Explain to me why "America is going downhill"...

Every single day at work, I can't help but pass by a large number of people with derogatory bumper stickers on their cars for everything Obama-related or Democratic. "One Big Ass Mistake America", an LOL with the Obama O in the middle, even one with the Obama O rolling down a slope and "America Is Going Downhill", and much much more. It's been like that since about a month or so before the US presidential election, and it's been getting worse now that Obama has actually won and the Romney stickers are being replaced.

Now, I've never been too much into politics. I only know the bare minimum and am usually only alerted to something that directly affects me or things I'm interested in, and I will admit to being one of the many Americans who voted for Obama simply because he was by far more promising of the two candidates to try to improve LGBT rights (as it sounded like gays would have been screwed had Mitt Romney come in). So, I don't really understand why it is that every single Republican is making it sound like the end of the world for us.

I know that the past four years have been rough ones for people. I myself likely didn't feel the worst of it, having relied on my parents for support and not even been able to find a job. But from what I've always understood, the whole financial crisis came as a result of a number of unavoidable things that happened before Obama even came into play, and that almost everything that Obama tries to do to help things get better gets overridden in Congress. Maybe I'm hearing things incorrectly or misinterpreting the situations, but almost every single thing they do in Washington makes it sound like it's all just some giant game for them to play, Conservative Republicans vs. Liberal Democrats, rather than actually caring about the country's direction.

So, I guess I just want to know WHY everyone seems so against Obama rather than trying to help move the country forward, if he's actually doing a crappy job as a president or if everyone's just looking for a scapegoat. Why exactly is the US "going downhill" just because of who got elected president? Again, I don't understand too much of politics, but it just seems... well, much ado about nothing.



Note: This is not a thread to bash Americans or overly criticize random flaws that the US has. I'm sure most of us are already aware of them, and know that no country is perfect to say the least.

But from what I've always understood, the whole financial crisis came as a result of a number of unavoidable things that happened before Obama even came into play, and that almost everything that Obama tries to do to help things get better gets overridden in Congress. Maybe I'm hearing things incorrectly or misinterpreting the situations, but almost every single thing they do in Washington makes it sound like it's all just some giant game for them to play, Conservative Republicans vs. Liberal Democrats, rather than actually caring about the country's direction.

This is pretty much how I see it, and that's talking about the UK government, not just the US. More often than not, it doesn't seem like our politicians even know what the real world is like. It's all good for most of the high up ones who obviously don't have the same issues as most poor/working class folks. It's probably somewhat worse for us, seeing as 19 of our male Prime Ministers so far have all come out of Eton, an independent boarding school that they attend for 5 years from the age of 13 that costs £1600/$2500 to go to. So, from the outside, it looks like they get a pretty good, though cooped up, life compared to those who come from state school backgrounds. I had to put with distractions and people who could care little about education or anything else for that matter. It does leave you to wonder just what knowledge they draw their plans up against.

I do wonder where we get the notion of having a democracy comes from, though. Sure, we get to elect who is in government (we only get to vote the party too, no choice about the leading person in the UK), but that seems to be about it. After that, decisions about what bills/acts get passed seems entirely at the decision of some people behind locked doors. Here, we have the House of Lords and the US has Congress. Even if the President/Prime Minister has a good idea, if no one else likes it then that's the end of that. Surely, the people should be having some input on that too. There are common people who know more about the effects of a particular decision more than the politicians themselves seem to know or realise. And for some reason, they can end up making their vote based on personal reasons like "I just really hate that guy so I'll say no anyway". They don't seem to be making decisions based on the benefit to the country and the people who live there. It really does appear to be some kind of popularity contest/game most of the time.

But then, as you have noted, the common people do the same thing. "I don't like Obama/Cameron/*insert other leaders here*" so I will just disagree and bash everything they say or do. And then they don't really offer other ideas. They don't know themselves, they just don't like something and have to complain.

