The State of the Union speech - with comments

Here's some of what was said - with observations. After all, Observations are what this blog is all about.

"In a system of two parties, two chambers, and two elected branches, there will always be differences and debate. But even tough debates can be conducted in a civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger."
So, you won't be calling Murtha a coward anymore, right? Fat chance of this happening, George - the neo-cons are the most insult-happy people on earth!
"In 1945, there were about two dozen lonely democracies on Earth. Today, there are 122."
Name them. Places like Zimbabwe, Egypt, and all the other democracies-because-we-SAY-they're-democracies don't count, by the way.
There is no peace in retreat. And there is no honor in retreat ... The United States will not retreat from the world, and we will never surrender to evil."
Battle of Cannae - Hannibal pulls back his center. The Romans rush forward. Hannibal pulls in his flanks, encircles the Romans, and wipes them out. One of the greatest victories in the Ancient world. Sometimes there's victory in retreat, George, so long as you're a good general.
"We are on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory."
"Shoot them all" is also a clear plan for victory, George. Do you have a workable plan for victory? And what do you consider victory? If a united Iraqi people decide to sell oil to China exclusively, and resolves never to speak to the US again, would that be victory? What is it you are trying to accomplish?
"Yet there is a difference between responsible criticism that aims for success, and defeatism that refuses to acknowledge anything but failure. Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy."
So what is responsible criticism, George? When you're failing, every criticism sounds like defeatism. Second guessing may not be a strategy, but the first step to revising a strategy is second guessing. And acknowledging that something is wrong.
"The Palestinian people have voted in elections – now the leaders of Hamas must recognize Israel, disarm, reject terrorism, and work for lasting peace."
You just threw out their election platform, George.
"America respects you, and we respect your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom. And our Nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran."
Just don't do anything we don't want you to, own any weapons we don't want you to have, elect any governments that don't espouse Western values, or sell your oil to China.
"Fortunately, this Nation has superb professionals in law enforcement, intelligence, the military, and homeland security. These men and women are dedicating their lives to protecting us all, and they deserve our support and our thanks. They also deserve the same tools they already use to fight drug trafficking and organized crime – so I ask you to reauthorize the Patriot Act."
Drug trafficking and organized crime are flourishing, George - your superb professionals need new tools. And pay raises. And more staffing.
"It is said that prior to the attacks of September 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to al-Qaida operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late. So to prevent another attack – based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute – I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al-Qaida operatives and affiliates to and from America."
And hopefully the unsuspected al-Qaida operatives will be stupid enough to hold phone conversations as if they were characters in an episode of Get Smart, so that you'll notice them. And hopefully nobody will be tempted to use these intercepts for less noble purposes.
"If there are people inside our country who are talking with al-Qaida, we want to know about it – because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again."
And if your superb professionals tell you about it, will you listen this time? Gathering the information is not the problem. Interpreting and acting on the information is the problem, George, and you are not famous for doing either.

There's more - Bush says we must seek alternatives to oil (I'll believe that when I see it - Exxon has a lot of pull around here - ), says we must have illegal immigrants because the economy depends on them ( - although not as much pull as Haliburton does.), refuses to allow further stem-cell research (no biggie - all the CEOs will just have to go to Korea for treatments), and says that the economy is strong, with 4.6 million new jobs (minus the ones Ford cut.).

More later.

A different state of the Union

A few looks at what's going on.
- Just last month, the GAO issued a report warning that the administration still had no plan in place for freezing terrorist cash assets. So, we'll listen to their phone messages but we won't stop their spending. Cute.
- Ford received $250 million in tax credits as part of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. They just eliminated hundreds of jobs. Cute.
- Vincente Fox estimates that there are 23 million Mexicans in the US illegally. They have been given maps to help them get here, and the Mexican Army has been known to provide them with fire support, "accidentally" of course. The government response: hire them to rebuild New Orleans.
- Saddam's WMD may have been shipped out of Iraq right under the government's noses. Pardon me, guys, but while you were raving about how Saddam could use these weapons on us at any moment, shouldn't you have been watching to make sure they weren't? I mean, getting them out of Iraq would have been the first step, right?
- The Abramoff scandal: Republicans respond to corruption charges by saying that the Democrats took money, too. As if that made it all right. Hey, guys - if the Democrats jumped off a cliff, would you jump too? Meanwhile, the president has just "promoted" the head investigator to a new job. As reported elsewhere, Abramoff got away from his last scandal, in Guam, when the president removed the US Attorney running the investigation.
- Exxon, which just posted record profits for the year, wants the money - $5 billion - it spent on the Exxon Valdez disaster . . . refunded.
- China, future enemy #1, is the number one for worldwide foreign investments, while France, the neocon punching bag, is number 2. America's annual trade deficit is a half-trillion dollars, which means all those America-First ultra-patriotic corporations, like Haliburton and Exxon, are either not selling too much, or are putting their profits into offshore banks. So much for their faith in America.
- Domestic spying, by both NSA and the Pentagon, defended with the statement "national security". In other words, we need to do this in order to know if anyone is planning to attack us. Meanwhile, bin Laden announces - on international TV - that he intends to attack us.

