Thank you for your oh-so-enlightened-euro-centric viewpoints.

Italy was also responsible for Mussolini.

And the Renaissance. Smarter monkeys, please.

Yup, nothing good can ever come out of Italy because of Mussolini. Are you retarded?

Americans take everything to excess. That's what makes us great!

And nothing good ever came from the US...nope...never.

America might be great at exporting weapons and mass murdering brown peoples but not much else. Take a look:

America by the numbers..No. 1?
By Michael Ventura
Mar 4, 2005, 02:13

No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We're an "empire," ain't we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We're No. 1. Well...this is the country you really live in:

* The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
* The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
* Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
* "The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
* Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
* "The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
* "Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
* Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
* Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We're not the place to be anymore.
* The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
* "The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
* Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
* "U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it's the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
* Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
* The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
* Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
* The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
* "Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
* "Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world's 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).
* "Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European.... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world's leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European.... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world's top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies...are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top ten. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
* The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).
* U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).
* Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million--one in five--unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
* Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt. (That's why we talk nice to them.) "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
* Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world's largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world's largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world's largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
* As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
* Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn't show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That's more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don't show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
* One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
* "Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined" (The European Dream, p.28).
* "Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable" (The European Dream, p.32).
* Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).
* "Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available" (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).
* "The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever" (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).
*

No. 1? In most important categories we're not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.

The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.

http://www.citypages.com/databank/26/1264/article12985.asp

My advice is to leave.

Ah yet another example of great conservative arguing skills, "If you don't like what's going on in America, just leave. We are perfect and we'll be damned if something like statisitics and facts gonna prove any different. Yeehaa!"

the sad fact is that liberals always distort and configure statistic so that america DOES look bad. take for instance, aid in the tsunami...america far and away leads in private donations...however, according to libs at nyt, abc, cbs, ap, reuters, pbs, lat, etc etc, we are "per capita with income included," among the lowest...also, why is it again that foreigners come to our colleges in droves again?

gee, cynthia is cute.

yeah she's not bad....but too liberal.

"also, why is it again that foreigners come to our colleges in droves again?"

Because we have more of them.

And just because the U.S. has given the most private donations just means we have a higher population than all of the European countries who gave more per capita.

Don't get me wrong the U.S. is usually and is always capable of being a great country. We are far from perfect though, and by just pedaling the same argument that we are better than other countries does not excuse us of our faults. Just like most other countries we have blemishs on our social, political, and historical records, and they should not be forgotten.

It looks to me like 60% of those ridiculously misleading stats are from book, the European Dream. Perhaps the poster that suggested this person leave America oversimplified things slightly, but he was on the right track. America is about the invididual over the collective. This is one of our founding tenets. If you wish for a collectivist society, you really will need to move elsewhere.

"And just because the U.S. has given the most private donations just means we have a higher population than all of the European countries who gave more per capita."

see?

Why do we need to analyze things per person, per capita, etc...why not just give straight numbers. We give more than anyone else, plain and simple. You can't even argue that.

to the above poster with a laundry list of why the U.S. sucks- you must be one of those people who threatened to move to Canada or somewhere else if Bush was re-elected, but didn't. You should.

I can't understand why millions of people sneak into such a terrible place as the USA seems to be. I also wonder why the line to get in legally is so long? Just a mystery I guess.

Almost everyone here is acting like an infant. Both the "America sucks" and "America's number one" attitudes are equally facile and counterproductive. Whoever said "the U.S. is usually and is always capable of being a great country. We are far from perfect though", has it right.

America doesn't suck. The red states suck though and anywhere that conservatives run the governement is consistently among the worst places to live in the country. The list poster's point as I took it was that we need to stop just spouting rhetoric that we are NUMER ONE!!!! and actually take stock of the situation because we could do better. That's a liberal argument though and I wouldn't expect the conservatives ehre who want to maintain the status quo as capable of understanding it. If they had their way we would all be serfs n a medieval society. I think I will call them regressives insted of conservatives from now on.

america isn't perfect, however, we are the only self perfecting nation in the world...we constantly amend ourselves in hopes of perfection. "in order to establish a more perfect union." etc whatever

I agree that those who don't like America should leave. It was the same with racism, if the blacks didn't like it they should just have left. Actually come to think of it it was the same in the Civil War. If the South didn't like the policy they should have just left. and the Revolutionary War, our founding fathers should just have left if they didn't like their Britain's rules.

