Superpower?

[Mojorabbit]

Great rant on the huffington post

We are a country that can no longer pay our bills, no longer wage an effective military action, and no longer protect our citizens from disaster. And it doesn't matter what fiscal responsibility individuals show, what bravery individual soldiers show, or what generosity individual Americans show. As a nation-as a geopolitical entity-we have been stripped of all of our superpowers and many of our powers, and it has been done quickly and efficiently, in the name of blind patriotism, by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and their neocon advisors. The very powers that these people thought they were going to enjoy exercising have slipped out of their grasp. It's laughable now to remember the name of the campaign against Baghdad, "Shock and Awe". No one in Iraq feels any "shock and awe" toward the US presence there any longer. "Fear and Loathing" is more like it.

Whether or not the administration and the press know that the powers are gone doesn't matter. They are. And they aren't coming back, because the last twenty-five years of Republican free market political devolution have resulted in a completely different country from the one that in the course of the 20th century became a superpower. Bush and Cheney have provided the final, telling blows to American power, but actions of the corporatocracy laid the ground work. There is nothing left in the US of real substance. The only thing that remains is ego, bullying, and public relations. The question thoughtful Americans are going to have to answer eventually is one they should be thinking about
now-when our superpowers are gone, what are we and what do we want to be?

More
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/superpower_b_11048.html

[Erika]

1. I think W answered the question

We are now a third world country with a large military. Much like the Soviet Union before it fell. We have no money to help out our poor or the working class, but our tax $ flow freely to the military.

[dogfacedboy]

2. And don't forget all of that corporate WELFARE ! n/t

[Mojorabbit]

3. She was brutal in this paragraph

"It is obvious that George W. Bush is a small, shallow man, the son of a rather dumb and bumbling father and a blinkered, vindictive mother. That his nature and nurture have been visited upon the country as a bwhole is an interesting detail of our decline and fall. No doubt someone, maybe Rove or Haley Barbour or some other corporate kingmakers
that we haven't heard of, considered him attractive enough (remember when they tried to make use of Dan Quayle in a similar way) as a public relations front man. It is their problem that he can't be shown in public too often because his true character keeps peeking through. It is also their problem that he seems completely uninterested in his job. Lots of vacations and a very light daily regimen have not worked. Now what we saw intermittently during the election of 2004 is evident in every public appearance- Bush feels that the duties of a leader require too much effort. And Cheney, who spent the week of the New Orleans disaster closing a real estate deal, is just as bored. Those who are a little bit energized by getting and exercising power are too jaded to do any work. Where have we seen that before? "

[Erika]

4. W's true interest has always been the T-ball field

Most excited and passionate he's ever been. Of course, that is why we are going down the toilet.

[Mojorabbit]

5. Shameless kick cause it was such a good rant