It's funny that we compare this to games. If you look at forums for specific game titles, especially ones with multi-player features like MMOs, you find that people who complain just don't like change or they hate a certain idea so much (even without knowing the effects) for whatever reason and feel that everyone else should think the same. And they can't even offer suggestions/alternatives because they don't really understand it anyway.

In the UK, we currently have two parties running government because no particular party won the election. So the party with the most votes (which to me says you win anyway, but not in our system) got to pick which other party it wanted to make the numbers up with. In this case, we ended up with the right-wing Conservatives (majority) and the slightly centre-left Liberal Democrats. But the number of Liberal ministers is so small in comparison, that much of what they might agree with or disagree with seems to matter little. I assume this would be the same in the US if there's more Republicans than Democrats in Congress to stand against the President. With that kind of thing happening, it's no wonder that the actual leaders end up looking like the bad guy in everything.

I don't think it's the fault of one person. I'd agree with that if we were in a dictatorship, but we aren't. We are in some form of democracy where there is more than one person who is deciding things. The leaders seem to me to be more of a voice than an actual decider of fate.

It's all stupid to me. Why don't we look at the situation and all come together to find something that will actually work. Rather than taking sides, or who is going to win. Put your difference aside, and starting thinking about the future and how to stop us all from going downhill. It's not just one person's fault, but everyone's.

I really don't know much about politics, and I really don't want to either. But to me, the answers seem far more simpler than they're made out to be.

In a strange twist of events suddenly all the Republications and Democrats suddenly agree.
The journalist populace are outraged, the Republications are not giving anything other than basically "The democrats are doing well" in interviews and Democrats praising Republications for their ideas and cooperation.


As if that's ever gonna happen.
Republications (opposition) are going to repeat badmouthing the current president and his party hoping eventually people will start believing in it, or at least be affected enough to through a vote their way in the next election.

Silly, unethical, but who knows... it might work.

*hugs*

First of all, bipartisanship is stupid. Secondly, a vast amount of people don't even know what they're talking about. They just spout "OBAMACARE" (as if that is somehow a derogatory term) without even knowing what the health care reform actually means. Repeat ad nauseum about every other facet of anything to do with politics, and there you go. People are idiots. There is no explanation other than that.

My girlfriend works at a health insurance provider for military veterans, and commonly has to explain to them why the changes in health care aren't affecting them as negatively as they just assume they are. The general populace is just uneducated on anything political and only base their opinions on what they hear from family, friends, on CNN, or worse, Fox News.

EDIT: I should probably also add that I don't think Obama is the best president ever or anything, but I also don't think he's horrendous and he's certainly a step up from Bush and most definitely Romney, and I am not a democrat or a republican.

Let me preface this by saying I identify myself as a libertarian and that I didn't vote for or support Romney or Obama. I don't believe in voting for the lesser of two evils because you're still essentially voting for evil, and that's not going to fix anything. And if you asked me which one is less evil, I wouldn't have an answer since they're so similar. If you're an honest liberal or an honest conservative and actually look at the facts, you should be incredibly unhappy with both politicians and both parties.

Here are a few things Obama did:

- Signed a bill that allowed the indefinite military detention of US citizens without due process.
- Extended the highly invasive Patriot Act
- Significantly ramped up drone strikes, which have killed 2,562-3,325 people in just Pakistan, of whom 474-881 were civilians and 176 were children
- Assassinated three US citizens, one 16 years old, via drone strike without due process
- Spent and increased our deficit significantly more than George Bush, who was an outrageous spender himself.
- Is using a horrific shooting as an excuse to ban "assault weapons" which include semi-automatics. If he really wanted to lower the amount of unjust deaths, he would stop his drone strikes and "war on terrorism" and push to end the war on drugs.

Barack Obama is a very, very bad man. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I supported him.

