Real Americans To Celebrate 4th. Unemployed, Not So Much

1. 
   DarwinCatholic permalink

   July 2, 2010 11:18 am

   For the little that a reach across the aisle is worth: I think it’s pretty unconscionable to be refusing to extend unemployment benefits in this environment. If there’s one area of spending we should all be able to agree on its in keeping jobless benefits in force.

   I think there’s a certain amount of blame to go around, as both parties are playing games about where the money should come from and whether to bundle other funding in with it, but they need to damn well stop fooling around and extend unemployment benefits before people see checks stop coming.
2. 
   Rodak permalink

   July 2, 2010 1:20 pm

   Amen to that.
3. 
   Mark Gordon permalink*

   July 2, 2010 3:26 pm

   We could fund unemployment benefits nearly indefinitely with modest reductions in the defense budget. Personally, I would like to see funding for both Iraq and Afghanistan immediately shut off – except for the costs of bringing the troops home – and all of that money redirected to the unemployed. But the Republicans are willing to see families starve so long as they can make their point, while the Democrats are unwilling to make the necessary hard choices on spending. And so it goes.
4. 
   samrocha permalink*

   July 2, 2010 4:29 pm

   Pretty soon they’ll start privatizing fireworks.
5. 
   Frank permalink

   July 3, 2010 9:40 am

   Paul Ryan has a closed GM plant in his district.

   And yet, according to the polls, the chickens will be flocking to the polls to vote for Colonel Sanders come November.
6. 
   digbydolben permalink

   July 3, 2010 12:48 pm

   Let ‘em “flock”; America will not learn its lesson until a truly fascist politician like Palin is actually in the White House. Bush made Obama possible by lying to start a war and by torturing prisoners of war–as well as by incompetence in the face of natural disasters. Obama is making Palin possible by not taming financial institutions, by not “stimulating” employment and by extending a losing, trillion-dollar war (as well as by demonstrating weakness in coping with a man-made disaster).

   Palin will “privatize” everything in America, will refuse to tax for anything but the military-industial complex, and will guarantee Zionist hegemony in the Middle East.

   One thing Ron Paul says is absolutely right: the sanctions against Iran passed the other day put us on a fast track to war.

   America–the most widely hated country on earth–so hated, in fact, that American travelers and expatriates are being harassed and hassled everywhere. (But don’t tell it to the seventy percent or so who don’t even possess passports and think that “main stream media” is covering “the world.”)
7. 
   Rodak permalink

   July 3, 2010 5:25 pm

   Americans truly believe America to be universally loved, respected, and looked up to as an exemplar for the rest of humanity–which remainder is seen by Americans as inferior and “backward.” This would be hilarious, were it not so dangerous.
   I personally encountered plenty of anti-American sentiment in Europe, Israel (yes, Israel!) and the UK in the late 1970s. And we weren’t even at war then.
   Americans are the “country mice” of the world, and haven’t a clue. But then, we Americans tend to believe Ronald Reagan to have been a great man, so what can be expected of us?
8. 
   dan permalink

   July 3, 2010 6:22 pm

   “America–the most widely hated country on earth–so hated, in fact, that American travelers and expatriates are being harassed and hassled everywhere.”

   Huh? Haven’t and don’t experience this at all in my travels, and the Americans I know living overseas seem to be having a pleasant time. Also,living in a predominately immigrant community in the Bay Area, CA I find it hard to believe America is the “most widely hated country on earth.”

   Yes there are serious issues and problems–when on God’s green earth haven’t we humans struggled, even failed–, yet I do not believe projecting simplistic, blanket condemnations will bring about fruitful changes.
9. 
   digbydolben permalink

   July 3, 2010 8:33 pm

   Dan, you obviously only travel to places like Britain or Israel, or–in Europe–only to tourist sites with five-star hotels. Try living in India or the “real” Middle East, or Africa, or South America (in other words, where most of the world’s population live).
10. 
    digbydolben permalink

    July 3, 2010 8:37 pm

    And, Rodak, you’re absolutely right about Israelis: during the time I last lived in India, I met young Israeli “warriors” (veterans of the suppression of the Intifada), who ragged on me for being a citizen of the country that was “betraying Israel” by forcing the “road map” of the Oslo Accords on her.
11. 
    Frank M. permalink

    July 3, 2010 9:28 pm

    It is not a contradiction for America to be both the world’s “most widely hated” and also the most respected and envied country. When we conflate “respected” with “feared” we hold that status with a comfortable margin.

