Arrived back in the U.S. early yesterday morning

being in argentina for the past month was a blessed relief and coming back yesterday to the u.s., it was clear that nothing has changed, a conservative sweep of the mid-term elections notwithstanding... now, mind you, i didn't expect anything different, but sitting in the breakfast room of the hotel this morning with fox news blasting in my face from two different monitors, i confess to being just a tad bit glum... i never watch fox news unless i'm absolutely unable to avoid it but i am always stunned at its complete lack of depth, its self-granted freedom to distort the truth and its blatant pandering to all the worst human tendencies... kind of like a mirror for the rest of the country, i'm afraid...

the good news...?

i'm back on a plane out of the country later this afternoon... granted, there's no such thing as a utopia out there and most places i go, i see the same ugly patterns repeating themselves... what makes it a little more tolerable is that, when i'm in somebody ELSE's country, what's getting shoved in my face isn't constantly reminding me of the miserable state of my OWN country...

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Oh, yay...! Just keep printin' that worthless goddam paper...

keep on tryin' to keep the good ol' u.s. of a. from getting sucked down the financial failure toilet bowl...

The Fed said it would buy an additional $600 billion in long-term Treasury securities by the end of June 2011, somewhat more than the $300 billion to $500 billion that many in the markets had expected.

The central bank said it would also continue its program, announced in August, of reinvesting proceeds from its mortgage-related holdings to buy Treasury debt. The Fed now expects to reinvest $250 billion to $300 billion under that program by the end of June, making the total asset purchases in the range of $850 billion to $900 billion.

wtf is goin' on here...? let's let the goddam thing crash already...!

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Guess it's time to move to California

judging by yesterday's election results, it looks like the only place in the u.s. where i'll still be among semi-like minds...

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Yemenis are unnerved by U.S. drones patrolling their skies...?

well, no shit, sherlock... imagine how YOU'D feel if you looked up and saw one of those purveyors of death flying overhead several times a day...

reuters...

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Saturday's empty "Rally to Restore Sanity"

chris hedges...

The celebrities from Comedy Central and the trash talk show hosts on Fox are in the same business. They are entertainers. They provide the empty, emotionally laden material that propels endless chatter back and forth on supposed left- and right-wing television programs. It is a national Punch and Judy show. But don’t be fooled. It is not politics. It is entertainment. It is spectacle. All national debate on the airwaves is driven by the same empty gossip, the same absurd trivia, the same celebrity meltdowns and the same ridiculous posturing. It is presented with a different spin. But none of it is about ideas or truth. None of it is about being informed. It caters to emotions. It makes us confuse how we are made to feel with knowledge. And in the end, for those who serve up this drivel, the game is about money in the form of ratings and advertising. Beck, Colbert and Stewart all serve the same masters. And it is not us.

sitting here in buenos aires, i tuned in to the rally briefly on the c-span internet live stream and experienced an immediate, negative and very visceral reaction... the only way i can describe it is that seeing colbert and stewart on the platform at the national mall was shockingly, jarringly out of context... somehow, they just didn't belong there... it was like they had decided to combine their respective television shows and take them on location, only they weren't doing their shows, they were doing this totally contrived shtick that was neither funny nor engaging... just by watching, i somehow felt manipulated... about three minutes was all i could stand so i closed the window...

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