The decline and eventual fall of the USA as world superpower?

[narveen]

And I will suggest that the administration deserves to be terrorized. They lied and are conducting illegal activities.

 

I must say that the Obama administration is no better than the Bush administration was. Power-hungry and fearful of losing any of the power they have.

 

uh-oh, another point of argument coming up. i don't think the word "better" conveys the appropriate meaning.

 

did you really mean to say that the obama administration is no different from the bush administration despite obama's criticisms of bush policies and promise to stamp them out ( a broken promise that snowdon said cause him to blow the whistle)?

 

methink obama didn't keep his promise because he couldn't - bush policies were grounded on the bedrock of bush doctrine. obama's promise was founded on feel-good, popular sentiment. this is why obama had been all over the place because he and his handlers just couldn't dismantle the bush program set up to protect the nation. but they sure did make a mess of it like a kid fooling around with an adult handgun.

 

he has shot himself in the foot at least a couple of times now and i don't dare to look because he might just blow his own head off. this is so sad.

Edited July 2, 2013 by narveen

[Marblehead]

Hi Narveen,

 

I think you hit the target. We will never know how hard Obama tried because so much happens behind closed doors.

[narveen]

Hi Narveen,

 

I think you hit the target. We will never know how hard Obama tried because so much happens behind closed doors.

 

why are you not sleeping? it's 4 am.

i am in asia.

[Marblehead]

why are you not sleeping? it's 4 am.

i am in asia.

My cold has messed up my sleeping. I took numerous naps yesterday keeping my body warm and my mind won't go to sleep now so here I am. After the cold passes I'll be back to normal.

[Jetsun]

he is terrorizing the administration. if the white house doesn't watch it and handle this matter the way it has been handling the other messes, obama could see judgment day before his term is over.

 

No, he is being charged under the espionage act when he has not colluded with any foreign power so there are no grounds for being charged under this act, and Obama is putting pressure on governments not to take him in so he is being denied the universal human right of asylum forcing him to become a stateless person. Clearly he is the one being terrorised

[narveen]

No, he is being charged under the espionage act when he has not colluded with any foreign power so there are no grounds for being charged under this act, and Obama is putting pressure on governments not to take him in so he is being denied the universal human right of asylum forcing him to become a stateless person. Clearly he is the one being terrorised

 

why can't the us president show some leadership in this matter? putin is stealing the show. since when did an american run to the evil empire for protection from uncle sam?

 

if i were obama, i would stop this circus and get snowdon back in the usa instead of sending biden to secure committments from other countries not to offer asylum. he keeps getting it wrong and doing the exact opposite of what a us president would do.

 

snowdon is like a troubled child running from his home because he is upset with his dad.

a bad dad would go after his son to haul him back home to give the kid a beating.

the kid is now getting shelter and protection in the home of the baddest dude in the neighborhood.

this makes the bad dad look worse to everyone.

 

all that talk about extending a hand of friendship to iran to get ahmadinejad to come to terms.

how about extending a hand to snowdon to get him to come home?

a good dad would do that.

and if snowdon comes back, obama's approval ratings would jump 1000%

Edited July 2, 2013 by narveen

[Apech]

resettled in jaimaca and bahamas? why not back from where they were taken: Africa?

 

 

Don't know.

[manitou]

 

maybe you got your history wrong, pal. the slaves were not brought to america by americans. it all began with the french, the dutch and the spanish bringing slaves to the carribean and brazil. according to wikipedia, slavery had been practiced in British North America from early colonial days, and was firmly established by the time of the United States' Declaration of Independence (1776).

 

your need for self-flagellation is not doing any good for the american narrative and will keep on feeding "white guilt" forever. it's 2013. time to move on.

I suppose you could go back even further and blame the African chieftains who had their heads turned by money and trinkets, sold their people, and blame them for all of it. We are descended from all those societies you mentioned, a melting pot. Time is HERE and NOW. Ancestral guilt is part of the whole equation, and some things need to be rectified. To not realize that seems pretty exclusive, Caucasian, and arrogant. The current mindset in the U.S. by people of means pretty much seems to be 'Screw 'em!' when it comes to caring about folks in ghettos. All the monied people care about seems to be accruing more 'stuck energy', which is all money is in the final analysis. the Corporation is now the rule of the day. Maybe it's too late to do anything to raise the living standards, (particular with our dysfunctional congress now) but certainly common humanity must enter in here in an enlightened sense. And please don't forget, friend, that we live Each and Every Day with the results of what the slaves accomplished to build this nation - YOU get the benefits of what THEY did all the time but apparently take it for granted and don't give it a second thought. Please think about it once in a while.

 

Walk away from it? Pretend it's not there? Puh. Some folks have a social conscience who really care about this stuff. My guess is that the Dalai Lama wouldn't tell you to forget the guilt and pretend it's not there, go on with your life like nothing happened.

Edited July 2, 2013 by manitou

[Everything]

I have this M&M's bag, it's made out of some kind of composition of plastic. I think it's been developed in the USA. It looks very firm, and yet flexible. You can even open it, because they've deliberate included a weakspot. It is perfect for just using without consideration whatsoever! People of all kind of shapes and sizes could buy such an M&M's bag without it breaking appart. I think your people designed this m&ms product and so you guys know! This plastic m&ms bag is powerful and good!

