Re: US strike options on TSP

[Gus]

Why GOP not backing Condi Rice for next pres candidate? Or is it she doesn't want to contest? She would first woman and African American to boot.

Is this a trick question? Or are you actually falling for republican establishment making some noise now and then about reaching out to minorities but keep serving only the interest of rich white men.

[member_22733]

svenkatji,

From my reading of the Americans (thats my only experience in the 'west'), I feel that many are genuinely gullible and blissfully unaware of their own deeply held prejudices.

Infact, the US has two parts. The stock USofA population is like how Indians were when they were the most prosperous.. blissfully unaware of the outside world. This is a new phenomena, but a large part of the US in getting to this state. The other part which are usually the rich 1%, they are acutely aware of the geopolitical realities, but again... the prejudices remain. Since the $$$ is on their side, they dont have to care about their prejudices and can still do business. This factor might change (along with the population dynamics) in the US in the medium term future.

Very interesting decades ahead.

[svenkat]

LokeshCji,
Very true observations.

[A_Gupta]

Israeli/Jewish politics in the US:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/0 ... In-America

[A_Gupta]

Understanding the moneyed interests in the United States (small vignette)
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/08/3 ... -home.html

[shiv]

Veering off topic slightly..and this is a serious question (for my own information and debate, if need be) and not a loaded one designed to trap someone.

Does the US have culture? Is there anything that can pass as "American culture" that is not negative (like loud, brash etc)?

When I asked myself this question I started struggling with stuff like "What is culture?" What is British culture or French culture?

So I'd appreciate inputs/opinions

[member_28108]

They tried to get Music "culture " through Dvorak ! It was a serious attempt to make an "American culture"

[ramana]

Why GOP not backing Condi Rice for next pres candidate? Or is it she doesn't want to contest? She would first woman and African American to boot.

Posted a few posts above your query.

A_Gupta, Womens right to vote and be elected is the last frontier in American human rights saga. Its has not happened yet. The Democrats by choosing Obama over Hillary Clinton showed their patriarchal preferences. They did this earlier when blacks were give the right to vote before women.

So how do you expect them to endorse a black woman for President? The way things are going both parties will endorse some other minority before this.

[Amber G.]

They did this earlier when blacks were give the right to vote before women.

May be I am misunderstanding but in US.. women got right to vote in whole US around 1920.. (Many states allowed this much earlier -- even in 1700's).

For all African Americans (or many non-white people) right to vote in whole US in true sense was 1964 (President Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964)

[A_Gupta]

http://www.npr.org/2014/02/11/275087586 ... ns-of-race
Sorry, there is not transcript yet. This is the weirdest story you ever heard.
The gist of the story is:

Governments, schools and companies keep track of your race. The statistics are used to track the proportion of blacks and whites who graduate from school. They tell us how many people identify themselves as Native American or Asian. They help us measure health disparities. But there's a problem with all those statistics — and the deeper way we think about race

The National Board of Labor Statistics does longitudinal studies. It takes a large random sample (20-30K) of people, and keeps track of them over two-three decades; periodically interviewers go and find out what is happening with each person in the sample. Part of the data the interviewers record is the race of the interviewee.

Now, what a social scientist found is that some 20% of the people's recorded race changed between interviews!!!!! After a lot of study what she figured out what, successful people changed to white and unsuccessful people changed to black. E.g., suppose a person was recorded as white; and then went to prison. Subsequently, the interviewer had a non-zero probability of recording that person as black. Conversely, if someone was recorded as black; and subsequently enjoyed great success. The interviewer had a non-zero probability of recording that person as white.

Obviously, this didn't happen with everyone; but it happened enough to account for most of that 20% of people's recorded race changes.

My take:

Now, for example, Hernnstein and Murray's "The Bell Curve" which tried to prove that blacks were intrinsically less intelligent relied heavily on such longitudinal samples (created by a different organization -- but if the entire culture is so biased, I would expect it to be the same).

So now you have to take American social statistics that show blacks as dragging down the national averages with a huge pinch of salt.

[Najunamar]

They did this earlier when blacks were give the right to vote before women.

May be I am misunderstanding but in US.. women got right to vote in whole US around 1920.. (Many states allowed this much earlier -- even in 1700's).

For all African Americans (or many non-white people) right to vote in whole US in true sense was 1964 (President Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964)

After rejecting more sweeping versions of a suffrage amendment, Congress proposed a compromise amendment banning franchise restrictions on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude on February 26, 1869. The amendment survived a difficult ratification fight and was adopted on March 30, 1870. - Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteenth_ ... nstitution

Now, if you keep redefining "true sense" then there is no hope for anyone to say anything. Sathyam Param Dheemahi.

