He can stay if he promises to behave himself lol...

Well, obviously, not every one. Some will remain clueless.

I had great hopes for Ron Paul, but the Machine wouldn't let him in.

I am pretty much convinced that the solution won't be political.
I mean, no matter how you clean it up,
you just can't give people a feast
on the stuff ya scrape up in the bull pen.

I believe we just have to evolve;
each person's gotta step up to the plate
and do what's right, do what's gotta be done,
make the government IRRELEVANT
in terms of our lives and freedoms.
Put the government back into its role
as the administrator of the will of the people.

"Executing the will of the people
was supposed to mean DOING it!"

-Me

In my mind, until we switch at least 50% of our guns and bombs budget over to the electric car we can plug into our solar powered roofs, which would put generations to work on something useful, we will be spinning our wheels. Than add in what hemp could do for US, plastics, paper, cloths and biodiesel, we could have work for a century.

Is it really possible to put the gov back where it belongs? Our freedom has diminished more than I think we really realize. Look at what we are supporting, the Olympics. Originally (from my understanding) these games were to represent peace and bring the world together. By supporting the games in China, where it is obviously a police state, what are we saying? I know that winning at these games can set up an athlete for life, but at what cost to the world as a whole? Can we make a change in the world by how we conduct ourselves? Is it possible to effect change by quietly, but firmly, not supporting? Or is it important to shout and scream and fight?

Arlo, are you interested in being President?

He's got my vote...

Has any one else seen the chart of our bombs and guns, as opposed to the rest of this planet? Its got to be at least 5 times more than the rest of this planet.
(176 more to a 1000 posts.)

Shout and scream and fight, by all means!

I'm just saying that government as we know it
can not be rehabilitated. IMO.
We cannot FIX it because it corrupts all who touch it.
Kinda like a big ole tar baby.
So we must REPLACE it.
Not with a new and improved government
but with a new and improved citizenry,
with people who WON'T be governed
because they don't NEED to be governed.

If we, the people, take care of he Katrina victims
then the gov't won't have to get involved and screw it up.
That's what I mean by replacing the gov't.
As long as we turn to our politicians and say
"Give relief to the disaster victims"
our shouts and banners are seriously diluted.

Shout and scream and fight, by all means!
I haven't stopped since the late 1960s.
Yet I believe I accomplish far more
when I offer help to a family in crisis
rather than calling Family Services to report them.
When I help build a wheelchair ramp for our local art gallery
rather than calling for a new "access" law.

Am I making any sense at all?

("Gov't" is how you spell "malicious and incompetent"
with only four letters)

This is the OFFA link to the article.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/200 ... esponsible

Well, I'm not, for one, prepared to go out and build sewers and and fix potholes on the streets I use and create my own clean water from polluted water, and check the kitchen of every restaurant in town to be sure it's up to my health standards, and make sure the schools are teaching children well (or teach the children myself) and that the hospitals are following standards, and arrest, try, and watch over incarcerated burglars and murderers, and, and, and, and ...

What? You say the government's not doing a good job of those things now? I quite agree. And the reason it's not is that it's being run by people who don't believe in government and have done their best over the last 28 years to dismantle all the good bits of it that once existed. I don't like the government we have now, but until people realize that we NEED real government, in the sense of government being all of us joining together to do collectively what we CANNOT do alone and cannot depend on corporations to do correctly (in our best interests and not purely in the interest of profit--as in the current for-profit nohealthcare system), this mess will just get worse. To say that government--all government--is a priori bad is dangerously simplistic and just plays into the hands of those scoundrels, IMHO.

But that's just me, and I am going to go duck and cover now.

Hey ya, I like my state Rep. She made me cry today, and I haven't cried about anything for years and years... (I can't spell her name.)

Ditto what Shel said.

And no Olympic watching for me. And not just because I've always prefered to be a participant in sports, not a watcher.

Ceashel, no need to duck on my account.
I stopped shooting long ago.

When I say that gov't cannot be rehabilitated
I'm not talking about the Highways department.
(Not that THAT is a model of efficiency)
I'm talking about big-G Government,
politics, the people who wield POWER over others.

The problem with trying to find a "better" president,
to take an example,
is that the only people competing for that power
are people who WANT that power.

Back in the '60s my friends and I
used to sit on the back step smoking pot
and waxing philisophical and we used to say
"No way will we put OUR kids in prison
for smoking a natural, beneficial herb."
And yet our kids are still being imprisoned for just that.
Why?
Because those of us who opposed excessive gov't power
did not choose to run for positions of gov't power.
Those who wanted the power got the power
and they are delighted, apparently to imprison our kids.

BTW, we did homeschool our kids,
produce our own vehicle fuel, filter our own water,
raise our own food, fix our own roads, etc, etc.
And I have never regretted it for a moment.

But then I really am a simplistic feller, no doubt.

We don't have to agree,
we just have to work together.

Peace to you.