主题：美国精英对美国选票制度的批判。 -- dolong

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=7835.6441.0.0

看到你的祖国死去很痛苦，只有止不住的叹息和哭泣。

美国正在遭受好几个病痛的折磨，这些病好不了了。这是一个不可避免的（inescapable）而且很简单的（ plain）事实。

原文链接＋全文

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=7835.6441.0.0

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It’s Hard to Watch Your Country Die

January 12, 2011 | From theTrumpet.com

One can’t help but sigh and cry.

Robert Gates says don’t underestimate America.

The talk in global political circles is that the U.S. is washed up. America’s defense secretary, traveling to China this week, addressed the gossip.

“I’ve watched this sort of cyclical view of American decline come around two or three times, perhaps most dramatically in the latter half of the 1970s,” he said. “And my general line for those both at home and around the world who think the U.S. is in decline is that history’s dustbins are filled with countries that underestimated the resilience of the United States.”

Maybe so. But it seems like it’s hard to underestimate America these days. When was the last time anyone faced any consequences for doing so?

The secretary’s words ring especially hollow when you look at where he was heading. China has plenty cause for a low estimation of the United States. America owes it probably a trillion dollars. And China looks poised to single-handedly neutralize America’s robust, decades-long influence in the Asia Pacific thanks to a military spending binge that will yield aircraft-carrier-killing missiles, not to mention aircraft carriers and stealth planes.

Meanwhile, Secretary Gates, just days earlier, announced that America will slash military spending by $78 billion. The contrast between a country rising and a country sliding is stark.

It’s painful to watch someone you love dying of a terminal sickness. The same must be said of seeing a country you love die.

America suffers with several ills from which it will not recover. This reality is becoming inescapably plain. There is hope—a bright, shining, sure hope for this country. But it is most certainly not to be found in any of the sources that naive optimists look to. We must face facts.

The virtues America once embodied have largely faded. The blessings America once enjoyed have been squandered.

America’s military dominance is proving inadequate. America’s wars are proving impossible. Our allies are leaving us. Our enemies are provoking us.

“America is funding its military supremacy through deficit spending, meaning the war in Afghanistan is effectively being paid for with a Chinese credit card,” Foreign Policy wrote. The epic indebtedness to China and the shrinking military are both symptoms of an irreparably broken economy. Not only has America’s fiscal irresponsibility gone on too long to correct, the country shows no sign of having the will to even try.

Despite growing unemployment, despite ruinous private and public debt, despite whole states risking bankruptcy, despite the federal government now paying its bills with nothing but printed paper, Americans keep spending like good times will roll forever. In the past decade, people’s incomes declined for the first time in America’s history—yet spending kept rising. Frugality, thrift, moderation, self-control, self-sufficiency—it seems such perennially American virtues are permanently lost, buried by rank materialism and excess.

The nation simply will not recover from this condition before it pays dearly for it. At the end of 2010, the national debt cracked $14 trillion—and debt growth is only accelerating. The last Congress racked up a stupefying $3.22 trillion in debt in two quick years. After an election that supposedly rebuked Washington for its profligacy, Republicans agreed to a spending bill that will add another trillion to the debt.

This new Congress will not reverse this juggernaut trend. Newcomers agitating for change face a House controlled by one party, a Senate controlled by the other, and a president with veto power and a bulldog determination to keep expanding the government.

And, truth be told, he’s got the people behind him. Maybe not for healthcare. But Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare represent more than $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities—and no politician plans to lose his job trying to prevent those programs from bankrupting the country. The problem isn’t Obama: The wild spending, the disastrous deficits, the entitlements, the bailouts—these all started with his “conservative” Republican predecessor. The problem is Washington—and the voters who decide who to send there.

The children of hard-bitten, self-reliant settlers who conquered the West have become grabby government dependents. In today’s America, only 58.2 percent of the civilian population is even employed.

The nation’s spreading economic and political sickness is matched by its moral decline. Despite warnings from military leaders and front-line soldiers of how it will hurt America’s fighting capability, civilian leaders decided that homosexuals can now freely serve in the military. At a press conference celebrating this policy “victory,” the president said his views on same-sex “marriage” are “evolving.” Those views, like those of the general population, will never “evolve” back to upholding the plain definition of marriage that has underpinned stable families—and strong societies—for millennia.