    Like Dan, I live in the Bay Area, but I would generally agree with both assertions: People in many countries despise us for our confused foreign policies and militaristic ways, and can’t understand how we could be so stupid to elect GWB twice. At the same time, some of those same people would much rather live here than wherever they are.

    N.B.: Per The Economist’s Index of Democracy, the US comes in 18th out of 167 countries.
12. 
    dan permalink

    July 4, 2010 10:26 am

    “Dan, you obviously only travel to places like Britain or Israel, or–in Europe–only to tourist sites with five-star hotels”

    Huh? Never been to Israel, been to Europe a few times in that past eight years, but the rest of the two months per year I spend overseas is else where.

    I thought comments to Vox Nova were screened?
    Clearly ‘diggby’ doesnot know me from a whole, yet snide falsehoods are considered and allowed for serious discussion? It is dishonest, unchartiable, and, frankly, dehumanizing (“Don’t take ‘Dan’ seriously, he travels to Israel and stays in 5-star hotels. He should shut up and go away”).

    Are we to have an open discussion or is bearing false witness deemed acceptable because is satisfies a particular?

    Pardon me, but I expected more here Vox Nova, but…elsewhere calls. Peace.
13. 
    Rodak permalink

    July 4, 2010 11:46 am

    Let’s all chip in and buy “Dan” a dictionary!
14. 
    Arturo Vasquez permalink

    July 5, 2010 7:08 am

    I was in Argentina during 9/11. While people sympathized with my plight as being from a country that had been attacked so brutally, I felt there were some who were holding back saying: “Well, they deserved it.” This was confirmed when I saw “Viva Bin Laden!” graffiti in a city in the interior. Obviously, no one thought it in poor enough taste to cover it up.

    I think people like individual Americans more than they like America itself. America is an empire, and like all empires, most people cannot ignore its hegemonic discourse. However, to mistake others’ penchant for American movies for respect would be erroneous. In Latin America especially, if people want to live here, it is because they see that the United States has so helped to muck up their own country that they feel they have no other choice.
15. 
    digbydolben permalink

    July 5, 2010 8:44 am

    Also, as far as Israeli and American exceptionalism are concerned, it is time to call “a spade a spade”; both have their roots in Protestant heresy:

    http://publius-aelius.livejournal.com/664845.html
16. 
    Rodak permalink

    July 5, 2010 2:54 pm

    What a stupid, twisted, bigoted crock of horseshit that is. Amazing!
17. 
    David Raber permalink

    July 5, 2010 10:25 pm

    America may be hated all over the world, but still the world is rushing headlong to transform itself into the image of the United States of America. While many in the world, both “the people” and their leaders, oppose American militarism and other aspects of an aggressive foreign policy, very few oppose the rushing tide of “capitalism” and the culture of consumerism that goes with it.

    Al Quaida and their fellow-travellers stand in opposition, but with a worldview and a world vision even more vile than that of their enemy.

    The Gospel of Jesus Christ stands in opposition, and the Catholic Church voices that opposition and to a degree acts upon it, consistently and persistently, albeit rather weakly, in my opinion.

    Because of the weakness of this witness, and the hodge-podge of other “Christian” voices out there, few see that the Gospel of Christ is the only great force in the world today offering a coherent, viable alternative to rampant “capitalism,” now that the Cold War has been lost and won.

    It is up to the followers of Christ–Catholics and others too–to speak and act in such a way as to make the alternatives clear; but things will not be made clear just by blogging and opposing abortion and speaking and acting within the current politcal system. (I was about to say that going to Mass every Sunday would not be enough, but if all we Catholics did that, it would be enough!–to get things going and keep them going in a big way.)

    We need to show the world how Christians should and can love one another; we need to show how it is possible to live together like Christians. We need large-scale demonstration projects, something like the Catholic Worker movement on steroids.

    But who wants to put in peril their two or three vehicles and their paycheck and their kids’ college education just to show what it means to live on this earth like a Christian?

    St. Francis, pray for us!
18. 
    digbydolben permalink

    July 6, 2010 8:58 am

    who wants to put in peril their two or three vehicles and their paycheck and their kids’ college education just to show what it means to live on this earth like a Christian?

    Perhaps you’ve just touched on the heart of the problem: is true Christianity practicable, without a return to the monastic principle of communalism?

    Is it possible that the over-valorization of “family” and “family values” isn’t at the heart of the conflict between Christ and “the world”?

