Congradulations U.S.A. (The Mars Landing)

The guy who made Hoyt cry today.

 

A dimmer switch for braking and you just turn it off for parking.

 

If they all look like Maria Sharapova, then they can come with rattling chains, whips and whatever other weapon they like. I'm ready to surrender.

 

That blood-shot eye suggests the skull has been celebrating in Colorado or
Washington State. Bong on, Hoyt!
P.S. Are you going to finish that Twinkie?

 

Don't cry Hoyte- WWII ended a long time ago & it may be high time that we start to leave behind some of our direct influence of problems 'over there':

http://www.europeaninstitute.org/EA...trategy-will-have-major-impact-on-europe.html

 

There's no need to take the result so seriously, Hoyt.
Laugh it up, and remember that the USA still has stalwart friends all over the
Middle East.

 

I hardly think that a realignment of our global security approach given known threats amounts to "isolationism".

Read the piece I posted BTW:

"9/11 confirmed a view that Rumsfeld and his officials had already been forming. Less than three weeks later, Rumsfeld’s first Quadrennial Defense Review appeared: it changed the metrics in all previous reviews (essentially force-planning based on defined scenarios of likely future conflicts) and replaced them with what Rumsfeld called “a ‘capabilities-based’ model” contingencies of a global war on terror. U.S. forces must be ready to fight anywhere, against all sorts of adversaries. Henceforth, the “central front” (Europe, facing Russia) was no longer a threat: “With the notable exception of the Balkans, Europe is largely at peace.” And, from an old cold warrior such as Rumsfeld, this momentous conclusion: “Russia…does not pose a large-scale military threat to NATO.”

It was the decisive signal of a shift in America’s strategic focus away from Europe as the main theater for U.S. power. Now Rumsfeld’s review pointed to China: “although the United States will not face a peer competitor in the near future, the potential exists for regional powers to develop sufficient capabilities to threaten stability in regions critical to U.S. interests. In particular, Asia is gradually emerging as a region susceptible to large-scale military competition…Maintaining a stable balance in Asia will be a complex task. The possibility exists that a military competitor with a formidable resource base will emerge in the region.” Coping with that would mean “developing systems capable of sustained operations at great distances with minimal theater-based support” – meaning naval and long-range air power."

Every subsequent review has echoed Rumsfeld’s judgment. In August 2004, Bush announced the first earnest of the shift away from Europe: “the most comprehensive restructuring of U.S. military forces overseas since the end of the Korean War,” the White House boasted. The U.S. would “close hundreds of U.S. facilities overseas and bring home about 60,000 to 70,000 uniformed personnel and approximately 100,000 family members and civilian employees.” “The world has changed a great deal, and our posture must change with it,” Bush said. Worldwide, the U.S. would cut its foreign installations from 850 to 550 – two-thirds of those closings in Europe. Of the 70,000 coming home – most of them Army – 40,000 would come from Europe. In total, the biggest pull-back would be from Europe."
http://www.europeaninstitute.org/EA...trategy-will-have-major-impact-on-europe.html

This writing has been on the wall for some time and was strongly campaigned by Rumsfeld/Bush.
Or perhaps you were also cringing while Bush was in office?
If so you were not alone...

 

Oh and congratulations on your new, old, president. Fascinating to watch an American election unfold.

 

It's a shame the USA doesn't play elections as often as the Italians. Then we could be entertained every year, or even more often.

 

It really is incredible to watch two grown men prostrate themselves before the electorate for months, begging, talk'n trash, telling thousands of lies, spending mountains of money then.....

THE WINNER IS !!

And the system really works. America has never produced a Stalin or Mussolini.

Incredible

 

There's a risk of opening a can of worms there, if I say that America (intended as system, not as people who live in in US) is too smart and too exposed to produce such blatant and brutal forms of dictatorship. It's an option left to less smart countries. International Monetary Fund, for example, together with several other political, mediatic and brute-force methods, are much more effective tools the US has at hand to keep the people and whole countries under control. So to avoid that risk, I won't say it. Oooops, what, I just said it?

 

That just an issue of too much power and special interest. Perhaps as the world matures , Superpower will be tamed.

 

I think that is America's greatest achievement: it created and has maintained a system (flawed as it is) for the peaceful transfer of power at a national level. The system works because normally losers accept the outcome, pick up their marbles and go home. And when they get home they sleep soundly, knowing the winning side won't be killing them in the middle of the night.

The one time the losers refused to accept the results, we had a Civil War that killed as many Americans as all our other wars put together. May it never happen again....

 

Oh and...once the congratulations are over the WORLD is watching anxiously for how the administration will deal with the FISCAL CLIFF. Terrifying.