USA Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts

USA Literature, Philosophy, and the Arts

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, American art and literature took most of its cues from Europe. Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau established a distinctive American literary voice by the middle of the nineteenth century. Mark Twain and poet Walt Whitman were major figures in the century's second half; Emily Dickinson, virtually unknown during her lifetime, is recognized as another essential American poet. Eleven U.S. citizens have won the Nobel Prize in Literature, most recently Toni Morrison in 1993. Ernest Hemingway, the 1954 Nobel laureate, is often named as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. A work seen as capturing fundamental aspects of the national experience and character—such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925)—may be dubbed the "Great American Novel." Popular literary genres such as the Western and hardboiled crime fiction developed in the United States. Postmodernism is the most recent major literary movement in the world, and though on the theory side postmodernism began with French writers like Jacques Derrida and Alain Robbe-Grillet, and was transitioned into largely by Irish writer Samuel Beckett, it has since been dominated by American writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, John Barth, E.L. Doctorow, Kurt Vonnegut and many others.

The transcendentalists, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau, established the first major American philosophical movement. After the Civil War, Charles Peirce and then William James and John Dewey were leaders in the development of pragmatism. In the twentieth century, the work of W. V. Quine and Richard Rorty helped bring analytic philosophy to the fore in U.S. academic circles.

In the visual arts, the Hudson River School was an important mid-nineteenth-century movement in the tradition of European naturalism. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene. Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new styles, displaying a highly individualistic sensibility. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein have developed largely in the United States. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has also brought American architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry to the top of their field.

One of the first notable promoters of the nascent American theater was impresario P. T. Barnum, who began operating a lower Manhattan entertainment complex in 1841. The team of Harrigan and Hart produced a series of popular musical comedies in New York starting in the late 1870s. In the twentieth century, the modern musical form emerged on Broadway; the songs of musical theater composers such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Stephen Sondheim have become pop standards. Playwright Eugene O'Neill won the Nobel literature prize in 1936; other acclaimed U.S. dramatists include multiple Pulitzer Prize winners Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and August Wilson.

Though largely overlooked at the time, Charles Ives's work of the 1910s established him as the first major U.S. composer in the classical tradition; other experimentalists such as Henry Cowell and John Cage created an identifiably American approach to classical composition. Aaron Copland and George Gershwin developed a unique American synthesis of popular and classical music. Choreographers Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham were central figures in the creation of modern dance; George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins were leaders in twentieth-century ballet. The United States has long been at the fore in the relatively modern artistic medium of photography, with major practitioners such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Ansel Adams, and many others. The newspaper comic strip and the comic book are both U.S. innovations. Superman, the quintessential comic book superhero, has become an American icon.

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USA States

USA States

The United States is a federal union of fifty states. The original thirteen states were the successors of the thirteen colonies that rebelled against British rule. Most of the rest have been carved from territory obtained through war or purchase by the U.S. government. The exceptions are Vermont, Texas, and Hawaii; each was an independent republic before joining the union. Early in the country's history, three states were created out of the territory of existing ones: Kentucky from Virginia; Tennessee from North Carolina; and Maine from Massachusetts. West Virginia broke away from Virginia during the American Civil War. The most recent state—Hawaii—achieved statehood on August 21, 1959. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the states do not have the right to secede from the union.

The states compose the vast bulk of the U.S. land mass; the only other areas considered integral parts of the country are the District of Columbia, the federal district where the capital, Washington, is located; and Palmyra Atoll, an uninhabited but incorporated territory in the Pacific Ocean. The United States possesses five major territories with indigenous populations: Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands in the Caribbean; and American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific. Those born in the territories (except for American Samoa) possess U.S. citizenship.

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USA Parties, Ideology and Politics

USA Parties, Ideology and Politics

Politics in the United States have operated under a two-party system for virtually all of the country's history. For elective offices at all levels, state-administered primary elections are held to choose the major party nominees for subsequent general elections. Since the general election of 1856, the two dominant parties have been the Democratic Party, founded in 1824 (though its roots trace back to 1792), and the Republican Party, founded in 1854. Since the Civil War, only one third-party presidential candidate—former president Theodore Roosevelt, running as a Progressive in 1912—has won as much as 20% of the popular vote.