Though I'm sure a lot of the people you see with anti-Obama bumper stickers probably support another tyrannical, corporatist, warmongering scumbag. That's a big problem with our political system; people have been convinced that there are two sides to everything and that the republican and democratic parties represent those opposing sides. They pick one party, see that as good and see the other as bad. Yet in actuality, they're both very similar.

While I'm not American and I don't wish to quote anything (Incase I'm wrong) I do think its safe to say that the general population is so anti-Obama purely because they don't know any better (as mentioned by a few people above)

It has nothing to do with things getting worse. It's just about information becoming more accessible by everyone. All presidents did bad things, the people just never heard about it. People just assume that stuff like this didn't go on before, but read some biographies of past presidents. There's some crazy shit that not a lot of people know. I try not to get too involved in this stuff because I'd rather worry about my own life than thinking that I have the answers to all of life's problems. Therefore, I do what I can for the "greater good" whenever I can, and forget the rest.

As a preword, I don't really look into what political spectrum I 'am', I just have ideologies. I believe in the signing of the Socratic social contract as a citizen, in that the U.S. has given me shelter and I feel the need to support the country no matter who holds office, unless they're truly corrupt and are intent on literally killing people. I wouldn't follow Hitler, and I really don't support Bush or Obama, especially in the war aspect, but I hold on and support the country so we can carry on.

Also i'm sorry, I write a little sensationally. I can't help it, i've written for newspapers before.

Commander in Chief, President Barack Obama surfed into office at the greatest time possible. Well, as we and he all thought was the greatest time possible. Bush, being one of our lowest approved Presidents of all time, exited the White House as quietly as possible. During this time, he left behind the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. These two acts, which came into law very, very quickly, changed the Internal Revenue Code, as run by the ever loved Internal Revenue Service, into reducing taxes for all earner-classes of citizens, bourgeoisie or proletariat, Oprah's free-cars-for-everyone style.

This basically hurt the upper class, especially the top 10% of earners. (Please don't fall into the 'oh my god 1% shit' trap, this is true.) The literal top 1% of earners weren't hurt very much by the tax cuts, but the middle class, usually comprised of Democratic voters and non-voters, felt this relief because it meant that they could bring home more money to survive off of. "Who doesn't like to get more money back each paycheck?" Fat King Bush thought, as he watched the country unsettle itself. Most people forget, however, that the government is tax-driven. The state (most states) are tax driven. Without the Gov't collecting these hard, heavy taxes, the spending gap between money earned by the Gov't and money spent in their day-to-day affairs grows wider. Most people see the deficit as why America is 'going downhill.' Along with our very expensive war in countries that don't need invading, this creates economic downturn. Bush, and his administration, still believed the fairy tale of the trickle down theory, in which giving the rich money means they will create new work. Everyone has more money but the government has less and less, and begin cutting things in an effort to save money. Which unemployed people, who are now unhappy that they aren't getting their bigger paycheck, which hurts the country as they basically stop paying income tax until new work is found. With that work closed off, they go search for other work, which isn't being created by the highly upper class.

Of course, however, these tax laws expire. Eventually.

Except Obama, as of Jan 1st, reinstated them for the first $250,000 USD earned by each household.

On the day they expired.

It baffles me how so many people have not heard of this. Don't believe me? It sounds a little Republican "eye hate that damn monkey fer stealin' mah jobs n money". But, here it is right from the mouth of the political machine. Congress did not present a bill to reinstate them, shockingly, and Obama drew this up. The part in question starts on page 6 and ends on 15.

But that's a little recent. Let's take a step back and answer the actual question. I just got caught up on the Bush Tax Cuts in the explanation set up.