As if the stabilizing force of family isn’t being rocked enough. “The social pathologies long associated with the inner-city poor—single-parent households, births out of wedlock, drug and alcohol abuse—now stalk the white working class in rural and post-industrial regions far removed from big cities,” reports the Washington Post. In the nation’s capital, more than half of family households are run by single parents. In one area of Washington, only a quarter of homes contain a functioning marriage; of the remaining homes, nearly 9 in 10 are run by women.

No wonder 40 percent of Americans think marriage is becoming obsolete: A generation is growing up without even seeing what it is supposed to look like. Fractured families breed more fractured families. This is a sickness that simply will not heal.

The litany of such problems goes on and on. Each headline shows a bleaker prognosis, a new pain, another symptom bound only to get worse.

“The passing of the Christian West signifies the end not only of a worldview, but of a character type—one based on honor, family, self-help, blood-and-soil patriotism, personal responsibility and a God-centered moral order,” wrote Jeffrey Kuhner. “Self-indulgence and self-expression have filled the vacuum. Life is no longer about sacrifice and duty; it’s about maximizing pleasure and self-fulfillment.”

Viewing this phenomenon, one can’t help but sigh and cry—as the Prophet Isaiah did, speaking prophetically of America today: “Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward. … [T]he whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment” (Isaiah 1:4-6). It’s painful to watch, particularly in a country you love.

Secretary Gates’s statement to the Chinese may have been technically accurate. But the far more relevant truth is that history’s dustbins are filled with countries that overestimated their own resilience.

The true hope that lies ahead for the United States is prophesied in the Bible. You can read about it in Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The United States and Britain in Prophecy, particularly the last chapter, “What’s Prophesied to Happen, Now—to America and Britain.”

Joel Hilliker’s column appears every Wednesday.

To e-mail Joel Hilliker, click here.

Please note that, unless you request otherwi

Featured comments:

‘Despite growing unemployment, despite ruinous private and public debt, despite whole states risking bankruptcy, despite the federal government now paying its bills with nothing but printed paper, Americans keep spending like good times will roll forever.’

And that’s the problem with the average joe. They grew up being told they could do anything they wanted with their lives. If it feels good it must be right. They don’t want to hear the truth about ANYTHING negative if it could possibly dampen their views on the life they ‘DESERVE’.

As far as my friends are concerned, it’s like they have blinders on! Every day I look at the news: jobless claims are higher than expected, take care, things look bleak (usually in the beginning of the week); (then by Friday) jobless claims are lower than expected, take it easy, things are going to be fine. It’s the weekend, relax, go out with your friends, go to the mall, spend what little money you have left on that pair of shoes you really want, or that pair of jeans that’ll land you that ‘perfect mate’… you DESERVE it. The media is becoming a big problem. Is anybody else picking up on that fact?

Take a good friend of mine as an example. Her and her husband are the average American. He’s an executive chef, she’s a half time waitress with a degree in business. I’ve been telling them for a couple of years to save up for the rainy day that’s on the way. No, no, they say, we’re OK. We have good insurance, our son with type 1 diabetes whose medical expenses are over $1000 a month will be fine no matter what… we have everything we need…

So life goes on for them. Until two days before Christmas. He comes home with the news that he lost his job. Now they’re trying to do the whole unemployment thing. She is so stressed out I think she’s going to have a stroke or something.

The point is though, it’s like they never saw it coming! Even when they’re being told! People litterally have blinders on and as incredible as it may seem to those in the know, most people have no idea whatsoever whats going on in the world. and the sad thing is they don’t want to know! I’ve only read the bible twice so I can’t remember where that phrase is, something about people only wanting to hear GOOD THINGS… I’m a new Christian and in the beginning I wanted to share what I’m learning with my friends. I still want to of course, but they say they don’t want to hear about God. They say they have enough to worry about without ‘getting stressed about the whole God thing’ Their idea of worrying is what to buy at the mall, or the grocery store, how to decorate so perfectly that the neighbors will be in awe. Getting everybody to the same bar at the same time come Friday night.