Within American political culture, the Republican Party is considered "center-right" or conservative and the Democratic Party is considered "center-left" or liberal. The two ideologies competing within the political mainstream are modern liberalism and modern conservatism. The former is distinguished through its belief in Positive liberty, holding that freedom requires the opportunity to live life as one would chose. Consequently liberalism seeks the universal provision of all three generations of human rights, including for example, freedom of speech, property ownership, education, health care and a clean environment - all of which are seen as prerequisites for liberty and human development. Modern conservatism is a hybrid of classical liberalism, which promotes Negative liberty, holding that liberty is nothing more than the absence of direct coercion by other individuals, and social conservatism, which emphasizes hierarchy and authority. It consequently often rejects state efforts to secure second and third generation rights, seeing the state's rightful role almost exclusively limited to securing first generation rights and the social hierarchy necessary for the maintain order. While modern liberalism was the dominant ideology on domestic policy throughout the mid 20th century, during a period often dubbed the "Keynesian consensus," it has been engaged in a fierce battle with modern conservatism, since the latter's rise in the late 1970s, leading to a sharp resurgence in political polarization. The states of the Northeast and West Coast and some of the Great Lakes states, known as "blue states" in political parlance, are relatively liberal-leaning. The "red states" of the South and the Rocky Mountains lean conservative.

The incumbent president, Republican George W. Bush, is the 43rd president in the country's history. All U.S. presidents to date have been white men. If Democrat Barack Obama wins the forthcoming presidential election, he will become the first African-American president. Following the 2006 midterm elections, the Democratic Party controls both the House and the Senate. Every member of the U.S. Congress is a Democrat or a Republican except two independent members of the Senate—one a former Democratic incumbent, the other a self-described socialist. An overwhelming majority of state and local officials are also either Democrats or Republicans.

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USA Government and elections

USA Government and Elections

The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation. It is a constitutional republic, "in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law." It is fundamentally structured as a representative democracy, though U.S. citizens residing in the territories are excluded from voting for federal officials. The government is regulated by a system of checks and balances defined by the United States Constitution, which serves as the country's supreme legal document and as a social contract for the people of the United States. In the American federalist system, citizens are usually subject to three levels of government, federal, state, and local; the local government's duties are commonly split between county and municipal governments. In almost all cases, executive and legislative officials are elected by a plurality vote of citizens by district. There is no proportional representation at the federal level, and it is very rare at lower levels. Federal and state judicial and cabinet officials are typically nominated by the executive branch and approved by the legislature, although some state judges and officials are elected by popular vote.

The federal government is composed of three branches:

* Legislative: The bicameral Congress, made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives, makes federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse, and has the power of impeachment, by which it can remove sitting members of the government.

* Executive: The president is the commander-in-chief of the military, can veto legislative bills before they become law, and appoints the Cabinet and other officers, who administer and enforce federal laws and policies.

* Judicial: The Supreme Court and lower federal courts, whose judges are appointed by the president with Senate approval, interpret laws and can overturn laws they deem unconstitutional.

The House of Representatives has 435 members, each representing a congressional district for a two-year term. House seats are apportioned among the fifty states by population every tenth year. As of the 2000 census, seven states have the minimum of one representative, while California, the most populous state, has fifty-three. Each state has two senators, elected at-large to six-year terms; one third of Senate seats are up for election every second year. The president serves a four-year term and may be elected to the office no more than twice. The president is not elected by direct vote, but by an indirect electoral college system in which the determining votes are apportioned by state. The Supreme Court, led by the Chief Justice of the United States, has nine members, who serve for life.

All laws and procedures of both state and federal governments are subject to review, and any law ruled in violation of the Constitution by the judicial branch is overturned. The original text of the Constitution establishes the structure and responsibilities of the federal government, the relationship between it and the individual states, and essential matters of military and economic authority. Article One protects the right to the "great writ" of habeas corpus, and Article Three guarantees the right to a jury trial in all criminal cases. Amendments to the Constitution require the approval of three-fourths of the states. The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times; the first ten amendments, which make up the Bill of Rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment form the central basis of individual rights in the United States.

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USA Contemporary Era

USA Contemporary Era

The leadership role taken by the United States and its allies in the United Nations–sanctioned Gulf War, under President George H. W. Bush, and later the Yugoslav wars helped to preserve its position as the world's last remaining superpower. The longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history—from March 1991 to March 2001—encompassed the administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. In 1998, Clinton was impeached by the House on charges relating to a civil lawsuit and a sexual scandal, but he was acquitted by the Senate and remained in office.

The 1990s also saw a rise in Islamic Terrorism against Americans from al-Qaeda and other groups, including an attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, an attack on U.S. forces in Somalia, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, the 2000 millennium attack plots, and the USS Cole bombing in Yemen in October 2000. In Iraq, the regime of Saddam Hussein proved a continuing problem for the UN and its neighbors, prompting a variety of UN sanctions, Anglo-American patrolling of Iraqi no-fly zones, Operation Desert Fox, and the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 which called for the removal of the Hussein regime and its replacement by a democratic system.

