Ohh its going to happen and its going to get bloody. It just a matter of what spark will set it off.

and time ofcorse. hell, who knows. this might just be the 12/21/12 Armageddon scene.

We speculate a lot about it here. There is even a growing community project to bring business, industry argiculture, etc back local and make the area more sustainable everything from fuel sources to planting a garden in your back yard. Even in a small town like ours everything is imported from somewhere else. Course I have the problem I got plenty land to work with and can grow a garden but I need power just to pump water out of the ground. Solar is NOT cheap nor is the diesel that runs the tractor. (example: Solar for the house approx 30,000 dollars min, solar water heater 3,000 dollars (best return on your investment) solar well 7-10,000 dollars) I would love a green car but I need something that can haul 18,000lbs of stock trailer up a muddy road. They dont make green vehicles that do that

Anyway before I ramble on too much the masses of sheeple will walk around in their ignorant haze, pay what they have to for what they must, skimp on that or go on welfare for this... this was proven with last years gas prices and housing crash. When food is simply no longer available and there is no energy to heat their homes or its too unaffordable THAT is when you will see riots. Part of the cause of this is the green movement. I am all for it but how much is too much? Some dont seem to be happy till we are down to wearing fig leaves, eating sticks and living in caves.

Did you just say the green movement is responsible for rising oil prices? Have you heard of OPEC, silly billy?

Ofcourse and they are enjoying the hell out of it. The less we are allowed to drill here the more higher priced stuff they get to ship in.

*squinty face* Clean coal technology.

All depends on your definition of clean. I was on a tour at a power company once and they talked about how clean the coal was and how they filtered it before it went out the stacks. I got some dirty looks "Uhh yeah what do you do with all the crap in the filters"

Im all for green. When you find a technology that works and that you can afford. Example. I have my own business. I have to carry my tools around with me everywhere. I have to be able to get down very bad roads (4x4 required) Now do I spend 30-40K on a Prius that can barely hold me much less all my equipment or buy a modestly used SUV that gets decent mpg (18-20) that does everything I want for 5 grand? I would love to tell the power company "I am done with you get your poles off my property... I do not have the 50 grand needed for solar and wind. Unless your willing to live in a cave or have really good credit green technology is a toy of the rich.

So the Prius is driving up the cost of oil?

The point is living green is expensive. Forcing other people to live green when it is outside of their means wont work and taxing or punishing people because they cant live green is just making problems (the economy) worse. Im all for it. Im all for practical solutions. Using a food supply (corn) for fuel is not practical... ask any farmer other than the ones growing corn that. I want my electric car and solar house but its not practical. We need to use the technology we have that IS practical while we work to make the new stuff affordable for everyone.

Give you an example. You want to go green and use solar? Grab your power bill I will show you how to figure it out directly from a solar installer: Kilowatt hours from your electric bill, divided by 30; Gives how many KWHs in a day. Divide by 5, (average sunshine) to find the size array you need in Kilowatts. Multiply that by $8 per watt. That's the sticker shock without any conservation steps.

You've got an argumentative tone, but I guess all I can say is we vociferously agree? You direct anger toward me over positions I have not expressed. Yes, I think living with a small or zero carbon footprint is for those of means, and is not a fully practical lifestyle. I certainly can't do it and I've got a few distinct advantages! My city is the beneficiary of a mix of solar, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric power that comes ridiculously cheap. We'd almost be a model green city if we weren't one of the largest urban sprawls in the world full of SUVs that like to idle in gridlock with little to no public transportation options available.

I do value the green movement, however, because scares like the recent gas price increase have brought green research a windfall, and breakthroughs in technologies like solar power and super capacitors are happening almost monthly. In five years time I would not be surprised to see automobiles powered microscopic solar cells who's energy is stored in super capacitors which have surpassed the efficiency of even the lauded lithium ion batteries. As is the way of such technologies increased familiarity to engineers and mass production will lead to exponential increases in cost to performance ratio. I would expect in twenty years time to see a somewhat decentralized energy grid in the United States, even the average private citizen easily capable of brewing up their own bootleg electricity, and being able to store that energy in vast amounts in tiny super capacitors, rendering fossil fuels obsolete for almost any application other than the one they're *really* good for, which is exotic organic chemistry. Really, burning things like oil and coal to boil water is, to my sensibilities, a sin against such amazing chemicals.