And so it goes.

What happens to wiretap info?

As George W. Bush continues to defend his wiretap policy as essential for the defense of the country, one has to wonder what he would do with the information once he got it?
FEMA is still a shambles. The police and fire services still haven't received any extra money for hiring. The FBI is still looking for a computer system that works. Customs still works on random sampling. Cargoes still enter port with only superficial checks.
Why do I get the feeling that if the NSA intercepted a call saying "All is ready. Begin the operation in two days.", the only thing the Bush government would get out of it is a two day head start on the Blame Game?

The Small Town Hick also appears on the Blogger News Network.

The Catholic Supreme Court?

An article in The Economist implies that the Republicans have engineered a Catholic takeover of the Supreme Court, as part of its long range plan to capture the catholic vote. Conservative Catholics have allied with Protestant Evangelicals over things like Abortion and Family Values.
Thus, men like Alito are nominated.

There is an old saying - when the gods really hate you, they grant your wishes.

What happens, I wonder, when the laws are changed?
A not-insignificant number of evangelicals consider the Catholic church to be the tool of the anti-Christ. A lot of Catholics don't consider Protestants to be "saved".
When the rulings they are both after become fact - something that could come about before the end of Bush's term of office - will the two allies part company?
If so, the Republicans will have loaded the court and gained nothing.

The Pope has already come out against Bush policies once. I wonder whether the Catholics on the Supreme Court are willing to support Bush over the Pope.
I wonder what Bush's reaction will be if he finds out he has turned the Third Arm of the Government over to the Pope?

Syria has the WMD.

From Blogs for Bush:
The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.

He says this in his new book, Saddam's Secrets, which is now likely to enjoy a GOP surge in sales comparable to that book Osama boosted a few days ago.
I suspect that if Syria really did have WMD, the Bush government would have done something by now - if it were really serious about such things.
Anyway, now I guess we've got something on everybody over there. Iran has nukes, Syria has WMD, Palestine is ruled by Hamas, . . . we've got justification to do anything anywhere in the Middle East.

Elections in Palestine

The Palistinian elections are drawing to a close, with Hamas a close second to Arafat's ruling Fatah party. Voters stated that they wanted to punish Fatah for it's 12 year history of corruption.
Sounds like the Canadian election. I wonder if this is the start of a trend?

Rebuilding Canada's Military

Canada's new Prime Minister, Steven Harper, has several big jobs ahead of him. One of the hardest and most expensive will also be one of the easiest and most rewarding.
Rebuilding the Canadian military.
Canada has a superb body of troops; well disciplined, well trained, well motivated - and saddled with equipment no self-respecting Third World nation would keep around. The latest acquisition was a set of leaky second hand submarines, one of which nearly went down for the final time during delivery.
The Liberals never really believed in the military. They were content in the fact that the US would never allow an invasion by a foreign power, since it would endanger the US as well. Therefore, the ruling party felt it could safely earmark military funding for more appropriate uses - like patronage.
As a result, the Canadian Armed Forces are equipped with leaking subs, ships with metal fatigue, 20 year old tanks, unarmored patrol vehicles, and obsolete everything.

Fortunately - perversely - this helps.
The Harper government now has reason to scrap everything - start from the ground up. New planes. New guns.
After 20 years of Liberal multi-million dollar make-work programs in the Maritime provinces, that lasted a year each, the Conservatives can set up a military shipyard and build state of the art patrol ships. They could retire the current (hah!) fleet, and re-equip the navy with vessels that can do the job.
Unlike the NATO powers, who must rework their anti-Russian forces into anti-terrorist forces somehow, the Canadian army can just rebuild straight into a 21st century military.