The presidential election of 2000 was one of the closest in U.S. history and saw George W. Bush become President of the United States. On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists struck the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon near Washington, D.C., killing nearly three thousand people. In the aftermath, President Bush urged support from the international community for what was dubbed the War on Terrorism. In late 2001, U.S. forces launched Operation Enduring Freedom removing the Taliban government and al-Qaeda training camps from Afghanistan. Taliban insurgents continue to fight a guerrilla war against a NATO-led force. Controversies arose regarding the conduct of the War on Terror.

Using language from the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act and the Clinton Administration, in 2002 the Bush Administration began to press for regime change in Iraq. With broad bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress, Bush formed an international Coalition of the Willing and in March 2003 ordered Operation Iraqi Freedom, removing Saddam Hussein from power. Although facing pressure to withdraw, the U.S.-led coalition maintains a presence in Iraq and continues to train and mentor a new Iraqi military as well as lead economic and infrastructure development.

In the upcoming 2008 presidential election, the Republican Party candidate, four-term Senator John McCain of Arizona – a former U.S. prisoner of war who served in the Vietnam War – will face the Democratic Party candidate, freshman Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the first African American to head a major political party's presidential ticket.

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USA Cold War and Civil Rights

USA Cold War and Civil Rights

The United States and Soviet Union jockeyed for power after World War II during the Cold War, dominating the military affairs of Europe through NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The United States promoted liberal democracy and capitalism, while the Soviet Union promoted communism and a centrally planned economy. Both the United States and the Soviet Union supported dictatorships, and both engaged in proxy wars. United States troops fought Communist Chinese forces in the Korean War of 1950–53. The House Un-American Activities Committee pursued a series of investigations into suspected leftist subversion, while Senator Joseph McCarthy became the figurehead of anticommunist sentiment.

The Soviet Union launched the first manned spacecraft in 1961, prompting U.S. efforts to raise proficiency in mathematics and science and President John F. Kennedy's call for the country to be first to land "a man on the moon," achieved in 1969. Kennedy also faced a tense nuclear showdown with Soviet forces in Cuba. Meanwhile, America experienced sustained economic expansion. A growing civil rights movement headed by prominent African Americans, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., fought segregation and discrimination, leading to the abolition of Jim Crow laws. Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed under President Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson and his successor, Richard Nixon, expanded a proxy war in Southeast Asia into the unsuccessful Vietnam War.

As a result of the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign, rather than be impeached on charges including obstruction of justice and abuse of power; he was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford. During the Jimmy Carter administration in the late 1970s, the U.S. economy experienced stagflation. The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 marked a significant rightward shift in American politics, reflected in major changes in taxation and spending priorities. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the Soviet Union's power diminished, leading to its collapse and effectively ending the Cold War.

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USA World War I, Great Depression, and World War II

USA World War I, Great Depression, and World War II

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States remained neutral. Americans sympathized with the British and French, although many citizens, mostly Irish and German, opposed intervention. In 1917, the United States joined the Allies, turning the tide against the Central Powers. Reluctant to be involved in European affairs, the Senate did not ratify the Treaty of Versailles, which established the League of Nations. The country pursued a policy of unilateralism, verging on isolationism. In 1920, the women's rights movement won passage of a constitutional amendment granting women's suffrage. Partly because of the service of many in the war, Native Americans gained U.S. citizenship in the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.

During most of the 1920s, the United States enjoyed a period of unbalanced prosperity as farm profits fell while industrial profits grew. A rise in debt and an inflated stock market culminated in the 1929 crash that triggered the Great Depression. After his election as president in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal, a range of policies increasing government intervention in the economy. The Dust Bowl of the mid-1930s impoverished many farming communities and spurred a new wave of western migration. The nation would not fully recover from the economic depression until the industrial mobilization spurred by its entrance into World War II. The United States, effectively neutral during the war's early stages after the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939, began supplying materiel to the Allies in March 1941 through the Lend-Lease program.

On December 7, 1941, the United States joined the Allies against the Axis powers after a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan. World War II cost far more money than any other war in American history, but it boosted the economy by providing capital investment and jobs, while bringing many women into the labor market. Among the major combatants, the United States was the only nation to become richer—indeed, far richer—instead of poorer because of the war. Allied conferences at Bretton Woods and Yalta outlined a new system of international organizations that placed the United States and Soviet Union at the center of world affairs. As victory was achieved in Europe, a 1945 international conference held in San Francisco produced the United Nations Charter, which became active after the war. The United States, having developed the first nuclear weapons, used them on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. Japan surrendered on September 2, ending the war.

