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[pmcd9]

The core Tea Partiers would just as soon see an America that is pure white as the driven snow.

Except for their black lungs.

[side_show]

As a side note, from a harm reduction perspective, electronic cigarettes are pretty interesting.  It gets me thinking that rather than people continuing to lose their shit over smoking, that that energy could be redirected into making smoking less harmful.  I find someone smoking a cigarette disgusting, but I could care less if they were smoking an e-cigarette around me.

[KeithHernandez]

I know this doesn't help, but I think borders are pretty fuck*ng stupid.  That is where I stand on illegal immigration.

I don't have a passport out of principle.

[Doc]

As a side note, from a harm reduction perspective, electronic cigarettes are pretty interesting.  It gets me thinking that rather than people continuing to lose their shit over smoking, that that energy could be redirected into making smoking less harmful.  I find someone smoking a cigarette disgusting, but I could care less if they were smoking an e-cigarette around me.

They should be good but for some reason they just won't catch on. I think they misjudge the reason people smoke, physical addiction is a big part but I think the social aspects are why people find it hardest to quit. Puffing on some fruity space age thing instead of bumming one off your mates just doesn't feel right, I'd imagine.

[Nabubrush]

Educate me. I see it as neutral at best with rotten side effects.

Personally, I'm at the '87/'88 version amnesty point just to clear this shit off the table.

Sorry - having a sorta bad day. I hate traveling and went off on you on a subject that angers me a lot, and you didn't deserve it.

[Choop]

no illegals = no good burritos, way less home depot hires. that backyard ain't gonna clean itself. i'm all for amnesty - i think if somebody's lived here for five, six years, plans to stay here and send cash home, doesn't matter where they're from, let 'em stay. most of 'em are from between here and columbia, they can get here in a week by truck. ain't like we can stop the flow, but it wouldn't suck to get a handle on it. other than australia, is there a country founded anywhere close to this on immigration?

here come some maps of global population density, with indeterminate relative scales. first, a comment: think you don't have enough room to live? check out central europe, western china, bangladesh versus pretty much all of the u.s. i'm on a third of an acre with just my wife; that could (would?) house 16 people comfortably without building up 1 2 3 4

[theinevitable]

you get pot legalized across the country and i'll be happy to let you take away my tobacco.

Yes, this is my fantasy. A world in which drugs are illegal or legal based on (!!!) how bad they are for you. Where the FDA tests out fun drugs the same way they regulate foods. This won't happen, and I guess I'd rather invest my mental energy in "pot should be legal" than "tobacco should be illegal."

[KeithHernandez]

Say what you want about tobacco, but if you want to start making more shit illegal you have to start with alcohol, not tobacco.  And, yeah, absolutely everything should be legal. 

[Nabubrush]

It's so absurd that the most dangerous drugs are legal and the others aren't that even children know it doesn't make sense.

[Nabubrush]

Nabu's comment falls right in line with my earlier concept of generational change and momentum building on issues.

Maybe since it came from him, dear readers, we will avoid some of the sneering douche-cock posts and actually realize that today we can see an horizon where there will be state managed dispensaries/vendors when in 1969 you could get 10 years in the pokey for getting caught giving your friend a marijuana cigarette in most places.

BTW, Spouse got a set up through a relative to have a Vancouver local spend a day touring around with her to depart local knowledge. Nice lady, she can no longer enter the US or it's possessions because forty years ago she got caught in the states getting on a plane with a personal sized amount of pot and declared part of the undesirable list and has stayed there.

The fun thing about it all is that the prohibitions are left over from shit like farm subsidies and other back-scratching and mattress-stuffing bullshit. If the weed lobby was smart enough to spread some money around (but of course the politicos couldn't hardly be caught taken cash from them) they might make some headway. Hard to find some folks to lobby for making hoss legal, though.

[theinevitable]

yesterday there was a big argument in my family about whether it is "snobby" to not like Harry Potter. Weird weird weird.

[pmcd9]

This is where we've come to as a nation.  If you don't like something that is popular it's not because you have good taste it's because you are a snob.

Harry Potter is a tough one though.  The first book was very good.  I enjoyed it immensely.  But it went downhill fast.  Every subsequent  book was worse than the one that came before it.  I made it through the 6th one before I threw in the towel.  I've got the 7th book sitting right next to me on the desk that a friend loaned me a couple of months ago, but I haven't managed to crack it open yet.

I like the movies though.  The last one is the only one I haven't seen yet and will be the only one I didn't see in the theater.  It's a catch 22 because I don't want to watch it before I read the book and I really don't want to read the book.  Ha ha...

[Nabubrush]

Never read them. Watched a bit of two of the movies (perhaps five minutes each).

I wonder if people would consider me a snob for not liking Dean Koontz? Because he writes like a teenager.

[pmcd9]

Oh boy, is this ever a juicy one.

BUCHANAN TO OBAMA
Finally............It is Said Publicly.    I have never seen the white side explained better! Pat Buchanan had the guts to say it, and it's about time.

By  Patrick J.  Buchanan

Barack says we need to have a  conversation about race in America .. Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation.. White America needs to be heard from,  not just lectured to.... This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its  convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are  these:

First,     America has  been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that  600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a  community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and  reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever  known.. Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an  American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans.  Untold trillions have been spent since the ' 60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans,  legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.  Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants.  Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated their time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.
We hear the  grievances. Where is the gratitude??

Barack talks about new 'ladders of opportunity' for blacks. Let him go to Altoona   and Johnstown , and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for 'deserving' white kids. Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of whiteAmerica?  Is it really white America's  fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware  that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first  three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al  about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena.  And all turned out to be hoaxes. But, about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.
 
Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago. This needs to be passed around  because, this is a message everyone needs to hear!!! 
 
OK...........

will you pass it on ?

YES. I did but will you?

Because I'm for a better America 

I am
Not racist,
Not violent,
Just not silent anymore

[theinevitable]

I mean, yeah. I just said, you know, I think those books are fine, but they are not the best books ever written, or even the best children's or fantasy books ever written. This made my family very upset.

Then my mom was trying to explain how those books are so brilliant and clever and it was making me embarrassed because I am a jerk.