Jay Leno and his profound comments on America

[Hikari]

Re: Ben Stein and his profound comments on America

The best thing about living here is being able to express opinions without too much fear of reprisal. Sure, you might risk getting in a fight with someone with the opposite view but you won't be arrested and sent to a gulag or a death camp. You can disagree with the president and that's fine. People can even hate this President, but from what I've observed about him, he doesn't seem to be any less sincere than previous Presidents who have led the nation in wartime.

It is no picnic to be responsible for sending people to fight. I've always thought it was interesting how much they change from their inauguration to the day they leave office. President Lincoln served during the war that claimed the MOST military lives in US history and his face showed every bit of the strain. It was like he held the Union together by sheer willpower. I think World War One and World War Two killed President Wilson and President Roosevelt respectively. As for President Bush, we really don't know what it's like to be in his position. Everyone has to do what they think is right. I may not agree with what he's done but I can respect him for taking what his conscience tells him is the correct path.

Anyway, it's good that people still express their views and don't let the media dictate to them how they should think. As the wise Frederick Douglass said so long ago, "Agitate, agitate, agitate." ^_^

[Riotsword]

Re: Ben Stein and his profound comments on America

I'm afraid to acknowledge that Ben Stein actually wrote that.

He had me until he mentioned "draft." Then I realized I never really did like Ben Stein that much at all.

[Garr123]

Re: Jay Leno and his profound comments on America

I dunno if Ben Stein wrote that, but I know he wrote this:



"A few days ago, a man from a slick new magazine about business sent me an e-mail. He wanted me to do a column for him about what was "new, hot and exciting -- or terrible -- in business today." The only catch was that he did not want me to complain about the rich. This is what I sent him:

Here is what's new and hot and exciting (or terrible) in the world of money today:

The average wage of the American worker adjusted for inflation is lower than it was in 1973. The only way that Americans have been able to maintain their standard of living at the middle and lower ends has been to send more family members to work and to draw down savings or go into debt or both.

The most sought after jobs in the United States now are jobs in finance in which basically almost no money is raised for new steel mills or coal mines, but immense sums are raised to buy companies, recapitalize them -- which means pay the new owners immense special dividends and other payments for going to the trouble of taking over the company. This process results in fantastically well-paid investment bankers and private equity "financial engineers" and has no measurably beneficial effect on the economy generally. It does facilitate the making of ever younger millionaires and an ever more leveraged American corporate structure.

An entire new class of financial entity has been created called "the hedge fund." It is new not in the sense that there were not always funds that hedged by selling short or buying assets uncorrelated with other assets. The new part of this phenomenon is that it is based on a demonstrably false premise: that these entities can consistently outperform wide stock indexes. They have not and cannot, and yet their managers and employees for a time are paid stupendously well.

As with the private equity function, the main effect is to siphon money from productive enterprise into financial manipulation. Or, to put it another way, to siphon money from Main Street to Greenwich or Wall Street.

Starting MBA's at hedge funds, which are basically gaming enterprises, get paid multi-six figure sums. Starting teachers in the state of Florida get paid $28,000 a year.

Here's what else is new and exciting (or terrible) in money: there is real poverty among the soldiers who fight our wars. There are fist fights to get children into $30,000 a year kindergartens and pre-schools in the right neighborhoods in Manhattan. There are 40 million Americans without health care insurance. There are almost 40 million baby boomers with no savings for retirement. There is a long waiting list for Bentleys at the dealership in Beverly Hills.

There are soldiers' wives selling blood to buy toys for their kids. There is a man selling non-functioning body armor who threw a $10 million Bat Mitzvah for his daughter.

In Brentwood, where the houses start at $3 million, the housewives complain about what a terrible country America is. In Clinton, South Carolina, where the textile mill closed fifteen years ago and there is real hardship, the young men still believe in America and their fiancees at Presbyterian College wait for them while they fight in Iraq.

This is a small part of what's new and exciting (or terrible) in America in the world of money right now.


I never heard back from the man at the slick new business magazine."

So he's aight.

[The Toecutter]

Re: Jay Leno and his profound comments on America

So being the knuckle dragger I am, I started thinking, ''What we are
so unhappy about?''

Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7
days a week? Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning
in the summer and heating in the winter? Could it be that 95.4
percent of these unhappy folks have a job? Maybe it is the ability to
walk into a grocery store at any time and see more food in moments
than Darfur has seen in the last year?

Maybe it is the ability to drive from the Pacific Ocean to the
Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we
move through each state? Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe
motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary
shelter? I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine
from around the world is just not good enough. Or could it be that
when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provide services
to help all and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.

Perhaps you are one of the 70 percent of Americans who own a home.
You may be upset wi th knowing that in the unfortunate case of a fire,
a group of trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top
notch equipment to extinguish the flames thus saving you, your family
and your belongings. Or if, while at home watching one of your many
flat screen TVs, a burglar or prowler intrudes , an officer equipped
with a gun and a bullet-proof vest will come to defend you and your
family against attack or loss. This all in the backdrop of a
neighborhood free of bombs or militias raping and pillaging the
residents. Neighborhoods where 90 percent of teenagers own cell phones
and computers.

How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we
enjoy that are the envy of everyone in the world? Maybe that is what
has 67 percent of you folks unhappy.

What are Americans so unhappy about?