Let's see if Harper and his people are smart enough to see the possibilities.

The Small Town Hick also blogs on The Blogger News Network.

The Canadian Election

The Conservative Party of Canada has won, with a total of 124 seats. The Loyal Opposition will be the Liberals, with 103 seats. Bloc 51, NDP 29.
For the sake of all those readers out there in the heartland of America who don't keep up with Canadian politics, a short explanation.
The two main parties are the Liberals and the Conservatives - the equivalent of the Democrats and the Republicans.
Here's what you need to know about the Liberals. They have been in power, barring a few politically humorous interludes, since Nixon. They have become arrogant and corrupt. They considered control of Canada to be somewhere between a birthright and a sure thing. The last Prime Minister, Paul Martin, executed a political coup to gain control of the party. They have just been implicated in one of the biggest patronage scandals in the nation's history - just the latest in a string of scandals lasting over a decade.
Here's what you need to know about the Conservatives. They couldn't win a majority while running against the Ottawa Thieves' Guild.
The party, as it is today, is a fusion between the moribund Progressive Conservatives, a backbiting group that hasn't had a strategy since the early 60s, and the Reform Party, an American style right wing fundamentalist party started in Alberta, aka Texas North. The oil-rich cowboys of the Canadian West were tired of being controlled by the white collar East, and created their own party to take control.
Now, they've got it. Sort of.
There are two other parties. The Bloc Quebecois is the latest version of the Quebec seperatist movement. Imagine if America's southern states created a Confederacy Party, running on a platform of secession from the Union. That's the Bloc in a nutshell. It makes Canada unique among all Western Powers in that its government has its own self-destruct mechanism.
The other party, the NDP, consists of everyone who wouldn't join the Liberals because they weren't far enough to the left. They are probably the main reason for the Liberal success over the last few decades - all the tree huggers and fuzzy thinkers that have plagued other left wing parties like the Democrats, driving away the moderates, all left and created their own party.
Now look at the vote figures again.
In Canadian politics, the magic number is 155. That is the number for a majority vote.
Notice that of the four parties in power, only two can control a majority between them, other than that of the two main parties. That is the Conservatives and the Bloc.
This probably means that, to stay in power, the Conservatives are going to have to appease the Quebec seperatists.
But note, also, that to defeat the Conservatives, the Liberals must have the support of both the Bloc and the NDP - both of whom are going to be acting as power brokers for the next few years. The Far Left and the Self-Destruct Mechanism - the DealMakers and DealBreakers.
Just remember that, next time you hear "interesting" news out of Canada.

A Post 9/11 View of the World

"Republicans have a post-9/11 view of the world. And Democrats have a pre-9/11 view of the world. That doesn't make them unpatriotic, not at all. But it does make them wrong -- deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong." Karl Rove said today.
What is a post 9/11 view of the world, Mr. Rove?
It isn't the idea that someone out there hates America, Mr Rove. Even the Small Town Hick read Lederer's The Ugly American when his was young - and the book's been around since the 50s.
Is it the idea that somebody out there can actually hurt SuperCountry? Has the World's Only Superpower discovered that most of the world's nations has a stock of kryptonite?
I think that everybody, from the farthest left appeaser to the farthest right apocalyptic, knows that now. So, no, I don't think that this is what Mr. Rove was thinking of.
No, I suspect that Mr. Rove's view of the world, post 9/11, is that only strength counts. You can't talk with these people, you can only shoot them. Might is Right.
Wrong.
Civilization depends on talking with people. Even Ghengis Khan didn't kill everybody, even Hitler negotiated.
The Rove post-9/11 view of the world is a cowboy sitting at the door of his house, rifle in hand, peering out into the darkness. He's told the womenfolk and hands that this is Injun Territory, and that the woods are probably full of savages, waiting to charge in and kill them all. He hasn't done much of a job of barring the doors and windows, everything he does do, whether the hands like it or not, is always excused with the comment "You want the injuns to get you?" Inside, he is hoping that the cavalry has done its job of keeping the injuns busy; he may even believe it. Thing is, he won't know until the first face peers in through the window, whether he is safe or not. And of course, by that time it's too late.
However, the Rove view doesn't allow any other course. No peace pipe, no bars on the window, no detatchment of cavalry kept nearby, no asking the neighbors for help. Stubborn old coot.
And while he's in control, that's how it's going to stay.
Let's hope he's right. If he's not, . . .

