Vaino's Diatribe

This is being posted courtesy of Vaino, who was more active here in days of yore. You should look up Vaino in Finnish mythology -- for instance, the Kalevala -- to see how much wisdom is attached to his pronouncements.

^^^

Is this the end of the Republican Party? Has their greed, hypocrisy and sleaze finally brought them to just ends? Or is this the beginning of the end of American civilization? I fear that despite our outsized economy and military, our influence on the rest of the world has already begun to wane. American policy in the Muslim world had been a complete disaster from propping up the Shah in Iran, to providing chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, to Narco-Warlords and the Taliban taking over control of Afghanistan. We are making all of Osama Bin Laden's predictions come true. In Latin America, the Milton Friedman economic experiment has been a failure everywhere. Other than a dumping ground for cheap manufacturing goods from overseas, the United States is becoming irrelevant. (And our foreign debt is being financed by the sale of bonds primarily to foreign countries.) In twenty years, China's economy will be as big as ours and they will wield more international political influence. This turnaround is a direct result of neocon policies, starting with Reagan but really coming to full implementation with Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. Their arrogance and utter ruthlessness will be the final undoing of America.