I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

[GreyGeek]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

+1, Snowhog!

Detonate, "Can Fly" lists would works except that our "leaders" would, with the appropriate "campaign contributions" in hand, require that the database used to hold such a list be either Oracle or SQL Server -- the highest "donor" winning. With their greed it would add $100-200+/flight/person to cost of air travel.

[Detonate]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

Yes, there would be a cost in developing and maintaining such a list, and in processing applicants. But could not these cost be offset by the reduction of costs in personnel and equipment currently being used?

[kyonides]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

No, Detonate, because they also have "companies to run and families to take care of" so they can't just terminate a contract in a legal fashion.

[Detonate]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

I think it could be done. We already have the resources to do it. It may take some moving around of available resources, but it could be done. I think it would be, at least, a partial solution to the problem.

[GreyGeek]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

Absolutely it could be done .... just not with the pack of greedy thieves presently residing in Washington.

[PhilT]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

Take a look at this really interesting analysis by Noam Chomsky on the Real News Network. His comments about the nature of the current legislature and executive in the USA are pretty incisive and a bit troubling.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?...4&jumival=5869

[PhilT]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

Ron Paul is on the case!!
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2010...l-dignity-act/

[GreyGeek]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

One cannot consider themselves well informed and leave Chomsky or Hutchins out of their readings. That is not to say one has to agree with everything Chomsky says, which I don't, but he can, at times, force you to see things in a different light.

For example, he says that both the Democrats and Republicans have moved farther to the Right. I disagree. Politically they have moved even farther apart -- Democrats to the far Left and Republicans to Cabalism, i.e., not the far right of Socialist Nationalism but to corporate control of the Government. At the same time, the "center" has moved considerably to the Left, so Republicans are now where the Democrats used to be under Johnson. That this is true one only has to consider that the largest caucus on Congress is the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is 15% of Congress. The founders of that caucus were, and are, by their own admission, practicing Communists. While they don't publicly proclaim their political stance, and the media never mentions it either, the truth occasionally leaks out during times of frustration. An example is a statement by Maxine Waters during a Congressional hearing where politicians were more interested in grand standing than finding solutions. Waters let her true political nature slip out, and it is no different from that of the Marxist ruler of Venezuela.

I've observed over the years that there is a "ratchet affect" taking place in the US political process that results in circumstances always moving the political process to the Left. When an event causes a movement toward the Center or the Right, the end result is usually a movement of the political center even farther to the Left. While it happened DURING the Vietnam war (the Communist lost EVERY battle of their Tet offensive but Walter Cronkite declared the offensive a Viet Cong victory on CBS, which led to the first loss of a war by the US), I saw that effect during Gulf I and Gulf II ... a brief burst of pride in our Country and a new appreciation of the Constitution and freedom, always followed by an even farther move to the Left.

9/11 is the latest example. Never before in my 70 year life had I seen the country so united as it was following that tragic event. ALL of the 21 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. Did we attack that country, which is STILL funding radical Wahabi movements in our country and around the world? No, we attack Iraq, our ally in helping Afghanistan repel the USSR invasion of that country. Over the next nine years we have arrived at a point where Homeland Security is treating Americans like terrorists at airports, and doing nothing to secure our wide open borders across which illegal aliens and terrorist sleeper cells and their tools travel every day! It is only a small step, for the sake of security, to spread TSA "screeners" to private aviation, then bus depots, major shopping centers and public event arenas, to the point where TSA "police" (a.k.a. "Civilian Defense Force") would stop citizens any place or time and force them to show their "papers" and submit to evasive searches in the name of "safety" ... just the way WWII German troops, the USSR "police", the Red Guard and other political thugs in tyrannical countries around the world were employed by their masters.

The 9/11 event has morphed into events which are moving the country to the Left. IF there is any one event which reveals that the current TSA debacle is NOT about security but establishing justification for political control it is this event in San Diego.

Sam Wolanyk says he was asked to pass through the 3-D x-ray machine. When Wolanyk refused, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) personnel told him he would have to be patted down before he could pass through and board his airplane.

Wolanyk said he knew what was coming and took off his pants and shirt, leaving him in Calvin Klein bike undergarments.

“It was obvious that my underwear left nothing to the imagination,” he explained. “But that wasn’t enough for the TSA supervisor who was called to the scene and asked me to put my clothes on so I could be properly patted down.”