The Osama tape

By now, you've all heard that Osama bin Ladin has released another tape to the media.
In this one, he offers a truce, stating that Americans don't really want a war, and threatens another terrorist act within America itself.
Let's look at these two statements.

1) The offer of a truce has been touted on the right wing blogs as Osama giving up. Yeah, right. He's running out of suicide bombers and Number 2 men. Much more likely he wants to regain control there in Iraq. If you haven't noticed, the bombs haven't been aimed at Americans much anymore - they've been aimed at civilians. That's the trouble with living in a cave, incommunicado - your people start taking the initiative.

2) The right has also been laughing off the threat, when they've paid any attention at all to it. The futile posturing of a defeated man, they say. Perhaps. But if he DOES have something set up, this is the time to use it. Bush has labeled himself as the war president. Whenever anyone has asked him about the scandals that have risen up around him and his government, he brings up 9/11, the war on terrorism, and his devotion to winning it.
It was his image as warrior that won his re-election; people saw him as a better protector than Kerry.
A successful terrorist attack, right now, on US soil, could very well ruin him. It would crush his last talking points, and those of his party.
Which is what makes the timing so interesting. The NSA scandal is in full swing, and the Congressional elections are at hand. Proving that the NSA wiretaps were useless - didn't stop bin Laden! - and that the Republicans had frittered away the last 4 years doing nothing for security, would probably mean a Democrat majority in the House.
Which could mean a hostile government that would hound Bush and his people right out of office.

I don't know about you, but I'm staying away from monuments until after the next election.

Martin Luther King - the legacy. Maybe.

January 20 is the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. I have been reading many blogs that have "celebrated" this holiday.
April 4th might be a more appropriate day to remember Dr. King. It was the day of his death. And for years now they have been trying to kill off his legacy.
In the last week I have read about how MLK would have hated affirmative action, fought against quotas in universities, and supported the war in Iraq. Nice that he's not around to dispute these opinions, isn't it.
Martin Luther King wanted people - all people - to be treated like people. He would have hated affirmative action but he would have supported it as well, until its job was done. He would have fought against private schools and breaks for the rich while the poor couldn't get medical treatment.
But the vast majority of pundits don't care anymore what HE wanted. They use his reputation, his arguments, to promote their own positions.
Yes, I think most of those in power right now would like to celebrate his death, rather than his birth - because April 4th was the day his name and reputation became theirs, to do with as they wished.

The Nature of Conservative thought

I just read an interesting post on the conservative way of thought here.
I decided to test it by checking out the local conservative blogs.

Blogs:

Blogs For Bush: latest topics
A Tale of Two Cities (Alito post)
Blogger Conference Call with Reps. Chocola & Barrett
B4B Podcast: Episode 1
Hitting Below The Beltway Blogroll
Party Likes It's 2006
Alito Heads Towards Easy Confirmation
Iranian Bluster
Liberal Delusions On Alito
On Pundit Review Radio Tonight

Little Green Footballs: Latest topics
Egypt Denounces Iran's Manhattan Project
The Hebron Riots
Markos vs. Sullivan
Democracy Palestinian Style
"May Allah Destroy Her"

The Right Wing News: Latest topics
The Democratic Underground Post Of The Day: The Dems Are America's Sunnis?
The Gang-Of-14 Deal Was Good For The GOP? Get Serious...
Harry Reid's Abramoff Problem
GPS Devices For Guns?
Animal Loving Freaks By Alan Caruba

Ogre's Politics and News: Latest topics
Eating Cake (humor)
Martin Luther King Day
Guard Our Borders!
How Bad Do You Want Freedom?
Charlotte Observer Hates Free Speech
NC Lawmakers Want Cash (anti-lobbyst)
USS Clinton (funny picture)
Just Wondering (Pat Robertson post)
Kyoto Treaty is Dead

Right On!: Latest topics
Can We Quote you On That? (Iran)
WalMart
Wow (Islam)
A Middle American View on Politics
A Soldier's Point of View

Conservative Trail Head: Latest topics
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Nuclear Iran
Abortion Transition
When is Abortion OK?
Dems Win - DeLay Out!

