The4thEstate wrote on Jul 10^th, 2016 at 1:13pm:

He'd almost be forgiven for thinking those extra states were The US Australian states!

The4thEstate wrote on Jul 11^th, 2016 at 12:30am:


It's not declining under Obama, 4th, it's declining because of the trillions of US dollars in debt. This debt is due to three things: the cost of the US health budget, the GFC corporate bailout packages, and the Afghan/Iraq wars.

The reason for Obamacare was to cut the cost of state Medicaid programs. The Bush administration left a trillion in health costs due to its generous medicine program for seniors. Bush cut taxes but subsidized the pharmaceutical companies. The result was the worst deficit in US history, after Bush came to power with a surplus. On top of this, Bush invaded two countries and created a massive domestic surveillance program: the Dept of Homeland Security.

The result? A debt so high the US will be paying it off for generations. The cost of Iraq and Afghanistan is the diminished place of the US in global security. This has led to the rise of Putin and Iran in global influence. While the US lost its credibility in the Middle East, China quietly grew in the Pacific. In the end, all Bush did was create more powerful enemies.

Ultimately, the US is declining due to competition from Europe and China in manufacturing. The neocons simply accelerated the process.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Jul 11^th, 2016 at 1:49pm:


Not yet. The US changed its business model under Clinton: intellectual property in information, agriculture, patents and brands became the business of America.

America led the world in the post-war era through its manufacturing and heavy industry. From the 1970s on, Germany and Japan competed in this market with cheaper and better products. By the 1990s, China took over the heavy lifting, originally with the patents fiiled in Europe and the US.

This has changed. China now produces the second highest number of patents and scientific journal articles in the world, after the US. While China developed industrially with other countries’ ideas, it is now producing its own ideas.

What China lacks is brands. While it makes the products, the Googles and Apples are headquartered in the US. Brands - and their marketing - are still the business of America.

This is the reason for US hegemony. That, along with the role of the US in the major global institutions - the WTO, IMF,  World Bank, etc, and the US’ bi-lateral trade deals and treaties  - its influence over other countries, both soft and hard.

But the US can’t keep this influence going if it doesn’t produce things other countries need. To do this, the US needs a bigenough population to rival China and Europe. Also, it needs a multicultural population to interract with the rest of the world. The market no longer belongs to European and English-speaking countries. The global marketplace is multicultural.

If the US doesn’t keep reaching out through innovation and business, it will decline. If it shrinks in on itself and falls into protectionist instincts, it will shrink. The US can only remain strong through mutual interdependence.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Jul 11^th, 2016 at 4:13pm:


That hasn’t worked since Vietnam. The US was forced after that war to sell its gold, the source of the G7’s currency standard. With a floating currency, the US is subject to the economic winds of fate. Priming the US.economy through war only puts the US into even more debt. More specifically, it sells the US’ future to China, who buy most of the US’ bonds.

Even Trump understands that the military industrial complex is starting to become a millstone around Uncle’s neck. It’s why he’s demanding US allies spend more on defence.

When this happens, it’s a sure sign of an empire’s decline.

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 11^th, 2016 at 1:44pm:

You just said the same thing I did.

Check the national debt when Obama took office and check it now -- it's gone from $10.6 trillion to about $18 trillion, and will probably reach $20 trillion soon.

Do you think it's just coincidence that the first trillion-dollar federal deficit during any year in history occurred under his presidency -- followed quickly by the second, third and fourth?


Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 11^th, 2016 at 1:44pm:

You left out Obama's so-called "stimulus" package, which put the U.S. another $800 billion in the red in 2009. Just another excuse to redistribute other people's money.

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 11^th, 2016 at 1:44pm:

Bush was no penny pincher, but let's keep things in perspective: The highest deficit under his presidency was $458 billion in 2008. That's not even half the size of Obama's first deficit in 2009 -- and by the way, don't let anybody tell you that the 2009 deficit was all Bush's. The Democrat-controlled Congress put off approving most of it until Obama was sworn in, figuring (correctly) that they'd have a better chance of stuffing the budget with more pork under a Democrat president than override a Bush veto.

Don't be fooled: Yes, Bush spent too much money. But his "worst deficit in history" was quickly surpassed -- repeatedly -- when Obama took office. Keep in mind too that the Bush deficits began appearing in 2002. Guess what major economy-rattling event happened the previous September? 

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 11^th, 2016 at 1:44pm:

Bush? He had to go into Afghanistan after 9/11 -- otherwise, Osama and Friends would have pegged the U.S. as a paper tiger. (What was the alternative, try to arrange an economic boycott??)

As with Pearl Harbor, you can't let outsiders blow things up and kill thousands of people on your soil with impunity. The mistake was in trying to nation-build afterward. Blow up the training camps, send as many Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters to 72 Virgin Street, and move on.

And by the way, the U.S. has never lost more credibility in the Middle East than it has under Obama, Hillary et al. Remember the "Arab Spring"? Remember how Obama sold military equipment to the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Morsi in Egypt and gave military support to the removal of Gaddafi in Libya? Remember how ISIS was allowed to grow, unchallenged, while too-cool-for-school Obama mocked the group as the "JV team"?

Even if you don't think the Iraq war was a great idea -- and I don't -- let's not pretend that Obama has done anything but engage in apology tours, bet on the wrong horses and generally do his best not to have any kind of strategy against the rising tide of Islamic terrorism. He'd rather be golfing.

Dirty Paki Khunt wrote on Jul 11^th, 2016 at 1:44pm:

China is fond of manipulating its currency to achieve a trade advantage. Plus, there are plenty of politicians on both sides of the aisle in Washington who have no qualms about selling out the American worker for a good business deal in, say, Mexico. Or with allowing millions of Mexicans to slip across the border illegally to create cheap labor or cheap votes.

If you think that's all the fault of the left's favorite scapegoats, Bush and the neocons, you've gotten only half the story (at best).

The4thEstate wrote on Jul 11^th, 2016 at 7:26pm:

Are you saying it'll be war all the time? Cos pretty much every empire that's gone before has collapsed because of that.

The4thEstate wrote on Jul 11^th, 2016 at 7:57pm:

Anger at 9/11 I can understand and agree with... Fury even... But blind fury??... Now there was always going to be some serious exponential blowback from that..

The war in Afghanistan has dragged on longer than Vietnam... Iraq - one monumental disaster - worse than everything Vietnam was (Everyone I know who were old enough to remember Vietnam and fear being sent there, to a man, thought this Iraq thing in 2003 was Vietnam - the sequel ).

The US sensibility that 'bombing them back to the stone age' will end the thing, speaks to the paradox of the mighty in strength with an infantile and paranoid soul.