Well, it's sort of a matter of if there's anywhere else for each to go.

By the way, the editorial SUUUUCCCKKKKSSSS! I mean, sucks! Really poor writing; really poor reasoning. Please don't greenlight.

Until Indonesia's version of Playboy has full frontal nudity, I'm going to say "no" on this one.

The_Sponge: Until Indonesia's version of Playboy has full frontal nudity, I'm going to say "no" on this one.

Bread and circuses. Always remember the circuses part.

filth

Well, it's sort of a matter of if there's anywhere else for each to go.

Well the US has been going backwards for at least 200 years now, so there must be a fair amount of space opened up that it could at least try to make back.

Filth:Well, it's sort of a matter of if there's anywhere else for each to go.

Is your contention that the US couldn't become any more democratic? The US has been becoming less and less democratic for a long time now, as corporate interests have co-opted a vulnerable process.

Tortoise and the Hare?

xria: filth

Well, it's sort of a matter of if there's anywhere else for each to go.

Well the US has been going backwards for at least 200 years now,

No way. The US peaked between 1890 and WWI, so it's only been 90ish years of backsliding.

Gangway Fathead: No way. The US peaked between 1890 and WWI, so it's only been 90ish years of backsliding.

Democracy peaked during the era of tycoons and robber barons?

Gangway Fathead: xria: filth

Well, it's sort of a matter of if there's anywhere else for each to go.

Well the US has been going backwards for at least 200 years now,

No way. The US peaked between 1890 and WWI, so it's only been 90ish years of backsliding.

I'm pretty sure black people and women might take issue with that statement.

/Just sayin'

Gangway Fathead: xria: filth

Well, it's sort of a matter of if there's anywhere else for each to go.

Well the US has been going backwards for at least 200 years now,

No way. The US peaked between 1890 and WWI, so it's only been 90ish years of backsliding.


The U.S. peaked during the 1980's.

After "Miami Vice" and Ronald Reagan, it was all downhill.

Gangway Fathead: No way. The US peaked between 1890 and WWI, so it's only been 90ish years of backsliding.

something tells me you have an absurd hatred for FDR

Well the US has been going backwards for at least 200 years now

No way. The US peaked between 1890 and WWI, so it's only been 90ish years of backsliding.

The U.S. peaked during the 1980's.

Oh ya, I'm more pessimistic and intellectual than all of you put together. Western government has been going downhill the years following 1215, right after the Magna Carta was signed.

helix400: Well the US has been going backwards for at least 200 years now

No way. The US peaked between 1890 and WWI, so it's only been 90ish years of backsliding.

The U.S. peaked during the 1980's.


Oh ya, I'm more pessimistic and intellectual than all of you put together. Western government has been going downhill the years following 1215, right after the Magna Carta was signed.

yeah. rule out the medieval crusades and the rights of "brownies" why don't you.

back on the threads topic, technically it has been downhill since world war 2, with the draft and all, and after that the corporations influence on congress has the U.S. back tracked on tons of rights, it seems the more PC we get, the less free we get.

/,,,,,,, there is some more commas for you grammar whores, since i know you like em so much when used in, a compound paragraph, that seems to keep going, while just slightly changing, the topic at hand.
//if you have nothing to do on the internet but correct everyone else's grammar, then go back to grading papers you damned elementary school teacher!

My comment was a joke. sorry.

We started backsliding with "corporate personhood" about 150 years ago.

FTFA: Hey, spade. You're a spade.

Xxplosiv:

if you have nothing to do on the internet but correct everyone else's grammar grammer, then go back to grading gradeing papers you damned elementary school teacher!

Sorry, pet peeves.

The US started backsliding when it allowed a US President to be murdered on a Dallas street and never really captured or punished or even bothered to find out all who were involved.
It set the precedent for so many things that came afterward.
Too late now...

History teaches that sanctions and exclusions have never succeeded in transforming societies.

Apparently the name "Nelson Mandela" isn't ringing a bell with this guy.

The_Sponge: After "Miami Vice" and Ronald Reagan, it was all downhill.

AFTER Reagan? Reagan was the single most overhype POS ever. A war criminal, a dunce, his economic theories are BS, he was responsible for Iran-Contra (you know ... selling arms to IRAN to fund TERRORISM in Nicaragua ... don't you love IRAN and TERRORISM?)

What about Nixon? That sonofabiatch ...

