I was gonna say^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^again, digit\'s quicker on tha draw than me. But yeah, we don\'t have to support him no matter what. I support the troops there, but not the decisions that put them there. I, like many americans feel there is a need to rectify shit in our own country, rather than see how many bombs we can drop on brown people, something king george and his daddy seem to have a penchant for. If you\'ve seen what I seen you will understand, but let me try to draw you an accurate picture. In a facility i was running a few years ago in the desert southwest, part of my job was surveillance and intelligence. On the facility grounds alone, which covered 300 acres, we had a count of influx of over 1000 people per NIGHT crossing the border and coming along the periemter fenceline. There are trails leading from the borders that look like the stadium exits after a Pearl Jam concert, thousands of water bottles, clothing, trash, so much that from the air these trails are more prominent in features than roads. What i\'m talking about is before dubya decides to go naming axes of evil and bombing brown people screaming peace and democracy, maube we should plug the big hole in the fence that any terrorist with intent can walk right through, and have an 80% or better chance of not being detected. Maybe we should get some operational experience with dept of homeland security before we go stir up shit in the gulf. Also, what financial position are we really in to be spending $100b on a campaign, yet our own border security is drastically understaffed, underfunded, and have little intelligence infrastructure. If you wan to see what mean look it up online, look up an organization called \"American Border Patrol\", note this is not the government agency, whose name is United States Border Patrol, rather ABP is a group of concerneed citizens patrolling our borders on horseback and atv\'s with binoculars, nightvision equipment, and satphones, performing surveillance and intelligence gatering, and putting calls into government agencies such as customs and us border partol and are responsible for quit e abit of the intelligence recieved in helping secure our borders. The strange thing about it is the government is trying to do everything they can to shut down their orhganization, calling them \"vigilante\" and \"militia\", and are propagandizing these citizens, some to whom i know personally and can testify are only concerned about securing their own backyard because the government does very little. They call this group, lawlwss, and compare them to modern day wild west outlaws. If our government was really trying to secure our homeland, maybe we should start at home. Maybe the government should take this volunteer force of intelligence personnel and supply them with proper equipment and training, as well as operational integration protocols, and maximize the intel they can possibly recieve, but have too much technology to provide. By too much technology, i mean the billions of dollars of surveillance equipment along the border like flir cameras, balloon mounted radar and camera platforms, that they have their entire intel force sitting in an underground room pushing buttons and watching TV, and nobody out in the field doing humint (human intelligence). There are people i know who own large ranches and pay taxes on their land every year, yet they have to lock the doors and windows at dark every night and can not go outside until sunup because during the night their houses are surrounded by illegal immigrants begging for food and water, and i don\'t mean a few, one woman i know had a crowd in excess of 300 people at her front door. That\'s my reasoning behind not supporting bush. If intelligence is denied and covered up as it is on the southern border, can i not expect that to be official government policy? what\'s the diffrenece between that and ignoring intelligence recieved from northeast region ARTCC of 4 airliners off course and unresponsive? If the intelligence wasnt ignored on purpose, and nobody knew 4 airliners with ~800 passengers aboard were missing until flaming jet fuel was raining down in manhattan and people were running and screaming then i fear our current regime\'s apathy more than their underhandedness, and there is still plenty of opportunity in a lot of american\'s backayrds for a lot more to slip under the homeland security radar, so to speak. Let\'s start by fixing that. Then maybe i\'ll show the president some support when he shows the citizens of his country some. Not to mention, america seems to like to wage war on everything, so much that it seems to the world, including a lot of americans, that america is just a machine of war, look at our military budget, recruitment prcatices, and the fac thet we choose to declare war on everything, war on drugs, war on paraphenailia now, america even goes as far on the past 25 or so years to desensitize the shock value of the idea of war. Americans have been so isolted and sheltered, aside form those who served in our military, americans as a society have not experienced a war anywhere near them for about 85-90 years and when we propagandize the idea of war and attempt to remove such a negative connotation as say, death and strife by declaring war on problems that require peaceful resolution, like saying war on hunger, war on homelessness, war on whatever, is it really war? are we dropping smartbombs full of bread on hungry people? are we using brutal force to attempt to put roofs over heads? I think you can see that point, that\'s social conditioning propaganda, and social engineering on a mass scale. I do not apologize for any america bashing it