No more listening to the Beacon of Hope mantra –  America use to be such a place but no more — it’s about greed, corruption, and oppression of the powerless.  Half of America, if not more, believe in suppressing the constitution, torture, wars, racism, and crushing personal freedoms.  Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and many others in the Republican administration should all be in jail.

Recently, the U.N. attempted to pass a resolution to decriminalize homosexuality — 66 countries supported it.  Guess what?  Not the U.S.A. — turns out our official policy is all for criminalizing homosexuality.  That puts us in bed with all of the Islamic fundamentalist states.  So, the American religious wacko fundamentalists are  equivalent to the Islamic fundamentalists — one religion or another, it just doesn’t matter that much.

Homosexuality is a criminal offense in more than 80 countries, while in at least seven nations, including Saudi Arabia, sex between men can be punished with the death penalty.

Notice that this U.N. resolution was not about gay marriage — it was simply to decriminalize being a homosexual so that countries stop killing or putting gays into prison.

Don’t expect much relieve from Obama either.  Obama has invited Rick Warren to do the invocation at the upcoming inauguration, and pastor Rick believes that homosexuality is a sin.  What a guy!  Hey Rick — why don’t you condemn all the blow jobs in your congregation?  You know, that Sodom and Gomorrah crap?

Seriously!  What is fucking wrong with America that in the year 2008 oppression still abounds?

America is doomed.

Don’t you love how crooks always scream loud and long about how they were setup or framed or just plain innocent?  Well, the Governor of Illinos, Rod Blagojevich, is screaming loud, “I will be vindicated.”  Sure he will — just like all of the other Illinois’ governors who went to jail.  Probably the reason Blago’s wife and brother got lawyers as well, because they knew Rod was innocent.  The big problem here is that Rod will likely not be put in jail long enough to discourage the next governor from the same type of corruption. Not only is Blago likely guilty on everything he is being charged with but probably lots more.

Everyday there are new allegations of corruption: Lehman broker is the latest one.   And today we learned that Sarah Palin’s future in law was arrested for dealing drugs.  Gotta love those home town values in Wasilla — the meth capital of Alaska — as Sarah said, “the real America.”  Of course, Sarah just had no idea any of that was going on.  In fact, Sarah has never admitted to her own personal ethics violations, and what about the suspicious contractor connections who built her house?  You know the same contractors who got the multi-million deal building the Wasilla arena?  These are just a few things we know about.

Really, should anybody be surprised?  America is the land of greed and corruption.  Few are surprised by any of this.  Billions and billions literally lost in Iraq.  Corrupt contractors.  Insider trading galore.  Stealing.  Embezzeling. You name the corruption and there are thousands and thousands doing it.  Sadly, few get caught.

America is doomed.

Bush the hero to Detroit because of the interim financing bridge loan to save GM and Chrysler for the next month?  No … just a way to make Obama responsible to the ultimate demise of Detroit and a way to get more money out of Congress for a last big spending party.

If you were writing a book, could you make Congress and Bush look more incompetent over this Detroit bailout?  Just how many times have they flipped back and forth?  Is there anybody in America that doesn’t think Detroit will end up in bankruptcy within the next year?

Yet, since the democrats want to bail out Detroit, could there be a better way to suck out more money in the last few weeks than to say the last of the TARP money was used on Detroit?  Bush giving the money to Detroit had less to do about Detroit and more about getting more money out of Congress.

Immediately after Bush acts the hero, Paulson says that the last $350 BILLION of TARP money needs to be released immediately.  Of course — if it isn’t released right away then how can the Wall Street crook pass it out before January 20th? Paulson has done such a great job already with all the flip flops and without any oversight.  Sure, give him another third of a TRILLION to waste — maybe he can pass it out for executive bonuses or another round of acquisitions.

America is doomed.

It is interesting that America has been living in an anti-science country for the last eight years, if not for most of its history.  Science has been shunned, mostly in the name of religion.

