OT - US Presidential Candiates Arrested!

[Ed Kolis]

To Starhawk:
I believe fully in the principles in which the USA was founded. However, the USA today is based on the OPPOSITE of those principles - we have BECOME the Tories, and IMHO it's time for another rebellion! I'm just not the one to lead such a thing...

[Starhawk]

Ever hear of a positive change instead of jumping right into the flag burning government bashing militant?

Sorry but you'll still not get me to agree with you on anything you say as long as you don't even attempt to seek any positive ways of changing things....right now you just sound like a hicksville (I'm from the south so I REALLY don't like the hick stereotype so don't try to sound like it ) militia nut who wants to lead a revolution that would get creamed in an hour because there are too many people who are happy with the government and don't want people like you or with your viewpoint ruling this or any other country.

To Gandalf yeah we do have territories like I said though it seems they cost us money and give us little in return when I say province I mean taxed (as in we get more mone from them then we spend on them) territory that has the choice of either paying or getting creamed by an invasion force ala British Empire .

There is a difference between a territory and a province as far as I'm aware though I could be caught up in semantics there....

[Will]

Where to begin... there's so much.

First off, Starhawk... we're serious when we say please tone down your Posts. The SEIV Forums will not tolerate extended ad hominem attacks, flames, etc.

especially SINCE WE ARE NOT proffiting from the damned war in Iraq....in fact it's COSTING US MONEY....oy

The argument about war profiteering isn't about the US gaining or losing money. It's about the military/industrial complex corporations profitting on an enormous scale because of the war, to the detriment of the rest of the economy. The profits are going to Halliburton, BAE, Saab Missiles, United Defense, Carlyle Group, Glock, Bofors Defense, Boeing, Northrup Grumman, etc, etc... These also happen to be the corporate Groups that own the most politicians...

As for all the comments on the "US bashers", "US haters", "flag burners", and so on. The strength of the United States comes from the fact that its citizens CAN dissent. If there is ever a time when there is no dissent, then I will be very, very afraid... because that will mean that the US is truly no longer a free country. All of your comments, which you seem to indicate are directed at Ed Kolis, are completely false over-reactions, the typical frenzied oversimplifications that drive the radical nutjobs on both ends of the political spectrum. People who are generally high on rhetoric and righteousness, and low on critical thinking skills. Examples:

• the Republican mailings in, IIRC, West Virginia, which say that "the liberals" want to ban the Bible and legalize gay marriage... only half of which is sometimes true
• the "think of the children!" Groups, which seem to use that one argument to justify anything under the sun
• Groups such as PETA, who semi-regularly break into labs, dump fake blood on people, all in the name of treating animals fairly
• Bill O'Reily, Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter (on that Last one, I can't believe anyone sane would really believe that Sen. McCarthy and the communist witchhunts were really a Good Thing)
• the environmental group that firebomed a few hundred SUVs a while ago (six months?)
• Timothy McVeigh, John Mohammed/John Lee Malvo, Osama bin Laden

All those Groups are guilty of mischaracterizing people they don't agree with, some to a much higher degree than others. Don't make their mistake, please.

As for the whole "liberation of Iraq" thing, I have to wonder if the countries we have "liberated" really are better off now. Afghanistan (which we ignored soon after invading and focus went to an Iraq which was all bark/no bite) went from the centralized, organizing... and oppressive... rule of the Taliban, to a short period of rule by an occupying US force, then degenerated into various territories held by warlords, and is in many ways just as bad or worse than before we invaded. The "provisional government" in Afghanistan is a joke, the only power they have is that of the few US troops we left there. In Iraq, we went in because of a supposed threat of Saddam either giving weapons to terrorists, or not having good enough security to prevent terrorists from taking weapons. We find in hindsight that there were no weapons, that analysts were pressured to conclude that Iraq probably had weapons, based only on Iraqi bravado which was meant to keep Saddam's enemies throughout the Middle East at bay. We removed a dictatorship again, and replaced it with chaos again, as we didn't put in enough resources to keep the area stable. We also removed the biggest asset the US had in the Arab world to hold the power of fundamentalist Islamic Groups in check. While Saddam was not our ally, he was a major reason why militant Groups were not forming in the Middle East as quickly or efficiently as they could have, since they were a threat to his secular state. So, based on very bad decisions that no one is living up to, we have two occupied countries that we screwed up, billions of dollars of the economy going to war instead of back into strenghening the economy, 1000+ soldiers dead, 6000+ soldiers wounded, and the biggest recruitment fair terrorist organizations could have hoped for. Wonderful

