This Blog is for the Rats

Entitled: If media covered America the way we cover foreign cultures

jahanzebjz:

Yet another massacre has occurred in the historically war-torn region of the Southern United States – and so soon after the religious festival of Easter.

Brian McConkey, 27, a Christian fundamentalist militiaman living in the formerly occupied territory of Alabama, gunned down three men from an opposing tribe in the village square near Mobile, the capitol, over a discussion that may have involved the rituals of the local football cult. In this region full of heavily-armed local warlords and radical Christian clerics, gun violence is part of the life of many.

Many of the militiamen here are ethnic Scots-Irish tribesmen, a famously indomitable mountain people who have killed civilized men – and each other – for centuries. It appears that the wars that started on the fields of Bannockburn and Sterling have come to America.

As the sun sets over the former Confederate States of America, one wonders – can peace ever come to this land?

(Source: ericgarland.co, via theredkite)

1 week ago - 8694

How Not to Make America Great

Nobody called government incompetent when it led to triumph in World War II. Nobody felt that the government couldn’t manage when it developed the atomic bomb. Nobody argued that the government was irrelevant when it built the Interstate Highway System. Nobody called the government a slouch when in eight years it created an engineering miracle that put a man on the moon and returned him safely to earth, a timetable set by JFK just weeks after the first American had flown into space.

So what gives today? Four things.

First, many Americans, especially older Tea Party Americans, believe that the government is a machine for taking their hard-earned money and turning it over to undeserving, slothful Americans, the “moochers” in Ayn Rand’s fervid imagery. This must seem like some kind of joke to the down-and-out Americans who receive ample evidence every day of the year that there is no way that America has much care at all for their fate, much less a system for channeling money their way! Let me put it this way: The federal welfare program (now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF) spends all of 0.2 percent of national income. Even if we add in Medicaid, food stamps, and the earned income tax credit, we’re still at 3 percent of GDP, less than a seventh of the budget.

Second, many Americans are convinced that the real transfers are not to America’s poor but to the world’s poor. America is one big generosity machine, pumping our hard-earned dollars to rich people in poor countries. Again, not so. Our total foreign assistance is but 0.2 percent of GDP, roughly 1 percent of the budget.

Third, Americans are disgusted by the lack of thoughtful management of government funds. Here I’ll agree. Can we really believe that the government is managing our money carefully when it invents trillion-dollar spending packages in a few weeks, or bails out the banks for $700 billion in a few days? Let’s just say that many government programs are unconvincing, even if many others are world-class and cutting-edge.

Fourth, Americans smell waste throughout government but don’t know how much and how deep. Why tax more when we are wasting so much as it is? Let’s put aside the poor, who are too poor to waste much. What about the waste for the rich, starting with overpriced weapons systems and deployment strategies that cost $1 million per soldier per year in Afghanistan? If ever there was a bloated, corrupted budget, it’s that of the military-industrial complex, which picks our pockets as we salute the flag.

(Source: azspot, via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)

1 month ago - 147

MotherJones analyzed 61 shooting sprees and found that not a single one was stopped or hindered by another civilian with a gun.

(Source: stfuconservatives)

5 months ago - 2342