Americans keep spending like good times will roll forever.’ More to the point - Americans keep sticking their heads in the ground, or pulling the sheets over their heads, like nothing ever even happened at all! They don’t want to know. They just keep moving forward, “Livin the Dream”, because “It’s All Good”, after all “It’s a Good Life”

As far as my own life is concerned, I guess i’ve actually become part of the problem. I got sick a couple years ago and am now waiting for social security. I’m only 46. I come from a family of succesful women with mid-west work ethics. I grew up knowing that I would do something great, and I thought, up until about 3 years ago, that I had. I was a professional. I had a couple years of savings, I did all the right things, how could this happen? I had to claim bankruptcy, I lost my house, my husband got terribly injured at work, I lost my job, I got sick, I became weak… now I’m a Christian and things are better. Now I get up everyday and remember to pray. Now I know God is here with me. Things are better.

Seems to me, the country is going through much the same trials. So who’s going to tell America we all should get down on our knees and pray to God? How many trials must our country endure before ‘our leader’ does the right thing?

I guess all we can do is pray and watch. And wait. Patiently.

Rebecca Weir—Vermont, US

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Sometimes I turn on the Jerry Springer Show for a minute, and it reminds me why the Lord plans to destroy our nations. There is no way to fix evil other than to completely destroy it.

I suppose if the Lord went on prime time t.v. tonight, and announced the complete destruction of our societies, the vast multitudes would scream who is this, and where is my show? Then the masses would cry “Crucify Him, and give us Barrabas.”

B.Posch—Canada

Nicholas Kristof是《纽约时报》的专栏作家，非常liberal，身边几个美国人都觉得他太“普世”了。他觉得北京政府对网络的控制比他预想的要宽松。

新浪微搏地址： http://blog.sina.com.cn/jisidao

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/opinion/23kristof.html

Nicholas Kristof: Banned in Beijing!

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof started a blog on Sina in order to see how long it wold stay up after he published “counterrevolutionary” posts supporting Liu Xiaobo and other dissidents:

On this visit, I started with blogging and with microblogging, the Chinese version of Twitter. But, in an ominous sign, I discovered that the Chinese authorities had tightened the rules since my last experiments. These days, anyone starting an online account must supply an ID card number and cellphone number. That means that the authorities can quickly track down nettlesome commentators.

Once I got started, though, the censors were less aggressive than I had expected, apparently relying more on intimidation than on actual censorship. Even my microblog posts about Mr. Liu, the imprisoned dissident, went up. A similar post mentioning the banned Falun Gong movement triggered an automatic review, but then a moderator approved it.

(A Chinese moderator once explained to me that grunt-level censors are mostly young computer geeks who believe in Internet freedom and try to sabotage their responsibilities without getting fired.)

Still, there are limits. I posted a reference to the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen massacre. It went up automatically, and then was removed by a moderator 20 minutes later.

The challenge for the authorities is that there is just too much to police by moderators, and automatic filters don’t work terribly well. Chinese routinely use well-known code phrases for terms that will be censored (June 4 might become June 2+2, or May 35). Likewise, Chinese can usually get around the “great firewall of China” by using widely available software, like Freegate, or by tunneling through a virtual private network.

中国开发银行和进出口银行2009年和2010年给发展中国家共贷款至少1100亿美元，而世界银行（World bank）共贷款1003亿美元。

看来中国对IMF和World Bank是明修栈道，暗渡陈仓啊。

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/488c60f4-2281-11e0-b6a2-00144feab49a.html#axzz1BvuTmkfN

China’s lending hits new heights

By Geoff Dyer and Jamil Anderlini in Beijing and Henny Sender in Hong Kong

Published: January 17 2011 22:15 | Last updated: January 17 2011 22:15

China has lent more money to other developing countries over the past two years than the World Bank, a stark indication of the scale of Beijing’s economic reach and its drive to secure natural resources.

China Development Bank and China Export-Import Bank signed loans of at least $110bn (70bn) to other developing country governments and companies in 2009 and 2010, according to Financial Times research. The equivalent arms of the World Bank made loan commitments of $100.3bn from mid-2008 to mid-2010, itself a record amount of lending in response to the financial crisis.

英国《金融时报》专版：中国改变世界（China Shapes the World）

http://www.ft.com/indepth/china-shapes-the-world

For the United States, China is the immoveable object. Blandishments don't work. Importuning doesn't work. Threats don't work. And as the Obama administration will learn, holding state visits and dinners don't work either.