Look for yourselves.
What do you think?

The spies who couldn't shoot straight.

In the middle of a firestorm about NSA spying, comes a failed attack in Pakistan.
Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was supposedly in the village of Damadola.
Unfortunately, the intelligence was wrong. He was not in the village when the CIA-ordered airstrike killed 18 people - none of them terrorists.
Senator Evan Bayh told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" that the problem was that the Pakistani government was unable to control that part of the country. Wrong. The problem is that America is firing blind - it cannot find its enemy, so it shoots anything that rustles in the grass.
The apologists who have been touting the Iraq war as being about fighting the enemy over there so that we don't have to fight them over here, have been silent on the correlation between the NSA story and the Pakistani tragedy.
One says that they may be here anyway - why else spy on US phone calls? The other says we don't know where they are, and can't keep them under observation for very long.
That doesn't sound reassuring. The news that the terrorists are switching to disposable cell phones is even more depressing. How do we fight an enemy we can't find?

King George

President George W. Bush has in his possession executive orders giving him absolute dictatorial power over the government. These “national security initiatives” were put into place by Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. President Reagan signed off on the initiatives and they have remained in place, dormant, until now. They would allow Bush to impose martial law, institute mass arrests of "subversive" individuals, and send troops into the streets.

Afraid yet?

Gun Safes not safe

There's a new sport in Canada, and it doesn't involve ice.
Organized groups are breaking into the homes of known gun collectors and robbing their gun safes.
If this were a matter of them getting away with some museum quality muskets and WWII Lugers, it would be bad enough. but these gangs are getting ahold of some serious modern weaponry.
Just as an example, two of the weapons netted in a recent robbery were Steyr AUG assault rifles - modern military weapons.
These guns are turning up in the hands of Toronto gangs, and have been pushing the Toronto homicide levels up.

These were not easy targets. The rifles mentioned above were taken from a 770 lb safe. These people are capable of breaking into any storage facility.
Is this a problem for the States? Depends. Smuggling goes both ways, and the price of a Steyr might be beyond that of a local gang.
More importantly, it goes to show how far the modern criminal element is willing to go to get their hands on some firepower. Remember we are talking about Canadians here - even their hoods still say please and thank you.

It is time to rethink the gun issue. It does no good to have a gun in the house if somebody just steals it. If you're going to keep a gun, you need to have a gun attitude.
As in keeping it with you, and knowing - really knowing - how to use it. If you're not willing to make the 24/7 committment, you need a new hobby.

Pat gets another 15 minutes of fame

Pat Robertson has apologized.
Duh.
Has anyone else come to the conclusion that these "off the cuff" remarks are not mistakes? That Pat - and his 700 Club - are not sorry at all about remarks Pat now refers to as "inappropriate and insensitive in light of a national grief"?
After all, this is his third major gaff in the last few months. You'd think that somebody in the organization would be putting him on a 7 second delay, and telling him to stick to the script.
Instead, he continues to make outrageous statements, which get him a lot of press, and for which he later apologizes, getting more press. He has become an advertisement for the 700 Club, attracting the attention of reactionary zealots, and no doubt filling his coffers with their money.
As a Christian, I am shocked and appalled by this man, by this organization, by its crusade to ruin all that is good and right about my faith in order to maintain their political and financial position of power. Pat Robertson's appeal to the flagellants of the country denigrates the values he pretends to uphold.
It is time to remove this hypocrite from the airwaves, and shut down his network of hate, whose sole purpose in existing is to continue to raise money for unChristian political purposes. His messages of intolerance and fake piety, played out before the national media so that he can expand his power ever wider, is no longer acceptable.
Even his allies are deserting him. He was leading a group of evangelicals planning a $50 million evangelical Christian heritage center along the Sea of Galilee. They have kicked him off the board, so to speak. The Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said that evangelical leaders "must exercise sensitivity and grace towards the people and leadership of the nation of Israel."
Duh.

