But I’m sure Darth Cheney was getting around to it:
As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make.
The worst unemployment in decades, and we’re contemplating cutting food stamps to pay for medicare medicaid while pumping billions into the war pig.
beltane
Rome went down with far more pizzaz, and they bequeathed all kinds of wonderful stuff to us. On the other hand, the fall of both empires can be plausibly blamed on the Christians, so we at least have that going for us.
Smurfhole
We just need to put our economy back on the gold standard, then start raiding other nations for their gold and other valuables. I think the US Navy could be the most effective seaborne raiding force since the Vikings, if it put its mind to it.
Oderint dum metuant.
Ruckus
@beltane:
Same thought here.
Or Respecting Internet Traditions.. This.
Pancake
We could save countless billions if we just shuttered about 15% of our public schools and half of our publicly supported universities. Education is clearly wasted on a very great many Americans; for proof, just look at some of those posting comments here.
jeffreyw
I’ll be dead and gone, but you all better hope that the US goes out with a whimper rather than a bang.
I’m having a spot of lunch.
General Stuck
Yea, things are awful, too bad we can’t all write ourselves a script for Oxycontin to make it better.
beltane
@Smurfhole: The Vikings were hippie sosha-lists, and we will never follow their example in anything. We will more likely go down to our final defeat while attempting to conquer the Persian Empire, or while placating the Parthians and Cappodocians. I’m sure Victor Davis Hansen could explain it all to us.
Sly
At first I thought this was written by Chris Hedges, whose work on fundamentalism I found partially inspired, but the End-of-Empire dreck he writes now is as insipid as it gets. Guess GG was on his way to this point for a while.
The game of life is hard to play
I’m gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I’ll someday lay
so this is all I have to say:
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
Martin
Medicare isn’t what is being paid for, Medicaid is.
And Medicaid hits largely the same population as food stamps, so it’s more a function of health care costs outrunning food costs, and catering to the demands of the states who aren’t able to cover their Medicaid obligations.
Medicare, on the other hand, is projected to be in decent shape thanks to the regularly maligned HCR legislation. Getting Medicare in shape was the primary goal of the legislation, which apparently most people fail to recognize.
DonkeyKong
Have you read the most recent contarian horseshit column at Slate, “Soylent Green, bad science fiction movie or next economic boom?”
beltane
@General Stuck: The very least they could do for us would be to decriminalize marijuana. The decline and fall of our world would be more bearable if were able to get stoned.
cat48
Roger Moore
@Smurfhole:
No way. The Navy might be able to attack effectively, but it would be a losing proposition in the long run. All of our armed forces are so weighed down with expensive equipment and enormous logistical tails that their raids would cost far more than they’d ever be able to collect.
kdaug
@Sly: “In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist”
Christopher Hitchens
Roger Moore
@Pancake:
Not very strong on self-reflection, are you?
General Stuck
@Sly:
Personally, I’m not complete without regular doses of Greenwaldian “you thought shit was bad under Bush” so I can stay sharp to pick out the invisible microphones.
Smurfhole
@beltane:
Well, the Vikings did eat a lot of cod, and we’ve made cod almost extinct. So we do have that similarity. Also, both Vikings and Americans hate the French; but I bet the French would let America have Normandy (and let us populate it with Texans) if we promised to stop attacking Paris.
Svensker
Look, bud, Muslim terrorists are going to impose SHARIA on us (any day now, I can just feel it) and you are worried about some (probably fat) dusky-hued welfare freak? What is wrong with you! My god, we’re all gonna die and you wanna take MY money to feed THEM! ? ! !
Also, too, Saul Alinsky George Soros!
Chuck Butcher
Sure the war pig is one of the villains, but there is a whole list and Greenwald’s is pretty short. I’m still trying to figure out exactly why modern Americans have such a strong desire re-live The Robber Baron Era. Cripes, you’d think the results of GOP domination would be a clue – but, Nah.
That is what the Democrats, thanks to a handful of Blue Dogs, can’t seem to get either.
kdaug
@Roger Moore:
Spoken like a guy who knows what the fuck he’s talking about.
What’s the old saying? “Amateurs talk about strategy, experts talk about logistics”.
This empire is going to kill us.