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USA Independence and Expansion

USA Independence and Expansion

Tensions between American colonials and the British during the revolutionary period of the 1760s and early 1770s led to the American Revolutionary War, fought from 1775 through 1781. On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress, convening in Philadelphia, established a Continental Army under the command of George Washington. Proclaiming that "all men are created equal" and endowed with "certain unalienable Rights," the Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The Declaration, drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson, pronounced the colonies sovereign "states." In 1777, the Articles of Confederation were adopted, uniting the states under a weak federal government that operated until 1788. Some 70,000–80,000 loyalists to the British Crown fled the rebellious states, many to Nova Scotia and the new British holdings in Canada. Native Americans, with divided allegiances, fought on both sides of the war's western front.

After the defeat of the British army by American forces who were assisted by the French, Great Britain recognized the sovereignty of the thirteen states in 1783. A constitutional convention was organized in 1787 by those who wished to establish a strong national government with power over the states. By June 1788, nine states had ratified the United States Constitution, sufficient to establish the new government; the republic's first Senate, House of Representatives, and president—George Washington—took office in 1789. New York City was the federal capital for a year, before the government relocated to Philadelphia. In 1791, the states ratified the Bill of Rights, ten amendments to the Constitution forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections. Attitudes toward slavery were shifting; a clause in the Constitution protected the African slave trade only until 1808. The Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution." In 1800, the federal government moved to the newly founded Washington, D.C. The Second Great Awakening made evangelicalism a force behind various social reform movements.

Americans' eagerness to expand westward began a cycle of Indian Wars that stretched to the end of the nineteenth century, as Native Americans were stripped of their land. The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory under President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 virtually doubled the nation's size. The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened American nationalism. A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The country annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845. The concept of Manifest Destiny was popularized during this time. The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. The U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest. The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 further spurred western migration. New railways made relocation much less arduous for settlers and increased conflicts with Native Americans. Over a half-century, up to 40 million American bison, commonly called buffalo, were slaughtered for skins and meat and to ease the railways' spread. The loss of the bison, a primary economic resource for the plains Indians, was an existential blow to many native cultures.

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USA History

USA History

The indigenous peoples of the U.S. mainland, including Alaska Natives, are thought to have migrated from Asia. They began arriving at least 12,000 and as many as 40,000 years ago. Several indigenous communities in the pre-Columbian era developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. In 1492, Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, under contract to the Spanish crown, reached several Caribbean islands, making first contact with the indigenous population. In the years that followed, the majority of the indigenous American peoples were killed by epidemics of Eurasian diseases.

On April 2, 1513, Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León landed on what he called "La Florida"—the first documented European arrival on what would become the U.S. mainland. Of the colonies Spain established in the region, only St. Augustine, founded in 1565, remains. Later Spanish settlements in the present-day southwestern United States drew thousands through Mexico. French fur traders established outposts of New France around the Great Lakes; FranceGulf of Mexico. The first successful English settlements were the Virginia Colony in Jamestown in 1607 and the Pilgrims' Plymouth Colony in 1620. The 1628 chartering of the Massachusetts Bay Colony resulted in a wave of migration; by 1634, New England had been settled by some 10,000 Puritans. Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, an estimated 50,000 convicts were shipped to England's, and later Great Britain's, American colonies. Beginning in 1614, the Dutch established settlements along the lower Hudson River, including New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. The small settlement of New Sweden, founded along the Delaware River in 1638, was taken over by the Dutch in 1655. eventually claimed much of the North American interior as far south as the

By 1674, English forces had won the former Dutch colonies in the Anglo–Dutch Wars; the province of New Netherland was renamed New York. Many new immigrants, especially to the South, were indentured servants—some two-thirds of all Virginia immigrants between 1630 and 1680. By the turn of the century, African slaves were becoming the primary source of bonded labor. With the 1729 division of the Carolinas and the 1732 colonization of Georgia, the thirteen British colonies that would become the United States of America were established. All had active local and colonial governments with elections open to most free men, with a growing devotion to the ancient rights of Englishmen and a sense of self government that stimulated support for republicanism. All had legalized the African slave trade. With high birth rates, low death rates, and steady immigration, the colonies doubled in population every twenty-five years. The Christian revivalist movement of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening fueled interest in both religion and religious liberty. In the French and Indian War, British forces seized Canada from the French, but the francophone population remained politically isolated from the southern colonies. By 1770, those thirteen colonies had an increasingly Anglicized population of three million, approximately half that of Britain. Though subject to British taxation, they were given no representation in the Parliament of Great Britain.