It was clear to Wolanyk that TSA only wanted him to submit to a pat-down and if they were interested in ensuring the safety of all passengers they would have rifled through his clothes, carryon baggage and acknowledged that he was not carrying any illegal paraphernalia on his person.

Once Harbor Police arrested Wolanyk, he was handcuffed and paraded through two separate airport terminals in his underwear to the Harbor Police office located inside a different terminal at the airport than Wolanyk had originally gone through during his TSA security process.

The incident was confirmed by Harbor Police Sergeant Rakos who said Wolanyk was arrested on two misdemeanors, “failing to complete the security process; violation code 7.01 and illegally recording the San Diego Airport Authority (they confiscated his iPhone); violation number 714 (2).”

This is the same guy who won his open carry lawsuit in San Diego. He obviously set up the TSA, but his point remains. The TSA, however, is getting smarter. When people object to being x-rayed or groped they confiscate the objectors cameras and cell phones immediately to prevent videos of their felonious activities from appearing on the Internet.

The Chomsky interview has some interesting tidbits:

What's happened over the past roughly 35 years is that both parties have drifted to the right. I don't think the terms liberal and conservative mean much.
...
So the group of people who say, I'm in favor of small government, cutting back taxes; put aside the social issues, they're different; well, it turns out most of them have more or less social democratic attitudes. You know, they think there should be more money spent on health, more on education, more on assistance to the poor, but not welfare.
...
There's pretty strong support for allowing the pharmaceutical corporations to get away with murder, because the government's not allowed to negotiate prices with them—overwhelming opposition.
...
JAY:In the fall of 2008, heading into the '08 elections, George Will is on Stephanopoulos's show, and there's a back-and-forth with Donna Brazile. And finally Will blurts out, he says, let's not get sentimental about democracy. We don't get to choose whether or not the elite will govern; we get to choose which elite will govern. And is part of the issue here that this liberal-conservative dynamic is a dynamic within the elite, and it doesn't get talked that way about what goes on in the rest of the society?
...
CHOMSKY: I would drop the term left, 'cause, I mean, what is called the left in the media is what used to be called moderate Republicans. The so-called new Democrats are barely—they're essentially what moderate Republicans were 30, 40 years ago. The Republicans are just brashly and openly the party of private power, private tyranny. They—I mean, they talk about we're the common man and elites, but so does everyone. But if you look at the policies, that's what it is. Take, say, Obama. I mean, the core of his funding in the 2000 election was actually financial institutions. And when groups of investors get together to control the state—what we call an election—they expect to be paid back. And they were.
...
JAY: So what's the longer-term vision?

CHOMSKY: There's a—right now there's a problem of low demand. Corporations have money coming out of their ears. They've just huge profits just stored up. They're not creating demand.

JAY: Yeah. In fact, they're going offshore with the money now, mostly.

CHOMSKY: Part of it, and that's part of the problem, which goes way back, not for now. The population can't—people just lost roughly $6 trillion. That's not small. That's what the housing bubble was, and maybe a couple of trillion more in their mutual funds and so on. So roughly $8 trillion of wealth have been lost for the population. So consumer demand is—it's there, but limited. Now, in that kind of situation, the only way you can get the economy moving again is by government creating demand.
...
AY: So what do you do? What should people be demanding in terms of structural change on the economic side?

CHOMSKY: Well, let's just look at the consequences of this. The consequences are for about—for roughly 35, 30 years, a little more, wages for the majority, real wages, have pretty much stagnated, working hours have increased. People have been getting by by having two adults working, or women in the workforce at lower wages, and by debt, and by asset inflation, like, say, the housing bubble. Well, that's just not viable. And meanwhile these same people see that there's plenty of wealth around, but it's going into very few pockets. I mean, the top maybe 1 percent or even one-tenth of 1 percent of the population have been making out like bandits.

I'm working harder. Things are getting worse. I'm working more hours. Benefits which were never very good have declined. Meanwhile, other people are getting very rich. Something's wrong. Give me an answer. They were right to ask for an answer. They're not going to get it from the Democrats, the people who are called the left, because they are the ones who have been denying and implementing policies. They're not going to say, yeah, that's true; that's what happens when we participated in the huge growth of the financial sector, which is of dubious significance for the economy, may be harmful, largely; we did that, and we assisted the policy of hollowing out production, which is a policy of setting working people in competition with each other throughout the world.
...
CHOMSKY: But the—my point is that the Democrats are not going to say this. Obviously, the Republicans won't say it. The press won't say it. So what comes along is George Will, the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, and others who say, look, I have an answer. If you listen to them—and I do listen to them; I'm interested—the answer that you get has a kind of internal coherence. I mean, it's off the wall as far as reality is concerned, but it has an internal logic, and at least it's an answer, so you can see why people believe it. And they end up with completely contradictory attitudes, like let's cut taxes and get the government off our back, but let's increase spending on all the things I care about. Get the government off our back—nobody says get the corporations on your back.
...