Smurfhole
@Roger Moore:
No, once we start equipping them with longboats again we can get them back on a paying basis. (Picture Vikings with machine guns, that’ll be the US Navy circa 2035.)
matoko_chan
rawr.
the real war is between the brights(liberals) and the stupids(conservatives), not between white xians and the World.
wise up, Cole…they don’t get to self-represent anymore! they are retards.
this is War.
they hate us……our games, our universities, our movies, our music, our culture.
conservatives daif.
full–> youtube.com/watch?v=KOmL2xT73pk&feature=related
beltane
@Smurfhole: The Texans would hate living in Normandy; the food is way too exquisite for their taste.
Erik T
I do find myself wondering just how the freeper nut-brigade thinks Sharia would actually be enforced in this country. I mean, by whom? Have none of them ever been given a warning by a police officer? Have they ever seen a car with tinted windows?
Svensker
Also, too, too, but John, could you ban that piece of shit, Pancake? It’s your blog, but I know you’ve banned BOB in the past for racism and outright douchebaggery, and Pancake’s name is the most vile douchebaggery. It makes me feel ill every time I see it. It’s like someone using the ID “DanielPearlsHead” or something — just disgusting, vile and cruel.
burnspbesq
One of Greenwald’s increasingly rare lucid moments.
Well said. More like this, please.
Pasquinade
9 years ago today, August 6, 2001, “Bin Laden determined to strike in US”
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×8892490
Smurfhole
@beltane:
Ah, just bring in some more pork and some more cattle; it’ll be alright. Don’t eat the cheese, though, it makes you French. (That’s worse than being gay- if it’s not the same thing. Which it probably is.)
kdaug
@beltane:
Watch your mouth, jackass. I live in Texas, been to Normandy, and the shit they serve is bland (tasty, but bland).
Dress it up with some Habenero, we can dance. Could even tone it down to jalapenos for the Yankees. But that whiney “it’s too hot!!” crap needs to stay up north.
BR
If you haven’t, you owe it to yourself to read Dmitry Orlov’s comparison to the USSR:
fora.tv/2009/02/13/Dmitry_Orlov_Social_Collapse_Best_Practices
energybulletin.net/node/23259
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@beltane: What, you’re letting that stop you?
Xanthippas
@burnspbesq:
He blogs like this like, every day. Where have you been?
Roger Moore
@Smurfhole:
So you’re thinking of a Mad Max/Waterworld style future? I guess that with global warming melting the ice caps, the Waterworld side of that is starting to look a bit more reasonable. Maybe if the long boats were powered by outboard engines fueled by our dwindling petroleum reserves (or methane derived from pig shit)…
Xanthippas
Look at it this way guys. When our empire finally collapses and the Chinese are dictating to use the value of our currency, maybe they’ll let us use some of it to repave our roads and rebuild our libraries.
Being a two-bit power isn’t all that bad. It’s quiet and peaceful. You’ll see…just look at Canada!
Jody
Trouble is we STILL have a huge percentage of our population that are insistent that we are on the road to a socialist dystopia, and only by more tax cuts are we ever going to save ourselves.
I have learned thru experience that the ability of these people to disregard reality is directly in proportion to how much Limbaugh/Beck/etc. they listen to.
John Thullen
The key to stopping the fraying of the safety net and keeping the money at home is for those affected to make more trouble for America than the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Bob Loblaw
@Xanthippas:
I wish this blog would just stop linking to him. It’s clear that the maturity level of the commentariat just isn’t up to it. And given that Greenwald has been no better whenever he shows up here just makes the problem intractable.
We’ll never be able to have a column of his linked without somebody getting into a snit. It’s just the way it is.
General Stuck
@Bob Loblaw:
LoL mr maturity sets us straight.
I’m mature. Pull my finger, go ahead, see what happens.
Citizen Alan
@Erik T:
They think it means that people who belong to another religion and/or ethnicity will be able to somehow gain an advantage over them. That’s all these troglodytes know about Sharia and that’s all they need to know. Deep down, all bigotry is based on the irrational fear that someday, the bigot will be the victim of bigotry by somebody else, so it’s better to strike preemptively.
tkogrumpy
@General Stuck: I make it a point to befriend people with bad teeth.
tkogrumpy
@kdaug: Jeebus if I lived a few miles north I’d be in Canada, and I drink Texas Pete straight out of the bottle.