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USA Environment

USA Environment

U.S. plant life is very diverse; the country has more than 17,000 identified native species of flora. More than 400 mammal, 700 bird, 500 reptile and amphibian, and 90,000 insect species have been documented. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects threatened and endangered species and their habitats, which are monitored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The U.S. has fifty-eight national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas. Altogether, the U.S. government regulates 28.8% of the country's total land area. Most such public land comprises protected parks and forestland, though some federal land is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, or cattle ranching.

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USA Geography

USA Geography

The United States is situated almost entirely in the western hemisphere: the contiguous United States stretches from the Pacific on the west to the Atlantic on the east, with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast, and bordered by Canada on the north and Mexico on the south. Alaska is the largest state in area; separated from the contiguous U.S. by Canada, it touches the Pacific on the south and Arctic Ocean on the north. Hawaii occupies an archipelago in the central Pacific, southwest of North America. The United States is the world's third or fourth largest nation by total area, before or after China. The ranking varies depending on (a) how two territories disputed by China and India are counted and (b) how the total size of the United States is calculated: the CIA World Factbook gives 9,826,630 km² (3,794,083 sq mi), the United Nations Statistics Division gives 9,629,091 km² (3,717,813 sq mi), and the Encyclopedia Britannica gives 9,522,055 km² (3,676,486 sq mi). Including only land area, the United States is third in size behind Russia and China, just ahead of Canada. The United States also possesses several insular territories scattered around the West Indies (e.g., the commonwealth of Puerto Rico) and the Pacific (e.g., Guam).

The coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way further inland to deciduous forests and the rolling hills of the Piedmont. The Appalachian Mountains divide the eastern seaboard from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi–Missouri River, the world's fourth longest river system, runs mainly north-south through the heart of the country. The flat, fertile prairie land of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region along its southeastern portion. The Rocky Mountains, at the western edge of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the continental United States, reaching altitudes higher than 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. The area to the west of the Rocky Mountains is dominated by the rocky Great Basin and deserts such as the Mojave. The Sierra Nevada range runs parallel to the Rockies, relatively close to the Pacific coast. At 20,320 feet (6,194 m), Alaska's Mount McKinley is the country's tallest peak. Active volcanoes are common throughout the Alexander and Aleutian Islands, and the entire state of Hawaii is built upon tropical volcanic islands. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rockies is the continent's largest volcanic feature.

Because of the United States' large size and wide range of geographic features, nearly every type of climate is represented. The climate is temperate in most areas, tropical in Hawaii and southern Florida, polar in Alaska, semi-arid in the Great Plains west of the 100th meridian, desert in the Southwest, Mediterranean in Coastal California, and arid in the Great Basin. Extreme weather is not uncommon—the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur within the continental United States, primarily in the Midwest's Tornado Alley.

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The United States of America USA

The United States of America, usually referred to as the United States, the USA, the U.S. or America, is a constitutional federal republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to its east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait, and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories, or insular areas, scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with more than 300 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and third largest by land area and by population. The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.The U.S. economy is the largest national economy in the world, with a nominal 2006 gross domestic product (GDP) of more than US$13 trillion (over 25% of the world total based on nominal GDP and almost 20% by purchasing power parity).

The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic seaboard. Proclaiming themselves "states," they issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The rebellious states defeated Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence. A federal convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments, was ratified in 1791.

In the nineteenth century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over states' rights and the expansion of the institution of slavery provoked the American Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. However, the Jim Crow laws passed after reconstruction allowed racism and inequality to persist. The Spanish-American War and World War I confirmed the nation's status as a military power. In 1945, the United States emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and a founding member of NATO. In the post–Cold War era, the United States is the only remaining superpower—accounting for approximately 50% of global military spending—and a dominant economic, political, and cultural force in the world.

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Obama showed independent streak in lobbyist dealings

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WASHINGTON — On Wednesday nights during Illinois General Assembly sessions, a group of lobbyists and lawmakers used to gather at the headquarters of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association for a weekly poker game. Barack Obama, who represented part of Chicago as state senator from 1997-2004, was a regular.

These days, Obama says lobbyists are part of the problem with Washington, and he refuses to accept their fundraising help. But during his eight years in Springfield, Ill., Obama played golf and basketball with them and hit them up for campaign donations, according to records and interviews. He shared meals with them, though he was careful to pay his own way, they say.

Obama also accepted lobbyist money when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2004, and he later used his influence to help secure grants for 16 Illinois-based institutions represented by six of his lobbyist contributors, public records show.

He did all that while retaining a reputation for independence. "I can't remember a time that state senator Obama wasn't on the side of the consumers," said David Kolata, executive director of the non-partisan Illinois Citizens Utility Board.