[svinayak]

Joel Gold, a psychiatrist at the Bellevue Hospital Center, revealed that by 2008, he had met five patients with schizophrenia (and heard of another twelve) who believed their lives were reality television shows. Gold named the syndrome "The Truman Show Delusion" after the film and attributed the delusion to a world that had become hungry for publicity. The syndrome predominantly affects young white men.[42]
Gold stated that some patients were rendered happy by their disease, while "others were tormented". One traveled to New York to check whether the World Trade Center had actually fallen — believing the 9/11 attacks to be an elaborate plot twist in his personal storyline. Another came to climb the Statue of Liberty, believing that he'd be reunited with his high-school girlfriend at the top and finally be released from the show.[42]
In August 2008, the British Journal of Psychiatry reported similar cases in the United Kingdom.[43] The delusion has informally been referred to as "Truman syndrome," according to an Associated Press story from 2008.[44]
After hearing about the condition, writer of The Truman Show Andrew Niccol said: "You know you've made it when you have a disease named after you."[45]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show

[Agnimitra]

Veering off topic slightly..and this is a serious question (for my own information and debate, if need be) and not a loaded one designed to trap someone.

Does the US have culture? Is there anything that can pass as "American culture" that is not negative (like loud, brash etc)?

When I asked myself this question I started struggling with stuff like "What is culture?" What is British culture or French culture?

So I'd appreciate inputs/opinions

If music is a good indicator of cultural forms, then Jazz is supposed be a major original cultural form invented wholly in America. Apart from that, there's plenty of patronage for all sorts of cultural activity in America. Of course it differs widely depending on which part of the US you go.

[A_Gupta]

May be I am misunderstanding but in US.. women got right to vote in whole US around 1920.. (Many states allowed this much earlier -- even in 1700's).

For all African Americans (or many non-white people) right to vote in whole US in true sense was 1964 (President Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964)

After rejecting more sweeping versions of a suffrage amendment, Congress proposed a compromise amendment banning franchise restrictions on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude on February 26, 1869. The amendment survived a difficult ratification fight and was adopted on March 30, 1870. - Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteenth_ ... nstitution

Now, if you keep redefining "true sense" then there is no hope for anyone to say anything. Sathyam Param Dheemahi.[/quote]

And the fifteenth amendment to the United States was pretty much ignored in the American South until around 1965.

Let's look at Wiki (emphasis added):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rig ... Background

As initially ratified, the United States Constitution granted each state complete discretion to determine voting qualifications for its residents. After the Civil War, the three Reconstruction Amendments were ratified, which limited this discretion: the Thirteenth Amendment (1865) prohibited slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) granted citizenship to all people "born or naturalized in the United States" and guaranteed citizens rights of due process and equal protection, and the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) explicitly limited state power to determine voter qualifications by providing that "[t]he right of U.S. citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Each of these amendments also contained an enforcement clause that granted Congress the power to enforce their provisions through appropriate legislation.

After the ratification of the Reconstruction Amendments, Congress enacted the Enforcement Acts to enforce them. The Enforcement Act of 1870 criminalized actions by public officers and private persons that obstructed a person's voting rights, and the first Enforcement Act of 1871 provided for federal supervision of the electoral process, including voter registration. However, in 1875 the Supreme Court stuck down parts of this legislation in United States v. Cruikshank and United States v. Reese.After Reconstruction ended in 1877, enforcement of these laws became erratic, and in 1894, Congress repealed most of their provisions.

[Vayutuvan]

When I asked myself this question I started struggling with stuff like "What is culture?" What is British culture or French culture?

So I'd appreciate inputs/opinions

AFAIK, no there is nothing like American Culture. It is a hodge podge of cultures of the immigrants. But Agnimitra's point is correct that Jazz is quite original.

But please do look up UK culture (high-brow, Professional, middle class, working class etc.) and French culture on Wikipedia. Just remembered a tidbit regarding how the British control loitering at public places - they play classical music (that would be Western not Hindustani or Carnatic) whose enjoyment is considered high culture which the loiters being from lower classes get annoyed by and leave. In Telugu we have a saying "pommana lEka poga peTTinaTTu" - Since it is impolite for the host to ask the guest leave she started a fire with lot of smoke.

