There was a small ray of hope just after the Lehman collapse that one of the most lamentable characteristics of US society - the relentless urge to build massive McMansions (funding questions aside) - was fading. Alas, as the Census Bureau confirmed this week, that normalization in the innate American desire for bigger, bigger, bigger not only did not go away but is now back with a bang.
NATO has always been more about offense than defense, and more about America controlling the policies of Alliance members, increasing their numbers, pressuring them to stress militarism more than they’d chose otherwise and of course, selling them lots of US weapons according to writer and activist Stephen Lendman. In an article for Global research he writes: When founded in April 1949, Soviet Russia was a North Atlantic Alliance enemy in name only, ravaged by WW II – needing years after Stalin’s April 1953 death to regain pre-war normality, peace essential to restore it.
A new study shows that Americans are four times more accepting of gay sex than they were 25 years ago, and twice as likely to have it themselves. Unsurprisingly, the Millennials are driving this. And what’s driving the Millennials? Excerpt:
But all of these factors — the increased acceptance, the increased behavior and the trend toward sexual fluidity — make Twenge think she knows the real driving force behind this cultural shift: We care more about ourselves. She believes this comes from an increased sense of individualism.
Submitted by Lucy Steigerwald via TheAntiMedia.org,
In America, we do not lock up our murdering politicians. We rarely prosecute or impeach them. The only scandals that stick are sex ones. Serious voters, writers, pundits, and anyone else who feels as if they have deep principles invariably buckle under the partisan weight of the political system.
Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,
The flyover zones of America are wanting for work and buried in debt. That’s the legacy of three decades of Washington/Wall Street Bubble Finance. The latter has exported jobs, crushed the purchasing power of main street wages and showered the bicoastal elites with the windfalls of financialization.