He has some good observations, some good points, but ... well ... Chomsky is being Chomsky, a dedicated Marxist who interprets every thing in terms of that philosophy. IF Marxism were the answer then the USSR, East Germany, China, Cuba, Cambodia and all the other states which were given over entirely to Karl's teachings would truly be "Worker's Paradises" which people every where would be trying to escape to. Can you name a country where people wanting to leave poverty and/or oppression ARE moving to by any means possible?

[toad]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

Can you name a country where people wanting to leave poverty and/or oppression ARE moving to by any means possible?

Ah, the power of advertising It leaves me with such a warm feeling around the gut - Hollywood and The Pursuit of Happiness. It must all be true.

[skunk]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

ALL of the 21 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.

There were 19; and (according to the official story anyway) their nationalities were a little more varied, although there were a few allegations of mistaken identity:

"All the suspected hijackers were from Saudi Arabia (fifteen hijackers), United Arab Emirates (two hijackers), Lebanon (one hijacker) and Egypt (one hijacker)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijacke...ber_11_attacks

Interestingly, ALL of them came from middle eastern countries considered friendly to the USA. And none of them were from Afganistan or Iraq

[woodsmoke]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

It is possible that this is a problem with a confluence of unintended consequences.

a) The "left" has drummed into the dear little heads of school children and people at large that "radiation is bad, bad, bad", with no attempt at discrimination about fallout that lasts a thousand years and irradiating foods.

And we also have the rather ludicrous medical situation of "lets do it but don't talk about it, except once in a while" breast scancer scans.

I'm not arguing for or against, but we now have a situation wherein the people of the U.S. have been made to think of all radiation as bad for so long, and having no education on it in the schools, except that it is bad... that we now have a completely UNeducated public on radiation.

The unintende consequence of that, is that when people say "it is about as much as two minutes in the airplane" now, the public has to suddenly just accept that and make an exception...

So... the unintended consequence of the left creating a whole sale fear of "radiation" so that they can shut down all nuclear power plants is playing out. (And, I'm not getting into the for or against of nuclear power plants).

b) profiling. Yes, a terrorist could put a bomb in the pants of a 6 year old kid or in the wheelchair of the 80 year old grandmom.

But, Because of the screaming and hollering about "profiling" of drug dealers/african americans/people driving on the interstate/you name it....we now have the unintended consequence of not being able to have ANY kind of reasonable discussion of it.

c) privacy rights....again..........the positions are so hardened that there is no chance of any kind of civil discourse on it.

It would indeed be ironic if there was an airplane that was a pricelinedotcom group travel of people that have vociferously railed against nuclear power and profiling flying to attend a meeting in oh..... San Francisco.

And that it included many great liminaries for the promotion of anarchy to get rid of the tea partiers and the GOP and libertarians.

And that it was blown out of the sky by a bomb in the body cavity of a woman who was made a citizen from being a graduate student ... as a sleeper before 9-11 wearing a pink fuzzy jogging outfit with black hair bleached blond, carrying the latest electronic book reader with all the editions of Harry Potter on it and with a two way ticket from Madison Wisconsin.

just a thought.

woodsmoke

[Detonate]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

just a thought.

woodsmoke

That's quite a thought!!

[kyonides]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

Could the World War III be started by the USA due to its "hidden or disguised" Imperialist-Communist tendencies? Would it be considered the enemy instead of the ally?

[psychotic behavior]
I think somebody is watching me but that guy's name isn't Big Brother... I don't know if it looks more like an elephant or a donkey...
[/psychotic behavior]

[GreyGeek]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

...
Interestingly, ALL of them came from middle eastern countries considered friendly to the USA. And none of them were from Afganistan or Iraq

ALL of them used Saudi Arabia VISAs to legally enter this country. IIRC, one got stuck in Germany and two chickened out.

[MoonRise]

Re: I guess God (needs to) bless America! But this is why I won't go there again.

Have to say interesting read from everyone.