Elections of the North

For those of you who don't watch what's happening in Canada, there's an election going on.
The Dominion of Canada has been governed by the Liberal party, barring a few blips, since Nixon was in power. That's a long time, especially when you take into account the No-Confidence motion. Any member of Parliament can dissolve the government and cause an election just by calling for this vote, and having a majority of members vote yes. Beats impeachment all to heck - if the US had this system, both Clinton and Dubya would have been removed from office within their first terms.
Anyway, the Liberals were just caught in a multi-million dollar pork scam. A huge scandal. The Conservative party had no problem winning a vote of non-confidence.
At the moment, it looks like a probable win for the Conservative party, led by Stephen Harper, who may be the closest thing to a Bush-style neo-con in the North. Much of the opposition to the Conservatives, such as it is, has been caused by the fear that he will do for Canada what Bush has done for the US.
So, if Harper does get in, expect a big change in how Canada and the US does business.

1984, 22 years late.

Has Orwell's world come at last to the United States of America?

The war on Terror is a remarkably easy one. No victory is needed - just vigilance. No evidence is needed - just whisper "national security". Meet every question with the accusation of "fellow traveler". Seize absolute power - and claim it's the only way to keep everyone safe.
How quickly we forget.
This generation's islamofascist is last generation's commie, with the black cloak and homberg replaced by a turban and robe. Again he waits under the bed, waiting for you to grow complacent so he can sneak out and enslave you.
The march of time has changed him a little - he now wants to blow you up instead of fluoridate your water, but he's the same guy. The same imaginary bogeyman used by demagogues all over the world to keep the masses quiet and obedient.

The McCarthy tapdance is back.
"What are you doing?"
Can't tell you. Top Secret."
"Is it working?"
"Can't tell you. Top Secret."
"You're breaking the law."
"Traitor! Only a commie or fellow traveler would say that. I want a list of anyone you know who thinks like you do."
"You can't do that!"
"If I don't, communists will pollute our precious bodily fluids. You don't want that, do you?"
And on and on.
And when it was all over, the commies turned out to be a bunch of geezers on the other side of the world, and McCarthy turned out to be a panic-monger.

Only a nation can defeat a nation. Only if we are all looking, all peering into the alleys and listening at the next table, can we beat terrorism. Together, we can find and defeat the terrorists. A secret organization listening to taped conversations cannot do that. Nor can a government that won't tell us what's really going on, that won't trust us.
We have to have a government that trusts us, our judgment, and our loyalty. A government that restricts our freedoms and lies to us will collapse to outside attack.
If you don't believe me, just look at Russia.

Smarter - but for how long?

"We both have meritocracies. Yours (America) is a talent meritocracy. Ours (Singapore) is an exam meritocracy. There are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well - like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority. These are the areas where Singapore must learn from America."
So spoke Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister of Education of Singapore, in this week's issue of Newsweek. He was pointing out why Singapore's children test better than Americans in math and science, but do worse in the real world, producing fewer inventors, entrepreneurs, and executives. Here, Americans have the edge.
Will this last?
Already we are teaching ourselves not to be curious, not to make waves, not to question. Church and government both expect their subjects to accept their word as fact, and to support their positions without question. Whether it is Intelligent Design or Intelligence without Oversite, we are told to forget what facts and reason tell us, and to rely on faith. Or else.
We have seen this before. Russia crippled itself with Lysenkoism and Five Year Plans; it now struggles to reclaim world power status.
The days of American manual labor are numbered. Foreign workers make things cheaper. Foreign programmers type cheaper.
What keeps Americans - what will keep Americans in the lead - are the qualities Tharman mentioned. Curiosity, creativity, and a willingness to challenge authority.
Lose that, and the U.S. becomes another Russia - a third rate nation with nukes, crooks, and thugs, lusting after lost glories, and endangering the world with schemes for power.

Bowl Games

I've spent the last few days watching football. So sue me.
I have learned two things from watching these games.
1) They're better than the NFL. The college players really TRY. And the crowds are more into it, too.
2) The networks have categorized the fans - and it's not a nice category.
Look at the commercials - beer and trucks. Look at the game - they now mark where the line of scrimmage is. Like you couldn't figure it out for yourself. The commentators all speak in catch phrases.
In short, if you watch football, you're a redneck.

I'm a hick, but I'm not a redneck. I have a job, I have an IQ, and I bathe.
I don't like the creeping implications the media is painting