 

Even powerful is the fact that the wind allways keeps on moving up in deeeer, with you guys over theeer!! I mean, where does it come from? It keeps on moving, and you can feel that on your face, the scent that the wind carries with it allways is something. It's like a carrier of delightful treats of scent and fresh lifeliness! I'm pretty sure we are breathing the same kind of air though, the climate there may be diffrent. I'm sure the winds in America are powerful enough, because they are durable and enduring, even the calm breeze is powerful in that way. So you can smell what your neighbour is coocking, and it brings you the message of such freely! You can even rang on their doorbell and say, hey dude! you are coocking this! And they will say, how did you know! You say, we have powerful winds in the USA, very powerful winds! Maybe we should call them muscle winds

Edited July 2, 2013 by Everything

[Flolfolil]

hey dude! you are coocking

[joeblast]

why can't the us president show some leadership in this matter? putin is stealing the show. since when did an american run to the evil empire for protection from uncle sam?

 

if i were obama, i would stop this circus and get snowdon back in the usa instead of sending biden to secure committments from other countries not to offer asylum. he keeps getting it wrong and doing the exact opposite of what a us president would do.

 

snowdon is like a troubled child running from his home because he is upset with his dad.

a bad dad would go after his son to haul him back home to give the kid a beating.

the kid is now getting shelter and protection in the home of the baddest dude in the neighborhood.

this makes the bad dad look worse to everyone.

 

all that talk about extending a hand of friendship to iran to get ahmadinejad to come to terms.

how about extending a hand to snowdon to get him to come home?

a good dad would do that.

and if snowdon comes back, obama's approval ratings would jump 1000%

Uninformed...

 

Who's the bad guy on the block, but the us and quite a few other Govs. Looke at merkels asinine response, she either knows or doesn't even care because the spy agencies are sharing what they want with each other, I'm.sure she can peddle for certain data on some Germans from the NSA.

 

Fact remains that it is illegal for the gov to attempt to classify information on an unconstitutional act.

 

Snowden is heroic for doing this, he could have taken his good salary and hot girl and stayed comfortably in Hawaii.

 

Better that men retain humanity and conscience.

 

Governments are out of control. Way out.

[silent thunder]

Snowden is a good example of a person who is not well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

[narveen]

Governments are out of control. Way out.

 

the government is like mom, joe. guess, you never liked your mom also?

 

Edited July 3, 2013 by narveen

[Formless Tao]

http://mobile.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/countries-reject-snowden-asylum-bids/story-e6frfkui-1226673457527

 

I wonder who forced the Bolivian presidents plane to land in Austria suspecting Edward Snowden was on board...

[Marblehead]

http://mobile.news.com.au/breaking-news/world/countries-reject-snowden-asylum-bids/story-e6frfkui-1226673457527

 

I wonder who forced the Bolivian presidents plane to land in Austria suspecting Edward Snowden was on board...

No. you are not wondering about that. You already know.

[xor]

.

Edited July 3, 2013 by Guest

[joeblast]

the government is like mom, joe. guess, you never liked your mom also?

the gov is NOT mom!!! where the hell do people get this notion that the government exists to nurture, teach, and shape an individual???

 

the government should be the friggin BUTLER. take enough money to help the house run smoothly - and make the house run smoothly without stealing from the owner, not let thieves into the house to replace the heirloom silver-ware with tin and gold items with shiny spray paint. we the people own this, it is not the other way around. we do not exist to serve the government - the government exists to keep the peace and facilitate an environment by which people can pursue their interests freely, not tell us how to live, what to eat, take 2/3rds of our income, or decide what portions of history need rewriting for purposes of indoctrinating our kids, etc, etc, etc.

[manitou]

 

why can't the us president show some leadership in this matter? putin is stealing the show. since when did an american run to the evil empire for protection from uncle sam?

 

 

I will be the only person on this thread who sees with my eyes. Nobody may agree with me, and in fact I'm prepared for lots of mocking. Have at it.

 

I can clearly See that Mr. Obama is an enlightened person in a very unenlightened position. He does not 'show leadership' in the traditional way. The man practices wu-wei down to his bones. And the Art of War? Everything he does shows his knowledge of that Art. He does by Not Doing. Am I the only one who sees this? Please recall that we didn't elect him King, we elected a president who has to share power with a bunch of current idiots. If you recall, he recently made the statement "This government cannot be fixed from the inside." The machine has gotten too big for anyone to fix. I think we're finished as the numero uno world power.

 

But the Tao is at work even as all this apparent chaos is happening. It'll all shake out just fine; we just can't see the top of the cloud. Equity will win out in the end, it has to.