对于美国，动中国是动不了：好言相劝不行，逼迫不行，威胁不行，Obama给他们一个国宴也不行。

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January 21, 2011

China: The Immovable Object

By Robert Robb

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/01/21/china_the_immovable_object_108611.html

Managing the U.S.-China relationship requires two qualities for which American foreign policy is not usually known: circumspection and patience.

Right now, the United States is irritated with China on many fronts.

We are worried about how much U.S. debt the Chinese own, but also that they will not want to buy any more. We believe that China undervalues its currency to cheat in trade.

The United States is alarmed at China's increased military capability and the threat it poses to U.S. supremacy in the Pacific. We find China's territorial claims provocative.

The U.S. believes that China is not doing enough to restrain the nuclear ambitions of Iran and, particularly, North Korea.

Some of this irritation comes from a lack of perspective. China's trade with the rest of the world is roughly in balance, it imports about as much as it exports. The trade surplus with the United States is not due to currency differences. China loosely pegs its currency to the U.S. dollar, which is the opposite of manipulation.

In fact, China has a much more valid currency complaint than does the United States. Extraordinarily loose U.S. monetary policy is devaluing China's dollar reserves.

China's large dollar reserves are insurance against its own immature banking and finance system, not a calculated effort to gain leverage over the United States. As a percentage of GDP, China actually owns less U.S. government debt than does Britain or Switzerland.

Some of the concern about China is real. China is clearly seeking to neutralize U.S. military supremacy in the Pacific. And it will succeed. That is a reality to which other regional powers - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan - will have to adjust.

Mostly, however, U.S. irritation with China results from the difficulty the United States is having in adjusting to a diminished role in the world. The United States just isn't used to a country that really doesn't seem to care what we think or do, as China generally does not.

For the United States, China is the immoveable object. Blandishments don't work. Importuning doesn't work. Threats don't work. And as the Obama administration will learn, holding state visits and dinners don't work either.

China does what it perceives to be in its best interests, irrespective of what the United States thinks about it.

There is deep anxiety in the United States that we will be eclipsed by China. This is another area in which perspective is missing.

China does seek to reduce U.S. geo-political influence in its part of the world. But economically, China wishes us no harm. At the state visit, President Obama told China President Hu that, "We want to sell you all kinds of stuff." The Chinese want to do the same to us.

The Chinese believe they have built an economic model that serves as an alternative to America's democratic capitalism. Many in the United States fear that they have.

But they haven't. China is still very much a developing country. China's approach of using state-favored large commercial enterprises to expand exports is hardly new among developing countries. It's been done before.

An export sector can be developed that way. But domestic production and trade cannot be centrally controlled. There are too many moving parts.

China is headed for big problems. It has an aging population without a social welfare net. As Richard McGregor's book, "The Party," documents, everything in China, including its large commercial firms, still owes first loyalty to the Communist Party. Maintaining authoritarian control over 1.3 billion people is not easy. China is constantly rife with small-scale protests.

Sometime over the next decade or two, China's state-directed export economic model will begin to stagnate. What will happen next is impossible to foresee. But a steady continuation of China's rise as it is currently configured isn't going to happen. Simply put, China has neither a political nor an economic system compatible with a generally prosperous people.

China will do what China will do. There's not much the United States can do about it except watch and cope.

Robert Robb is a columnist for the Arizona Republic and a RealClearPolitics contributor. Reach him at [email protected]. Read more of his work at robertrobb.com.

此博客已被关闭。

如有疑问请拨打客服电话：4006900000

忘了给它snapshot一下了，不然可以拿出来show show。

UC Berkley的节目：

[FLASH]http://www.youtube.com/v/dBUZaaq6whM[/FLASH]

Host Harry Kreisler welcomes James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly for a conversation on U.S-China relations. They discuss the rise of China as a manufacturing superpower, the costs and benefits of economic interdependence between the two countries, and the implications of the relationship for global economic stability. Fallows also talks about the lack of media coverage of the international context of the U.S. financial crisis and speculates on how China will impact the agenda of the next President of the United States.