No, IMHO the US kinda peaked, democracy-wise, with FDR. Truman chose to use the Bomb just for shiats & giggles, Eisenhower toppled Mossadegh, JFK did the Bay of Pigs, LBJ basically got Vietnam rolling, Nixon ... well, he was Nixon. The only PLUS point in the democracy column has to be Carter, mostly by contrast with the sons of biatches that came before and after him.

Reagan was the single most overhype POS ever

This!

Reagan played economic chicken with the USSR delivering unto the US it's first 1 Trillion dollar budget.

Chimpy produced the first 2 Trillion and 3 trillion dollar budgets.

The US peaked when Jimmy Carter put solar panels up at the WH and began it's precipitous fall when Reagan removed 'em.

True fact.

nictamer: AFTER Reagan? Reagan was the single most overhype POS ever.

This.

I occasionally have a hard time explaining to people why Reagan sucked because the fellating of someone so grossly incompetent pisses me off so badly.

That said, Reagan DOUBLED the debt. And it was Reagan, not Congress. Congress's budgets spent less than Reagan proposed every single year he was in office. Anyone alive today who thinks that the GOP is the party of fiscal irresponsibly is a farking moron. They haven't been anything close in the last 30+ years. Don't believe me? Take a look at any chart of deficit spending. Democratic Presidents cut deficit spending across the board, GOP Presidents expand it like it's going out of style.

Duh.

xria:

Well the US has been going backwards for at least 200 years now, so there must be a fair amount of space opened up that it could at least try to make back.

The U.S.A started backsliding with this event (new window).

The US started going to hell when a certain president decided that we should start paying for people's 'retirement' thus starting us down the road of the welfare state. Welfare, social security, medicare... wtf?!

The role of government is to defend the borders and stay the hell out of the way of the people to live their lives. The ONLY good things to come out of the US government is NASA and the USMC!!

tfresh: The US started going to hell when a certain president decided that we should start paying for people's 'retirement' thus starting us down the road of the welfare state. Welfare, social security, medicare... wtf?!

The role of government is to defend the borders and stay the hell out of the way of the people to live their lives. The ONLY good things to come out of the US government is NASA and the USMC!!

Really? What about the slavery question?

tfresh: The US started going to hell when a certain president decided that we should start paying for people's 'retirement' thus starting us down the road of the welfare state. Welfare, social security, medicare... wtf?!

And that is why the US ranks below every other developed nation in child mortality, life expectancy, and so on.

But, admittedly, well ahead in terms of douchebags driving SUVs.

The Populist era began in the 1890s, in response to industrial oppression. It was the first time Americans saw the federal govt as having direct responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. T. Roosevelts reforms in that era were only for show. The progressive movement was in swing around ww I. It was less klanlike than the populists and its reforms were more substantial. If you see the rise of corporatism as the enemy of democracy, which is reasonable, the 1890-ww I era was only the time in which we started to fight back. Jefferson's agrarian ideal was dead by the 1820s.

Personally, I think we peaked in 1968 and began our decline in earnest in 1980.

The fourth amendment has no comment because it's bound and gagged in Gitmo

lolmao666: The US had it good until 1913 when the FED became private.

Since then all presidents were scum bought and paid for.

Damn Woodrow Wilson, damn Calvin Coolidge and damn the Wright Brothers!

/Had to fit Family Guy in there somewhere

nictamer: tfresh: The US started going to hell when a certain president decided that we should start paying for people's 'retirement' thus starting us down the road of the welfare state. Welfare, social security, medicare... wtf?!

And that is why the US ranks below every other developed nation in child mortality, life expectancy, and so on.

But, admittedly, well ahead in terms of douchebags driving SUVs.

I thought the real douchebags were driving BMWs?

In physics we call that reaching the point of equilibrium. It will all be over once the chimp steps down and resumes his subpar golf endeavors. I can't wait till the historians ream his terrible legacy and compare him to those failed Roman emperors who did nothing but further harm the Roman Empire.

And yes I know that history is written by winners, but by current accounts, America, under the leadership of Bush, is certainly not a winner.

Suicidal Writer: tfresh: The US started going to hell when a certain president decided that we should start paying for people's 'retirement' thus starting us down the road of the welfare state. Welfare, social security, medicare... wtf?!

The role of government is to defend the borders and stay the hell out of the way of the people to live their lives. The ONLY good things to come out of the US government is NASA and the USMC!!

