America - The Official Thread

[sumbrownkid]

No doubt some municipalities will charge an insane tax on marijuana to discourage use and squeeze smokers of their cash, like cigarettes in Chicago where a pack can go $12 I think.

 

[FoolKiller]

It's more complicated than just "tax the heck out of it." Why would anyone buy it legally when they could get it way cheaper and without any tax on the "black market" from the same dealers they've always gotten it from? If the price/tax starts out too high, then illegal trafficking/sales will still be profitable for dealers/cartels. The risk of buying illegally will be a lower priority to people who have always purchased it that way compared to a potentially huge price increase.

Edit: ^^ FoolKiller makes some goods point about how the price could/should be lower for domestically/legally grown pot, but that assumes that the regulations wont be overbearing to the point where its still cheaper to just sneak the stuff in from outside the country.

I do not use so I don't know the street price of marijuana, but is it more expensive than cigarettes? Tobacco is taxed at a ridiculous rate but around here you can still get a pack of 20 cigarettes for anywhere between $2 and $5. Some states have taxed them to prohibitively high levels and even their black market is minimal and from other US states.

How much does a joint's worth of marijuana go for illegally? How much would it cost without mostly small load transportation costs and what is essentially hazard pay (to make it worth risking life and/or freedom to produce, transport, and sell)?

And that brings us to an alternate question. Why don't we all buy black market goods for cheaper? Moonshine can be cheaper. Guys stealing cars will give you a better deal than any dealer. Same for almost any good.

The answer is simple. The deal is not worth the moral and legal burden or accessibility is far easier for the legal good. On a consumable, like drugs or food, you have no guarantees of how safe it is or how pure it is. Do you know your marijuana isn't mixed with something? And would someone raise an awareness campaign against the gun-toting cartel if it wasn't pure? I'm not saying it needs government inspectors, most private food companies exceed USDA requirements by a long shot. But you have no public recourse. I've bought uninspected meat, eggs, and milk, but I visited the farm I bought it from.

Ultimately, if I used marijuana and it was legalized but taxed higher than the black market price I would buy the legal stuff for one specific reason: The corner convenience store is, well, convenient, and I could buy my Cheetos at the same time.


EDIT:. This goes back to if we are acting more like our enemies or not.
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-drone-tweets-reveal-double-tap-plan-2012-12

A trend has been found in our drone strikes of double tapping, the act of shooting a second time a short time later, when first responders are clearly on scene. We accuse Hamas of doing it as an act of terrorism. It is, according to international law, a war crime. But hey, I guess when you want to be sure your target is dead you should kill any innocent, perhaps even children and doctors, who show up to help the injured, who are likely strangers to them.

And these are the actions of a Nobel Peace Prize winning president.

 

[David]

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[BongRipz]

This is not a justification for anything. You could legalize and tax the heck out of crack cocaine or heroin but we're not likely to see that are we?

What you have to realize is that most of, if not all of, the social problems those drugs bring are not associated with marijuana in the least bit. In fact one can say other legal substances such as alcohol bring more social problems then marijuana would if it were legal.

Right, I understand the reasoning behind that, and the rest of what you said. As someone who has never partaken in illicit drugs I agree with you.

I'm mostly just wondering if that holds true for current users who are already used to buying it illegally, and are thus less inhibited by the risks (safety and legal) that deter non-users. In this situation there is already a large "black market" in place, whereas thats not really the case with cigarettes or alcohol. As long as there is some profit to be made for trafficker/dealers I'm sure it will be around. Judging from the many people I know who seem to come across pot pretty easily it doesn't seem too inconvenient for them as it is. Heck, I had friends in college who basically had it delivered right to their door. Who's to say that guy isn't just a buddy dropping off some legal pot and not an illegal dealer?

I guess the real point I should try to make to the people saying to just tax the heck out of it, is why support legalizing it if you just want the government to overtax it in an effort to discourage use anyway? A minimal tax to pay for the regulation should be sufficient. Let people make whatever silly decisions they want beyond that.

Edit: FK I think you added an edit to the wrong post!

If you did partake you would understand the convenience factor even more. No matter how easy it is to get hold of marijuana there are always hoops one must jump through. There is usually waiting involved, not to mention sometimes long car drives and having to rely on usually unreliable people. And you have to keep in mind that most users are already "Taxed", its just that this tax is not by the government. I've been on both sides of this and it is an all round PITA.