In the mean time, as I hinted before, I'm a big fan of nuclear, and one of the remarkably few things I'm glad of that came from the Bush Administration are new nuclear reactors being built in the US. Certainly that was anathema to the 70's green movement, but the advantages of nuclear power are simply undeniable, and dont get me started on the sublime possibility of exporting geothermal energy to other nations to help wean them off more polluting forms of energy. There's been a somewhat underground (hehe) revolution in geothermal energy production, the largest practical limit to harnessing it is literally our ability to dig deeper holes! I think we'll crack that enigma without much fanfare in the very near future.

These alternative modalities of energy generation are all the brainchildren of green minded scientists, and their fruits are within our grasp. In the time it would take to set up new oil drilling in America, or goodness sake, begin extracting petroleum from sand in Canada's marshes (an idea I find fucking crazy, though it's often floated) better options than oil will be available. Were the subsidies we give to oil companies--who don't need subsidizing because never in the history of the world have men ever reaped such profits as American oil companies today--diverted to help fund such super capacitor research and development the time table I imagine could be shortened startlingly.

Nope. Not arguing just stating a point. This is all text on a screen and goes away when I click the back button which I will do shortly after I submit this.

Then be my guest and cop the heck out. Some people mean things when they write or write when they mean things, and some people are just squakin' parrots who don't mean anything by anything.

I am not looking for a fight. Just a debate.

I was only fightin' your withdrawal from the debate. Let the record show, that's when the name calling started, when you walked away, I virtually slapped my manly chest like a posturing silverback gorilla and said "Yeah, you better walk away." I am so fucking tough over the internet.

There again its an internet debate. I gain or lose nothing by ending the discussion and in the end it changes nothing. I made the points I wanted to and you did to. It was a fair debate but I am only willing to devote so much time to it.

An internet debate can do anything an in person debate can do, change minds, force someone to rigerously examine their own positions and defend their weaknesses, but it is ever the refrain of the loser that "Hey guys, its just the internet!"

Oh lawdy, a war that will pit internet toughguy against internet toughguy, the horror of it! There will be blisters on fingers, and keyboards with the 1/! key worn to a nub!

don't forget the f5 key, as they will be hitting that every five seconds waiting for a reply.

See, I'd like to mess with the system by starting a cooperative at some point, if I can find people who understand how it accomplishes what it does.

A group of democratically-organized people doing a good job of masquerading to the average person and company as just another corporation, but worrying about themselves and their quality of life instead of some random investor's bottom line on the back end. :)

That "pretending to be a corporation" is written into the master blueprint for making co-ops, but it seems that many startups don't really get that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeli.....ues_and_events

land of the free, land of the brave

I dont think you can get much support for you plan now that Obama is in office.

I think he'd get a lot more. The right wing in America has classically been the more militant of the two factions, and the "patriot militias" movement is in resurgence because white neckbeards don't like having a black liberal president, and though no one has proposed gun control legislation in decades there's an endless amount of paranoia among the right wing militants about federal agents trying to take their guns. Surely you've heard about the shortages of ammunition in the US? There was a massive run on guns and ammo after the election. Meanwhile despite Bush being indisputably a war criminal who flagrantly violated the constitution, and did more to expand the powers of the American police state than any government in history, these right wing militias thought he was fine because he spoke with a fake cowboy drawl and made proper blood sacrifice to the dread god "freedom" by sending poor teenagers to die in Iraq for who knows what reason.