Religion has always shunned science.  Consider Galileo or thousands of other scientists who discovered truth that was inconsistent with some religious belief.  Who cares about the scientific method when you have some piece of bullshit written in Genisis. Over time, the evidence is so overwhelming that religious people accept it and usually make some silly claim about the truth being god ordained.  The religious authorities eventually forgive the scientists but always long after they die.

Currently, there is the asteroid Apophis which is heading toward earth and is expected to pass close by in 2029, and it will pass closer in 2036 — possibly even hitting the earth.  Kaboom.  Goodbye social security.  Hello vaporization.  Good news — no more worries about global warming or who has the biggest dick in the middle east.

Anyway …

It turns out that the NASA scientists that are looking for large near-earth objects has not been funded so well, in fact:

So far, NASA has spent $41 million on asteroid detection and deflection, but the Near Earth Object Program is running out of money.

It is ironic and tragic that such important work is funded with scraps.  Trillions for Wall Street, trillions for wars, billions for nonsense, and zippo to potentially save the planet.   In fact, most of the near-earth objects have not even be identified or classified.  So, it is entirely possible that one of the unclassified objects is already heading for a extinction event collision with earth.

It doesn’t take a 50 million ton asteroid, like Apophis, to cause serious damage to the earth.  Just look what Bush did! Sorry — off subject again. Go look at the hole in Arizona that was caused by a little rock flying through space when it hit the earth — it’s a big hole — the mass times velocity sort of thing.  Apophis is so large that it is an extinction event, but there may be many objects that will cause significant damage to the earth.  No matter where such objects land on the earth, the entire earth will be impacted.  Maybe we should look into them.

With all the money wasted year by year in Congress, one would hope that there might be a little money to try and find objects that could damage, if not destroy, the earth.  It is something about priorities.

It is sad that America is polarized about science and religion and how frequently religion wins out in the short run.  Anti-science policies may end up destroying the earth and the religion twits will exclaim that it was all god’s doing.  These are the same twits who thank god when they survive a hurricane, but rarely ponder that same bastard allowed the hurricane in the first place.

Here is another piece of irony.   My atheist friends are generally never afraid of dying and yet most of the religious people I know are very afraid of dying, probably because of the hell nonsense they believe.  I have often suspected it was this fear of dying that makes religious people believe in the bogeyman or some other equivalent mythology.  It is these same religious wackos who are afraid of terrorism because they are, again, afraid of dying.  I guess this fear of dying is all part of the irrational mindset of the religious freaks.

America is doomed.

Exactly why do companies like to acquire and merge with other companies?  It is because there are gigantic fees and bonus to executives involved — that is the only real reason.  In the process, there are always LOTS of layoffs.  But, who cares about laying off ordinary people as long as the executives and the investment banks make lots of money.

The merger and acquisition craze has been in vogue for a long time and companies use these techniques to juice up their earnings or  to put big footnotes next to poor earnings.    Companies borrow piles of money completing most of these acquisitions and frequently issue lots of stock and completely dilute shareholder’s ownership of the company.

Take just about any area you want and you can find lots of mergers and acquisitions.  For example, retail drug stores, super markets, oil companies, technology, and banks just to name a few.  As companies are merged then redundant stores are closed and people are laid off.  The resulting company eliminates some competition, free enterprise is usurped, the debt load of the newly formed company increases, bonus to executives, fee to investment banks, employees are laid off, and the consumer is fucked over.

Remember the original AT&T — it was split up into a bunch of little pieces and then it was merged and merged and merged some more and now you have AT&T acquiring all the little pieces again and the Bell Labs piece is with Alcatel-Lucent.  Each step along the way debt was increased and money was paid to executives and investment banks.  In the end, you fucked up the America telecommunication infrastructure, laid out hundreds of thousands of workers, and reneged on all sorts of commitments to former employees.  Just recently AT&T raised its dividend just after announcing another gigantic layoff.

Guess what?  Virtually all of these mergers were approved by regulators who were suppose to be representing the American people.

This is America’s idea of capitalism — reward the rich and fuck everybody else.

America is doomed.