    The Church has been so busy idolizing “family values” and “traditional sexual morality” in the last century or two that perhaps she has forgotten that CHRIST prioritized “eunuch-hood” for the “kingdom’s” sake (which certainly isn’t “traditional sexual morality”). Is it not possible that, in putting one’s family’s interests (i.e. tribalism) over one’s brothers’ very survival, one encounters the essential stumbling block to the message of the Gospels?
19. 
    Rodak permalink

    July 6, 2010 9:44 am

    Jesus always puts the emphasis on the individual and the state of the individual’s soul.
20. 
    David Raber permalink

    July 6, 2010 12:02 pm

    digby,

    I agree with your questioning of “family values.” Love of family is an improvement over selfishness, but our Lord asks us to love our neighbors (very broadly understood) and even our enemies!

    Is Christianity practicable? It sure doesn’t seem like it, to the eye of “common sense,” and yet someone like Martin Luther King made it work powerfully in the arena of political activism; not that it worker all that well for him personally–or for his family, for that matter.

    Jesus’ career didn’t work out all that well for him either, in strictly human/earthly terms; taking up the devil’s offer after His forty days in the desert–now that would have been the smart career move.
21. 
    Pinky permalink

    July 6, 2010 4:11 pm

    America isn’t hated all over the world. Such thinking indicates that the writer hasn’t travelled much outside Western Europe, and believes what their press reports. America is popular in Africa, Indonesia, the Phillipines, pretty much anywhere that’s had to fight extreme Islam. We’re popular in Eastern Europe, and among the reformers in Muslim countries. We’re popular among the poorer people of South America and India – the rich view us as competition, but the poor see us as something to aspire to, and maybe even move to. (I should have counted India and Pakistan among those who fight extreme Islam.) As for the former British Empire, they make fun of us but admire us.
22. 
    digbydolben permalink

    July 6, 2010 5:07 pm

    Pinky doesn’t know what s/he is talking about; I have lived as an expatriate outside of the United States for a third of my life–and in some of the countries s/he mentions, and I have encountered fierce anti-American sentiment among all levels of all the societies s/he mentions. (I have lived in continental Europe, Britain, and the Indian sub-continent and in Sri Lanka, and have traveled in ALL the countries Pinky mentions.)
23. 
    Rodak permalink

    July 6, 2010 5:24 pm

    There is none so blind as he who will not see.
24. 
    Pinky permalink

    July 7, 2010 11:31 am

    Digby – Check out the Pew Global Attitudes Project. I think it will surprise you. (BTW, I was totally wrong on Pakistan, according to their results.)
25. 
    digbydolben permalink

    July 7, 2010 1:25 pm

    Pinky, I just , and I’d like to suggest to you that, when you have 24-26% of various countries’ populations reporting a NEGATIVE opinion of a country, that country has a problem with world public opinion.

    For example, what percent of America’s population would report a NEGATIVE opinion of, say, Japan? Most folks in America would have no opinion whatsoever of Japan–but the Pew folks don’t record any “no opinions.” Don’t you think that looks suspicious?

    And don’t you think it’s also strange that very few countries in the Middle East are polled? Sorry, but I’ll take my own experience as being more reliable than the “Pew Global Attitudes Project.” I’ll bet it’s a tool of globalist “marketing.”
26. 
    digbydolben permalink

    July 7, 2010 1:26 pm

    The link, Pinky, which didn’t come through with my feeble attempt to hyperlink here:

    http://pewglobal.org/database/?indicator=1&survey=12&response=Unfavorable&mode=chart
27. 
    digbydolben permalink

    July 7, 2010 2:06 pm

    I trust these polling results more:

    http://www.eutimes.net/2010/04/huge-international-bbc-poll-has-israel-19-favorable-opinion-germany-most-beloved-country/

    …and I’d like to draw your attention to the effect the extreme bias in our foreign policy in favour of Israel is having on world public opinion of us.
28. 
    Pinky permalink

    July 7, 2010 2:10 pm

    Pinky, I just , and I’d like to suggest to you that, when you have 24-26% of various countries’ populations reporting a NEGATIVE opinion of a country, that country has a problem with world public opinion.

    I disagree. Most cultures are isolationist, and tend to have negative opinions of everyone else. I’d bet that few countries have positives as high as ours.

    For example, what percent of America’s population would report a NEGATIVE opinion of, say, Japan?

    Bombing Pearl Harbor, buying up our real estate, undercutting our auto companies and the UAW…I’d bet a lot of Americans have a negative opinion of Japan.