So Barack Obama is elected into the office on the process of Hope and Change and college student and african-american votes. From this, he is well aware that the Bush Tax Cuts will end. From this, as well as promising to end the war in Afghanistan (which he did for the most part), Obama is pretty well off in office. Granted, many people will just hate him because he is A) Black, B) A Democrat, C) "A Muslim", or D) They just don't know what the fuck is actually going on in politics in this day and age. This describes your typical right-wing, uninformed mass. President Obama created the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, a little before having served a year of holding office. In layman's terms, this changes the tax cuts around a little. The middle class, especially those with households or unmarried women, get a much bigger tax break, and it tightens the cuts around the upper class, from I believe 25% of earners and up. Which is good. People who can't pay great taxes and still have enough to keep surviving to actually pay taxes are allowed breathing room. I myself have even benefited from it when I achieved a full time job.

President Obama passed this on the grounds that he couldn't just have Congress just end the bush tax cuts. People would snap, the rich would snap for having to pay taxes, it just couldn't be approved. Something had to be done, and this act overrules part of the Bush-era tax cuts acts. This actually won some lower-middle class Republican views in favor of our Commander in Chief.

But this in itself didn't lower the deficit. Which, logically, of course it didn't. It just adjusted the scales, very carefully, to where the Gov't would only be getting a LITTLE bit more money from taxes. Most Americans see the deficit as god-send evil and must be destroyed by voting out this party and voting in the alternative until the alternative party 'screws it up' and votes in the alternative. The Government spends money. It literally cannot help it any longer, (without the use of great, house-congress-president approved law,) with the massive bureaucratic divisions it has split into. And, by earning less money because the Congress won't just throw out the Bush tax cuts, the deficit continues. The war has quieted greatly, but the after effects of spending still keep rolling on.

People typically blame Obama for this, which I think is just generally dumb. The President of the United States of America is always, always someone who is feeling the burn of their predecessor and expected to carry the weight of what they have done and make things better. When this doesn't happen, which it won't until we as Americans learn to start choosing the Congress and House carefully, we hate the President. To the American who just doesn't get that it's more than their fault, they are evil and must be shot. Yes, I blame Bush and everyone around him for starting a war that didn't need to be started and searching for WMD's when there weren't any, but what's done is done. The Clinton era prosperity would have actually continued if the war hadn't been started. Life under Bush's rule was actually passable before the war. However, this won't change anything anyway. The country is growing. Our population is still skyrocketing. The Government can't help but spend to fix these things, and these new people won't be paying taxes for a while.

tl;dr: The Congress is typically at fault, as well as ourselves for not choosing them better. The country will always be spending money, and a lot of it is actually Bush's overflow onto Obama. Yes, he could be doing more, but such radical changes will be stopped unless the House of Representatives changes from Republican to Democrat favor.

It has nothing to do with things getting worse. It's just about information becoming more accessible by everyone. All presidents did bad things, the people just never heard about it. People just assume that stuff like this didn't go on before, but read some biographies of past presidents. There's some crazy shit that not a lot of people know. I try not to get too involved in this stuff because I'd rather worry about my own life than thinking that I have the answers to all of life's problems. Therefore, I do what I can for the "greater good" whenever I can, and forget the rest.

It's irrelevant whether or not all presidents did bad things. That doesn't make those things not bad, and that doesn't mean that it's okay for future presidents to do more bad things. That also doesn't mean that certain things and presidents aren't worse than others. For example, I dare you to find anything Grover Cleveland did that compares to Lincoln suspending habeas corpus, or Barack Obama essentially doing the same thing a year ago with NDAA 2012.

Things could be much better than they are now.

But this in itself didn't lower the deficit. Which, logically, of course it didn't. It just adjusted the scales, very carefully, to where the Gov't would only be getting a LITTLE bit more money from taxes. Most Americans see the deficit as god-send evil and must be destroyed by voting out this party and voting in the alternative until the alternative party 'screws it up' and votes in the alternative. The Government spends money. It literally cannot help it any longer, (without the use of great, house-congress-president approved law,) with the massive bureaucratic divisions it has split into. And, by earning less money because the Congress won't just throw out the Bush tax cuts, the deficit continues. The war has quieted greatly, but the after effects of spending still keep rolling on.

