People scream about the difference between the rich and the poor, but what they miss is this. When the rich were at their richest in the US, so were the poor! As the rich have lost income in this country, the poor are far more in number and far worse off. So for all you might say about the income gap, it stilll results in being better for the poor than socialistic ideas and high taxes. The poor in the US are a lot better off then the poor in other countries...
I've traveled often in what used to be called the Third World. I've seen starving people, and people who had illnesses that kill yet could be cured by a few dollars. I've also three times lived over half a year in the USA. One image I'll never forget was in a small town in the Rockies, where I was waiting for a Greyhound connection. The lobby of a hotel was the waiting room. Snow outside was two feet thick. A handful of people were clearly waiting like me, but three didn't seem to fit: young males. The manager just kicked them out into the snow at night. How you survive that, I do not know. It seemed akin to India to me.
That's just a one-off anecdote, but I know the US fairly well and know homeless people there. Well, at least they do - the people I know like that - have soup kitchens. But even in India many ashrams would take you in for three days and feed you. Even house you.
Sorry, but the inequality in the USA appalls me. I'm not saying the USA should become socialist (it won't anyway), just that those who "have" are often incredibly selfish, and as in the Third World they just look down, without extending a helping hand, to those in dire need. In the USA, at least in some states, even people with cancer have to queue night-long for the slightest help.
I'm not anti-American, but I see the massive flaws.
V
Are you sure, V, that he didn't see some Muslims from an island in Alaska? 😉
:p:p I think it's time to revise your geography 0-level? :p:p
V
Taken off of anothers misquote from what Palin actually said. Palin never said she could see Russia from her house. What she actually said was you can see Russia from an island of Alaska, which is TRUE.
Ace, no-one is misquoting Palin. I'm sure she CAN see Russia from an Island off Alaska - geographically correct I'm sure. It just such a politically immature thing to say.
On a clear day, you can see France from the Kent coast, but I'm sure David Cameron wouldn't gain any kudos from announcing that at a Summit meeting - he'd be laughed off the stage:rolleyes:.
It was a pretty pathetic thing to have said all the same. I'd just guess she's never been there and done it; and she probably doesn't even know what system of governance Russia even has. That kind of real basic savvy is what any major politician has to have.
Has she ever been abroad?? Just asking. IMHO if you don't travel and know much of the world first-hand, you can't deal with it or be a politician of worth.
V
I know she was in Haiti recently visiting some of the people with Franklin Graham. Let me just say this. While I agree with many of Palin's views, I am not voting for her for the Republican nomination because I see her weaknesses. She is unable to answer questions off the top of her head very well the way smoother politicians do. She certainly would lose to Obama and she will not win the Republican nomination for President. But all that being said, the way the press has treated her and some Americans have treated her and her family has been absolutey disgraceful. People wishing for her death, reporters hounding her at her house, death threats, insults about her family and kids....just so many things I don't have time for them all.
People scream about the difference between the rich and the poor, but what they miss is this. When the rich were at their richest in the US, so were the poor! As the rich have lost income in this country, the poor are far more in number and far worse off. So for all you might say about the income gap, it stilll results in being better for the poor than socialistic ideas and high taxes. The poor in the US are a lot better off then the poor in other countries...
If you have, say, cancer, in the developing world, and cannot pay for treatment, you die. If you have cancer in at least parts of the USA, and cannot pay for treatment and have no insurance, you also die. I don't see much difference. The same through the whole range of illness, physical and psychological, and for other factors such as homelessness. If you're homeless you're homeless. How is that better in one country than in another? Or are you saying the US has no homeless?
V
She is unable to answer questions off the top of her head very well the way smoother politicians do.
But who wants "smooth" politicians either? That's the typical political class, so to speak, wherein there's an inherent or learned ability not to make gaffs, but also to smoothly utter just what people want to hear, just the right thing to win votes.
Sometimes truth is controversial. Sometimes people in the real world change their minds. Politicians I admire above all others are those few who speak their honest thoughts and beliefs, and are willing to openly change their minds on the reception of new data or insights. In other words, real and honest people working in politics - not 'politicians' seeking to use the real world to their own egotistical aims.
(Prompted upon finishing a very wise, insightful, and heart-felt novel by Richard North Patterson, "The Race" - about a man who runs for the Republican nomination whilst still being his true self and not selling himself to become any kind of 'smooth' politician.)
V