You know, I'm rather sick of the idea of people thinking that our military has one purpose and one purpose alone, and that is to sit on their ass and brag about how their branch is better then the other branch. I constantly hear people saying things like 'Bush is trying to kill off the lower class by making the poor go out and fight'... well, I dont know about you, but I dont remember there being a draft order. Do you remember the draft order? No? Well, maybe its because there nere was one. People got all bent out of shape beacuse we sent our fighting forces to go... dare I say it... Fight. Its been so long since we have had to fight a battle that now people are under the impression that the military is only good for job training and free money.

Also, not to argue for or against your point, but what is it that you think Bush did that would qualify him as a 'indisputable war criminal'. I often hear various reasons but I want to hear your own.

Also its no wonder people are making a mad dash for ammo. According to some news stories (that may or may not be true, no way to tell just yet, so take it with a grain of salt) since Clinton did not do so well with her gun control bill the last time, they figure the next best thing is to remove the bullets. They want to increase the tax on bullets so much that a 12 dollar box of bullets would end up costing close to, if not more than, 50 dollars after taxes. Thats pretty bad. And its already a known fact that gun control only works on people who actualy abide by the law. Interviews with gang members and captured gun smugglers prove that they LOVE gun control laws, because it means nothing to them, since they dont pay attention to the laws. Gang members get more inbolded when those laws kick in becaus they know they dont have anything to worry about when mugging, robbing, and just inflicting crime on the general population because they know they wont have guns to defend themselves. Oddly enough some liberals are against gun control laws simply based on the fact that they hated Bush so much during his presidency, they wanted to make sure they had their guns to rise up against him in revolution if they ever got the chance.

You rebuke me good sir. I have no rebuttal and am laid low. Your supposition that you think there might be a rumor that Hillary Clinton is going to steal all the bullets in America is ironclad and I cannot find an opening in your presentation of the facts as they are! Indeed, why have a military at all if you aren't going to have them fight. What is the navy up to at the moment? Goldbrickers just floating out there in the sun and surf. I say we attack Micronesia, they'll never see it coming, and the international community won't object, they're not even on most maps! And don't get me started on that nuclear stockpile the airforce keeps mollycoddling honestly, it's got to get off of mother's apron strings sometime! A sound way of conducting war, based on a solid ideology grounded factual data, thank you for clearing up what the Iraq war was about, there had been a profusion of explanations, as you may recall, but it's good to know that that is why we went in there then, now.

Quite astute of you to notice that there was no draft. I think I saw that piece of information on the cover of a magazine in a supermarket checkout line, though it might have been a dream. Thank goodness I have you to point it out, even though at first glance your bringing up the absence of a draft seems to support the assertions of the straw men--ahem--critics I mean, who you cite as saying that the war's purpose is to kill off the lower classes. After all an all volunteer army will inevitably be composed of those poorly off enough to see military service as an attractive option, whereas a draft would create an army drawn from all social classes, save those obscenely wealthy and influential enough to pull strings and get out of it. But upon second glance I'm sure your assertion will make sense as a point for you, and will respond as I have given it a second thought, unless I'm distracted by liberal infiltrators trying to steal guns, those rascals! Hiding behind the perfect facade of saying nothing against guns for decades, and even trying to appear pro-gun such as candidate John Kerry's duck hunting trip, and on stage shot-gun toting, to mollify even the illiterate paranoid who fears for the safety for his guns (Really he aught to get something to protect it with like... a gun or something). Goodness, the last person I can remember to get any significant gun legislation through was Regan press secretary Jim Brady. What ever was it that got into him to make him such a gun hater... oh that's right it was a lunatic's .22 haha silly Brady, probably faking that paraplegia, a real man can shrug off anything up to a .38.

Obviously my advice to ‘take it with a grain of salt’ meant that you don’t exactly take other’s advice. I have to wonder if you even understood what I wrote, so I’ll try putting it in more direct terms. A military is something that is not designed to be a free ride. That is not to say they must be flung out in all directions at all times. That’s also not to say that they are only designed for sitting around and not to do anything except during an invasion of home soil.