People typically blame Obama for this, which I think is just generally dumb. The President of the United States of America is always, always someone who is feeling the burn of their predecessor and expected to carry the weight of what they have done and make things better. When this doesn't happen, which it won't until we as Americans learn to start choosing the Congress and House carefully, we hate the President. To the American who just doesn't get that it's more than their fault, they are evil and must be shot. Yes, I blame Bush and everyone around him for starting a war that didn't need to be started and searching for WMD's when there weren't any, but what's done is done. The Clinton era prosperity would have actually continued if the war hadn't been started. Life under Bush's rule was actually passable before the war. However, this won't change anything anyway. The country is growing. Our population is still skyrocketing. The Government can't help but spend to fix these things, and these new people won't be paying taxes for a while.

I think giving the president a lot of the blame for large increases in deficit spending is entirely justified. He signs many laws, a lot of which are undeniably unnecessary. He also commands the military and blows people up, which costs a lot of money. As for all the things the president can't directly do himself, he has more power than anyone over controlling what issues are considered important. The president talks about something, he "urges congress" to take action, it engulfs the press until you're sick of it, the public won't stop talking about it and a lot of the time, something comes of it and we get some shitty new law. I'm sure that power can be used for good if the president's willing.

I don't think you know how the bill through house -> senate -> president thing works, nor the military.

I don't think you know how the bill through house -> senate -> president thing works, nor the military.

How do you figure?

Its relevant to this thread because its not called, "why does America suck", but "why is America going downhill." And now im not posting here anymore because that's about how much of my time I really feel like spending on this.

Its relevant to this thread because its not called, "why does America suck", but "why is America going downhill." And now im not posting here anymore because that's about how much of my time I really feel like spending on this.

If every president were equally as bad as every other, then you'd have a valid point.

I know it's reddit, and fully aware of how sensationalist it all is, and I should form my own opinions whenever possible, but what I've been reading on Reddit lately has me thinking that America really is going downhill. I read a story the other day about the DEA entrapping an autistic kid for a drug bust, the undercover cop harassing him for weed (not realizing he was autistic) until he finally got some (probably for the first time) and gave it to the undercover cop. The DEA then arrested him, and interrogated him for three days, without even telling his parents. And now the school's going to expel him, even though it was 100% entrapment and he wasn't even CLOSE to being one of the real targets of the investigation. Reading the part where the parents said they were really excited for their son, because it's really hard for him to make friends, and that this new friend of his (that ended up being an undercover cop) was the only friend he'd made in a very long time really threw it over the edge.

Then there's the story about that one cop writing a manifesto and going rouge, because he saw other cops breaking the law, reported it, and got fired for it. And how now that cop is on the run, and his own police force is looking for him, and that police force shot two asian ladies during the search because the car was similar (but not an exact match) to the rouge cop they were looking for. Yeah, the cops just shot two innocent people. Their punishment? Paid leave. This one's tricky, though, because yes, I know the rogue cop killed a few cops he thought were crooked. Maybe they were. Who can say. What appalls me the most is the innocent, completely unrelated people getting injured because they were driving a car that was "kind of like the rouge cop's car."

Then there's all this crap I read about the wealthy being in power and fucking over us middle class and poor people. That's pretty standard fare these days.


I know it's reddit, and fully aware of how sensationalist it all is, and I should form my own opinions whenever possible, but there's still some truth to each of these stories and I've seen enough of them in the last couple months that I'm really starting to see why this country is in the shitter, and it's not so simple as OBAMAS GONNA TAKE OUR GUNS AWAY. But people that actually think that are definitely part of the problem, too. In fact, I dare to say they're the biggest part; the people in this country are fucking stupid. They don't think for themselves unless they're thinking about themselves, they're lazy, they're liars and cheaters, and they're greedy.

Also, Fox news fuels our country with hate. So there's that, too.


If I could leave, I would. I realize every country has it's problems, but I know for a fact that there are plenty of countries far more forward-thinking than my own, right now.

