Quote Originally Posted by mkemse View Post
Clevernick,

My view at this moment is that the USA was, as recently as 1979 or so, all that. It was free in every sense, politically aware, highly educated, dynamically inventive, morally lofty, and the best country to get rich in, get sick in, have children in, or protest political injustice in.

These things are no longer true, but there's practically an entire industry of spin doctors now devoted to convincing its citizens that they still are true, and that anyone from outside who says otherwise has an agenda.

I agree 1005 and I fully expect all or most of this to change in November of 2008 whgen we finaly get to elect a President who's intrest is that of the Citizens of our Country and not the Major Corporations in this country

Point in fact, in 2000 When Bill Clinton left office, our government had a $500 billion dollar surplus, we are now over 1 trillion in debt do to our wars we are in enchaged in, also when Clinton left office gas was 1>50 per gallon 8 years later we have gone as high as $3.89 but it has tailed off to more like $2.80, it is hard to fathon that in 8 years that gas could cost almost $2.00 more then it did in 200, but the in 2000 a barrel of oil was roughly $5.00 now in Oct of 2007, it is almost double that
When we have a change in our nations leadership next November, I hipe and expect thinghs to slowly return to the way YOU saw them in the 70's and back to people who care about the commom man here and not the ricj and elite like they do now
No offense, but that is an unrealistic pipe dream!

America watches TV, gets their information from TV, and makes it's opinions based on TV. It's a sad fact, but it's still a fact. As a result politicians put huge amounts of effort into that medium. They also see the internet as an emerging platform in which to make their campaign. Don't believe me? Try going to digg.com and type Ron Paul into the search box, see what kind of results you get. You will return 140 pages of user submitted content related to the name. So to make headway in those political venues they must spend gross amounts of money. Where does someone get the money, from lobbyists of course, and who funds them, corporations of course. So if a candidate wants a snowballs chance in hell of being considered on one of the party tickets, they must show they have the ability to get the monetary support, that means being a puppet to the ones with money.

So, now let's take a look at the candidates, and who is doing what on the issues.

http://www.2decide.com/table.htm

Take a look at the link, it has a chart with each candidate, and their stance on a particular issue. Most of the Dems are for phased pullout of Iraq, almost all of both parties are for the patriot act, hit and miss with military action on Iran (which would be a complete disaster). Our action with Iraq has cause us as a nation to look imperial in nature in the eyes of the world. Is there really a candidate that could fix that? Perhaps, but they wouldn't have the big defense contractors backing through lobbyist.

Clevernick is right, this nation used to be the goal of many nations. Now that just isn't so.

Electing a particular candidate it '08 has the potential to fix things, but it's taken us 30 years to achieve the disaster we are in, one president isn't going to fix it.