And the whole black market thing, there is a black market for anything heavily taxed. One could simply drive a few hours down south and load up on cartons of cigarettes in a state that doesn't tax as heavily and bring those back to say New York or Ohio that has higher taxes. This is done all the time and regular customers wont question different tax stamps because they are probably saving money or just dont give a crap. When the store around the corner from me wasn't doing so well financially the owner used to do this all the time.

 

[David]

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[FoolKiller]

Right, I understand the reasoning behind that, and the rest of what you said. As someone who has never partaken in illicit drugs I agree with you.

I'm mostly just wondering if that holds true for current users who are already used to buying it illegally, and are thus less inhibited by the risks (safety and legal) that deter non-users. In this situation there is already a large "black market" in place, whereas thats not really the case with cigarettes or alcohol. As long as there is some profit to be made for trafficker/dealers I'm sure it will be around. Judging from the many people I know who seem to come across pot pretty easily it doesn't seem too inconvenient for them as it is. Heck, I had friends in college who basically had it delivered right to their door. Who's to say that guy isn't just a buddy dropping off some legal pot and not an illegal dealer?

Funny you should mention alcohol. There was a time when alcohol was prohibited. Constitutionally prohibited. During that time alcohol was created or imported illegally. This had to be done by those willing to fight the law and the lawmen. This is how organized Chicago gangsters were born. It is how Al Capone came to power. Just as in the War on Drugs, tons of money was spent fighting this law and many people died. Many influential and famous people still found ways to get a drink at speak easys. Few people during that time didn't know how to get a drink.

Then it was legalized. The criminals had to be convicted of other crimes or let go. The speak easys became legal social clubs. The criminal led distilleries either shutdown or became legitimate businesses. Everyone that was buying it from illegal sources began to buy it from legal sources. Today I live less than an hour drive from two wineries, four or five bourbon distilleries, and three or four breweries. I can't buy alcohol on Sundays, but that just means we buy extra on Saturday.

With the exception of a jar of moonshine that was gifted to me, I have never had illegal alcohol. And moonshine is only illegal to make, but legal to drink or possess. I won't go out of my way for cheaper beer, but better quality beer will find me driving all over.

See, if you want to know the result of a prohibited substance surrounded by violent crime and easily available becoming legal and strapped with regulation designed to discourage its use you only have to look at US history. We've been there and done that.

I guess the real point I should try to make to the people saying to just tax the heck out of it, is why support legalizing it if you just want the government to overtax it in an effort to discourage use anyway? A minimal tax to pay for the regulation should be sufficient. Let people make whatever silly decisions they want beyond that.

Well, asking politicians to legalize because it should be is a hard sell when they clearly couldn't give two squirts about rights. The tax is to give them a reason they can understand. Government is good at taking your money, but getting them to do anything because they should is hopeless.

Edit: FK I think you added an edit to the wrong post!

Nope. It is relevant to the thread topic: America. It is referring to a topic we discussed a few days back, that our current military strategy has is acting like those we call terrorists.

I added it as an edit to avoid double posting.

 

[FoolKiller]

Dear America,

Has it really come to this? Illegal candy?
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/184828741.html

St. Paul shop caught with smoking gum

A back-in-the-day soda shop in St. Paul has been busted for selling cigarettes -- made of candy.

Lynden's, on Hamline Avenue near Cretin-Derham Hall High School, said a city inspections official came in last week and gave the shop a warning and added that a misdemeanor citation -- with a $500 fine -- would be next if the non-carcinogenic confections continue to be sold.

"We got busted [Dec. 19] by the City of St. Paul. Oops," the shop tweeted.

Candy cigarettes, bubble gum cigars and bubble gum made to look like chewing tobacco have been among a host of vintage sugary treats that Lynden's has kept in stock since it opened in April.

"We had no idea," Tobi Lynden said Wednesday, lamenting that she can no longer sell the white candy sticks with the red tips, her best-selling candy. "We don't want to get on the bad side of St. Paul."

Lynden said nearly all of the candy cigarette purchases were made by adults.

" 'Oh, I had these when I was little,' " she said she would often hear. "We weren't trying to promote smoking or tobacco use of any kind."

And just what would prompt a bureaucrat to ferret out such nefarious activity?