[ramana]

Agnimitra and matrimc, have you hear John Coltrane's music or read commentary on it?

Thanks, ramana

[A_Gupta]

Veering off topic slightly..and this is a serious question (for my own information and debate, if need be) and not a loaded one designed to trap someone.

Does the US have culture? Is there anything that can pass as "American culture" that is not negative (like loud, brash etc)?

When I asked myself this question I started struggling with stuff like "What is culture?" What is British culture or French culture?

So I'd appreciate inputs/opinions

Balu
http://www.hipkapi.com/2011/03/01/how-t ... angadhara/

[Agnimitra]

^^^ ramana ji, yes. Its interesting that one of the greatest shapers of free jazz was very drawn to Hinduism and Indian philosophy.

[Vayutuvan]

Heard the name of John Coltrane in an interview of Nora Jones on NPR. She was talking about the great Pandith Ravi Shankar (her dad) and how Coltrane was her dad's friend etc. Will have to listen to his music sometime.

[ramana]

Over weekend will try to send you some stuff.

hat tip to my son who is jazz fan.

[MurthyB]

So I have been following some news in my neck of the woods here, and had a piskological insight (for me) that seems to have a common thread:

Exhibit A: Dylan Farrow, Mia Farrow's adopted daughter with movie director Woody Allen renews her allegations against Woody Allen that he sexually molested used a standard law enforcement cavity search procedure on her when she was seven. Now, we have heard these allegations through and through, it was all back in 1992, and they were proved to be untrue. The court gave him a clean chit, and he went on to make more movies and adopt two more daughters. Of-course, he did hook up with Mia's adopted Korean daughter with Andre Previn, while Mia herself was cavorting with Sinatra to have a ******** child by the name of Ronan Farrow who found out about his real father only last year, in 2013. But coming back to the cavity search allegations, there is one Sooth Asia specialist Ms FairAndLovely, who immediately called for Woody Allen's head on a pike, evidence and court trials be damned. Not only that, she articulated this latest gem of progressive, liberal thought: if Allen is innocent until proven guilty, does that not imply that Dylan Farrow is guilty (of lying) until proven innocent? How can any liberal then NOT be of the opinion that Allen is guilty? After all, is not Dylan Farrow innocent (of lying) until proven guilty? Hence, to jail must Allen go!

Anyhoo, it turns out that Ms. FairAndLovely herself was molested as a child by her maternal uncle who was hauled off to jail.

Ms. FairAndLovely has also accused her Indian professor at U. Chicago (hah!) of sexual harassment on the basis of a smug question he had asked her about the bumper sticker on her bag that proclaimed that women had a right to sexual pleasure or some such.

And Mia Farrow's brother is currently IN JAIL for pedophilia. And Mia Farrow has been a big supporter of her friend Roman Polansky who was actually convicted of pedophilia.

Exhibit 2: Piskoanalysis of the characters in Wendy's RISA Lila by Rajeev Malhotra-ji: Paul Courtright, Sarah Caldwell, Jeff Kripal, and Doniger herself. Not sure which is which, but one person had homoerotic feelings arise within him as a Catholic monk, one fellow is uneasy about his Gypsy roots, and one was sexually molested etc. etc.

What one gathers from all this is that Americans appear to have major PROJECTION issues. Not only do they project the dishonorable behavior in their own families to others, within their own societies, but whole scale cultural projections appear to be in play as well ("Indian domestics are slaves" etc). The connection between Courtright's rising boner within Catholicism (alright no deviation into the padres proclivities in the last 10 years) and projection onto Ramakrishna is all pretty clear.

This should be kept in mind when analyzing where these bull droppings come from.

[shiv]

What one gathers from all this is that Americans appear to have major PROJECTION issues. Not only do they project the dishonorable behavior in their own families to others, within their own societies, but whole scale cultural projections appear to be in play as well ("Indian domestics are slaves" etc). The connection between Courtright's rising boner within Catholicism (alright no deviation into the padres proclivities in the last 10 years) and projection onto Ramakrishna is all pretty clear.

This should be kept in mind when analyzing where these bull droppings come from.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to say something that I have been wanting to put down in writing for a few months. What stopped me from doing so is that I am completely unable to find even via Googal (also known as Kokila aunty in Tindivanam, Haryana) a critique that I read many many saals ago.

That critique referred to a very famous treatise on American sexuality - can't recall the name - and I can't even recall if it was THE "Every thing you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask". Basically it was stated that American sexuality had been moulded by that work and Americans saw themselves as feeling what that work described as "normal". Unfortunately that work was a shoddy piece of research with very small sample sizes as well as biased samples in which even kinks and practitioners of unusual sexual practices were given legitimacy as "normal American sexuality".