In older times, people viewed the military only as a self defense tool. Later, the ideology changed to use the military as a form of national standing, ergo, the nation with the most advanced army and biggest navy was the best around. Then it changed again, and it will keep changing. But right now it seems that the common idea of the military is as a jumping off point for careers. That’s all fine and good but when its time to go fight, you cannot just expect to get out with a free lunch. You go in, want money and training, you can, but when conflicts arise, you have to be ready to fight. To expect otherwise is childish and selfish. I got relatives who went off to fight not because they wanted to go defend our country, but because they signed up for the cash and training. But they did not cry and try to say ‘Hey, this is’int what I signed up for!’ because they knew that was the risk they took signing up. Just in case you assume I am making this up; 1 second cousin: army engineer, nearly lost his foot in Iraq, 1 cousin-in-law: Army general infantry, was shot once but recovered fast and is well now, 1 son of a god parent: Marine, currently back from Iraq waiting to be re-deployed after he heals from an accident he had after getting back from service.

My point is that they don’t like to be called freeloaders and two of them have told me they are so sickened by the news of what they do and how it is covered that they want to get back to Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else outside the states because they are sick of hearing it all. We have been raised to think that armies and navies and all them are not there for fighting but are there for show. Governments recall them or send them back but regardless they are always out there fighting. You can be as snide and as coarse about it all you want, that is not going to change that fact. People seem to think that there is no good that comes from fighting, and in part that is true, but you have only to look at some of the largest conflicts that our nation has faced to understand that you cannot always just sit under a damn rock and act like the worlds affairs don’t matter to us.

And judging from your response it seems like you would prefer a draft over our current recruitment system, so please, do mention that to everyone, I’m sure they will love the idea as much as you. And if the current system or the draft is not good enough, would you rather we just disband and disarm the armed forces? I mean, judging from your attitude, why have them anyway? Certainly no matter what, people will protest and argue and disagree with what we do with our armed forces. So if you seem to be such a fountain of knowledge, what do you propose we do with them? Of course, if you don’t really know, you can just keep attacking my view for the sake of argument rather then for the sake of intelligent argument.

Who are you even arguing? I'm sorry, I really aught to end this for your sake but wow you're a nutty one. So lets see, you're trying to convince me of what... that it's the soldiers fault and they deserve to die because it's what they signed up for, so any old way of dieing is fine, whether they be electrocuted by a KBR shower built by idiots with a no-bid contract, or whether they're exploded by ex military forces of a nation chosen at random to invade? You're really trying to say it doesn't matter what a soldier dies for, as long as he dies instead of hanging out and playing grabass? And this makes you not a part of the weird cult of the blood god "freedom" how?

During the 69 major deployments of US military forces since my life began I must have forgotten to be trained to think of soldiers as lazy and underused, as you say I should.

I do prefer a draft, in fact. It's a far more egalitarian way of raising an army. Americans haven't supported the war in Iraq for years, but it doesn't stop. Why not? Because there is a military class, a caste, an economic bracket of little means little education and no voice that gives us all our soldiers, that no one pays any attention to. The media happily helped paint Cindy Sheehan as a nut after all. If a broad strata of the American people know that their children will fight and die in a war, however, such miscarriages as the Iraq war don't happen. People would take action to stop it, vote politicians out of office for supporting it, if they had a personal stake in it, rather than passively allowing our leaders to do as they will with these volunteers. A reason becomes needed to go to war, rather than your pissy notion that those soldiers shouldn't be loafing around home all the time, which is the sort of jingoistic dickery that has us on the verge of invading Pakistan after our great and proud eight year war in Afghanistan. But in your opinion it's better that an underclass fight to defend the nation instead of everyone chipping in, that's fine, a lot of people agree so I'm sure it must make some kind of moral sense.