Really? What about the slavery question?

Yes yes, the government has been gracious enough from time to time in actually presenting some good legislation like abolition of slavery, giving women the right to vote etc etc...

However, most politicians are opportunistic, greedy, shady scum... of which a LARGE percentage happen to be lawyers... O.O

And I'm not worried about the SUV driving, small hoo-ha owning bunch... as we slowly morph into a western European socialist state we'll wind up outlawing people's right to drive whatever they want...

NO! Don't tell me they got indoor plumbing over there!

tfresh: The US started going to hell when a certain president decided that we should start paying for people's 'retirement' thus starting us down the road of the welfare state. Welfare, social security, medicare... wtf?!

The role of government is to defend the borders and stay the hell out of the way of the people to live their lives. The ONLY good things to come out of the US government is NASA and the USMC!!

You obviously have no kind of idea what the situaton was like at the time. And you have no concept of what would happen if those programs shut down. Please note that the US, because of those "stupid other programs", has been King of the World for 65 years, with a standard of living that beats everyone else (Well, it did until we elected Bush, but that's another issue.).

Indonesia...that's the country where witchcraft is still considered empirically real, right? Where a mud-eruption that has consumed a town (and appears to be on-track to keep erupting for a decade) has been described by the government as being caused by an angry god?

Oh wait, people believe in witchcraft here, too? Damned synonyms...

Dubya's_Coke_Dealer: tfresh: The US started going to hell when a certain president decided that we should start paying for people's 'retirement' thus starting us down the road of the welfare state. Welfare, social security, medicare... wtf?!

The role of government is to defend the borders and stay the hell out of the way of the people to live their lives. The ONLY good things to come out of the US government is NASA and the USMC!!

You obviously have no kind of idea what the situaton was like at the time. And you have no concept of what would happen if those programs shut down. Please note that the US, because of those "stupid other programs", has been King of the World for 65 years, with a standard of living that beats everyone else (Well, it did until we elected Bush, but that's another issue.).

it's just like the (very few) economists that try to deny that the economic crisis we're in now started almost immediately after they lifted regulations on the lending industry. some people just have no ability to correctly identify what is going on in front of their eyes.

Dubya's_Coke_Dealer: tfresh: The US started going to hell when a certain president decided that we should start paying for people's 'retirement' thus starting us down the road of the welfare state. Welfare, social security, medicare... wtf?!

The role of government is to defend the borders and stay the hell out of the way of the people to live their lives. The ONLY good things to come out of the US government is NASA and the USMC!!

You obviously have no kind of idea what the situaton was like at the time. And you have no concept of what would happen if those programs shut down. Please note that the US, because of those "stupid other programs", has been King of the World for 65 years, with a standard of living that beats everyone else (Well, it did until we elected Bush, but that's another issue.).

I refuse to believe that the US has risen to the #1 country in the world because of a social program that has a lower rate of return than a simple saving account! People who believe in things like social security are basically saying that people can't be trusted with their own money so we have to give it to the government for 'safe keeping' (
And thanks to that oh so long expectancy there is NO WAY we're going to be able to keep up with the increase in the cost of medical care and social security in the near future!

US: Downhill since 1913 with ratification of 16th Amendment providing for Federal income taxes

Indonesia: As said before, is there anywhere else to go after Suharto?

Riiiiiight.

That very well may be the stupidest editorial I've ever read, my small town redneck paper with "guest columns" included.

It's not as simple as saying "the US has slid backwards". We're not looking at a binary proposition. In some areas, we have been seeing constant advancement, in others steady decline.

The biggest issue has been the expansion of government power. Even when used for good, it's a decrease of individual liberty and a violation of the two most important amendments in the Bill of Rights: the 9th and 10th.

My job is to design complex systems. The biggest mistake people make is not being clear enough in defining the role, purpose and restrictions on a system, and that causes what we term "scope creep". The US government has been engaging in "scope creep" for a very long time.

When people pick on FDR, that's what they're really upset about. He really took scope creep to new heights, and he definitely did it with some dirty tricks (court packing, anyone?). But Lincoln expanded the role of President in new ways as well (suspending habeus corpus, anyone?). Both of them were responding to crises and did the best they could with what they had- the outcome, overall was good.

But we've still got this problem of scope creep.