MY COUNTRY RIGHT OR WRONG! Say something bad about this great land and you are not an American. We refuse to hear any criticism. America is always right! There will be no dissent. Shut up and start waving your flag! Obey Obey Obey! Questions are not allowed!

Gold doesn't always get you good soldiers but good soldiers can always get you gold.

you mean oil don't you?

If the USA wanted oil the best thing would have been to support Saddam. He would be pumping Kuwait and Saudia Arabia dry to pay for more and bigger palaces. He'd know how to deal with Osama - his head would have been pickled and on it's way to Washington in no time.

But middle-class Americans don't simply cast ballots for Republicans. They also vote with their feet, which is why blue states and old Democratic cities are losing population to red states and Republican exurbs. People are moving there precisely because of economic reasons - more jobs, affordable houses and the lower taxes offered by Republican politicians.

They're not moving for the churches, and they don't vote for Mr. Bush simply because he reads the Bible every day. One of the main reasons they like him is that he gets bashed so often. When Jon Stewart sneers at him, they empathize because they're used to being sneered at themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/03/opinion/03tierney.html?hp

unday, November 10, 2002

Well, I want to thank all the many people who have told me to "Love it or leave it" all these years, starting back in the Vietnam era and continuing to the present day. Back then they demanded to know "Why don't you go to Russia?" and now they ask "Why don't you go to Iraq?" Of course, these logic-challenged question-askers would actually themselves be happier in a place like Iraq or the old Soviet Union, since they would not have to be challenged in those countries with hearing dissenting views. But pointing this out is not why I write.

I write because finally, the hidden-to-them logic of their question struck me the other day: I will leave, but not to go to Russia or Iraq. And I won't leave alone. How about I take New York, California and a few other states with me? That's right, how about the Prime Blue States secede, and leave all the Red Bushian wasteland expanses to their own devices!

Who needs them? Besides growing our food and providing some other natural resources, what good are those places? Populated largely by morons who continually vote to screw themselves, I don't want to be associated with them any more.

They'll still sell our new country food and resources, because who else could buy them? But the rest of us won't have to be stuck with their fundamentalist-inspired, imbecilic social claptrap and their bellicose, kill-them-all foreign policy that bloodies our name and besmirches our souls more and more with each passing year.

The brains, money and creativity are in the Blue States. Argue with me on that, if you dare.

So citing irreconcilable differences, a select group of us Prime Blue States should amicably separate from the Dunderhead Nation and call ourselves, oh, how about the United States of New America, or USNA?

I like to think outside the box. This may well be thinking outside the entire paper mill. But the inexorable logic of the secession idea just strikes me as so perfect.

A million questions naturally arise, the four main ones of which are:

--There are Constitutional means to add states to the union, so are there -- or could there be enacted -- Constitutional means for states to leave?

--Which states (or even counties within states?!) should be included in our select departing group?

--What's the easiest and fairest way to allocate Federal government land, property and debts between the two new political entities?

--What about population transfer issues prior to the secession date, since no state is monolithic, and even hard-core Bushian states have some decent people in them, and, God help us, even we Prime Blue States have some Bushian Neanderthals who I'd love to see permanently cross over the border into the Red Nation.

I guess I need to take out the law books, as well as analyze that 2000 election Blue-Red map while cross-referencing with state population and economic data. (Anyone having any relevant legal cites or economic date please send it!)

Even if there are no established procedures for secession, shouldn't the Red States want us to leave and make it easy for us to do so? Listening to Limbaugh, Hannity, Lott et al blast liberals, let alone anyone further left, all day and night, 24/7, we would only be giving them what they really want, wouldn't we?

