 more on the way, al-Qaida is now in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and North Africa, while the huge U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq serves as its recruiting poster.
Again, it is not a malevolent fate that has done this to us. We did it to ourselves. We believed all that hubristic blather about our being the "greatest empire since Rome," the "indispensable nation" and "unipolar power" advancing to "benevolent global hegemony" in a series of "cakewalk" wars to "end tyranny in our world."
After a decade of self-delusion and self-indulgence, we must stop deceiving ourselves. As Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, the "can-do" nation that won World War II in Europe and the Pacific in less than four years, that put a man on the moon in the same decade JFK said we would, is history.
We have a government that cannot balance its books, defend its borders or win its wars. And what is it now doing? Drafting another entitlement program as we are informed that the Social Security and Medicare trust funds have unfunded liabilities in the trillions.
At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the question is not whether we will preside over the creation of a New World Order, but whether America's decline is irreversible.
Dick Cheney not too long ago and the now all of a sudden rallying cry from the right that deficits matter again, lol!
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was told "deficits don't matter" when he warned of a looming fiscal crisis.
O'Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush's economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from "the corporate crowd," a key constituency.
O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.
Last edited by DR_GONZO; January 4th, 2010 at 05:46 PM.
Other than the anti socialism note at the end I pretty much agree with what he is saying. I agree we did this to ourselves and a deficit was caused by irresponsibility. However I do think the deregulation on the bank over the years helped create this mess, which was done by both political parties.
I completely agree on everything he said about foreign policy. All we are doing is causing more people to turn to terrorism.
Interesting article!
“Two percent of the people think; three percent of the people think they think; and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think.”
It is sad. This country needs to wake up. Some might cry protectionism is not the way. I agree. Protectionism will not work today. It should have been implemented back in the late '70s, early '80s when the cancer began to rapidly destroy the middle and lower classes in the U.S.A. We were warned again in the '90s by the Nader's and Perot's but the billion dollar corporate lobbyists and their political servants made the capitalist cancer stronger. So again protectionism will not work. We are too far past that. Survivalism should be the new rallying cry. Our country and it's existence depend on it.
Dr G... nothing short of civil war will change the direction of our country. As sad, and as badly as Ifeel about war upon our own soil, I dont think anything will change until people, every day people stand up, unite, and literally fight against the special interest groups. For far to long the american people have watched our 'elected' officials blatently LIE to the people. They have spent more money than we as a people are able to afford. Have put forth the lives of thousands of american soldiers over MONEY... Money,. money, is worth more than an american life unless it is a life that represents POWER AND AUTHORITY. Then, its life for life. Otherwise, the american people are nothing more than a piggy back to get rich and to rage war to gain trillions and 'power'
The US, has become a modern day Version of Nazi Germany, with our 'spread of democracy' First of all, the US is not a democracy its a Republic, that should be your first clue. Second of all, we are invading countries with out official congressionally approved declarations of war.
Third, according the the US Constitution we arnt cupposed to have a standing military and therefore need to make 'special' arrangements each year to keep our standing military legal.
Our country continues to violate the laws of our constitution. We continue to spend billions which we dont have on countires that hate us. We continue to import 98% of all products...
We try to elect those that will suport we the people, instead those that get in ,are those that want nothing more than the destruction of our country.. therefore voting doesnt work.
What is REALLY left, what choice except acts of violance, are left for the american people? What choice does the american people have besides taking the fight to the streets and defending what is rightfully theres? Protests? your high right? seriously... I hate to say it, but the ONLY recourse the average american has, to to resort to violance. Legal means have been cut off. voting has been cut off, and our govt continues to gain more power, and demands more wealth... and for what?! Security? Our constitution states we as citizens have a right to bear arms, its the laws of our over bearing govt that stops us from doing such.
Willful ignorance is the downfall of every major empire in history.
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." - Mao, 1938
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