Did any of you watch President Obama's "State of the Union" address last night? I watched on and off. Some things I liked and others I didn't like at all and chose to switch to another channel. These political speeches are all predictable: The incumbant brags on any successes since they took office, blames any setbacks on the opposing party, and tries to stir hope in the masses that can allegedly only be fulfilled by a second term in office. Then comes the disssenting response from leadership of the opposing party . . everything is terrible since this President took office, they are leading us in the wrong directions, and things will only get worse if they are elected to a second term. Blah, blah.
While I would like to think U.S. is on its way back, I seriously doubt that. The Democrats get all excited by a fraction of a percentage point drop in unemployment (even if that drop can be attributed to a temporary cause, such as the Christmas shopping season) or a slight drop in foreclosures (even though the drop was artificially created by govt. mandates that slowed processing of foreclosures).
U.S. just has too many problems and not enough solutions to "be back." Principal among those, in my opinion, is the huge national debt that continues to grow, not just from interest owed, but by a U.S. that continues to run trillion+ budget deficits year-after-year. Another major problem is the large, starting to retire, no longer working but collecting pensions and needing increasingly levels of expensive medical care "Baby Boomer" generation. These things aren't changing under ANY administration. Regardless what happens to other aspects of our economy, those things alone can sink us.
As we were duped into the "global economy", and with the European Union appearing to teeter on the brink of disaster, U.S. isn't safe even if we can deal with our own problems. Together, the EU is the largest part of the world economy, so if they fail, the West and much of the world economy fails. Folks like Brandon will insist that things aren't as bleak as I am describing. I wish that were true . . Americans could use a little realistic hope right now. But how we will come out of this, at least in this decade, or the next, is something I just do not see occuring.
I don't know if America is back, but Americans are to be back soon from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, is the current government in Iraq any better to its population than Saddam Hussein's?
And in Afghanistan, the Taliban are to be back in power as soon as Westerners leave. The Afghans will again be proud of themselves as they are the only people to have defeated the Soviet Army and the coalition of Western powers, led by the United States.
As a conclusion: These two wars have killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, have costed trillions of US$ to American taxpayers, and led the world into the current crisis, to not even achieve any of their goals!
Marseil.