Then again, you mentioned abolishing the armed forces, and, with tongue in cheek, I'd suppose we've learned enough about asymmetrical warfare since Vietnam that maybe it isn't such an unfeasible idea. A tax cut of more than fifty percent would sure be popular, or a lesser tax cut even and we could still fund little niceties like health care education and space exploration if more than half of the federal budget wasn't gobbled up by the DoD every year. Just a pipe dream of course.

Please respond in a semi-coherent rant that appears to address a straw man constructed of your own bizarre hangups, rather than the arguments I made :)

I thought I made myself clear but I guess my trying to figure out your own argument through the thick crust of your sarcasm is the problem, so let me try to get this across.
For one, I'm not trying to say all soldiers should go off to die, I'm saying that if they should happen to do so during a conflict, that’s not something that should be a surprise. Considering how many police officers die in the line of duty every year its a wonder that people dont consider asking for them to give up and go home. That’s my point, you cannot afford to have an army that packs up and goes home as soon as they lose any number of troops. What would be a good enough reason to pull out? Now say that the entire or vast majority of the population of Iraq or Afghanistan raised up arms against us, that would be a more clear defining sign that things are not going well, its time to go, but luckily that is not quite the case. Ever since the conflict in Vietnam, every nation and organization in the world knows that if you can prolong a conflict with American troops, winning is the least of your concerns because they will just go away when its no longer fun. Imagine if that was the case when we were wrapped up in World War 2, after the massive casualties on D-day if all the American people suddenly demanded we stop fighting because it was too costly in lives and not worth it. My point is that a conflict without casualties is impossible in this day and age. Its not good that our soldiers die, but it cannot be helped, and the idea that they should leave imidiately as soon as it happens is just silly, thats not how an army works.
The problem with the draft is that while it is more 'fair' its also 'unfair' in that while people fighting right now agreed that they would be called on to do so in times of conflict, a draft would show them that 'So what if you never agreed to it, that dont mean shit!'. It would be even more unfair to the poor then the current situation because all the middle class would just make a mad dash for Mexico and Canada, and the upper class would just pay their way out of it, as you mentioned, so rather then the lower class who actually signed up to fight, you get ALL of them regardless of what they agreed to.
I never said that I think soldiers should always be out fighting wars and never stay at home, I said that its unrealistic for them or anyone else to think they would not have to go fight conflicts after signing up to go fight conflicts should they arise. It might be the fault of the recruiters themselves, pitching to people that signing up will get you an education, job training, and some decent pay, but you got to be a fucking moron to think that people in the army don’t have to fight when they are sent off to do so. If we lived in a perfect world there would be no conflicts and our soldiers would have no need to fight, but that’s not the case.
Abolishing the armed forces is not the answer either. We almost did that between World War 1 and 2, and we had to totally reform our equipment and strategy after our first conflicts. Thank god we had the experience of the British to fall back on otherwise we would have lost countless more soldiers finding out the hard way. My opinion on this would be that if soldiers were not tied up in any major offensives that they be rotated regularly for training, to make sure they are always in top form whatever their position, sent back home afterwards as others come on, and so forth. I mentioned this elsewhere but if I had a say in it I’d have the government spend their research money not on new, more expensive and complicated weapons but on cheaper and simpler versions of what we already have. Would’int you rather have jet fighters that cost a few hundred thousand dollars each instead of a few dozen million? How about smart bombs and missiles that cost just a few grand rather then a few hundred grand? We need technology to make our state of the art weapons easier to make and cheaper to make, that way it would not cost so much to have our soldiers active or in training. Hell, the Javelin missile launchers cost over 100k for each, which is a lot more expensive then what it costs to make a RPG launcher, which is what the rest of the world uses.
If you have any more responses, just sent them to me in notes. I think we have drawn this out on Karno’s submission as it is and I’d rather not take away from it. Regardless if I do or do not agree with his opinions, I enjoy the method of which he presents them.

Hear hear. Though I think he's a loony I can agree to celebrate sequential art. Though matronly goats getting boned may be more enjoyable than ill informed screeds about a premise I basically agree with.

