It's a blog - thought he made some good points. Agree? With some? All? Disagree?

Why America Feels Like it's Been Ruled by a Foreign Occupier

As Obama takes over the wreckage this country is in, one can't help but feel like something alien to America has been controlling it these past eight years. The wave of emotion that has erupted with the election of Barack Obama reminds me of the Allied victory in France in WWII. After a long foreign occupation in which foreign German interests occupied the agenda of France, French governance would once again be representing the concerns of it's populace. That hope seems to pervade America after it's long neocons occupation. Here are a few of the parallels that I see.

- American Public Opinion Has Been Ignored

Polling has consistently shown that the American government pursues an agenda far to the right of American public opinion. For the slight margin of victory that Bush had in both elections he won, the sweeping changes he pursued illuminate his disregard for the sizable chunk of our society that disagree with him.

When Dick Cheney was questioned on ABC about whether the fact that two thirds of Americans were opposed to the Iraq War had any influence on decision-making, he basically said that the American people get to make their input every four years and after that they can be ignored. The government is there to represent the people and now that it seems like that is returning; joy is understandable.

- Core American Values Overturned

America fought a revolution to have its opinions represented by it's government. That has faded in Bush's term. America set up the UN after World War II to set up international law and put an end to military aggression and imperialism. That went out the window. Habeas Corpus was inherited from England where it originated in the 12th Century. Bush in that sense has embraced the morals of the middle ages. Along that line, America reinstituted the use of torture. England discontinued its use in the 1600's Frederick the Great ended it in Prussia in 1740, Italy in 1786, France in 1789, and Russia in 1801. Besides moral reasons, the practice was written off as ineffective in terms of yielding useful information. This administrations moral conduct is clearly alien to the values of most Americans.

- Basic Infrastructure Neglected

Bridges, roads, and environmental standards have degraded these past eight years. What could be of more interest to a population than the upkeep of these vital elements of society? Clearly the vital interests of the population did not matter. You would have to be completely foreign to what America is not to see it, as basic infrastructure degraded tremendously in Bush's tenure.

- National Resources Diverted Overseas

If you study any foreign occupation, one common thread would be that national wealth would be diverted into foreign lands. While American healthcare, education, and infrastructure languished, we dumped billions of dollars into Iraq and pursued an otherwise aggressive and destructive foreign policy across the world at large at tremendous cost.

On top of that, national debt doubled the past eight years. It's like America lost a war, suffered an occupation and had to pay a 5 trillion dollar indemnity. We're in a similar position to France in 1870 or Germany in 1919 in that our common interests have been ignored, we've pursued an aggressive foreign policy to our own detriment and we are now deeply in debt.

- Propaganda Tuned Up

Bush took the stance of a foreign occupier in his governance- rational argument would never win the minds and hearts of the masses so crude propaganda such as Fox News was trotted out to scare and paralyze America into obedience. The same quest for obedience through misinformation and crude scare tactics are the same you see in the totalitarian governments from South America to Asia that have brought nothing but misery to their own people and the world at large.

John Hallmann: Why America Feels Like it's Been Ruled by a Foreign Occupier

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Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
- Robertson Davies

I agree with the blog. Our country is in the same situation it was when the Declaration of Independence was penned - except today our enemy is domestic, not foreign.

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"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." Thomas Jefferson

Walter Mondale: "George Bush doesn't have the manhood to apologize." George Bush: "Well, on the manhood thing, I'll put mine up against his any time."

I agree with the basic spirit of this. Neo-cons far from conservative, favoring big governement with empirialistic foriegn policy.

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No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn't. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

Polling "by an agenda driven, left wing media" has consistently shown that the American government pursues an agenda far to the right of American public opinion. For the slight margin of victory that Bush had in both elections he won, the sweeping changes he pursued illuminate his disregard for the sizable chunk of our society that disagree with him.

Presidents have always been given too much credit and took too much blame for events in America.
Congress is the power. Legislators, legislating with "their" futures in mind, setting aside the good of the nation have spent this nation into the condition it is in. Bush's fear of using his veto power is the other. Now, American's expose themselves by voting from emotion. How absurd is it to blame one person for the condition America is in?
The Bush administration is simply a preview to the absurdity of a country being ruled by the left.

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"My wife, she gets mad when I caress my machine gun, but she
understands." Now close your eyes and repeat: It's a Religion of Peace!

ugh. The right always tries to make even moderates look liberal, especially when compaired to the right's more extreme agendas. The far right beleives the more extreme you make your opponant, the more moderate you look.

It's all BS really. In reality, we have too many extremists in power from both sides of the specrum. As mentioned in the above post, 'elected' officials rarely represent the more moderate views of most Americans.

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No party holds the privilege of dictating to me how I shall vote. If loyalty to party is a form of patriotism, I am no patriot. If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn't. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the sixty millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

"You" in my reply refers to the author of the blog entry.

This silly wave of emotion that has swept over much of the world because of Barack Hussein Obama bin Laden's election shows just how shallow people really are. There has been this commemorative plate commercial on television recently and the announcer is just gushing over this inexperienced Chicago politicial - his confident smile, his kind eyes, the hope he brings to the world... It's really sick! But the reality of the matter is that the neocon "occupation" is just the most recent development in the more than 150-year history of the federal government moving away from the ideals on which it was founded.

So-called "public opinion" is irrelevant if what the people think they want is actually unconstitutional. Would you prefer that a presidential administration govern by polls the way Slick Willie Clinton did? Oh, and by the way, Congress is just as guilty of ignoring public opinion. Remember the bailout? One of the senators from California was speaking on the Senate floor telling her colleagues that out of approximately 95,000 calls and e-mails her office received, 85,000 of them were telling her to vote against the bailout. What did the broad do? She voted for the bailout. American public opinion has been overwhelmingly against the bailout and yet most of Congress still voted for it.

He said what most of the politicians in Washington actually do: ignore the American people. But even there, unless what the American people want is constitutional, it really doesn't matter.

The fade started long before Bush. It started more than 150 years ago. I'll go back even further and say it started with a Supreme Court decision known as Marbury v. Madison.

Bridges and roads are the responsibility of state and local governments. It's not Bush's fault that the states and local governments let things slide.

Well, you know something, Congress is more to blame for this than Bush. They're the ones who illegally (by violating the Constitution) surrendered war-making power to the President decades ago through the War Powers Act. They voted for the Iraq war - a war that is actually illegal because Congress did not actually declare war on Iraq. You can blame President Wilson for this logical extension of interventionism. Wilson said the United States was "exceptional" among the nations of the world and that gave us the right to intervene in the affairs of other nations (his whole notion of saving the world for "democracy," even though the United States itself is not a democracy but a constitutional republic).

And you can thank Congress for that. What the blog author so damned stupidly forgets is that Congress controls the purse-strings. It decides how much money is spent and what it gets spent on.

Oh, and the leftist media hasn't shared in the propaganda? Do you really think that most Americans even watch Fox News? Remember that the congresscritters were the ones that allowed Bush to engage in this unconstitutional action against other nations (but, then again, Congress has been doing that for decades, particularly since the War Powers Act).

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A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."