One thing became clear to me many decades ago. The US did not appear to have any specific culture to hold on to or "return to" if a social experiment failed. No social baseline, as it were, good or bad. Only Vaseline to slide uncontrollably. So the US conducted social experiments on its own society and changed that society in various ways in the name of freedom. The US has experimented with sexuality in that way and it has (in my view) become a society which displays some unique sexual beliefs and habits that are more in the nature of "popular myths" than biological fact.

For example. there is, in my view a tendency to hook up girls and boys at a very young age - at an age when girls or boys are generally not attracted to people of the same age and opposite sex. Adults (usually my female Indian American relatives) who have picked up this culture will sometimes ask a five year old nephew or grand nephew in desh "So who's your girrrlfriend? Donchoo have a girrrlfriend?" The other American thing is the fond hope and belief that sexuality and the need to run after men or women, and display overt sexual desires or intent must continue among all people all the way into their 50s, 60s and 70s. Biologically it is not as if older people do not have a sexual drive, but a reduction in drive is normal. But I find (in general) that this reduction in drive is seen as abnormal and needing correction by many in the US and much is done to thwart or reverse it, and hide it where it occurs. I get the impression that for men at 70 it is demeaning or shameful to admit to a sex drive that is anything less than it is for men aged 20 years. Of course little blue pills may be sought but that is kept under burqa.

[Prem]

MurthyB

Few days ago Mia/N F also accused Late Mahesh Yogi of gropping her .
http://www.realbollywood.com/2014/02/mi ... oping.html

[Amber G.]

May be I am misunderstanding but in US.. women got right to vote in whole US around 1920.. (Many states allowed this much earlier -- even in 1700's).

For all African Americans (or many non-white people) right to vote in whole US in true sense was 1964 (President Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964 ** actually 1965 .)

After rejecting more sweeping versions of a suffrage amendment, Congress proposed a compromise amendment banning franchise restrictions on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude on February 26, 1869. The amendment survived a difficult ratification fight and was adopted on March 30, 1870. - Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteenth_ ... nstitution

Now, if you keep redefining "true sense" then there is no hope for anyone to say anything. Sathyam Param Dheemahi.

To add to A_Gupta ("And the fifteenth amendment to the United States was pretty much ignored in the American South until around 1965") .. what I meant by "true" sense in "whole" of US...

The notorious "literacy test" (where a election official - generally white - will ask a person to read the constitution and "explain" the meaning -- before a person is able to register - thus passing virtually all whites but failing virtually all blacks), "poll tax" and "grand father clauses" made the registration very difficult.

For example, in Mississippi, before 1960's, about 1% of non-while voting age people were able to register to vote. (And of course, at a polling place, without protection they were often stopped by mobs)... except for a few big cities, in whole south, very few blacks were able to vote. ( about 5%)..

The situation changed only after the voting rights bill.
(See any history book, or source .. for example)

http://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-mo ... ated-south

I just found the figure.. worth noticing..

In Mississippi, voter turnout among blacks increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969.

[A_Gupta]

Marcus Garvey, 1922:

"A terrible mistake was made between 40 and 50 years ago when black men were elected to legislative assemblies all over the country, especially in the southern states and even at the national capital when representatives of this race occupied seats in Congress. The mistake was made as far as the white people were concerned. There was a state of dis-organization in the nation, and in that state certain things happened to mere chance. In the chance, dozens of black men became Senators and Congressmen. This opened up to the eyes of the white nation the possibility of the black man governing the white man in these United States of America – the possibility of the black man making laws to govern the white man? This possibility drove them almost to madness, in suddenly rejecting the spirit of the Constitution and the declaration of Lincoln that "all men are created equal," hence the determination was arrived at, that never again would it be possible for the race of slaves to govern the race of masters within these United States of America."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/1 ... dent-Obama

[Vayutuvan]

5 Most Cringe-Worthy Blunders From Obama’s Ambassador Nominees

...
4. “Obviously, you don’t want to answer my question.”