But just imagine the wonderful feeling that you and I could have if the likes of George Bush, Newt Gingrich, Anton Scalia and Trent Lott were in another country that was now incredibly weak. We wouldn't have to give a damn what they thought, or what the cretins who considered them their leaders thought either.

It's just too sweet to imagine...

An open letter to the Red-State victors:

With hard work and superb organization, you have triumphed over John Kerry and the forces of Blue-state paternalism. Congratulations. The multinational corporations that hold you in bondage remain free to profit off your sweat nearly tax free, while their overpaid senior execs continue to pay a pittance in personal income tax.

Your primary and secondary schools will continue to turn out third-rate pupils with limited opportunities, while you enjoy the satisfaction of making it on your own without health care when a catastrophic illness bankrupts your family.

Your agricultural universities will continue issuing Ph.D.s in football, and bogus Protestant Evangelical and Fundamentalist theology, and how to jerk off a bull safely. Your children will learn to borrow enough money to erect chicken houses so that they, like you, can take custody -- not possession, but custody -- of Tyson's chicks, feed them, rear them, assume losses from those that fail to thrive, and in the end earn just enough money to service their endless debt, and realize a profit of perhaps $12K a year. Your bank thanks you; Tyson thanks you; George W. Bush thanks you; and I thank you.

You can continue sending your sons to die in Iraq on a fool's errand. When you bury them, you can console yourselves with Bush's platitudes about their heroic mission to defend America from weapons of mass destruction.

You can savor the deficit spending that stimulates commerce today, but will cripple the US economy in ten or fifteen years' time when the bills come due with interest. Perhaps a Democrat will be in office at that time, who can be blamed for W's delayed economic fiasco.

You can continue believing, as Republican Party brainwashing has persuaded you, that we, your neighbors, are your enemies. You can believe that we have no morals; that we pimp out our teenage daughters for Internet porn; that we eat babies; that we are all gay; that we are cowards on the battlefield; and that we want to run your lives and give you AIDS.

Here's a clue: we are not your enemies; we are your countrymen. Your enemies are the greedy multinationals that the Republican Party bends over backwards to accommodate. Incidentally, most of them are based in Blue states, as are their Republican owners and major shareholders.

Here in the Blue States, Democrats and Republicans alike generate the lion's share of America's wealth, although it is you Reds who provide the lion's share of the stoop labor. You are our Mexicans, so to speak. We could not have accomplished the economic miracle that is America without your willing capitulation to a system that lies to you and fucks you over at every turn.

Look at economic output and educational achievement on a state-by-state basis: it's painfully evident that we Blues are immensely more productive and better educated than you Reds. We have lots more money. We live longer. We eat better. We work less. We fuck more. We do cocaine and smoke fine Canadian buds, not the homebrew crank and cheap Mexican headache reefer you guys are stuck with. We drink French wine and Stoli martinis, not Budweiser. Our children rarely bother us: we've got them on Ritalin and Prozac. Our teeth are straighter and whiter, our necks longer, and our fingernails cleaner. And many of us are the Republican elite who have just punked you.

It's good to be a Blue, regardless of which party you join.

Understandably, you resent us, so you've fabricated an imaginary measure of superiority: Christian "values." Yet you talk about values the way a pre-teen girl talks about "love" in fan letters to Ashton Kutcher. You recycle quasi-religious platitudes and received slogans. You know nothing of moral theology, a rigorous philosophical pursuit that hardly exists outside the Catholic Church and its elite universities. You make of the Bible what you will; you attend prayer meetings with other semi-literates, where you reinforce each other's sloppy understandings of the text, and combine them with half-digested bits of old-timey Hallmark-card "wisdom." And when you spout gibberish, you call it "speaking in tongues." You actually fancy that you're saints, you silly, narcissistic creatures.

Nevertheless, you are fellow Americans. The Blue Republican elite encouraged you to vote for George W Bush, because they quite simply own him, and they know that his administration will make policies that help them, even if hurt you. We Blue Democrats voted for John Kerry because we believed he would minister to your needs better than Bush. A President Kerry would have shared some of our wealth with you, assured your health care, raised the minimum wage, and checked the rapacious greed of the multinationals that hold you in thrall.