"Somebody from Bloomington called and reported us," Lynden said. "The whole thing is pretty weird."

Robert Humphrey, spokesman for the city's Safety and Inspections Department, said the complaint came to his agency Dec. 13. An inspector visited Lynden's on Dec. 19 and had the forbidden products immediately removed from the sales floor.

A unanimous City Council outlawed candy smokes and cartoon character lighters in April 2009. The council cited a study showing that these products encouraged youngsters to take up smoking tobacco.

Lynden's Facebook page has collected dozens of comments decrying the enforcement action and the rationale behind it.

"I just got through a bag of gummy bears," one person wrote. " Now I can't stop thinking about where to find a REAL bear to eat!"

Several countries prohibit the sale of candy cigarettes, including Australia, Canada and Thailand.

In the United States, some national retailers have agreed not to sell them. Maine and Tennessee and several local jurisdictions in other states have outlawed the sale of novelty lighters.

The ordinance was championed by a group of St. Paul teenagers working with the Association for Nonsmokers-Minnesota, which educates youth groups and individuals who want to lobby for anti-tobacco policies.

Humphrey said he gets a complaint "about once a year" concerning the sale of candy cigarettes and other sugary tobacco-themed products in his city.

"We enforce this on a complaint basis," Humphrey said. "This isn't taking time away from any major enforcement [actions]."

Now what are nonsmokers supposed to hand out when they have a baby. You are supposed to do blue bubble gum cigars for a boy and pink for a girl.

And they banned Big League Chew! I'm boycotting St. Paul.

But seriously, banning candy? I think the only worse isea was the "clever" title givrn to the article.

Ah well, there's always the Internet.



This next article, I've kind of held back on because it asks a controversial question. I wanted the CT shooting to die down just a bit first.

http://www.guardiannews.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/19/newtown-drones-children-deaths

Over the last several days, numerous commentators have lamented the vastly different reactions in the US to the heinous shooting of children in Newtown, Connecticut as compared to the continuous killing of (far more) children and innocent adults by the US government in Pakistan and Yemen, among other places. The blogger Atrios this week succinctly observed:


"I do wish more people who manage to fully comprehend the broad trauma a mass shooting can have on our country would consider the consequences of a decade of war."

My Guardian colleague George Monbiot has a powerful and eloquent column this week provocatively entitled: "In the US, mass child killings are tragedies. In Pakistan, mere bug splats". He points out all the ways that Obama has made lethal US attacks in these predominantly Muslim countries not only more frequent but also more indiscriminate - "signature strikes" and "double-tap" attacks on rescuers and funerals - and then argues:

"Most of the world's media, which has rightly commemorated the children of Newtown, either ignores Obama's murders or accepts the official version that all those killed are 'militants'. The children of north-west Pakistan, it seems, are not like our children. They have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and flowers and teddy bears. They belong to the other: to the non-human world of bugs and grass and tissue.

"'Are we,' Obama asked on Sunday, 'prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?' It's a valid question. He should apply it to the violence he is visiting on the children of Pakistan."

Political philosophy professor Falguni Sheth similarly writes that "the shooting in Newtown, CT is but part and parcel of a culture of shooting children, shooting civilians, shooting innocent adults, that has been waged by the US government since September 12, 2001." She adds:

"And let there be no mistake: many of 'us' have directly felt the impact of that culture: Which 'us'? Yemeni parents, Pakistani uncles and aunts, Afghan grandparents and cousins, Somali brothers and sisters, Filipino cousins have experienced the impact of the culture of killing children. Families of children who live in countries that are routinely droned by the US [government]. Families of children whose villages are raided nightly in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Meanwhile, University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, at the peak of mourning over Newtown, simply urged: "Let's also Remember the 178 children Killed by US Drones". He detailed the various ways that children and other innocents have had their lives extinguished by President Obama's policies, and then posted this powerful (and warning: graphic) one-and-a-half-minute video from a new documentary on drones by filmmaker Robert Greenwald (no relation):

Finally, the Yemeni blogger Noon Arabia posted a moving plea on Monday: "Our children's blood is not cheaper than American blood and the pain of loosing [sic] them is just as devastating. Our children matter too, Mr. President! These tragedies 'also' must end and to end them 'YOU' must change!"