Being a Hollywood producer doesn’t disqualify someone from being an ambassador, but from the combative nature of his questioning, McCain wasn’t very impressed with the resume of Colleen Bell, who has been nominated to be ambassador to Hungary.
This exchange probably best encapsulates most of McCain’s question and answer session with Bell:
SEN. MCCAIN: So what would you be doing differently from your predecessor, who obviously had very rocky relations with the present government?
MS. BELL: If confirmed, I look forward to working with the broad range of society –
SEN. MCCAIN: My question was, what would you do differently?
MS. BELL: Senator, in terms of what I would do differently from my predecessor, Kounalakis –
SEN. MCCAIN: That’s the question.
MS. BELL: Well, what I would like to do when — if confirmed, I would like to work towards engaging civil society in a deeper — in a deeper –
SEN. MCCAIN: Obviously, you don’t want to answer my question.
...

[Vayutuvan]

Obama rewards big bundlers with jobs, commissions, stimulus money, government contracts, and more

...
Gips, a vice president of Colorado-based Level 3 Communications LLC, delivered more than $500,000 in contributions for the Obama war chest, while two fellow senior company executives collected at least $150,000 more.

After the election, Gips was put in charge of hiring in the Obama White House, helping to place loyalists and fundraisers in many key positions. Then in mid-2009, the new president named him ambassador to South Africa. Level 3 Communications, in which Gips retained stock, meanwhile received millions of dollars of government stimulus contracts for broadband projects in six states—though Gips said he was "completely unaware" of the stimulus money.
...

[A_Gupta]

In the New York Times, Samuel Bowles and Arjun Jaydev write:

Another dubious first for America: We now employ as many private security guards as high school teachers — over one million of them, or nearly double their number in 1980.

And that’s just a small fraction of what we call “guard labor.” In addition to private security guards, that means police officers, members of the armed forces, prison and court officials, civilian employees of the military, and those producing weapons: a total of 5.2 million workers in 2011. That is a far larger number than we have of teachers at all levels.

What is happening in America today is both unprecedented in our history, and virtually unique among Western democratic nations. The share of our labor force devoted to guard labor has risen fivefold since 1890 — a year when, in case you were wondering, the homicide rate was much higher than today.

Is this the curse of affluence? Or of ethnic diversity? We don’t think so. The guard-labor share of employment in the United States is four times what it is in Sweden, where living standards rival America’s. And Britain, with its diverse population, uses substantially less guard labor than the United States.

They make the observation:

States with high levels of income inequality — New York and Louisiana — employ twice as many security workers (as a fraction of their labor force) as less unequal states like Idaho and New Hampshire.

[pgbhat]

5 Most Cringe-Worthy Blunders From Obama’s Ambassador Nominees

...
4. “Obviously, you don’t want to answer my question.”

Being a Hollywood producer doesn’t disqualify someone from being an ambassador, but from the combative nature of his questioning, McCain wasn’t very impressed with the resume of Colleen Bell, who has been nominated to be ambassador to Hungary.
This exchange probably best encapsulates most of McCain’s question and answer session with Bell:
SEN. MCCAIN: So what would you be doing differently from your predecessor, who obviously had very rocky relations with the present government?
MS. BELL: If confirmed, I look forward to working with the broad range of society –
SEN. MCCAIN: My question was, what would you do differently?
MS. BELL: Senator, in terms of what I would do differently from my predecessor, Kounalakis –
SEN. MCCAIN: That’s the question.
MS. BELL: Well, what I would like to do when — if confirmed, I would like to work towards engaging civil society in a deeper — in a deeper –
SEN. MCCAIN: Obviously, you don’t want to answer my question.
...

Thank you! That link is a comedy gold.

[A_Gupta]

Americans are all for freedom of speech where it really, really matters.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ag-gag_laws

[ramana]

I am thinking that the rise of super-hero genre of fiction and comics is a break away from Bible teaching in America. This genre coincides with the end of Civil War and end of Slavery. Both these are break away from Bible teaching of primacy of God and Noah's Hamitic theory of races.

Super heroes in spandex underwear with non-human powers envisioned by modern scientific mind was a way create new mythos.

[A_Gupta]

Ta-Nehisi Coates, in the Atlantic, on the failure of the jury to convict in the case of the so-called Loud Music shooting:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc ... nn/283870/

Jordan Davis had a mother and a father. It did not save him. Trayvon Martin had a mother and a father. They could not save him. My son has a father and mother. We cannot protect him from our country, which is our aegis and our assailant. We cannot protect our children because racism in America is not merely a belief system but a heritage, and the inability of black parents to protect their children is an ancient tradition.

....