I think the solution is a ground-up redesign of the government and our attitudes towards how it functions. I think the system needs to be modularized; one body creates criminal laws, one body creates civil laws, one body provides social service X, and a completely different body provides social service Y. The central point of authority is no longer the three-branch structure we have, but is the people themselves.

Each module has a single, clearly defined purpose that they cannot move out of. New modules can be created and managed, and citizen membership can be optional (for example, you could opt out of the Social Security module; SS could in turn have reciprocal agreements and bundling with other modules that would make that undesirable in most cases).

This guy needs a little historical perspective.

/I'm still not convinced waterboarding is torture
//OH YEAH! I SAID IT!!! MUAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
///relax

tfresh: The US started going to hell when a certain president decided that we should start paying for people's 'retirement' thus starting us down the road of the welfare state. Welfare, social security, medicare... wtf?!

The role of government is to defend the borders and stay the hell out of the way of the people to live their lives. The ONLY good things to come out of the US government is NASA and the USMC!!

Remember, boys and girls:

* $35B to send sick kids to the doctor: BAD.
* Unlimited funds to blow schitt up in Iraq: GOOD.

t3knomanser
The central point of authority is no longer the three-branch structure we have, but is the people themselves.

Direct democracy is, or at least always devolves into, mob rule. At this time in our history, with simple "propaganda" having evolved into a multitude of highly specialized and successful industries, the result of that would simply be to hand more power to the people that are already basically running things (into the ground).

Lee Jackson Beauregard: tfresh: The US started going to hell when a certain president decided that we should start paying for people's 'retirement' thus starting us down the road of the welfare state. Welfare, social security, medicare... wtf?!

The role of government is to defend the borders and stay the hell out of the way of the people to live their lives. The ONLY good things to come out of the US government is NASA and the USMC!!

Remember, boys and girls:

* $35B to send sick kids to the doctor: BAD.

Kids with healthcare == good... making sure we get it all from our trusting government in bed with malpractice lawyers and insurance companies == bad


* Unlimited funds to blow schitt up in Iraq: GOOD.

No its getting bad... we'd better darned well take control of the oil fields over there for all this!

"What outside pressure can bring about democratic change? And why, after nearly two four decades of boycotts, aid cut-offs, trade bans and diplomatic condemnation, are Burma's Cuba's generals apparently more in charge than ever before? Are we really looking at Burma Cuba - a country of 55 11 million people - in the right way?"

burndtdan it's just like the (very few) economists that try to deny that the economic crisis we're in now started almost immediately after they lifted regulations on the lending industry. some people just have no ability to correctly identify what is going on in front of their eyes.

Though I'm usually a fan of deregulation, that move in 1999 wasn't a good one. Some regulation needs to exist. (Hurts me to say that) The deregulation had a hand in the problems we have today, but it wasn't the main reason like the regulation proponents like to make you think.

The booming economy of the 90's was largely based on speculation and consumer confidence in the market. People thought they were rich because "on paper" their investments looked like they were worth more than their actual value. It was trickle down economics from the standpoint that people thought they had more discretionary income because of the inflated sense of their own wealth. The discretionary income just didn't come from tax cuts this time around. 911 hit, the dot com bubble burst, and the fed tried to micromanage the economy by slashing interest rates because in their eyes the housing economy was still booming and they could ride that horse to keep us out of a recession.

Even though the market bubble burst, people's spending habits that developed in the 90's didn't. Lenders took advantage of that. They share an equal amount of the blame. People are greedy and want the "big house", lenders want to lend and are encouraged by the government not to "discriminate" and lend to people they may not have in the past. Money was to be made and people took advantage.

Right now most homes are overvalued. It's going to take a couple of years for the market to sort this out, but it will. Actually the next couple years are going to be a good time to purchase a home because eventually the pendulum is going to swing back the other way. The market will overreact (like it always does) and before long homes will be undervalued. That's when you buy.

Suicidal Writer: tfresh: The US started going to hell when a certain president decided that we should start paying for people's 'retirement' thus starting us down the road of the welfare state. Welfare, social security, medicare... wtf?!

The role of government is to defend the borders and stay the hell out of the way of the people to live their lives. The ONLY good things to come out of the US government is NASA and the USMC!!

Really? What about the slavery question?


The US has a far better record on Slavery than is current popular perception.

Thune:

The US has a far better record on Slavery than is current popular perception.

Does it compare to Western and/or Northern Europe?