There's just no denying that many of the same people understandably expressing such grief and horror over the children who were killed in Newtown steadfastly overlook, if not outright support, the equally violent killing of Yemeni and Pakistani children. Consider this irony: Monday was the three-year anniversary of President Obama's cruise missile and cluster-bomb attack on al-Majala in Southern Yemen that ended the lives of 14 women and 21 children: one more child than was killed by the Newtown gunman. In the US, that mass slaughter received not even a small fraction of the attention commanded by Newtown, and prompted almost no objections (in predominantly Muslim nations, by contrast, it received ample attention and anger).

It is well worth asking what accounts for this radically different reaction to the killing of children and other innocents. Relatedly, why is the US media so devoted to covering in depth every last detail of the children killed in the Newtown attack, but so indifferent to the children killed by its own government?

To ask this question is not - repeat: is not - to equate the Newtown attack with US government attacks. There are, one should grant, obvious and important differences.

To begin with, it is a natural and probably universal human inclination to care more about violence that seems to threaten us personally than violence that does not. Every American parent sends their children to schools of the type attacked in Newtown and empathy with the victims is thus automatic. Few American parents fear having their children attacked by US drones, cruise missiles and cluster bombs in remote regions in Pakistan and Yemen, and empathy with those victims is thus easier to avoid, more difficult to establish.

One should strive to see the world and prioritize injustices free of pure self-interest - caring about grave abuses that are unlikely to affect us personally is a hallmark of a civilized person - but we are all constructed to regard imminent dangers to ourselves and our loved ones with greater urgency than those that appear more remote. Ignoble though it is, that's just part of being human - though our capacity to liberate ourselves from pure self-interest means that it does not excuse this indifference.

Then there's the issue of perceived justification. Nobody can offer, let alone embrace, any rationale for the Newtown assault: it was random, indiscriminate, senseless and deliberate slaughter of innocents. Those who support Obama's continuous attacks, or flamboyantly display their tortured "ambivalence" as a means of avoiding criticizing him, can at least invoke a Cheneyite slogan along with a McVeigh-taught-military-term to pretend that there's some purpose to these killings: We Have To Kill The Terrorists, and these dead kids are just Collateral Damage. This rationale is deeply dishonest, ignorant, jingoistic, propagandistic, and sociopathic, but its existence means one cannot equate it to the Newtown killing.

But there are nonetheless two key issues highlighted by the intense grief for the Newtown victims compared to the utter indifference to the victims of Obama's militarism. The first is that it underscores how potent and effective the last decade's anti-Muslim dehumanization campaign has been.

Every war - particularly protracted ones like the "War on Terror" - demands sustained dehumanization campaigns against the targets of the violence. Few populations will tolerate continuous killings if they have to confront the humanity of those who are being killed. The humanity of the victims must be hidden and denied. That's the only way this constant extinguishing of life by their government can be justified or at least ignored. That was the key point made in the extraordinarily brave speech given by then-MSNBC reporter Ashleigh Banfield in 2003 after she returned from Iraq, before she was demoted and then fired: that US media coverage of US violence is designed to conceal the identity and fate of its victims.

The violence and rights abridgments of the Bush and Obama administrations have been applied almost exclusively to Muslims. It is, therefore, Muslims who have been systematically dehumanized. Americans virtually never hear about the Muslims killed by their government's violence. They're never profiled. The New York Times doesn't put powerful graphics showing their names and ages on its front page. Their funerals are never covered. President Obama never delivers teary sermons about how these Muslim children "had their entire lives ahead of them - birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own." That's what dehumanization is: their humanity is disappeared so that we don't have to face it.

But this dehumanization is about more than simply hiding and thus denying the personhood of Muslim victims of US violence. It is worse than that: it is based on the implicit, and sometimes overtly stated, premise that Muslims generally, even those guilty of nothing, deserve what the US does to them, or are at least presumed to carry blame.

Just a few months ago, the New York Times reported that the Obama administration has re-defined the term "militant" to mean: "all military-age males in a strike zone" - the ultimate expression of the rancid dehumanizing view that Muslims are inherently guilty of being Terrorists unless proven otherwise. When Obama's campaign surrogate and former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about the US killing by drone strike of 16-year-old American citizen Abdulrahman Awlaki two weeks after his father was killed, Gibbs unleashed one of the most repulsive statements heard in some time: that Abdulrahman should have "had a more responsible father". Even when innocent Muslim teenagers are killed by US violence, it is their fault, and not the fault of the US and its leaders.

