Please... really... show me ONE trustworthy politician in Washington DC. They're all as corrupt as toxic waste, and doing twice the damage to our country as any terrorist attack could produce.
Even the ones I DO admire and respect, like Rep. Henry Waxman from California, or Sen.'s John McCain and Joseph Biden, have shown they have their special agenda's... although nowhere near the (my perceptions only) avaricious malevolence and greed of the Cheney-led Bush Administration.

US Politics today = Dreck. And dreck looks the same whether its donkey or elephant dreck.
We don't need term limits, what we need is integrity in government. And with the system currently in place, that is no longer possible.
Put em all on Paxil, Zoloft, or better yet, an overdose of morphine, and turn the country over to people who really care about this country...
the ones who care about it so much, they are buying up US property at staggering rates.
Do you realize that between China, Japan, and the Arabs, almost 40 percent, yes, 40 percent of the land and property of the United States is now owned by foreign interests. China is buying up almost 300 Billion in US notes every year. The Saudi oil sheiks take their petrodollars, and buy up properties on American soil, including over 1 trilliion dollars in Manhatten real estate alone, Japanese and Korean banking concerns now own some 18% of downtown Los Angeles.  These are oft-quoted statistics that vary depending on whether the data comes from the right or the left, but nonetheless, even the best news scenario puts foreign governments  ownership of American Assets to be in the vicinity of 23%.
Doesn't anyone see the House of Cards starting to crumble?

or that you can't deal with mudslingers without resorting to the same tactics?

I was appalled that a Prez would have such bad judgment as to get a BJ from an intern, but Plamegate is not bad judgment, it's treachery, and exactly what you would expect from an RNC that would front Bush 2 as a potential president.

You gotta be somewhat authoritarian to maintain standards, and how can you be "somewhat" authoritarian?

Personally, I believe the ideological, take-no-prisoners attitude of the religious right is a major (if not the primary) corrupting influence.  Politics is about compromise for the common good, and these people are determined to take us back to the 16th century.

to be led from behind by shepherd Bush.History is replete with examples of societal regression in the face of revolutionary scientific advances-fear of adaptation to change is the underlying factor! Iran is a good example of a reaction by regressive ayatollahs to an albeit corrupt king who attempted to modernize iran.

flocks of lemmings are fun to watch!

here are some primo samples of fine lemmingness:
superdelicious lemming photo album:
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003801.htm
(check out the pictures!)

lemming home bases:
http://www.dailykos.com
http://www.democraticunderground.com

The left has their looney toons just as does the right. But i'm sick of the "oh yeah, well what about THEM?!?!" attitudes.

Fuckin get rid of all of em, wipe the slate clean, and start all over again.

That's sort of what happened some 6000 odd years ago.

Mayyyyybe the entire Judaic concept of the world being only 6000 years old isn't so far fetched as we might think.

Maybe its only about 6000 years since the last time humanity was destroyed as a civilization, only to rise up again. Which hopefully, will happen again.

I'm just so sick of everyone talking, and nobody doing anything about it. I truly am. Peace.

a couple more lemming home bases:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/browse
http://www.sbc.net/

Hmmm, what's the old saw about sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander?

If the US was totally innocent of ownership of any foreign assets, I'd be a lot more in agreement with your basic point, which is a good one.

We've gotta distinguish between productive assets and assets of other types, which may be possibly prestiegous to own for a foreigner, but doesn't do much to change things and, most importantly, doesn't necessarily generate  revenues which revert back to the foreign country.  But that begs the question somewhat of why these non-domestic types would buy properties that don't generate revenues.

I recall reading that the Japanese took a beating when they purchased the movie studio, I think it was Columbia.  wonder how many more ill-advised investments and purchases we could dig out?

Lots of these guys are fools with money, and if they're parted from it, well...  I'm not going to shed too many tears, if any.

But foreign countries holding massive amounts of US gov't debt is another thing entirely.  It gives them a potential weapon against us, but likewise we threaten them with policies that threaten the safety and security of those holdings.  And I really love this topic, despite its relative dryness, because it gives me an opportunity to take free and easy potshots at Ronnie Reagan, who is the irresponsible father of these trends.

And, in politcal science literature, this falls under the massive heading of interdependence, an idea which has kicked around for a long time.  In theory, this is a good thing, as it makes countries more interested in the well-being of others. But conversely, it creates more points of friction as well.  So pay yer money and take yer choices?

Peace and good health to you.

Do you have a link to a source? How is the % derived?  I once saw a figure that the US federal government owns outright something like 70% of the land in the US, but your figure would [I guess?] be land and capital/property?

We could quibble over the relevance of the % of ownership issues but I don't think that was anywhere near your central thrust.

"""Doesn't anyone see the House of Cards starting to crumble?"""

The long answer would have to be delivered over cervecas. The short answer is NO. The house is changing, but NOT crumbling.

I insist on trying to be optimistic about our future. (Don't be too distracted by my bluster and bulllshit)lol

Remember Japan, Inc.'s foray into US real estate in the '80s?

The rest, is pretty much on target. However, the right wing of the GOP is a real problem. I believe that problem is going away soon, but the same people behind that idea are the same people who were behind the Nazis and WWII. Just some food for thought.

-- Modified on 11/4/2005 3:28:58 AM

but "eternal vigilance, yadda yadda,"   Resting on our laurels will screw us right up, and mismanaged change can result in crumbling.

a lot of your rant were topics brought up by Michael Moore in FARENHEIT 9/11 especially about how much money AND "CONTROL" the Saudi's have over us. That in fact if they alone pulled all their money out of the US, our entire economy would crash.

Politics and money can make for strange bedfellows ... but at some point I think we have to wake up, shake the buzz off and realize we've got "coyote arm"*.

* ie - we went to bed with the ugly one, and have to chew our own arm off to leave without disturbing them.

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"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." -

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right... The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds." -

"It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office." -

"The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake." -

Quotes From Henry L. Mencken (1880-1956)