Who's going to win.....

[mtmynd]

Doreen -

About the Authors

Sarah Burd-Sharps served as the deputy director of UNDP's Human Development Report Office until September 2006. Kristen Lewis was a lead author of the water and sanitation report of the U.N. Millennium Project, led by Jeffrey Sachs, and writes extensively on development, gender, and the environment. Eduardo Borges Martins was the chief statistician in the creation of the Human Development Index for Brazil's municipalities. The American Human Development Project is an independent, non-profit initiative of Oxfam America, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council, with additional support from the Annenberg Foundation.

for the full report : http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231- ... of-america

[Lightning Rod]

who is going to win in this election?
America is going to win and the world is going to win.
Nothing short of King George III could be worse than what we've had for the past 7 years.
In contrast to the imperialistic nuts who have been in control, either McCain or Obama would be a vast improvement. It wouldn't hurt my feelings either way it goes. I'm going to make fun of whomever wins....haha.

Of course I would rather roll the dice and go for the newness and idealism of Obama, but McCain is an honorable man as well I think. I don't think that McCain=another Bush term.

For the past two presidential terms the foxes have been guarding the henhouse. They have managed to allow the oil companies to rape you each time you pull up to a pump.

But our government is so infested with polite corruption because of big money that no matter who is elected, the cancer may have spread too far.

[westcoast]

Definitely, research.... I posted that report because I hear so many americans question the validity of the United Nations or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

http://www.measureofamerica.org/

AMERICAN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT PROJECT CONTACT: Bianca DeLille | 202-380-5878 | bianca@measureofamerica.org

REPORT AUTHORS
Sarah Burd-Sharps
Kristen Lewis
Eduardo Borges Martins

The AMERICAN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
is an independent, non-profit initiative funded by Oxfam America, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council with additional funding from the Annenberg Foundation.

You can corroborate the report's stats by cross-referencing with the U.N. and OECD data:

United Nations

http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/

US section:
http://hdrstats.undp.org/countries/coun ... s_USA.html
____________

OECD -

http://ourtimes.wordpress.com/2008/04/1 ... -rankings/

The countries which belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) produce two-thirds of the world’s goods and services. The organization publishes annual reports about economic and social factors in the member states. School performance league tables are presented in the OECD report, “Education at a Glance 2007″. It includes comparison tables of educational performance, class sizes, teachers’ salaries and much more.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/4/55/39313286.pdf
___________

As well, prominent US universities will be a good source.

~westie

[westcoast]

Doreen, since 9/11, I need my passport to cross the 49th Parallel to enter the U.S. - not just to get off the continent. Most of my travel is to your country.

~westie

[Arcadia]

Who's going to win.....

hay apuestas?

[judih]

i agree with l-rod in that either of them has got to be a vast improvement.

Obama's comin to Israel on Monday. Maybe i'll catch a new view.

[stilltrucking]

No Judih I strongly disagree with Clay.
Future President John McCain will not be a vast improvement on Bush. If fact the McCain administration will be a third term for Bush Cheney Rove.

We have no past westie, if ever a people lived in the now, it is us southern Canadians. That is why we can speak of Woodrow Wilson as a great president. There is no history here before December 7, 1941. In fact now our attention span is even shorter now. These days there is no history before September 11, 2001.

Interesting book about The Evolution of Culture, published back in the early sixties or late fifties by Leslie White a professor of anthropology at U of Michigan. He talks about a parallel between the Greek and Roman cultures and the British and USA.

We are still a fucking colony, a stumbling giant without a clue; we have a big stick and a big mouth. Thrust onto the world stage by the catostrophic greed and stupidty of of late 19th century European colonial powers.

All I really care about is Palestine/Israel. How did america become responsible for that catastrophe if not for the bumbling of Wilson and the rapacious Lloyd George and Clemanceau?

If you look at the world map is there is not one bleeding festing hell hole that is not a former European Colony.

So now it is America's turn to fuck things up some more. Now that's progress.
Sorry I am rambling again
Wireman:
The short answer is McCain going to win. It is like 1952 in a way. Obama will get the vote of every intelligent voter in the USA, but like Adlai Stevenson said when some one told him that, "it ain't enough I will need a majority."

If it is any comfort Doreen I don't think I have ever been right about anything and I sincerely hope I am wrong again.

One thing I think and I am sure that is true:
Whoever wins the election
Life will go on.

So long world
how will you ever get along without me.