All of this has led to rhetoric and behavior that is nothing short of deranged when it comes to discussing the Muslim children and other innocents killed by US violence. I literally have never witnessed mockery over dead children like that which is spewed from some of Obama's hard-core progressive supporters whenever I mention the child-victims of Obama's drone attacks. Jokes like that are automatic. In this case at least, the fish rots from the head: recall President Obama's jovial jokes at a glamorous media dinner about his use of drones to kill teeangers (sanctioned by the very same political faction that found Bush's jokes about his militarism - delivered at the same media banquet several years earlier - so offensive). Just as is true of Gibbs' deranged and callous rationale, jokes like that are possible only when you have denied the humanity of those who are killed. Would Newtown jokes be tolerated by anyone?

Dehumanization of Muslims is often overt, by necessity, in US military culture. The Guardian headline to Monbiot's column refers to the term which Rolling Stones' Michael Hastings reported is used for drone victims: "bug splat". And consider this passage from an amazing story this week in Der Spiegel (but not, notably, in US media) on a US drone pilot, Brandon Bryant, who had to quit because he could no longer cope with the huge amount of civilian deaths he was witnessing and helping to cause:


"Bryant and his coworkers sat in front of 14 computer monitors and four keyboards. When Bryant pressed a button in New Mexico, someone died on the other side of the world. . . .

"[H]e remembers one incident very clearly when a Predator drone was circling in a figure-eight pattern in the sky above Afghanistan, more than 10,000 kilometers (6,250 miles) away. There was a flat-roofed house made of mud, with a shed used to hold goats in the crosshairs, as Bryant recalls. When he received the order to fire, he pressed a button with his left hand and marked the roof with a laser. The pilot sitting next to him pressed the trigger on a joystick, causing the drone to launch a Hellfire missile. There were 16 seconds left until impact. . . .

"With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.

"Second zero was the moment in which Bryant's digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif.

"Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.

"'Did we just kill a kid?' he asked the man sitting next to him.

"'Yeah, I guess that was a kid,' the pilot replied.

"'Was that a kid?' they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.

"Then, someone they didn't know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. 'No. That was a dog,' the person wrote.

"They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?"

Seeing Muslim children literally as dogs: few images more perfectly express the sustained dehumanization at the heart of US militarism and aggression over the last decade.

Citizens of a militaristic empire are inexorably trained to adopt the mentality of their armies: just listen to Good Progressive Obama defenders swagger around like they're decorated, cigar-chomping combat veterans spouting phrases like "war is hell" and "collateral damage" to justify all of this. That is the anti-Muslim dehumanization campaign rearing its toxic head.

There's one other issue highlighted by this disparate reaction: the question of agency and culpability. It's easy to express rage over the Newtown shooting because so few of us bear any responsibility for it and - although we can take steps to minimize the impact and make similar attacks less likely - there is ultimately little we can do to stop psychotic individuals from snapping. Fury is easy because it's easy to tell ourselves that the perpetrator - the shooter - has so little to do with us and our actions.

Exactly the opposite is true for the violence that continuously kills children and other innocent people in the Muslim world. Many of us empowered and cheer for the person responsible for that. US citizens pay for it, enable it, and now under Obama, most at the very least acquiesce to it if not support it. It's always much more difficult to acknowledge the deaths that we play a role in causing than it is to protest those to which we believe we have no connection. That, too, is a vital factor explaining these differing reactions.

Please spare me the objection that the Newtown shooting should not be used to make a point about the ongoing killing of Muslim children and other innocents by the US. Over the last week, long-time gun control advocates have seized on this school shooting in an attempt to generate support for their political agenda, and they're perfectly right to do so: when an event commands widespread political attention and engages human emotion, that is exactly when one should attempt to persuade one's fellow citizens to recognize injustices they typically ignore. That is no more true for gun control than it is the piles of corpses the Obama administration continues to pile up for no good reason - leaving in their wake, all over the Muslim world, one Newtown-like grieving ritual after the next.

As Monbiot observed: "there can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people" in Newtown. The exact opposite is true for the children and their families continuously killed in the Muslim world by the US government: huge numbers of people, particularly in the countries responsible, remain completely untouched by the grief that is caused in those places. That is by design - to ensure that opposition is muted - and it is brutally effective.

