All About McCain

[innerSpaceman]

I'm so excited about tomorrow.

[Tenigma]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Ridicule amongst the rest of the world....I hardly care. Most of the rest of the world is run by dictators and would be considered second or thrid world.

Sceagles, I thought of you when I ran into the following article from Spiegel in Germany:

America Loses Its Dominant Economic Role

George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly.

He talked about terrorism and terrorist regimes, and about governments that allegedly support terror. He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting. The US president gave a speech similar to the ones he gave in 2004 and 2007, mentioning the word "terror" 32 times in 22 minutes. At the 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations, George W. Bush was the only one still talking about terror and not about the topic that currently has the rest of the world's attention.

"Absurd, absurd, absurd," said one German diplomat. A French woman called him "yesterday's man" over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN.

The American president has always had enemies in these hallways and offices at the UN building on First Avenue in Manhattan. The Iranians and Syrians despise the eternal American-Israeli coalition, while many others are tired of Bush's Americans telling the world about the blessings of deregulated markets and establishing rules "that only apply to others," says the diplomat from Berlin.

But the ridicule was a new thing. It marked the end of respect.

...

This is no longer the muscular and arrogant United States the world knows, the superpower that sets the rules for everyone else and that considers its way of thinking and doing business to be the only road to success.

A new America is on display, a country that no longer trusts its old values and its elites even less: the politicians, who failed to see the problems on the horizon, and the economic leaders, who tried to sell a fictitious world of prosperity to Americans.

Also on display is the end of arrogance. The Americans are now paying the price for their pride.

Gone are the days when the US could go into debt with abandon, without considering who would end up footing the bill. And gone are the days when it could impose its economic rules of engagement on the rest of the world, rules that emphasized profit above all else -- without ever considering that such returns cannot be achieved by doing business in a respectable way.

This stuff is horrendous... horrendous what has happened to us. This is a GLOBAL world. We have GLOBAL markets, GLOBAL issues. We've been the last superpower, and we've been squandering it away. You might not personally care what some Gaston thinks in Paree, but all of this affects all of us in the U.S.; our economy, our influence, world politics, etc.

I have to say, if you still think that how we are viewed by the rest of the world is not relevant, then you sir, are living in the 20th century, as a Monroe doctrine isolationist.

What will the rest of this planet think of us when we elect a 72-year-old senior citizen with his hottie trophy VP who appears to be completely disengaged from the world?

[scaeagles]

Indeed. It is a global world. I find all of this amusing, because the European housing and credit markets are in largely the same condition. In fact, I beleive we're going to be getting healthier long before they do, as is evidenced by the amazing surge recently of the dollar against the Euro. If Americans are paying the price for their pride (which is not all together untrue), what are the Europeans paying the price for as they experience much of the same?

I am most certainly not an isolationist, and to call me such is rather ignorant of my views that have been clearly stated over the years on this board because I have always supported US influence in the rest of the world. I am pro NAFTA, pro Gulf War I and II, pro free trade (NAFTA being north American only I am listing this separately), pro Israel, pro NATO, Russian expansionist aims concern me....I could go on and on and on.

I make NO apologies for not being concerned about what "Gaston thinks in Paree" when they have so many bass ackwards policies there, which if I am critical of I seem to be a target of ridicule and accused of being too nationalistic....yet criticism of American problems (when a large portion of the free world is experiencing the same thing) is gospel when coming from Gaston.

No apologies whatsoever. What the rest of the world thinks is not what concerns me overall, because I think the rest of the world is more often than not screwed up in their thinking.

[innerSpaceman]

But there you go again, scaeagles. Trying to excuse the problems of the United States by crying to mommy, "but Europe did it, too."



For all you know, "Gaston" could go on in the next sentence to ridicule Algeria, Japan, Malaysia and then his native France. But it doesn't matter if he does or not. If everyone is a thief and a liar, does that make it ok for me to be a thief and a liar??

[scaeagles]

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

In my post there is NOTHING about excusing the US at present, nor have I portrayed it as such. I am simply saying that their criticism of the US in this current fiscal crisis is laughable when they are experiencing their own crisis in the same financial markets.

We have problems of our own making. Europe has problems, too. So I am to take the criticism of Europe seriously when they have the exact same thing going on? NO WHERE did I justify ANYTHING going on. I'm laughing at the criticism from them because of it.

I did not say our problems are excusable because of their problems. I said their criticism of our problems is laughable because of their own.

[innerSpaceman]

Why are you obsessed with the source of the criticism? How does the source make or not make criticism valid?


People often ridicule the pot calling the kettle black ... but it's almost always the pot who knows best about the blackness it sees in kettle.

[Strangler Lewis]

Scaeagles, your criticism of Gaston seems a little dishonest now that the Republicans have a VP nominee who uses antlers in all of her decorating.

[scaeagles]

My point, ISM, is that I don't know why I'm supposed to care about what the Europeans (or whomever) think about us because of the current situation when they are in fact in the same situation.

It is not that I consider criticism of our situation to be invalid,nor have I said so. I'm just wondering why I should care about what others think about us because of it when they are doing the exact same thing. It's like a heroin addict pointing at another heroin addict talking about how pathetic they are. Both are pathetic and the one talking about how pathetic the other is might need to realize they are no better.

Yes, we're both heroin addicted and pathetic. But I don't care if the other pathetic losers think we're pathetic losers, too.

[Gemini Cricket]

Originally Posted by Strangler Lewis

Scaeagles, your criticism of Gaston seems a little dishonest now that the Republicans have a VP nominee who uses antlers in all of her decorating.

That was just brilliant, SL! Visible mojo.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

My point, ISM, is that I don't know why I'm supposed to care about what the Europeans (or whomever) think about us because of the current situation when they are in fact in the same situation. ...
Yes, we're both heroin addicted and pathetic. But I don't care if the other pathetic losers think we're pathetic losers, too.

Except it didn't use to be that way. It used to be that when other markets were faltering, they'd be looking to us for help. I think it IS significant to note that the rest of the world appears to have diminished respect for our economic stature, especially in a world where we are increasingly reliant on world consumer confidence. It's not about whether we're having the same problems as everyone else, it's about whether we are still perceived as the economic leaders of the world. Economics is 100% perception. Money has no value unless people think it has value.

That's not to say that a few individual opinions are absolute proof of anything, but if we want to get back on a path to recovery, you have to look at more than market indexes and exchange rates. The dollar may have gained a bit of strength in recent weeks, but if there's a growing perception of weakness it will not last.