Series: Conversations with History [11/2008] [Show ID: 15413]

ABC = American-Born Chinese:美国出生的华人，他们中不少年轻人开始回到中国发展。

[FLASH]http://www.youtube.com/v/xb1wlV4PAIY[/FLASH]

ABCs are American-Born Chinese: and since China has been economically booming in the last few years, more and more Chinese Americans decide to go back to China.

老美也喜欢用 “黄鼠狼（weasels）”来形容那些可恶的富人！

Not so with the weasels who run Deutsche Bank and Saxon in the Hurley case. They seem to be fighting the Hurley’s tooth and nail.

黄鼠狼们（weasels）运营德意志银行和银行撒克逊，他们对Hurley（一美国驻伊拉克士兵）敲骨吸髓（fight the Hurley’s tooth and nail）。

Too many seem to be run by spineless weasels, and they hurting men and women serving in armed armed forces.

太多的（银行）是那些无脊椎的黄鼠狼们（spineless weasels）在管理着，他们伤害着为这个国家服役的士兵们。

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US Soldiers Losing Homes to Illegal Foreclosures

from The Big Picture by Barry Ritholtz

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/01/us-soldiers-losing-homes-to-illegal-foreclosures/

Here is a story to shoot your blood pressure through the roof:

“While Sgt. James B. Hurley was away at war, he lost a heartbreaking battle at home.

In violation of a law intended to protect active military personnel from creditors, agents of Deutsche Bank foreclosed on his small Michigan house, forcing Sergeant Hurley’s wife, Brandie, and her two young children to move out and find shelter elsewhere.

When the sergeant returned in December 2005, he drove past the densely wooded riverfront property outside Hartford, Mich. The peaceful little home was still there — winter birds still darted over the gazebo he had built near the water’s edge — but it almost certainly would never be his again. Less than two months before his return from the war, the bank’s agents sold the property to a buyer in Chicago for $76,000.”

And it only gets worse from there.

The Sergeant (retired, disabled) has been on a legal odyssey that is in its 7th year. He is battling Deutsche Bank Trust Company and Morgan Stanley subsidiary Saxon Mortgage Services.

Under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, Hurley’s lawyers are seeking punitive damages against the two giant banks. The NYT reports the specifics of the Servicemembers Act:

“Under the law, only a judge can authorize a foreclosure on a protected service member’s home, even in states where court orders are not required for civilian foreclosures, and the judge can act only after a hearing where the military homeowner is represented. The law also caps a protected service member’s mortgage rate at 6 percent.”

Big banks routinely violated the act. Wells Fargo and Citigroup were cited, as was JPMorgan Chase (they regularly overcharge servicemen, despite the law).

But as bad as Chase has been, they seem to be trying to make amends. Not so with the weasels who run Deutsche Bank and Saxon in the Hurley case. They seem to be fighting the Hurley’s tooth and nail.

There are many reasons never to bailout banks, but here’s another one: Too many seem to be run by spineless weasels, and they hurting men and women serving in armed armed forces. (Aren’t there any ex service people working at these banks that can get this taken care of promptly?)

Shame on Morgan Stanley, and shame Deutsche Bank.

>

Source:

A Reservist in a New War, Against Foreclosure

DIANA B. HENRIQUES

NYT, January 26, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/business/27foreclose.html

比如说明书可以写的非常复杂，让你根本看不懂，但是在给你宣传的时候只讲好的一方面，结果糊里糊涂的上当；比如编个又臭又长的合同，在倒数第几页的时候小字写上“解释权归本银行所有”，然后你就又被扰进去了。

打官司？随便。银行每年花着大笔钱养着律师呢，足够折腾你的。

shame.

这个视频总体上说的都挺客观的。但是最后我心里同时出现了两种相反，即愤怒，又高兴。有点看不下去了。

愤怒的是这个James Fallows和主持人说起中国人“穷，但是还平均每人借给美国人4000美元”时的得意的丑恶嘴脸。不就是早工业化了一两百年吗？他们得瑟什么？我们不这么干难道还有什么别的选择吗？难道去学印度，南美，东南亚，非洲？现在不就是我们用这种吃苦耐劳还借钱给他们的笨办法，实际上撼动了西方几百年的统治根基了吗？

高兴的是，不管怎么样，我们得到的是manufacturing bases,是工业化，是几亿的高素质工人，是真正的power所在。西方人牛逼就继续搞金融啊，o8m提什么“再工业化”啊？