A look at Obama's past relationships with lobbyists shows that, for most of his political career, Obama wasn't as attentive to the appearance of coziness with special interests as he is now. But it also shows that he often voted against the interests of his lobbyist friends, and he helped pass two significant upgrades to Illinois campaign finance and ethics laws.

"I think that he understood that lobbyists had valuable information and are a part of the system," said Illinois lobbyist Paul Williams, an Obama contributor who represents the cable television industry, a major electric utility and other powerful interest groups. "But he doesn't necessarily want to be tied to or indebted to their financial support, which might have an influence on his decision-making process."

Obama has said he stopped taking money from lobbyists and political action committees when he began running for president in January 2007 because he came to believe that special interests were too influential in Washington. Before that, his Senate campaign committees took in $140,400 in lobbyist contributions from 2003-06, and $1.2 million from PACs, out of about $16.3 million raised, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

In an interview last month with USA TODAY, Obama said his self-imposed ban on lobbyist and PAC donations means there are "fewer strings attached to me." He said, for example, that a lobbyist who raises campaign funds for him "is going to have some very specific interests that they want you to deal with," adding, "I'm never in that situation."

Records suggest a more complicated reality. As a U.S. senator, for example, Obama helped secured three grants totaling nearly $8 million for military fuel-cell research and other projects at Chicago State University. The university's lobbyist, Anita Estell, contributed $1,500 to Obama in 2004. Other employees at her then-firm, Van Scoyoc Associates, gave Obama $2,750, records show.

Last year, Estell brought Chicago State to her new firm, Polsinelli Shalton Flanigan Suelthaus. While Estell by then was barred from giving, Polsinelli lawyers who aren't lobbyists contributed $7,498 to Obama's presidential campaign, records show.

Estell said Obama was inclined to aid a minority-serving school. Donations "may matter with some candidates; I don't think it matters with him," she said.

Although he did business with lobbyists, Obama in 1998 helped pass a bill restricting lobbyist gifts and fundraisers near the Illinois Capitol building in Springfield. In 2003, he helped draft gift restrictions for state employees. And in Congress last year, he worked to enact disclosure requirements for lobbyists who raise funds for lawmakers.

He also cast some high-profile votes against powerful interest groups. In May 2003, for example, SBC Communications, Illinois' main telephone provider, deployed dozens of lobbyists who lined up much of the Democratic establishment behind legislation that consumer groups said would increase phone bills.

Michael Lieteau, a lobbyist for SBC, had played poker and basketball with Obama. Lieteau recalled, noting, as other lobbyists did, that Obama always paid his own tab.

Obama was one of just six Democratic senators who voted no. He sided against the Democratic governor, the Democratic House speaker and his mentor, Democratic Senate President Emil Jones. Even the political consultant he had hired to help him run for the U.S. Senate in 2004, David Axelrod, was working for SBC.

Bush defends decision to attend Olympics

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By Paul Wiseman, USA TODAY

TOYAKO, Japan — President Bush on Sunday defended his decision to attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games next month, saying that skipping the event "would be an affront to the Chinese people."

Bush said that he "doesn't need the Olympics to express my concerns" about China's human rights record, something he said he has consistently done in past meetings with Chinese leaders. In Beijing next month, he intends to cheer on U.S. athletes. "It's an athletic event," he said.

Bush made the comments in a press conference here with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on the eve of the annual Group of Eight summit of industrialized nations.

Fukuda also ended speculation by declaring that he would attend the Aug. 8 opening of the Games. Some human rights groups have called for world leaders to boycott the ceremony to protest China's repression of dissidents and its support for pariah states Burma and Sudan.

"You don't have to link the Olympics to politics," Fukuda said. "I would not like the Chinese to become unhappy. We are neighbors, after all."

Meeting in a resort on the northern Japanese island Hokkaido, the leaders of the G8 nations — the United States, Japan, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Canada and Italy — will work through a packed three-day agenda covering topics such as:

•Global warming

•Soaring energy and food prices

•Economic uncertainty following the collapse of the U.S. housing market

• The nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran

•Aid for Africa

Fukuda hopes to use the G8 summit to broker a deal to reduce by 50% worldwide greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Bush has balked at the idea, believing that any G8 agreement to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases — which trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming — would be meaningless unless emerging economic powerhouses China and India sign on, too.

"The president's trying to shift the blame to developing countries," says Alden Meyer, policy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit environmental group. Meyer said that China and India have already signaled at a climate change conference in Indonesia, last December that they're willing to accept emissions-cutting targets.

"On the topic of climate change, this year will be a place-holder summit," William Antholis, managing director of the Brookings Institution think tank, predicted.