Now, all this terrible stuff has happened because of the hawkish policies of the current administration, and the "shoot first, ask questions later" type of personality the President seems to prefer. And you're calling into question the motives of those who are criticizing this government? The simple thing is, this government needs to change, and as I believe was already said by Atrocities on these Boards before, it needs to change through one of four boxes, in the following order: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. This is the soap box. The ballot box for me is in the mail right now (absentee ballot). I can't really sit on a jury with enough power to change much in the government (SCotUS is pretty much the only one with that power). And, if it comes to it, I may go to the ammo box. But unlike this administration, I have some patience before I will put my finger on the trigger, and even more patience before I actually pull it.

Oh, and on Kerry's "flip-flopping": How can Kerry be changing positions all the time, yet be more liberal than Ted Kennedy, as the Bush campaign claims? And why does changing opinions based on new data constitute a character flaw (I thought bull-headed stubornness was supposed to be the vice)? And what about Bush's flip-flopping? Steel tarrifs, not taking money from Medicare/Social Security, the Department of Homeland Security... hypocrites.

[AMF]

Will said:
Oh, and on Kerry's "flip-flopping"...

The funniest thing about the whole "flipflopping" issue (aside from the fact that it isn't true, but simply the right's propoganda machine at work) is that we're saying that Kerry is not fit to be President because....he CHANGES HIS MIND!

OH MY GOD. They're right. Surely we don't want someone who CHANGES THEIR MIND at the helm of the country.

I mean, just think of it. What if they learned new information or *gasp* intelligence that didn't fit with thier plans? They might CHANGE THEIR MIND!

Or, if they got advice from an advisor that was smarter on a subject than they were and they convinced them that they might be wrong? they might CHANGE THEIR MIND!

Holy cow. Think of the possibilities. It would be devastating to have a president that listened to advice and then made up a decision, and was willing to CHANGE THEIR MIND if the country needed it, or if it made sense. Or if, god forbid, they might have been wrong.

I mean, just think, what if Kerry were president, and we got attacked by Al Qaeda and he knew, just knew, that Iran was behind it and so he started to prepare for an invasion but then one of his advisers or the CIA came to him and said, "Mr President all our intelligence indicates that it isn't Iran behind the attack, instead it's North Korea". What if, under that situation, our President CHANGED HIS MIND?

Where would the US be then?

In a hell of a lot better place than now, I can tell you that.

Remember that Cuban Missile Crisis thingy? Where we went eyeball to eyeball with the Russkies and the whole world watched while we almsot blew it up? Well, JFK was a pretty bright guy...because he listened to his advisors on possible options to deal with the Missiles in Cuba...and he CHANGED HIS MIND and instead of airstrikes he blockaded.

WE know now, given that Russian archives have all been released to the public after the wall fell down, that if he had ordered airstrikes, odds are very good that there would have been a nuclear war.

Thank god he CHANGED HIS MIND.

WE need a President that is not so lugheaded and stubborn that he can't CHANGE HIS MIND.

Get it?

Or, is it possible that you can't CHANGE YOUR MIND?

[Gandalf Parker]

Starhawk said:
Ever hear of a positive change instead of jumping right into the flag burning government bashing militant?

You might want to be aware of who you are talking about if you are including me. Although there should NOT be such a thing as a list of qualifications which give the right to comment, if there WERE such a list then many of us would qualify quite heavily. Hmmmm lets see... US citizen, vietnam vet, military retired, tax payer, functional family man, home owner. Thats quite a list of things I can put me on the "politicians listen to me" list. About the only thing I could add to it that I dont have at the moment is that Im no longer a "small business owner" or "CEO of a large corporation". Thats just me. I thought Id clarify it abit.

To Gandalf yeah we do have territories like I said though it seems they cost us money and give us little in return when I say province I mean taxed (as in we get more mone from them then we spend on them) territory that has the choice of either paying or getting creamed by an invasion force ala British Empire .

Again its not the facts, its the way they are worded and looked at by others than the person who keeps saying them louder and louder. And civil disorders in those territories has caused us to send in troops (same as the british empire).

The scarey part is that most of those were taken in war. They were taken to move out the government ruling them, we stayed in control in order to "lead them to a proper government", (sound familiar?) and now decades later they still arent free nations or states. Im sure its all in their best interest but then most such actions by countries usually are as far as the nation doing it says.