I've been assuming that for years.

I've been saying this for over a decade. We are living in complete and utter denial. The average American is more concerned with what's happening on their favorite TV show than they are about what's happening in their own government - and it is made obvious by the fact that we keep electing a Congress that only 10% of us approve of.

And to answer your question: No, I do not think it can be fixed at this point. There is too much debt, too much oppression, too much corruption, and above all too much apathy to ever be able to recover.

It makes no sense to actually catch all the drug dealers. Then, there would be no reason for the government to spend billions of dollars militarizing local police forces to wage war on US Citizens.

The "war on drugs" is a money and power grab, and nothing more. It's an excuse to put local cops in control of armored personnel carriers, fully automatic machine guns, riot gear, and other weapons necessary to oppress The People.

The government is actually spending MORE money to close these resources than it is keeping them open.

An example is the closure of the memorials in DC. Normally there might be one parks officer roaming around them, but under the closure, there are dozens of park police manning the barricades to ensure nobody can go see them.

It's all political theater. The Administration (and don't get me wrong, I don't give a shit of an R or D is in the white house - they both would do the same thing) is doing today exactly what it did with the sequester - it's punishing the American people as much as it can.

Most of the sequester cuts were planned in a way to have the greatest negative effect on people, and these closures are being executed in the same way. Government is not happy that it has lost it's money source, and it figures the only way to get it back is to go around kicking people in the face to get them to scream at the people who control the purse strings.

It's despicable. Instead of doing their jobs and negotiating the best possible compromise between all interested parties, they've become a bunch of extremists (on both sides) who refuse to negotiate. It's "my way or the highway."

Obama in particular ought to be ashamed of himself. He campaigned on a platform of unity and leadership, and he has exemplified NONE of it. In fact he's the biggest one going on national TV proclaiming with pride that he refuses to negotiate.

Fire them all. Seriously. Every last despicable goddamn one of them.

Taxation has proved in the past to be a very effective and safe behavior modifier.

An annual $100/lb overweight tax would probably do the trick quite quickly and eliminate probably 80-90% of all new diabetes cases over the next 10 years (considering that 90% of all diabetes cases are of the voluntarily-acquired Type 2 variety).

Finally, after all this time, the US Government is the size it is supposed to be, and doing only what is "essential."

We've been paying for "non-essential" bullshit to the tune of trillions of dollars every year for a decade now.

"Natural gas-burning power plants that benefit from a glut of cheap gas produced by hydrofracking cut wholesale electricity prices in half." ... while retail electricity rates continued to rise...

What's even cheaper is eradicating the instances of lifestyle diabetes - which are all of those cases of diabetes that occur by personal choice. Yes, there are autoimmune cases of diabetes, but the vast majority of diabetes cases occur by choice in people who refuse to put the fork down when they've had enough to eat, or refuse to stop drinking 5 gallons/day of sugared soda.

One of the new features of Obamacare is that insurance companies can steer you into healthy lifestyles and charge you a surcharge if you do not comply. Starting in 2014, our insurance company charges up to a $100/month-person surcharge for being "outside the fence" of acceptable measurements, which include BMI, blood pressure, fasting glucose, resting heart rate, and bodyfat percentage. You have to go in once/year for measurement, and if you are outside the box, you can remeasure again in 6 months.

We also have to turn in "verifiable workouts" either by going to an approved gym (at our expense), or log walks/runs/bike rides, etc with our smartphones - basically proving that we aren't sitting on our tails all the time. Failure to comply brings a surcharge (which is not a premium increase, btw - this is how Obama advertised that premiums would not go up. They aren't. But surcharges - oh boy...)

Not many insurance companies are doing this, but I imagine that more and more will as more and more people sign up and cost billions in treatment or obesity and inactivity-related disease.

I thought Micro-USB was already the required charging standard for phones in the EU?