Can't believe no one has posted this up. Land of the free and democracy: we lose the vote so we'll close the country. I hear Miliband is considering adopting the same in his manifesto...
A brilliant advert for the democracy they are so keen to spread throughout the world. And for what? Because they believe so strongly that poor people shouldn't have medical care. Result.
I like the idea that all government workers are laid off, unpaid. Except for the poor needy politicians - greedy, self-serving bastards.
Got me out of a hole yesterday activating some stuff for the military that was delayed 'oh well it doesn't matter now' result
I dont really look at any news regarding America and Americans as it just seem to be themselves shooting each other or high fiving each other with far to much whooping and hollering over a burger. They seem to have a lot of twats in the US of A.
I've been there many times and have quite a few friends over there. The average joe is actually fine, its the whiney / obnoxious or plain insane who ruin the country. By default due the number of people there a lot of insane / greedy / unpleasant people exist there, and make their voices heard.
"America failed to shut down correctly - click here to restart in safe mode : with free healthcare and no guns ( recommended )"
The problem with America at the moment, and since the last election, is that the "WASP" republicans refuse to accept the fact that they lost the election and that they are no longer in the majority. They think that they have a god-given right (litterally) to run the country and resent the fact that some young upstart with moderate, sensible ideas wants to limit their insanity. "What? Let poor people use hospitals? Crazy idea... You'll be saying next that they want to stop us running riot in cinemas and schools with assault rifles..."
Political discourse often includes an element of brinkmanship. Some small group or faction is out of government, but has just enough power that they can threaten to push the whole system off a cliff if they don't get their way on some pet issue. It's a common negotiating tactic. Nearly always they pull back from the brink, because they realise that if that actually carry out the threat everybody will realise they are irresponsible lunatics and will not vote for them next time. This week in America, exceptionally, the lunatics (in this case the Tea Party faction of the Republicans in the House of Representatives) really have pushed the system off the cliff. It remains to be seen how much damage the faction has done to themselves in the process. There seems to be constituency of voters in a few parts of USA who actually want to vote for irresponsible lunatics.
There are a good number of people who vote for the "irresponsible lunatics" - or at least have been in the past. Let's face it, they voted George W in twice (allegedly ). The question now has to be how much of the blame will the nutcases be able to shift onto the democratically elected government... And vice-versa...
I suspect the average Joe of being very brainwashed. When I was in Florida last year, I went down to the bar and had a drink or two with some guys who were installing a new wifi system in the hotel. They were a great laugh and were genuinely friendly and we had a happy time. However, they loathed Obama, and seemed very keen on guns and hunting and killing things in their spare time. I think they were just very typical average Americans. Nice people but with very screwy values. They didn't know anything about the world outside the US of A.
Glid - you will probably have noticed, as I have when visiting America, that they never see anything that is not American. Their television news is always like this : local news, state news, national news followed by the tiniest bit of news about things outside America that have a direct connection to America. As you have said, the average American is friendly and welcoming. But they have very strange ideas, largely because they honestly don't know any better and have nothing to compare themselves with. When I was in Florida a few years ago there was a fuss because the state was introducing a law that would make it illegal for any school to teach that anything from outside America was better than its American counterpart. When the guy that was proposing this was asked if he had ever been outside America he replied that he didn't have to leave America to know that America was the best at everything. That is the kind of mindset that a lot of Americans have. They believe their own movies - as far as they are concerned they have won every war in history single-handed, they invented every useful thing in the history of science and technology, and they are ALWAYS the good guys... And the general population believe that because they are never allowed to see or hear any different. So yes, they have been brainwashed...
El T - Simple to explain. Same answer as any similar question put to any government department - "that comes out of a different budget..."
