united states

Matt Drudge has decided to start pushing socialism. Look at his big headline right now:

Here's the story Drudge links to, but I want to go to a story about this that came out two days earlier:

Hardheaded Socialism Makes Canada Richer Than U.S.

On July 1, Canada Day, Canadians awoke to a startling, if pleasant, piece of news: For the first time in recent history, the average Canadian is richer than the average American.

According to data from Environics Analytics WealthScapes published in the Globe and Mail, the net worth of the average Canadian household in 2011 was $363,202, while the average American household’s net worth was $319,970.

A few days later, Canada and the U.S. both released the latest job figures. Canada’s unemployment rate fell, again, to 7.2 percent, and America’s was a stagnant 8.2 percent. Canada continues to thrive while the U.S. struggles to find its way out of an intractable economic crisis and a political sine curve of hope and despair.

I've brought up before, how things like Canada's single payer healthcare system has been a big attraction to businesses, but there's also things like education:

The [Toyota] factory will cost $800 million to build, with the federal and provincial governments kicking in $125 million of that to help cover research, training and infrastructure costs.

With the price of gas on the rise again, this is really shocking news:

The United States is awash in gasoline. So much so, in fact, that the country is exporting a record amount of it.

The country exported 430,000 more barrels of gasoline a day than it imported in September, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

That is about twice the amount at the start of the year, and experts and industry insiders say the trend is here to stay.

We always hear that if we want gas prices to go down one of the big answers is more refineries. Well apparently we have more than enough refining available if we are now in the export business.

And why are we exporting more than we are importing? It seems like it would make more sense to just say "hey - we're not going to import or export and use it all here". But this is the "global economy" and not much makes sense in that.

Al Qaeda has vowed revenge for the killing of Osama bin Laden and it looks like they are making good on it:

Pakistan's Taliban on Friday claimed their first major attack to avenge Osama bin Laden's death as 80 people were killed in a double suicide bombing on a paramilitary police training centre.

Around 140 people were wounded, 40 of them fighting for their lives, in the deadliest attack this year in the nuclear-armed country where the government is deep in crisis over the killing of the Al-Qaeda chief by US forces on May 2.

In the fallout over the unilateral raid and in another sign of damaged ties with wary ally Washington, an official said Pakistan's senior military officer General Khalid Shameem Wynne had cancelled a visit to the United States.

We knew this was coming and if anything the death of Osama could spark a lot bigger and more vengeful attacks than we have scene before. This is the reason that the Afghanistan war is far from over.

As we get ready to roll into 2011 the fringe wingnuts have decided it’s time to come up with some brand new conspiracy theories about the President:

The good news is that the right-wing isn't talking about President Obama being a secret Muslim right now. The bad news is that they're now concerned that he's going to use his honorary status as a Crow Tribe Indian to return the United States to Native Americans.

The outrage began after the President announcedon December 16 that the U.S. would reverse course and support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. The Declaration was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2007, but the U.S., under President Bush, opposed it.

I really think the wingnuts would embrace this idea. They always seems so hell bent on taking the U.S. back to the days of the wild west, so why not?

In under a week the civil rights movement have lost two big names. Last week Benjamin Hooks passed away and today it’s Dorothy Height:

Dorothy Height, a longtime leader of the U.S. civil rights movement and the chairwoman of the National Council of Negro Women, died on Tuesday in Washington. She was 98.

Trained as a social worker, Height began her career as an advocate for civil rights and gender equality during the 1930s, working to prevent lynching, desegregate the U.S. armed forces, reform the criminal justice system and work for free access to public accommodations in the United States.

Height died at Howard University Hospital of natural causes, a hospital spokesman said.

A very sad passing and these are the kind of voices we really need today.

Appearing tonight on the Rachael Maddow Show, the Haitian ambassador, Raymond Joseph, took some time to remind haters like Pat Robertson that if it wasn’t for Haiti the U.S. would not be what it is today.

Joseph: “What pact the Haitian made with the devil helped make America what it is”

Let’s have a little history reminder for Pat Robertson. Here is the current states that were all or in part brought into the U.S. from the Louisiana Purchase

11/2/10 is Election Day and given the current state of health care reform and the Senate constantly ignoring the will of the people, I have decided if this bill isn’t change that I’m going to do something I have never done – skip an election.

Having been a life long Democrat and getting involved in the actual party politics at a very young age, this decision doesn’t come very lightly. It’s not just the Democratic Party that is broken, but the system as a whole. When we have a Senate where the minority actually rules then we see that democracy is dead in the United States.

It has become obvious over the past 11 months that the Democrats aren’t willing to listen to the people who worked to deliver them to power, so the only message we can send now is to watch as their numbers decline. Hopefully once that happens we can start building up a new, better party with elected officials who remember the people they represent – you and me.

If there is some big turn around in the healthcare bill then I will gladly rescind this, but with every passing day the bill becomes less of what we hoped for and more of what the insurance companies will love. The profits of big business are once again trumping the lives of Americans and that is a sorry state of affairs for this nation.

“The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 – the fastest pace possible – so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers. They will increase our ability to train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.” 

“Because this is an international effort, I have asked that our commitment be joined by contributions from our allies. Some have already provided additional troops, and we are confident that there will be further contributions in the days and weeks ahead. Our friends have fought and bled and died alongside us in Afghanistan. Now, we must come together to end this war successfully. For what’s at stake is not simply a test of NATO’s credibility – what’s at stake is the security of our Allies, and the common security of the world.”

“Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground. We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan’s Security Forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government – and, more importantly, to the Afghan people – that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country.”

source