That they are being ripped off on electricity and running water by the utility industries, who constantly hike rates using the excuse that they need to upgrade their infrastructure, only to pocket the money as profit. That their electricity is still mostly powered by polluting fossil fuels when cheaper alternatives now exist, but aren't used since they generate less profit. That their running water is being contaminated with mercury, particulates, and volatile organic compounds from industry and in some areas is so questionable as to its long term safety that people buy their water bottled. Americans are ****** that their source of heating in the winter is run by regional monopolies hell bent on more rate hikes and more profits while the disposable income of the lower middle class and impoverished is whittled away so that companies like LacClede gas can pay millions of dollars in bonuses to their executives while those not so well to do choose between heating their homes or eating dinner. How about the fact that the unemployment statistics are manipulated, and that you're only counted as unemployed if you are receiving unemployment aid, and that the real unemployment rate when adjusted for this inconvenient fact is actually approaching 20%? Or that those who have lost their jobs and found new ones are working at a Walmart for minimum wage, with no benefits, and no prospects of upward social mobility? Or the fact that the vast majority of businesses have no regard for an individual person's privacy with their extensive use of invasive background checks, drug testing, and credit checks? Perhaps it's because when they go into a grocery store, they have no idea whether the food they buy has genetically modified organisms in it, since the FDA says they don't even have the right to know what they eat and what the effects of these ingredients are on those who consume them? Perhaps it's because a few giant agribusinesses corporations are controlling the majority of food production in the US, and are so subsidized that small farms can't compete to even get their products on the shelves?


Maybe it's the fact that the oil and auto industries were allowed to tear down the mass transit in the 1940s by this government, and thus an expensive car is a requirement for most Americans to get anywhere at all! Or maybe it's the fact that those cars consume oil, are a huge contributor to the greenhouse effect, and that viable alternatives such as the electric car and biodiesel from hemp have been actively fought by this very government and the industries this government supports? Maybe it's the fact that if you can't afford a nice, clean motel, you are likely to be harassed by police for sleeping in your car due to laws that outlaw homelessness? Maybe it's the fact that wages are so low in relation to living expenses that the restaraunts affordable to most Americans tend to go by names such as Burger King, McDonalds, and White Castle? Or perhaps it's that if you wreck your car, are shipped to a hospital, and can't afford medical insurance, you are billed with such huge expenses from profiteering contractors that you'll be in debt for life? Maybe it's that cheaper and more effective medications are kept off the shelf by statute so that a few pharmaceutical companies can keep making money hand over fist?

Perhaps it's the fact that a few rich realators have bought up most of the available homes, artificially hiking the price so high that most Americans are paying nearly half their income to finace a home over a 40 year period, only for the buyers to be stuck with a home who's value is rapidly declining due to a bursting housing bubble? Or how about those officers in military armor, brandishing assault rifles, who can break into your home in the middle of the night for growing a plant, or because you are on some FBI watch list? Neighborhoods where you don't let your children play because of fear from all sorts of unchecked crime as all the police are wasting their time going after political dissenters and arresting people for victimless crimes such as smoking a joint in their own home?

How about the rapidly eroding religious, social, and political freedoms, which are now below that of any other first world nation? The fact that the U.S. has been ranked by the UN as the 96th most peaceful; nation out of about 120 countries measured?




Maybe that is why Americans are so upset.

[Kit Carruthers]

Re: Jay Leno and his profound comments on America

the author is *****ing about people *****ing.

since when do other people need to be happy? let people be unhappy if they want to be unhappy. being unhappy leads to making changes that makes them happy.

and then only the grumpy old white males who ***** about young people will be displeased and they're going to die soon anyway so whatever.

it's not like people are complaining about the luxury. the fact that they take their luxury for granted is a completely different issue than the iraq war and terrorism.

[Red Dragon]

Re: Jay Leno and his profound comments on America

On the subgect of not bieng peaceful nation. How can we be peaceful having one of the strongest armies in the world? Also during wartime?

[The Toecutter]

Re: Jay Leno and his profound comments on America

How can we be peaceful having one of the strongest armies in the world? Also during wartime?

Simple answer is we can't.

This is exactly why the original Articles of Confederation, which do outline some of those non-enumerated rights in the U.S. Constitution, had declared keeping a standing army in peacetime illegal. This is why our Founding Fathers acknowledged the right for militias to exist, for the country to be able to protect itself from foreign attacks and for citizens to be able to protect theirselves from their own government.

This country as outlined by the ideals of our Founding Fathers isn't supposed to invade other nations under false pretenses or for their resources. It is supposed to adhere to and uphold the treaties which it has signed.


Instead, our leaders want endless war as defense contractors laugh their way to the bank at taxpayer expense. They want more oil as the supply runs short while they meanwhile suppress less profitable alternatives to using it. They want more surveillance and restrictions to keep the public from being able to fight back when it finally becomes angry enough.



Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of this country because this country is becoming a police state.

[Dusk Raven]

Re: Jay Leno and his profound comments on America

This is why our Founding Fathers acknowledged the right for militias to exist, for the country to be able to protect itself from foreign attacks and for citizens to be able to protect theirselves from their own government.

Thing is, they can't really protect themselves from their own government, since the government has the military:

They want more surveillance and restrictions to keep the public from being able to fight back when it finally becomes angry enough.

...

This country as outlined by the ideals of our Founding Fathers isn't supposed to invade other nations under false pretenses or for their resources. It is supposed to adhere to and uphold the treaties which it has signed.

Case in point: the US has made more than 400 treties with Native American nations and, according to A People's History of the United States, broken every single one of them.

Instead, our leaders want endless war as defense contractors laugh their way to the bank at taxpayer expense. They want more oil as the supply runs short while they meanwhile suppress less profitable alternatives to using it.

Profit, profit, profit. I hate the very word.