I insist that the irrelevance of black life has been drilled into this country since its infancy, and shall not be extricated through the latest innovations in Negro Finishing School. I insist that racism is our heritage, that Thomas Jefferson's genius is no more important than his plundering of the body of Sally Hemmings, that George Washington's abdication is no more significant than his wild pursuit of Oney Judge. I insist that the G.I Bill's accolades are inseparable from its racist heritage. I will not respect the lie. I insist that racism must be properly understood as an Intelligence, as a sentience, as a default setting to which, likely until the end of our days, we unerringly return.

[A_Gupta]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infa ... _States%29

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the United States Army was a regimental size fighting unit composed almost entirely of American soldiers of Japanese descent who fought in World War II, despite the fact many of their families were subject to internment. The 442nd, beginning in 1944, fought primarily in Europe during World War II.[2] The 442nd was a self-sufficient force, and fought with uncommon distinction in Italy, southern France, and Germany. The 442nd is considered to be the most decorated infantry regiment in the history of the United States Army. The 442nd was awarded eight Presidential Unit Citations and twenty-one of its members were awarded the Medal of Honor for World War II.[3] The 442nd's high distinction in the war and its record-setting decoration count earned it the nickname "Purple Heart Battalion." The 442nd Regimental Combat Team motto was, "Go for Broke".

[svinayak]

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content ... picks=true
American Exceptionalism is Dead
Submitted by Bud Meyers on February 13, 2014 - 10:41pm


Having the mightiest military, more powerful than the world has ever seen, doesn't make America exceptional. An ever expanding middle-class, equal opportunity for all, fairness in the political process and worker's rights was what had also made America exceptional since World War II—when the rising tide of capitalism had once lifted all boats. Now it just lifts the biggest yachts.

[A_Gupta]

https://medium.com/p/9f53ef6a1c10/
San Francisco

I live in a new gilded age in a golden city. But sometimes the cracks show, even here. The façade crumbles and you find yourself naked, in solitary confinement, in a wretched, feces-stained prison.

How? As a result of my efforts to help injured bicyclists by calling 911, I was, in short order: separated from my friend, violently tackled, arrested, taken to county jail, stripped and left in a solitary cell. I am writing this story because, if it could happen to me, it could happen to you, and I feel the need to do something to help prevent this brutality from propagating.

Also involves a policewoman named Paramjit Kaur.

[A_Gupta]

T Bone Burnett about his TV show True Detective:
http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/ ... usic-songs

"This show does not avert its gaze," Burnett says. "It takes a good, hard look at who we are right now, in a very profound way...I live in Los Angeles, and I recently took a drive through the middle of the country, and I was stunned by what I saw. In places that had once had purpose, all that's left is a pawnshop, next to a gun shop, next door to a motel, next door to a gas station, with a Walmart right outside of town. There are people working three jobs just to get by and having to take methamphetamines to do it. That's the middle of the country, and that's a plague that's spreading outwards. We're not seeing it, and these are things that you see in the show. It's making a very strong statement, but I'm not going to say what it is. It's a story that's going to unfold soon enough."

[ramana]

I had the same feeling when we visited San Francisco after a long time. Its a dying city.

[Prem]

T Bone Burnett about his TV show True Detective:
http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/ ... usic-songs

"I live in Los Angeles, and I recently took a drive through the middle of the country, and I was stunned by what I saw. In places that had once had purpose, all that's left is a pawnshop, next to a gun shop, next door to a motel, next door to a gas station, with a Walmart right outside of town. There are people working three jobs just to get by and having to take methamphetamines to do it. That's the middle of the country, and that's a plague that's spreading outwards. We're not seeing it, and these are things that you see in the show. It's making a very strong statement, but I'm not going to say what it is. It's a story that's going to unfold soon enough."

The same observation i made 5-6 Years ago and posted here on forum. I started driving around countryside as hobby and it shook me to find out the extent of social devastation caused by economic crisis. Average person makes about 16-18 K and rest for survival come from Govt. People so eager to go on permanent disability than work for living or give up smoking, drinking, get education etc.

[JE Menon]

Thanks for that A_Gupta - I watched the entire series beginning to end (what is out so far) yesterday. Excellent production and strong performances (especially McConaughey). The despondency and desolation is palpable. Must watch. The religious angle is interesting and handled subtly.

[svinayak]

Two things are happening simultaneously
Baby Boomers have receded from participating in the economy and consumption
.There is a population gap with a missing 40M people in the middle
The millennial generation are young have less skills and money

http://www.rense.com/general62/destroy.htm

Another. Read the last 3 para
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2012/ ... art-1.html