Antholis said that U.S. presidential contenders Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama were more committed than Bush to stopping global warming. When a new U.S. president meets G8 leaders again in Italy next year, he said, "industrial nations may finally step up to the global challenge of cutting emissions."

In an hour-long meeting Sunday afternoon, Bush, who was celebrating his 62nd birthday, sought to reassure Fukuda on another issue sensitive in Japan: the abduction by North Korea of at least 17 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s.

Last month, the United States removed North Korea from a list of countries that sponsor terrorism — a reward for Pyongyang's progress toward dismantling its nuclear weapons program. The decision was widely criticized in Japan, which wants to see North Korea pressured into accounting for the missing Japanese.

"As a father of little girls, I can't imagine what it would be like to have my daughter just disappear," Bush said. He said he told Fukuda "the United States will not abandon you on this issue."

Weather aids tired firefighters in Calif.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Firefighters on Sunday took advantage of cooler, damper weather to battle a vast blaze ravaging Santa Barbara County as they tried to gain a foothold against the fire before the expected return of hotter, drier conditions.

Moist air currents from the ocean cooled temperatures to the high 70s Sunday, helping fire crews keep the four-day-old blaze from spreading. The fire, which has been burning since Tuesday, was less than a third contained Sunday afternoon.

"We've got a window here with the humid weather that's really helping us. But we know we're in this for the long haul," said Dixie Dies, spokeswoman for the state Incident Management Team.

Temperatures are forecast to start climbing Monday and to reach the 90s by Thursday. The moist air currents are expected to dissipate, causing drier conditions, Dies said.

Lightning strikes were also possible as a new weather system moves in, forecasters said.

The fire, 28% contained Sunday night, has consumed about 13 square miles of Los Padres National Forest.

Nearly 2,700 homes were in jeopardy earlier in the weekend, but by Sunday night many of the evacuation orders were lifted or downgraded to warnings.

"People are filtering back to their neighborhoods and they're very happy," said forest spokesman John Ahlman. Some mandatory evacuations remained in scattered mountain communities south of Highway 154 and in areas on the west end of the fire, Ahlman said. He did not have exact numbers of how many homes were affected.

Firefighting crews made progress Sunday in controlling the fire's perimeters, said Santa Barbara County spokesperson Carrie Topliffe.

"It's pretty well stopped on the southern flank, where most of the structure threat was," Topliffe said.

The fire is blazing through 15 to 20-foot tall forest in extremely steep, rocky terrain. Crews are relying mainly on drops of flame retardant by helicopters and DC-10s to control the burning ridges and canyons, Dies said.

Officials decided Sunday that the nearly 1,200 firefighters, from 22 states and the District of Columbia, are sufficient to combat the fire, Dies said. "They're working incredibly hard," she said.

The fire still had the potential to roll through a hilly area of ranches, housing tracts and orchards between the town of Goleta and Santa Barbara.

Investigators suspect the fire was human-caused. The U.S. Forest Service has asked for public help in determining how it was set.

Sunday's cooler weather also helped firefighters advance on a two-week-old blaze that has destroyed 22 homes in Big Sur, at the northern end of the Los Padres forest.

"The fog held on a little bit stronger than was originally anticipated, which was great for the crews out working on the lines," said Sarah Gibson, a spokeswoman for the command post in charge of fighting the blaze.

The improved weather did have some drawbacks. Fog made the takeoff of firefighting aircraft more difficult and hampered efforts to start controlled burns to clear out brush ahead of the advancing wildfire, Gibson said.

The fire, which has charred 113 square miles, was 11% contained, a slight jump from the day before. Fire officials said crews were burning out brush between the fire's edge and Big Sur's famed restaurants and hotels and cutting more lines to halt flames creeping down from ridge tops.

"The biggest challenge is whether or not the containment lines that they're building now and continuing to improve are going to hold as the fire approaches," said Rolf Larsen, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service.

Wildfires have burned more than 800 square miles of land and destroyed at least 69 homes throughout California, mainly in the northern part of the state, in the past two weeks. One firefighter died of a heart attack while digging fire lines.

About 1,400 fires have been contained, but more than 330 still burned out of control Sunday morning.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who on Saturday visited a command post in the coastal region of Santa Barbara County, has ordered 400 National Guard troops to be trained in wildfire fighting so they could help fight the state's blazes.

He also urged lawmakers to adopt his budget plan for a $70 million emergency surcharge on home and business insurance policies to buy more firefighting equipment.

California now has a year-round fire season and needs the money from the fee, which should cost the average homeowner about $1 a month, Schwarzenegger has said.