You demonstrate your vast depth and breadth of knowledge of the US police state. But ... hold on a minute, was it the FBI at the Waco seige? And were the Branch Davidians just normal folks ... or were they a cult dedicated mainly to pedophilia and unlicensed weapon modification, and the ATF, there instead of the FBI? And did the ATF slaughter them, or did the ATF wait patiently for 51 days after the cult had shot and killed 4 of it's officers trying to serve a search warrant before the cult doused their compound with accelerants and immolated themselves after "mercyfully" shooting their children?

That's the issue I have with most conspiracy theories - they require too many people be too smart. People aren't. If anything, the most that happens is gross incompetence and malfeasance gets shoveled under the rug. Granted, there is a lot of it, and some of it is indeed gross and offensive (say, starting a war to funnel money in no-bid contracts to your buddies...) but it doesn't usually have a larger purpose.

The ATF started the assault on the Branch Davidians as a way to get good publicity (a budget review was coming up). After they had well and truly screwed the pooch, the FBI came in to fix everything. Which they did. How many witnesses survived the fire?

Nine. The FBI were there as advisers, and the national guard loaned tanks to penetrate the compound walls to flood it with tear gas and get the murderers out. It was the ATF's show, and ATF men who were killed by the fanatic cultists.

Wrong on almost every count, but I really can't be bothered to fact-check for someone who clearly doesn't want to listen. And those small children burned alive, that's fine with you, because they were "fanatic cultist murderers"? Although, to be fair, the smallest ones may already have been dead from the gas. The Israelis stopped using that stuff because it was so lethal in enclosed spaces. Back where I come from, killing children is something the police are supposed to fight against, not do.

You don't have the inclination to read about the incident from factual primary sources, you mean. Nine survived the fire. Others simply left the compound and amazingly weren't gunned down by teh evil gubbumint.

In our country we search premises where undercover police officers have confirmed that physical and sexual abuse of children take place. Maybe Iceland doesn't have the population necessary to generate such cults, it takes a special breed to brainwash others so far out of the main stream of society after all. It's a real shame that David Koresh a.k.a god almighty decided that his followers should die in fire rather than give up their unlawfully modified weapons and let him be indited for all that raping and beating of children.

Maybe you're smarter than you seem, and you're just confused by the parallel underworld of bullshit that America's rich tradition of conspiracy theorists have constructed. Maybe you're trapped kind of like those cultists. Probably not stupid by conventional definition, but too saturated with false input and reinforcement of bad memes to find your way out the front door.

Six of the children at least were executed, three with gunshots, one with a knife in the chest. Still more were poisoned with cyanide, but cyanide is what you get when you set fire to tear gas. Too bad they weren't chemistry fanatics, then again cyanide is probably better than burning to death. Of course the gas was thickest in the exterior of the building and the fire started on the interior of the building. Only nine people left the compound during the fire. Most of the rest remained in the interior bunker with the cult leader.

During the 51 day siege negotiators were only able to secure the release of 21 children from the compound. The rest died because they loved Texas cowboy pedophile Jesus more than them, and were sure burning themselves to death was the holier thing to do than let federal authorities see what sort of things went on inside the compound.

Just one little question: Since when does the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms handle child-abuse cases? What you quote as the justification for the deaths of all those people was desperately cobbled together as an excuse AFTER the ATF's little publicity stunt went horribly wrong. If they'd wanted to stop Koresh's suspected abuse of children, the local law could easily have arrested him while he was away from the compound. Which he was often. But that wouldn't have given the ATF a table of siezed guns to show the TV cameras, now would it?

The ATF comes for the illegally modified weapons, they stay for the drunken child brides. Do you know anything about what was happening in that compound? ATF just happened to have an undercover man there, and some of the violations taking place were well within their jurisdiction. It could have been federal marshals, FBI, Texas rangers, hell, it could have been highway patrol, but religious cults in the southwest have a terrible habit of unlawfully using explosives and preforming unlicensed modifications and exchanges of weapons, so the ATF had their eye on them. And indeed, many different law enforcement agencies were on the scene as the seige dragged on.

