scuttlebutt is that "benlanger" & Rjai/Lorr share that religious background & are an "item".

I understand they will have their honeymoon in
a FKK club, as Germany collapses around them. Ugh------

Alabama Town Stops Paying Retirees' Pensions, Some Residents Destitute.

How much longer you guys think it is safe to defend a bankrupt and a broke country?   No pensions, no health care, no food, no medicines and have you folks heard of Calcutta?    Until now you saw it on TV but your country will get to live it!

They are rioting in half the major capitals of Europe because of "austerity" cuts.

How much longer will you defend a continent on a suicide path.  Oh. I forgot. Your rapid influx of radical Islamist will save the FKK clubs of Berlin.

off board, starts 24th midnight t o25th midnight, game on mentally challenged jackass or retard, or brain dead.

It's only a matter of time, Americans will wake up one of these days and see ALL the politico's for the crooks they all are includes both Democrats and Republicans.

The Banksters have RAPED taxpayers to the tune of $13+ Trillion and payed themselves handsome bonuses. We have 43+ million Americans on food-stamps. Real unemployment is nudging 18%. We are so fucked we cannot even see straight.

If he is Moslem, and he runs into his sister at a FKK club, he will have to cut of her head.  

Posted By: Priapus53

scuttlebutt is that "benlanger" & Rjai/Lorr share that religious background & are an "item".

I understand they will have their honeymoon in
a FKK club, as Germany collapses around them. Ugh------

....................distribution concentrated to the top 1% of the population, and an economy based on export of raw materials and imports of manufactured products.

By those yardsticks the United States is slowly slouching toward Third World status.

FWIW, 46 of 50 U.S. states are on the verge of bankruptcy, our cities are going dark at night, our asphalt roads are being returned to nature and sharp budget cuts are leaving our students without teachers and supplies, or even a full-time education.

Just this month, in shocking scenes of mass desperation, 30,000 people showed up to apply for public housing in East Point, Georgia for 455 available vouchers. The despair and chaos suggested a Third World nation, not the United States - but it was the United States.

After all one out of every seven American adults and one out of four children now survive on government food stamps. And according to the US Department of Agriculture, 50 million Americans were unable to buy enough food to remain healthy at some point last year.

These are shameful numbers for the world's richest nation.

But none of this should be a mystery. Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households. Now the top 1% owns a third of Americas wealth and 50% of its bonds. In fact, the gap between the top 1% and everyone else hasn't been this bad since the Roaring Twenties. Meanwhile the real average earnings for middle class Americans have not increased in 50 years.

If you aren't in the top 1% of America's earners, you're pretty much screwed.

will be immediately aware of what the true definition is after only a couple of hours.

The US is not without it's problems, but even our worst ghettos are nothing compared to the squalor you will find in a third world country. Even in Overtown, Watts, or Harlem you will still find Cadillacs and plasma TV's. Try going to a third world country where running water or electricity would be considered an unattainable luxury.

Dingaling has obviously never been to a third world country. You don't have to go to Calcutta or Africa, Haiti is only couple of hour flight, you can find all the true poverty that you would ever need to make the point that we in the US don't have a clue as to what real poverty is all about.

Not to mention of course the fact that anyone living in ghetto in this country can simple walk, or take a bus a few short miles and voilla they are out of the ghetto and no one with guns is going to drag them back. Try that in someplace like Rwanda or even Nicaragua for that matter.

Please go back and reread what I wrote.

I would sure like to see what happens when the Chinese stop buying our debt completely and all our  revenues generated go towards paying interest on the debt. You can then kiss Medicare, SS, military spending, etc GOODBYE.

Visit a third world country sometime, it will leave no doubt as to which yardsticks are the real indicators. I would put abject poverty at the top of the list of "indicators", we can't even imagine abject poverty in this country.

As to the Chinese, they are as married to us as we are to them. I will concede that the US may slip from being the dominant economy of the world, but our problems, as large and scary as they are, pale in comparison of other first world countries like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, just to name a few.

it doesn't make them any less funny, or true. lol

My one wish for this board, and for huge segments of society, is that people who think the U.S. is anything like the "Third World" or a dictatorship actually spend time in those countries and see what they are really like.

Yes, we have very serious economic problems, but when I was at the funeral of a friend last month I did not see thousands of people living in the cemetary.  In contrast, one of the "sights to see"in Cairo is the main cemetary that is home to thousands of people.

Yes, we have a skid row in downtown Los Angeles.  I drove through last week.  It is so far removed from Calcuta or Nairobi that it is a silly comparison.

On the dicatorship side, there are countries where people are literally afraid to talk to friends in coffee shops.  Internet accesss is so tightly conrolled in Syria that outside of a few first class hotels for foreigners and a handful of businesses engaged in international commerce (like trourism), it was border line none existent.  (Funny story. I was in a small town in the north of Syria and saw a sign that said "internet cafe." I went in to check my e-mail.  They didn't actually have internet, but the liked the name.)  As for opposition papers, ain't none.

Yes, we have problems, but to say we are anywhere near Third World can only be argued by people who never spent much time there.

That has never been the meaning or standard for defining "Third World."  Originally, it mean the unalligned, theoretically (though not really) neutral natons between the West and the Communist countries.

Later, the definitions changed. Now, it tends to mean "underdeveloped" nations. But while they may be in debt now, that is not the definition or standard for judging.  

If it were only a question of debt, Greece and Spain would be "Third World."

Likewise, if the term is used to describe "underdeveloped" nations, we may have problems but we are not "underdeveloped."

You give a litany of woes, but that is changing the subject.  I said we have serious problems, so repeating them in detail does not add anything.

Yes, you can go on for another 3 pages detailing more problems.  But that is not what makes a nation "third world."

I forget the exact year, but in the 70's a group of leftists were hosting some type of gathering in NYC with people from all around the world coming to confer about what ever they confer about.

The American leftists decided to embarass the U.S. by having many of the visitors stay in parts of town like Harlem, so they could see how bad the U.S. was.  

All the delegates from the Third World countries immediately became convinced that the American delegation was CIA because they were trying to hide poverty and deceive the other delegates by taking them to areas where they would never see the true abject poverty of the US.  They could not believe that Harlem was the "distressed" part of NYC.

My next fav story was when Krushchev came to the U.S. they took him to an auto factory, which he instantly knew was a fraud because there was a big parking lot in front and his host tried to tell him that the cars belonged to the workers, which he know could not be true.

Were all friggin broke and its nobodys fault...

Ask Barney Frank, he is responsible for anything!!

Snow, let's go through this:

Fact 1) prior to 1980 the US national debt never topped 1 trillion dollars.

Fact 2) today it is nearly 14 trillion dollars.

Fact 3) Since 1980, 20 of the last 30 years, the US was under a Republican President.

Fact 4) Economic policies since 1980 has overwhelmingly been conservative in nature, regardless of who was President.

You are right about the Republican spending habits, but just because someone has an (R) by their name does not mean thay are conservative. The GOP lost its way and because of that lost the House several years ago. The fact is the Tea party is simply the Conservate members of the GOP trying to move the party back to being fiscal conservatives.

We will see if this new batch will actually watch the puse strings, one can only hope....

because I agree with much they are trying to do, their propensity for attracting the loony, religious fringe of the right does give me pause however. I just hope the cure is not worse than the disease.