Accolades
President Obama, the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, has just been bestowed by TIME Magazine with the equally prestigious and meaningful accolade of 2012 Person of the Year.

You know, I want to stand by the "there is a difference in attacking those who would attack us" defense. But when we now know we have targeted the first responders and funerals in a double tap strategy (also a war crime) to the point that the UN is asking questions, have targeted underage American citizens and family members of already dead targets, and have drone pilots leaving and telling stories of casualties being called bug splat and even having an obvious child being called a dog to prevent a record of dead children, I have to wonder if we are not accepting and using a policy of targeting and killing innocents. Are we using mob tactics in the war on terror?

And if we are purposely killing innocents and children, are our leaders any better than a man opening fire in a theater or school?

I honestly don't know anymore.

 

[Keef]

Candy cigarettes: Yeah, I don't get it. The story says people blew up Lynden's Facebook page after they heard the news, joking and complaining. Funny thing though - where were those people when city council enacted this rule? Why didn't they step up to the plate and shoot it down? Why did they let all the do-gooders have their way with harmless (and delicious) candy? Candy!

 

[Joel]

You know, I want to stand by the "there is a difference in attacking those who would attack us" defense. But when we now know we have targeted the first responders and funerals in a double tap strategy (also a war crime) to the point that the UN is asking questions, have targeted underage American citizens and family members of already dead targets, and have drone pilots leaving and telling stories of casualties being called bug splat and even having an obvious child being called a dog to prevent a record of dead children, I have to wonder if we are not accepting and using a policy of targeting and killing innocents. Are we using mob tactics in the war on terror?

And if we are purposely killing innocents and children, are our leaders any better than a man opening fire in a theater or school?

I honestly don't know anymore.

The way the drone strikes have just completely gone under the radar is absolutely terrifying. President Obama has caused Newtown-esque death counts of innoncent children (and many men when you look at the absurd definition of militant) for 4 years. Somehow Obama just gets a free pass, and it deeply sickens me. Politics has becomes such a team sport that Obama supporters can't acknowledge just how barbaric this administration continues to be. He's "their guy", so he escapes the criticisms that still follow Bush.

How anyone can still be an Obama supporter is beyond me. These drone attacks are unbelievably disgusting. The sad reality is that most of the people in the US who would bring up/criticize these attacks, voted for Obama. These bleeding hearts can't look at reality and realize that Hope and Change was all just a classic bait and switch. It's a sick joke.

Imagine if an American elementary school teacher was a suspected anti-China terrorist, and the Chinese used a drone to attack his classroom while he was teaching a class full of American children. Then, as first responders arrive, the Chinese fire another missile, killing more children, teachers, bystanders, police, firefighters, and EMT's. All because one guy may or may not have maybe sorta kinda had some sort of plan to maybe some day attack China in some way.

And they want us to believe the evil muslims hate us for our freedoms and scantily clad women. Pure horse:censored:.

 

[Northstar]

I'm boycotting St. Paul.

You aren't missing much, everything worth going to is in Minneapolis.

As for the story, it is stupid and an embarrassment for all of Minnesota. I remember playing with those as a kid, my mom would even burn the tip so it looked even more like a cigarette. It should be noted I'm now 23 and have never even felt the urge to try the real thing.

 

[hogger129]

The way the drone strikes have just completely gone under the radar is absolutely terrifying. President Obama has caused Newtown-esque death counts of innoncent children (and many men when you look at the absurd definition of militant) for 4 years. Somehow Obama just gets a free pass, and it deeply sickens me. Politics has becomes such a team sport that Obama supporters can't acknowledge just how barbaric this administration continues to be. He's "their guy", so he escapes the criticisms that still follow Bush.

How anyone can still be an Obama supporter is beyond me. These drone attacks are unbelievably disgusting. The sad reality is that most of the people in the US who would bring up/criticize these attacks, voted for Obama. These bleeding hearts can't look at reality and realize that Hope and Change was all just a classic bait and switch. It's a sick joke.