may seem i have engaged in, as my disdain for our national and international policies, as well as it\'s willingness to wage war on issues that require some compassion, wage war on it\'s own peceful portions of it\'s population, namely us, the herbally enhanced. If we are so eager to wage war on our own citizens then it don\'t seem so much more of a drastic step to bomb some brown people. There is something inherently wrong with the system\'s management, ideals, and policies, and the same small group of miserable angry white guys have been deciding our fate since the 70\'s they amy have changed offices, but those in office are puppets to their subcomittees, and their subcomittees are backed by corporate funding from the private sector, and whoever has the money to supply also has the option to deny the capital. This means that at minimum policy is influenced by some certian prominent leaders of corporate america, and not the government officials itself. Bush is a puppet but what makes him a moron is i\'m not sure he even knows he\'s got the hand of capitalism up his ass pushing his buttons. That\'s the problem i have with capitalism, is that elected officials regardless of beliefs have pressure to lean towards the mindset of where the money\'s at, even if not for personal gain, but for fear of personal loss. Just look, for example, of something like Sen. Daschle speaking out, the media goes so far as to call him a traitor, probably at the direction and guidance of the angry white guys that call themselves good americans, the republicans. Yeah sure, we don\'t have guns to the heads of people in america to influence the directiona bias of policies, we actually have something equally or more powerful, yet less obviously threatening, and is basically a bomb in the mind, the exploitation of personal greed in those who run the country. By comparison, yes, i agree america works pretty well when it works, but still has an achilles heel in the fact that capitalsits influence policey, and capitalsits are not elected. A lot of dissenting americans abandon the country and renounce citizenship in protest, but am i not patriotic in my lack of fear of not being socially in-line with the mass majority who think okay is good enough, that we don\'t need all the freedom, just more than any other country has? My statements at times can be construed as america bashing, and i agree at points i do bash our leadership, policies, and some of our fundamental political and coroparte infrastructure, but my voice of dissent is not to try to offend or piss anyone off, it\'s to promote an open dialog on how we can all better ourselves. The day i would be a proud american is the day when i can smoke a blunt inside my own residence legally, when i can proudly procalim that we are a peaceful people, when we stop explitoing and raping the natural world and begin using hemp for food, fuel, fiber, medicine, and speaking of medicine, how about this, if you get sick or hurt and in need of medical attention, how about we take the money we save from waging war on everyone and put that into a healthcare system where everyone who pays taxes gets some level of benefits. When taxes are broken down, each american puts in about 12 weejs of work out of 52 in a year for the governmet, yet if i get hurt in an accident and have no insurance to pay my bills, can\'t go to work becaue of an injury, i\'m basically fucked, i\'ll be homeless on short order, and diabled. Now maybe in a couple of years after i am reviewed extensively and audited a few times, pumped full of drugs by doctors paid by the system and the pharmeceutical companies, only than maybe i\'ll be eligible to recieve aroung $500 a month to live on, and will not be allowed to have any other income as a stipulation of social security, not to mention that i will still be denied healing power of natural herb. Why should i accept getting screwed by the red white and blue with a smile and thank them?
Think about this next time you\'re sitting home all comfortable eatin nachos ans watchin the war on tv \"Unrest\" by TooSicKs So jaded, nonchalance, walk this earth in a trance. Blinded by light, but more by dark bleeding eyes covered by hands. Callous and seared, cold and hard as concrete. Unwitnessing horors, behind these walls again retreat Refugee of world, now hidden self from self. Where has the color gone, leaving behind visions of hell? Nothing left but black and white, shades of grey are all that be. Through grey mask of ambience, bodies swelling like a sea. Forced by fear of death from home, the grey is punctured by drops of red. Bleeding from the wounds, wounded, removed, left for dead. Push a button, change a channel, all the grey goes away. Behind hands cold as concrete, another world has died today.
Well, critter, i would run if i could put up with the politics of being in politics, i\'ve served on technical and operational rulemaking comittees, civil engineeering planning approval, and consulting/liason work between local, state and federal government,and have dealt with mayors and city council to know that if i was in office i\'d end up choking councilmembers who would be pissing me off. A few years ago a fellow stoner was #3 in the mayoral race with 6 candidates. I\'d actually have a fair chance i think cause i\'ve been somewhat of a public figure for a few years here.
Sorry guys, but this thread has really regressed into a USA bashing thread. Im all for people stating their views, but once it simply becomes bashing for the sake of bashing-- no matter what country it is-- its time to be closed...Ive gotten more than one report by members about this thread, so unless other mods choose otherwise im closing it up for now.