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Waits Dazzles With Glitter

Do a quick internet search and there are more than 600 references of "Tom Waits" and the term "huckster" together. Snake oil, parodist, sly salesman, etc., a vocabulary of carnival-esque trickery have followed the man; as critic Robert Christgau quipped in the 1970's, "Waits is so full of shit…" (as he ripped the Pomona, Calif., native apart).

But whatever Tom Waits is selling, his diverse and unifyingly strange fanbase is buying. The whole Glitter & Doom tour is sold out, with many dates since opening day. With Waits' latest release almost two years behind him -- and a rarities and leftovers triple-disc collection "Orphans" at that --the songwriter wasn't on any agenda to promote new efforts, having any number of suitcases from which to pull his wares at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis.

The scene was already set for poetry, play and parody. This gorgeous, longstanding venue has lasted more than 70 years, ornate as though it were brand new.

Sheathed in gold paint and dollops of ruby, rich blues, Moorish design and accent lights, Fox Theatre is a treasure to house treasures. Suspended above the stage in topsy-turvy fashion and perched on a series of metal bars in the back, the heads of megaphones and bullhorns were suspended, pulled from their bodies like the beheaded victims of Waits' pagan rituals.

Starting out with a literal bang, the 58-year-old singer stepped to the mic and stomped his foot onto his soapbox, causing baby powder or whatever fine magical dust he had up there rise up like smoke and he tore into "Lucinda." He wagged a warning finger and threw his arms across his body like a drunken evangelist, his face taut in revealing the Good Word.

"Way Down in the Hole" was quickly stolen by Vincent Henry, who played on double sax. The song title, too, was an apt description for the sound mix. Though Waits' astonishingly tight and emotional band had the mix down, his grumbling vocals seemed to fall on either side of one's ear, but never quite in it. The nuanced performance lost some luster, on and off, as his lyrics were muddied.

Solitary and sultry, Waits sang "Falling Down" in front of a red haze and built tension where previously there was none on "Black Market Baby." As the crowd shouted their I -ove-yous to Waits in between tracks, he volleyed back "I love you too, babe," flashing the inside flap of his red satin-lined suit jacket.

Omar Torrez, who kept his utterly delightful nastiness buried previously, started "All the World is Green" with a dextrous Spanish guitar intro. Waits' son Casey on percussion kicked off the sample-based "Heigh Ho (The Dwarfs Marching Song)," playing along on an intense wood block board -- think less "Snow White" and more "Alice in Wonderland." Waits finally gathered up a working bullhorn (which had yet to be dismembered) and otherwise cupped his hand about his mouth on this impressive vocal performance.

Samples were also used later for the claps on "Get Behind the Mule," a track that went a little too long to be comfortable. It's hard to shake, but there's something a little disappointing about listening to a quality ensemble that still uses tracking and pre-recorded snippets, no matter how essential those sounds are.

Waits picked up his junior guitar, blowing off the "smoke": "I miss you so much / I can't wait to see you / the day after tomorrow," he sang on touching "The Day After Tomorrow," barely accompanied. The ballad was replaced by creepy and hilarious "Rain Dogs" track "Cemetery Polka," "inspired by relatives who came too early and left too late." The sextet was ensconced in a sick green light, and Waits finished with the punchline: "That's family for you."
Sticking with the "Rain Dogs" theme, he crept to the piano for "Hand Down Your Head" and, later, "Anywhere I Lay My Head," "Singapore" and the klezmer/Weimar influenced title track.

He slid over to organ for "Lost in the Harbor" and returned to the full band format on "I Make It Rain," during which, naturally, he was rained upon by glitter at the signal of his whistle. The gold confetti stuck to his face and filled the brim of his bowler, dumped off later and revealing his aging, downy hair. "This is about a girl who lied to me. And I told her to continue to do so," Waits recalled before starting the rockabilly "Lie to Me" from the Brawlers "Orphan" disc. Sad waltz "On the Other Side of the World" precluded sea-lovin' "Singapore," Waits' idiosyncratic hrm-chah leading it off like the engine of whatever vessel (or planet) he's on.

The band lost it a little on long-running "Dirt in the Ground" but then a single, precariously blinking lightbulb descended from the ceiling to inspire the spoken word "What's He Building"… before Waits accidentally killed the bulb. The group raced toward the end, Waits introducing all the band -- including keyboardist/pianist Patrick Warren and upright bassist Seth Ford-Young. "16 Shells" preceded a chill-inducing "Rain Dogs."

The group shined off with "Goin' Out West," "Anywhere I Lay My Head" and piano-led "You Are Innocent When You Dream" for the encore. Waits invited the theater to join him on the latter, one of the few times the songwriter encouraged such participation. For a huckster, Waits certainly is generous.
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