    Sorry, but I’ll take my own experience as being more reliable than the “Pew Global Attitudes Project.”

    I won’t. You indicate that the Pew results support your interpretation, but also that you reject them, so I sense some “spin”. You presented your opinion and said that I don’t know what I’m talking about, but my experience agrees with the Pew study (not the only study on the subject, either).
29. 
    digbydolben permalink

    July 7, 2010 3:35 pm

    my experience agrees with the Pew study

    …And mine don’t, so I guess we’ll leave it there–except for one thing: I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, in the middle of my expatriations (which started when I was a teenager), and the contacts I made then were with folks who’d be highly unlikely to be polled by Pew–villagers, poor students and teachers in polytechnics, etc. (in other words, the MAJORITY–the representative poor of South Asia) and THEY were fiercely anti-American.
30. 
    grega permalink

    July 8, 2010 11:09 am

    Digby – one would hope that you as a student of history would be able to better see through the various rather complex issues that might lead a person, a group of people or a Foreign Nation to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ a leading global player like the US. As Churchill coined it, Nations have ‘Interests’ not ‘Friends’.
    Thus why even bother dabbling in the teenage type terms of ‘like and dislike’.

    LOL it seems also rather obvious that you enjoy the position you carved out for yourself: as the ‘good’, ‘smart’ ‘insightful’ person from an otherwise terrible ignorant brutish dumb Nation.
    Come on you can do better.
    The broad brush you enjoy applying is just that – unspecific and broad. For every boneheaded American foreign policy endeavor if you really wish you could find a rather positive example/attempt to do right- including perhaps your peace corps experience.

    The world is colorful not black and white.
31. 
    David Raber permalink

    July 8, 2010 11:54 am

    grega,

    It’s too bad that in the world system of nation states, nations behave pretty much like teenage boys intoxicated with testosterone–and this is hardly hyperbole. Why do we remain in Afghanistan? Because if we left without being able to claim some sort of victory, the other lads on the playground would think we are chicken. So maybe in general it is not inappropriae to talk about nations and their peoples in terms of likes and dislikes and other emotional categories.

    Regarding Digby being a self-righteous know-it-all, isn’t that a requirement for writing on a blog? Or at any rate, anyone who disagrees with you (or me) in strong terms is bound to look that way. I say, attack the ideas, not the person.
32. 
    digbydolben permalink

    July 8, 2010 12:54 pm

    I’m sorry, Grega, but PEOPLE have “friends,” and, of late, my “friendships” with people outside of the United States have been adversely affected, to a severe degree, by what the United States has been doing, and, even more pointedly, by the sheer arrogance and blatant hypocrisy or disingenuousness of the rhetoric our leaders have been using to justify acts that almost the entire rest of the world recognise as being exploitive and imperialist.

    Believe it or not, I myself have tried to exculpate my fellow citizens in some of these discussions with foreigners; ten years ago I had some success; now I’m having virtually none.
33. 
    grega permalink

    July 8, 2010 2:21 pm

    Digby – I do not doubt that your relations with people outside the US have been affected the way you are more than ready to kick your own shin. However in my experience true friends are very capable to calmly discuss such issues. Sure in my view it was a terrible mistake to outsource the fight against Bin Laden in the early days of the war in Afghanistan. Sure I wished Obama would have not expanded the war in Afghanistan. Iraq was a terrible error – I have a lawn sign in my garage from back in 2003 to say so and yes we all ( even us enlightened good liberal guys :))are paying the price for it. Such is life – sometimes the guys you dislike and disagree with reign as terribly bad as you feared – sometimes your own guys disappoint. Overall I am solidly convinced that I live in a part of the world that has important core values very right.

    David – fair points – I did not meant to be as critical of Digby and Digby’s views as I actually end up writing it down in a hurry. And no I do not view Digby as a self righteous know it all. Certainly as a native German I have had my share of ‘explaining’ to do for past sins. Furthermore towards the point of discussion here, as a German/European living in the US I have had plenty of explaining to do during the Bush II years. As a huge Obama supporter I find myself at times pained to swallow the political reality. Overall I find the US is on the correct path – yes for sure just like Vietnam we will not leave Afghanistan until a certain amount of ‘dignity’ is ensured.
    I perhaps see America and Americans in rosier terms than I should -
    I certainly grew up marveling at the nation that got it right before, during and immediately after WWII.
    I live now here in the US and have had a very positive experience overall.

    I agree with you

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