/incredibly dis-jointed rant I wrote while I was half-asleep

And now's there's all this speaker of the house business, bringing the country damn near an economic disaster because he and his republicans wouldn't negotiate with the president at the fiscal cliff, and then he turns around and blames the president for the only choice he and the republicans would agree to. Basically, he brought it all upon himself, but now he's trying to set the narrative so they can shift the blame off of them at the next election, instead of doing what they're supposed to be doing; helping this country.

And he's doing it over Twitter. You know, so the stupid masses will see it, and not question whether or not it's true.

Oh, hey, this just in: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-torrance-shooting-20130210,0,3955268.story

Remember those two innocent Asian women that the police shot while looking for that rogue cop? Well, it just happened again. They flagged an innocent guy down, and questioned him, and then let him go. And then a few seconds later a police car rammed his vehicle off the road and opened fire on him. Again, the vehicle was similar, but was a different make and model, and the innocent is about 100 pounds lighter than the rogue cop. Also, the rogue cop is black, and the victim was white.

They must really want to silence this ex-cop. I wonder why?

And now's there's all this speaker of the house business, bringing the country damn near an economic disaster because he and his republicans wouldn't negotiate with the president at the fiscal cliff, and then he turns around and blames the president for the only choice he and the republicans would agree to. Basically, he brought it all upon himself, but now he's trying to set the narrative so they can shift the blame off of them at the next election, instead of doing what they're supposed to be doing; helping this country.

And he's doing it over Twitter. You know, so the stupid masses will see it, and not question whether or not it's true.

Now see, that is EXACTLY what bothers me. Keeping in mind that I'm grossly uninformed, it feels like the Republicans in Congress are all "SCREW YOU OBAMA WE SHOULD HAVE HAD A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT" and pretty much argue over anything and everything that the president says or wants to do, no matter how important it is for us. It feels more like they're being petty and catering more to the party than the country, when it would be a lot better for all of us if they simply, honestly worked things through with each other without worrying about whose party looks better by it.

I would like to say that we've always had crooked cops in the system. Some just aren't caught in the act. If anything, I think it indicates that we're finally exposing more of these assholes to the public.

@arlen - Well, he is a cop killer. Their aggressiveness could be explained by wanting to silence him, but it could be explained equally well by the fact that he murdered their friends and is threatening their lives and the lives of their families.

I don't think you should jump to conclusions here. If what the man is saying is true, then he could've gone to the media before going on a rampage. He's not just targetting cops, he's targetting their families (Manhunt Manifesto at page 8 ). He murdered Monica Quan and her fiancé solely because Monica is the daughter of the person who represented him at his board hearing. Maybe he was unfairly treated, but there is no way to rationally get from "A treated me unfairly" to "I'm going to threaten, stalk and kill A's children." He is driven more by vengeance than justice, and that makes me skeptical about his other claims as well.  That's not even getting into his rants on "high-profile targets" at page 7, which seems divided by race and sexual orientation.

More generally, I think it is easy to derive a false picture of how bad life in the USA is from the media. Because of what is considered news and what isn't, you'll hear about almost anything bad that happens anywhere in the entire country. You won't hear about the church soup kitchens which feed thousands of people in need and the volunteers and donors who make that happen every day; you won't hear about the woman who goes home to her husband and kids and has a perfect and comfortable evening; you won't hear about the newly married couple that has finally saved enough money to buy their first home; you won't hear about the surgeon who saves someone's life; you won't hear about a child's joy when going to Disneyland for the first time; you won't hear about a woman getting a well-deserved promotion; you won't hear about a couple who just finds out they're pregnant after months of trying. The media does not cover those things because they're so common in the USA that they're not news, and that is actually a pretty awesome thing when you think about it. There are billions of people in other countries that couldn't say the same.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't care about the bad things that happen, but I think it needs to be put in perspective. As you noted, no country is perfect. No country has eliminated racism. No country has eliminated poverty. No country has eliminated sexual abuse. No country has a perfectly disciplined police force. I live in Canada, and those are all problems that exist here too.



