With all of the doom and gloom being touted by Democrats - and some Republicans - it might be good to remember that the United States is not the great Satan that some would make it out to be. An incredible commentary
in the Asia Times sums this up, and tells us how the myths are perpetuated by
Barack Obama (emphasis added):
America is not the embodiment of hope, but the abandonment of one kind of hope in return for another. America is the spirit of creative destruction, selecting immigrants willing to turn their back on the tragedy of their own failing culture in return for a new start. Its creative success is so enormous that its global influence hastens the decline of other cultures. For those on the destruction side of the trade, America is a monster. Between half and nine-tenths of the world's 6,700 spoken languages will become extinct in the next century, and the anguish of dying peoples rises up in a global cry of despair. Some of those who listen to this cry become anthropologists, the curators of soon-to-be extinct cultures; anthropologists who really identify with their subjects marry them. Obama's mother, the University of Hawaii anthropologist Ann Dunham, did so twice.
The Asia Times writer, whose pen name is simply "Spengler," is one of my favorite writers. He always hits hard, and this piece pulls no punches.
Here's more (emphasis added):
There is nothing mysterious about Obama's methods. "A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is," wrote Karl Krauss. Americans are the world's biggest suckers, and laugh at this weakness in their popular culture. Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis' cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power's portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire Nightmare Alley. The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.
Thanks in large part to 50 years of dumbing down the public education of this country, there are more suckers than ever ready to swallow
Obama's platitudes. They are ready to happily skip down their own nightmare alley, eyes wide open, brains have empty.
Spengler continues:
America has the great misfortune to have encountered Obama at the peak of his powers at its worst moment of vulnerability in a generation. With malice aforethought, he has sought out their sore point.
I remain optimistic that John McCain will win in November. I remain realistic, however, that he may not.
Should Obama win, the United States of America will quickly take a hard Left turn. We've already gone too far on the path toward socialism, which is merely a stepping stone on the road to communism. Obama and his America-resenting circle of friends and
advisers, corrupt associates and radical revolutionaries will do everything they can to weaken this nation in the name of "fairness." The "change" will come in the form of punitive fines, higher taxes, prosecution and persecution of those who speak out against an Obama Administration, and dangerous alliances with nations and entities that have long worked for the destruction of America. Do we need change?
Yes, but if we choose the wrong kind of change - a stupid, platitude fueled change - we will regret it for a long, long, very long time.
economic system we have now. Although the current system has a cold - a very bad cold - 
The bastards sold us down the river. Welcome, Comrades, to the United Socialist States of Amerika.
The House of Representatives approved a $700 billion bailout package for U.S. banks...by a vote of 263-171, sending the measure to President George W. Bush and concluding two weeks of legislative haggling in Congress that had roiled and captivated global markets. 