Imagine if an American elementary school teacher was a suspected anti-China terrorist, and the Chinese used a drone to attack his classroom while he was teaching a class full of American children. Then, as first responders arrive, the Chinese fire another missile, killing more children, teachers, bystanders, police, firefighters, and EMT's. All because one guy may or may not have maybe sorta kinda had some sort of plan to maybe some day attack China in some way.

And they want us to believe the evil muslims hate us for our freedoms and scantily clad women. Pure horse:censored:.

Well said. I did not agree with it under the Bush administration and it's equally as wrong under the current one. This whole thing is a result of the executive branch having too much power. 9/11 was done by Osama. Now he's dead and gone. Let's go home and let these countries fight for their own freedom. 70 years ago, they had to get a formal Declaration of War from Congress. Today they can just send a little force to wherever they want with little Congressional approval because of the unconstitutional War Powers Act.

I would really like for them to answer for Benghazi as well. I think it's being covered up because they did something illegal. My personal thoughts - and I don't have any proof to back this up so don't take it as Gospel - is that they were using this place for smuggling arms, and the people they were giving them to, turned on them. I still think there's something we're not being told and I'm a bit upset Congress is doing nothing about it.

 

[arora]

I would really like for them to answer for Benghazi as well. I think it's being covered up because they did something illegal. My personal thoughts - and I don't have any proof to back this up so don't take it as Gospel - is that they were using this place for smuggling arms, and the people they were giving them to, turned on them. I still think there's something we're not being told and I'm a bit upset Congress is doing nothing about it.

What, you are not buying the stomach bug, faint, concussion dealie?

Marco Rubio is still pressing and I think some of the gop is claiming to hold out on the Kerry appointment until we hear from Hillary, for whatever that is worth. I'm not holding my breath.

Gun running you say? I guess you are thinking guns going on down to Africa, I would not doubt that, after all we are now deploying 'training' troops in 36 countries to fight terrorists. From the AP.

This first-of-its-kind brigade assignment, involving teams from the 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, will target countries such as Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Niger, where Al Qaeda-linked groups have been active. It also will assist nations such as Kenya and Uganda that have been battling al-Shabab militants on the front lines in Somalia.

Gen. Carter Ham, the top U.S. commander in Africa, noted that the brigade has a small drone capability that could be useful in Africa. But he also acknowledged that he would need special permission to tap it for that kind of mission.

http://www.politico.com/story/2012/12/us-army-units-to-head-to-africa-85452.html?hp=l10

Drones can be used more places then the middle east lol.

Libya was just the start of course, these usually work out that way. Gotta secure those resources and such and keep them out of China's hands.

School of the Americas anyone? Might not be the same, kinda sounds the same though.

 

[FoolKiller]

Gun running you say? I guess you are thinking guns going on down to Africa,

Or quietly passing guns that can't be linked to the US to the group on the opposite side of a political upheaval than the ones we dislike. It wouldn't be the first time we did it.

How do you think bin Laden got all those fancy guns and knew how to use a non-guided, shoulder-mounted rocket to take down helicopters? And if you look into how we got them the guns to fight the Russians you would see that it fits the definition of gun running.

 

[arora]

I'm pretty sure we are arming the Syrians but I don't see them going through an embassy in Libya, anything is possible I guess.

 

[FoolKiller]

I'm pretty sure we are arming the Syrians but I don't see them going through an embassy in Libya, anything is possible I guess.

When you are taking non-US guns and giving them to non-US soldiers you have two parties that you deal with. When you are dealing in secret you don't meet where you are likely being watched.

Of course, there is enough unrest in the Middle East for us to be picking sides in a new fight every other week.

 

[Danoff]

So we're not going over the fiscal cliff - which means one thing - more spending. Obama says we should spend more and go further into debt, and enough republicans agree that the bill passed.

Tax hikes on small businesses? Check.
No spending cuts? Check.
$300B in new spending? Check.

How is this helping? I'm still wishing we'd gone over the cliff.

 

[FoolKiller]

The result was nothing more than a politically safe bill. It stopped the fiscal cliff, reserved the worst taxes for people making in the top 3% and cut spending on nothing of consequence.

That was the fiscal cliff trick. To prevent this supposed financial doomsday they just had to vote in anything. It didn't have to meet any real standards, just be something. They held their own feet to the fire to pass something that fixes nothing. And they knew it all along.

 

[arora]

We'll hit the debt ceiling soon, raise it and crank up the mints. Party like it's 1999.