As for the politics stuff, I have to admit I don't know very much about your political system. To play devil's advocate however, try to reverse the roles. Imagine that the Republicans had on their agenda something which you thought was socially reprehensible, and the Democrats promised to thwart that. You vote Democrat for that reason, but the Republicans still win the election. If the Democrats were able to use the fiscal cliff as leverage to get the Republicans to back down on the bill you thought was reprehensible, would you be as opposed to the gamesmanship then?

If yes, why do you not want your Democrat representatives in government to use whatever power they have to fulfill the promise for which you elected them?

I know all about the complications of the ex-cop story, and if I made it sound like I was taking a side, I apologize. There really is no side to take; both the ex-cop and the police force searching for him are, in my opinion, handling the situation in an extremely poor and dangerous manner. And I also believe there's a lot more to the story that we're not hearing about, which is also an issue. Not that I expect them to just disclose everything to us, but ... the point I was trying to make is that it's just a goddamn mess, and there's a lot of goddamn messes in this country right now. (Acolyte, I hadn't thought about it that way, so I guess that's one positive note we can take away from it all.)

MA, You make some good points about the stories in the media we don't hear about, but just because good things ARE happening doesn't make the bad things go away, and just because good things do happen doesn't mean we should just turn a blind eye to what's bad.

However, I really don't agree with this at all:

The media does not cover those things because they're so common in the USA that they're not news, and that is actually a pretty awesome thing when you think about it. There are billions of people in other countries that couldn't say the same.

The reason news programs don't cover these stories isn't because they're commonplace, it's because news programs are out to make money (which is in itself a huge problem), and shocking, violent, reprehensible stories bring in more ratings.

As for your devil's advocate scenario, if it were reversed, I'd still be just as upset. The extremism in our political system is what's holding our country back, and that extremism can come from either side, republican or democrat. Compromise could do a lot for our political system, and it's apparent that very few of our politicians are willing to compromise at all, because they think it makes their party look weak, and that's bad for the next election.

@arlen: don't trust the police and or government? watch this:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=250_1273098290

also have the sound on

Well basically, the rocky mountains are located just about in the centre of the USA. Given that most traffic heads towards either coast, airports in general being closer to the centre than they are to the actual coastline, if we look on a cutaway map we generally find the shape fits a bell curve. This curve, if we map the directional flow of the most traffic (also the location of train lines and such) generally gives us an America which, mostly speaking, is going in a direction which could be called downhill (technically speaking more downmountain).

If we follow the course of the rivers, (because they're rivers), we find that communities are larger where there is more water, pushing people over the years further along the rivers until they reach the deltas, such as Mississippi - New Orleans. Generally over time therefore, as America expanded, it has moved downhill.

In conclusion, America is going downhill.

First off I would like to say sorry for necroposting. I believe this is an important topic, and I would like to express my own opinion.

Now before I begin, I would like to say that I believe the whole government, Democrat or Republican, are all corrupt. Heck, I put Howard Stern as my vote for president when I voted.

I believe that Obama, like several other presidents, is having a "power freak" moment. Surveillance has been jacked up to an all-time high. Anyone who hates the government or anyone working for the government is automatically a suspect.

And also, I do not like Obama. I believe he got into presidency, by the look of my birth state (Tennessee) out of the stupidity of some people. Not saying everybody who voted for him is an idiot, but over half of my state voted for him because he is an African American, and they didn't want to be considered racist.

Finally, giving any president the right to control drones to view on US citizens is like giving Charles Manson another go outside of prison.

In conclusion, if America wants to be a democracy, let's be a bloody democracy. Not a dictatorship or communist country, a democracy.

Thank you.

America has sucked since "Reagan" Was out of office. The Politicians then played a slow but successful turn to Socialism and they are winning as we speak. so To put it simple whether to bash America or not, America Sucks!