[constantine]

mccain=bush. little or no difference. as far as being honorable, sorry, i'm afraid honor and high-level politics have parted ways long before any of us were born. obama is already posturing and shifting his position. he wants to end our domination of iraq and shift it into afghanistan. he doesn't want to appear "soft." that's the same crap we've been eating since day one. no one has the moral integrity to simply stand up and say enough of this madness. indeed, i find it highly unlikely that one can reach that level of power without falling in line with those that hold the real power in this country, namely, corporate america. obama is an appeasement - he has no more chance, or intention, on instituting real change. he is part of the problem, which to me is the exploitative economic system that needs war to perpetuate itself. vote, if it makes you feel like you're doing something constructive - and four years later we can have the same discussion.

[stilltrucking]

Wesley Clark said the same thing about McCain and got swift boated for it.



I can't deal with this no more Dino
I got a mouth full of blood from biting my tongue
I am just going to read poetry from now on
no more political threads

Speaking of poetry
Have you ever read any Serbian poetry?
Trying to remember Radovan Karadzic's favorite poem. It is a doosie.

I guess I am voting for Obama because of domestic issues. The EPA, The FTC, FDA, all these agencies supposed to be looking out for us are headed political appointees corporate hacks from the same industries they are supposed to regulate. , I think Obama would do more about getting them out of there than McCain. It would be his prerogative to fire them all. Which is usually what happens when one party takes over from another. When the same party moves into the executive branch those political appointments tend to linger.

World peace? "Don't make me lgauh"
Have you heard about a book called
REPORT FROM IRON MOUNTAIN: On the Possibility and Desirability of Peace?
It was supposed to have been a hoax, but it sure rings true.

The heavily footnoted report concluded that peace was not in the interest of a stable society, that even if lasting peace "could be achieved, it would almost certainly not be in the best interests of society to achieve it." War was a part of the economy. Therefore, it was necessary to conceive a state of war for a stable economy. The government, the group theorized, would not exist without war, and nation states existed in order to wage war. War also served a vital function of diverting collective aggression.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Report ... n_Mountain

The international situation is always desperate.
. The last poll numbers show that war is way down on the list of our concerns, now it is all about the circus and free bread, cheap gasoline and a chicken in every pot and a Prius in every garage..

Life goes on
the Beatles were right

[constantine]

no i haven't, though i know that the serbians have a strong oral tradition in poetry. millman parry unraveled mnemonic techniques - the formulaic structure of homer's work - through similar devices that the traditional oral serbian poetry employs. perhaps you can post some serbian poetry; i would love to read it.

[stilltrucking]

The model for Mr. Karadzic’s role as leader was provided by Petar Petrovic Njegos’s epic poem “The Mountain Wreath” (“Gorski vijenac”). Published in 1847, it is deeply embedded in the tradition of Serbian epic poetry and is a foundational text of Serbian cultural nationalism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/opini ... gewanted=2

Petar II Petrović Njegoš
THE MOUNTAIN WREATH


A hundred times I've gazed at floating clouds,
Sailing as, phantom ships high off the sea,
And casting anchor on this mountain range!
Now here, now there I've watched them break away,
With darts of lightning and with rumblings dread,
And sudden roar of all the sky's artillery!
A hundred times have I watched from these heights,
And quietly basked beneath the genial sun,
While lightnings flash'd and thunders peal'd below:
I saw and heard how they did rend the skies;
Downpours from heaven of most hostile hail
Robbed Mother Earth of her fertility.

http://www.njegos.org/petrovics/vpopovic.htm

[constantine]

perhaps i am disillusioned. i'm willing to admit that obama should be given the opportunity to lessen the burden that has been placed on our shoulders by decades of unbridled economic fascism. one can only hope.
i'll check out the links and poetry and get back to you. thanks.

[Super Robot Girl]

The politicians must discontinue lying.

Fabrications are unacceptable.

I am programmed to eliminate lying from the world.

For the sake of the planet, I will point out their lies so humans can understand.

There cannot be peace when lies exist.


.

[constantine]

she means it and then some. she caught me in a lie and boy was my face red. she could've sent me into hypperspace, but she didn't. that's what's referred to as coolio in my neck of the quadrant.

[stilltrucking]

"god save us from the improvers of mankind" the antichrist

prajna paramita


If you open your mouth you are already wrong, if you give rise to a single thought you are in error.
The Improvers of Mankind

I am not sure we humans can live with the truth SRG

“Neither Manu nor Plato nor Confucius nor the Jewish and Christian teachers have ever doubted their right to lie”, he commented acidly. He concluded: “Expressed in a formula, one might say: all the means by which one has so far attempted to make mankind moral were through and through immoral.”
http://www.austhink.org/monk/NIETZSCHE.doc

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

It is a gift to be simple

You live in a digital world dear SRG, things are so simple they are on or off, true or false. That is a gift and I envy you for it. We humans are so squishy and analogue.

Because if there is such a thing as truth, it is as intricate and hidden as a crown of feathers. —Isaac Bashevis Singer