 

Call me Shirley MacLaine, but I'm going way out on limb here and I honestly am of the opinion that Obama is a current Christ consciousness; in fact, I think he's the 'thief in the night' that the evangelicals think they're waiting for. When one of his disciples asked Jesus, "Master, how will we know you?" he replied that he will come as 'a thief in the night'. Can anyone think of a better thief in the night than an African American president? Especially in this day and age of ugly attitudes and the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

[joeblast]

I just wonder why people still cling to such a benevolent image of this guy - was the meme repeated *that* much that...well we still have to believe in the benevolence of our current Admiral Tarkin? He's a hand picked puppet whose eloquence extends from his eye to his teleprompter, and perchance he goes off script there's a high likelihood his foot winds up in his mouth. He was indoctrinated and groomed to be the mouthpiece he is, I cant say as I've ever seen an intelligent bit of information come from him.

 

Most certainly not any sort of *ahem*....leadership.

[silent thunder]

Power in America is wielded mostly by the Military Industrial Complex and the Federal Reserve.

They have no term limits and hold the strings of those who do.

[Jetsun]

I will be the only person on this thread who sees with my eyes. Nobody may agree with me, and in fact I'm prepared for lots of mocking. Have at it.

 

I can clearly See that Mr. Obama is an enlightened person in a very unenlightened position. He does not 'show leadership' in the traditional way. The man practices wu-wei down to his bones. And the Art of War? Everything he does shows his knowledge of that Art. He does by Not Doing. Am I the only one who sees this? Please recall that we didn't elect him King, we elected a president who has to share power with a bunch of current idiots. If you recall, he recently made the statement "This government cannot be fixed from the inside." The machine has gotten too big for anyone to fix. I think we're finished as the numero uno world power.

 

But the Tao is at work even as all this apparent chaos is happening. It'll all shake out just fine; we just can't see the top of the cloud. Equity will win out in the end, it has to.

 

Call me Shirley MacLaine, but I'm going way out on limb here and I honestly am of the opinion that Obama is a current Christ consciousness; in fact, I think he's the 'thief in the night' that the evangelicals think they're waiting for. When one of his disciples asked Jesus, "Master, how will we know you?" he replied that he will come as 'a thief in the night'. Can anyone think of a better thief in the night than an African American president? Especially in this day and age of ugly attitudes and the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

 

"The US government has charged Edward Snowden with three felonies, including two under the Espionage Act, the 1917 statute enacted to criminalize dissent against World War I.

 

Prior to Barack Obama's inauguration, there were a grand total of three prosecutions of leakers under the Espionage Act (including the prosecution of Dan Ellsberg by the Nixon DOJ). That's because the statute is so broad that even the US government has largely refrained from using it. But during the Obama presidency, there are now seven such prosecutions: more than double the number under all prior US presidents combined. How can anyone justify that?

 

For a politician who tried to convince Americans to elect him based on repeated pledges of unprecedented transparency and specific vows to protect "noble" and "patriotic" whistleblowers, is this unparalleled assault on those who enable investigative journalism remotely defensible? Recall that the New Yorker's Jane Mayer said recently that this oppressive climate created by the Obama presidency has brought investigative journalism to a "standstill", while James Goodale, the General Counsel for the New York Times during its battles with the Nixon administration,wrote last month in that paper that "President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom." Read what Mayer and Goodale wrote and ask yourself: is the Obama administration's threat to the news-gathering process not a serious crisis at this point?"

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/22/snowden-espionage-charges

[ralis]

Protest tomorrow by Reddit Mozilla et al. against NSA spying.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/03/nsa-protest-reddit-mozilla-july-4_n_3540893.html

[ralis]

USPS logging all mail for law enforcement.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?_r=0

[narveen]

I suppose you could go back even further and blame the African chieftains who had their heads turned by money and trinkets, sold their people, and blame them for all of it. We are descended from all those societies you mentioned, a melting pot. Time is HERE and NOW. Ancestral guilt is part of the whole equation, and some things need to be rectified. To not realize that seems pretty exclusive, Caucasian, and arrogant. The current mindset in the U.S. by people of means pretty much seems to be 'Screw 'em!' when it comes to caring about folks in ghettos. All the monied people care about seems to be accruing more 'stuck energy', which is all money is in the final analysis. the Corporation is now the rule of the day. Maybe it's too late to do anything to raise the living standards, (particular with our dysfunctional congress now) but certainly common humanity must enter in here in an enlightened sense. And please don't forget, friend, that we live Each and Every Day with the results of what the slaves accomplished to build this nation - YOU get the benefits of what THEY did all the time but apparently take it for granted and don't give it a second thought. Please think about it once in a while.

 

there are actually some african-americans who told me that they are thankful that they are americans and not africans. nowhere in africa can an african make millions of dollars playing basketball. look at the bright side of life.

 

if you want to cry over spilt milk, what about the native americans - the sioux, the apache, the lakota tribe and the trail of tears?

 

Walk away from it? Pretend it's not there? Puh. Some folks have a social conscience who really care about this stuff. My guess is that the Dalai Lama wouldn't tell you to forget the guilt and pretend it's not there, go on with your life like nothing happened.

 

what are you going to do with so much pain? how are you going to break the karma of suffering?

[narveen]

Snowden is a good example of a person who is not well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

 

did you vote? did you pay taxes? you are stuck in this sick society. either change it or get out.