President Kerry would have helped us to help you, which is all that we ask. It pains us to see you in wage slavery. It pains us to see you so ignorant and uneducated, and so eager to place yourselves in bondage. Yes, we live better; but we wish you to live better too, even if it means sacrifice on our part.

What we wanted for you would have been far better than that which you, in your ignorant pride, demanded for yourselves. Oh, you defeated us all right, but only to your detriment.

We Blues will come out of the Bush era no worse for wear, although you Reds will come out very much diminished, deeper in debt, and less able to improve your circumstances by your own powers. But because you wish to be flattered more than helped, you will be grateful for your ass fucking from the Blue-state Republican elite that is laughing behind your backs today.

We did not wish it so. We honestly did want to help.

On 2 November, you thanked us by electing a shrewd, manipulative handmaiden to corporate America who panders to you while ruthlessly exploiting your ignorance and weakness for the benefit of his patrons in the national plutocracy. There is nothing we can do about that. You won fair and square.

We should let you rot. We should secede and leave you to fend for yourselves. Then you will see firsthand just how dependent you are. We are sick of fighting for you by fighting against you. Perhaps, when you see how dreary your lives have become without us, you will finally develop the spine to fight for your basic, human rights. And then we will gladly confront the plutocracy alongside you. We need your help to defeat the Blue Republicans, who, I assure you, are just as decadent as we are, though often richer.

But until you finally learn to respect yourselves, we can't respect you, and we therefore can't be bothered to give a rat's ass about you.

So let us secede, Blue America and Red America. We can handle the Blue state Republicans, so long as we don't have a lot of ignorant Red state lemmings frustrating our efforts and screwing themselves in the bargain. Secession will enable us both to live as we have chosen without the other's interference. We will prosper, and you will get a clue.

But do stay in touch after the borders slam shut. When you finally tire of living on the modern, corporate plantations of Cargill, Tyson, ConAgra and Smithfield; when you tire of shopping at Wal-Mart and sending your daughters to sling hash at Denny's in hopes that they'll meet the nicer sort of truck driver; when you tire of sneaking into Blue America as illegal white-trash wetbacks eager for casual work dusting our parlors; and when, like men, you finally rise up in rebellion against this immoral usury -- then, and only then, let us talk.

We'll gladly get your backs. But first you must grow the brains and the balls needed to profit from our help.

Man, I just found out that I actually hate my country because we are all a bunch of illiterate Neanderthals.

If our public schools weren't so serious about teaching our children how to commit sodomy, teach 10-year-olds safe sex, and hate whitie while progressing a culturally Marxist ideology; maybe our children would be learning math and science. Just maybe.

Fuck Europe did most of our ancestors not leave there for a reason...

gud thang we gots all them smarty-pants libruls around to tell us whats best fer us

maybe them wul tell usen how ter vote rite nex tim

If you live in a blue-state stronghold, a coastal city where you can go 24 hours without meeting any Republicans, it's consoling to think of the red staters as an alien bunch of strait-laced Bible thumpers.

I simply don't see how someone pointing out that there are things wrong with the US means that they "hate" the US. Did it ever occur to any of the knee-jerk conservatives here that perhaps people say what is wrong with something because they want to make it better? Becasue they love it?

This is the spirit this country was founded on. That we criticize and try to make changes. That is what the whole American project was about-making changes from the old European ways of doing things. Whatever your opinion of the solutions needed there are clearly things wrong with the country: we are engaged in a pointless war in the Middle East that might have been avioded as most of the country has now realized, our governement is loaded in debt and a few changes in money markets could cause us to spiral into a depression, our healthcare system is subpar and there are millions of people without health insureance and so on.

I am not blaming Reps or Dems, as I think they are both at fault. Clearly though there are some things that need fixing. So let's argue about how to fix them and not be simple minded and say that anyone who alerts us to these problems should leave the country or hates the US. That is just foolish and immature.

Don't try and use logic and reason with conservatives above poster. They are brainwashed idiots who simply repeat what they are fed by Faux News and their Republican talking heads.