__________

EDIT: this is pretty funny, I know how much you guys love the sexiest smartest cougar in politics

​

 

[Takumi Fujiwara]

On the subject of the candy cigarettes from a few pages back; I'll bet anything that the law was passed out of fears that kids would try to eat real cigarettes, not understanding that they weren't candy. I remember other cases where similar things were taken off the market because kids were eating the real object or substance instead of the candy shaped like it and getting sick or choking.

 

[arora]

boo hoo

Seriously, are there any parents about?

 

[Johnnypenso]

So we're not going over the fiscal cliff - which means one thing - more spending. Obama says we should spend more and go further into debt, and enough republicans agree that the bill passed.

Tax hikes on small businesses? Check.
No spending cuts? Check.
$300B in new spending? Check.

How is this helping? I'm still wishing we'd gone over the cliff.

Funny thing is, I don't think Americans realize they did go over the fiscal cliff exactly as you described it above. Takes hikes on small and medium sized businesses and business owners cuts directly into the wallets of the primary job creators. Spending wasn't part of the deal so the gigantic, unsustainable deficits continue along with added new spending.

If that isn't a fiscal cliff I don't know what is.

EDIT: this is pretty funny, I know how much you guys love the sexiest smartest cougar in politics

I love Michele Bachmann, I wish we had a Michelle up here I'd vote for her in a heartbeat!!

 

[DK]

I love Michele Bachmann, I wish we had a Michelle up here I'd vote for her in a heartbeat!!

Seriously? She's a Christian fundamentalist!

 

[FoolKiller]

Seriously? She's a Christian fundamentalist!

That doesn't make all her ideas horrible, just when she is trying to legislate her beliefs. In this case, Obama using executive privilege to give Congress a raise, she is right. I'm not sure if it is supposed to be a bribe in the midst of debates, but it was definitely in poor taste during budget deficit debates and and a recession.

 

[DK]

That doesn't make all her ideas horrible, just when she is trying to legislate her beliefs. In this case, Obama using executive privilege to give Congress a raise, she is right. I'm not sure if it is supposed to be a bribe in the midst of debates, but it was definitely in poor taste during budget deficit debates and and a recession.

I am aware of that, but I feel that legislating solely because of your religious beliefs is a bad idea. 30 years ago my country's head of government wasn't figuring out whether he should obey the Catholic Church's beliefs, but rather how to properly address their bishops. (link)

 

[Johnnypenso]

Seriously? She's a Christian fundamentalist!

I'd rather have a Christian Fundamentalist in office, who has some business experience and knows how to balance a budget and guide an economy, as opposed to the free spending, finger pointing, divisive schoolteacher with no experience whatsoever in hiring, firing, managing money or running a business that you have now. I could live with a couple of Christian based rules here and there and save a $Trillion or 6.

 

[homeforsummer]

American students increasingly narcissistic, not necessarily performing any better

Interesting piece. Students' opinions of their own abilities relative to their peers are constantly growing, far more than their counterparts in the 1960s. Yet despite saying they're even more dedicated to study, they spend less time studying - and while claiming their writing ability is improving, overall writing standards are slipping.

I'd add personally that the same is probably true here in the UK too (and probably elsewhere), it's just the article centers on U.S. students.

Thoughts? High self-esteem and confidence is obviously a good thing, but do people have it these days because they feel they're entitled to it, rather than because they warrant it? Something which is reflected across wider society too?

 

[Keef]

Thoughts? High self-esteem and confidence is obviously a good thing, but do people have it these days because they feel they're entitled to it, rather than because they warrant it? Something which is reflected across wider society too?

I don't think self esteem is improving, I think fronting self esteem is growing. With all the campaigns about depression and whatnot telling us all to be happy and love ourselves, etc, people may grasp onto trivial reasons to think they're all that more than they used to. I'm 24 and some guys my age still do that and it drives me nuts, but hey, society tells us the humble guy never gets laid and you have to be cool and impressive and all that.

A lot of that has never really changed over time. I think the wider understanding of depression and self esteem problems has helped influence the change.

 

[David]

.

 

[arora]

Any thoughts on Chuck Hagel?

 

[Northstar]

I love Michele Bachmann, I wish we had a Michelle up here I'd vote for her in a heartbeat!!

You can have her, I'm ashamed she represents my district.