And I never said that Waco was not a textbook case of how not to handle a religious cult with strong dogma about a coming apocalypse. The ATF's tactics, informed by the FBI who were still quite embarrassed about the Jonestown mass suicide, were exactly wrong. Backing off, taking away the immediate and obvious threat of tanks and armed swat teams and arresting Koresh and his followers outside of the compound would have been much wiser. The law were not saints, but it was not, as you accuse, a publicity stunt where the government slaughtered a bunch of innocent churchgoers because they thought it would look good at a funding review. The ATF are guilty of all of those deaths to the extent that they were pursuing a strategy that only played into Koresh's hold over his followers, until ultimately the unstable individual with a god complex decided they all needed to escape by burning to death. Ineptitude, rather than conspiracy is what I charge.

One might ask Warren Jeffs if he thinks federal law enforcement has gotten any better at prosecuting criminal activities organized by religious cults since the Branch Davidians enacted their own apocalypse.

Sorry, Karass, I really don't buy into the "evil cultist" nonsense. I never have.

One of the fun things about the meedia/guvornmint/whoever is in power is how it demonizes the people we're supposed to be "opposed" to as dirty, sinful monsters (Without good, Christian souls), and the same thing's been going on for ages (Witches, Communists, Terrorists, Hackers, etc.) over and over again. Whenever someone gets wiped out that shouldn't be, they'll toss in one of those buzzwords (Like your "evil cultist") to make it seem like they were the righteous ones. Waco was an unjustified slaughter. Granted, everyone's going to have their viewpoints on it, and I won't say they're wrong or incorrect, but I can tell when a viewpoint has been influenced by outside sources like the media. People start repeating that newspeak shit Faux News and other stations like to throw around, not to mention some newspapers.

You've replied to almost every page. Why is it so important for you to try and point out mistakes and argue your perspective? We all have them, fine, but it seems like you just like to be obstinate.

I won't say "you weren't there" because neither was I, and neither was Karno, thank happenstance, but this is something I've studied for a long time, and this is most definitely not one of those "heroic gooberment rescuing children from domestic terrorists" things, because those stories are always fucking bullshit.

I reply to these because of the contents of the other comments. I hate seeing the pig ignorant agree profusely with one another, it moves me to attempt to become a token voice of reason. If you don't believe in the illegal actions of the cult, or the unhinged and abusive nature of it's leader this is hardly a difficult topic to find primary source material on, both from law enforcement and survivors of the cult. As I said above, I think the government was bumbling, and tactically acting quite wrongly, but that's what they call Monday morning quarterbacking, the last major confrontation between a christian cult of personality lead to what is called the mass suicide of 918 people, though it is known that many children and other cult members were forced to kill themselves by the others.

By all means, read the governments official statements, and read accounts by the Waco siege survivors. I couldn't do it and not come to the conclusion that the incident was a case of ill-prepared law enforcement versus a self destructive doomsday cult who's leader viciously manipulated and abused his followers even to their death.

I insist on emphasizing primary sources because this is a much studied case, and there are a lot of prepackaged conclusions to pick up so that you don't have to do any reading, thinking, or understanding for yourself. The myth of the evil oppressive government shooting up a church for jollies being popular among these.

For my part, I still remember watching an ATF man shot to death on live TV without firing a shot, brandishing a weapon, or even seeing his assailant. It was the first real death I'd ever seen and one of the only I still have. The event left an impact on me, about how unglamorous it looked to be shot dead, as opposed to how it usually looked on TV. I don't have a pathological love of police, and certainly believe in resisting law enforcement officers with every one of my rights, but when they have a warrant issued by a judge, you don't have the right to turn them away, to shoot them down. At that point you have the right to remain silent, etc, and take your next steps in front of a judge, a much more reasonable person than a paramilitary enforcer of laws.

My own opinion is the worst thing the government is guilty of in the Waco tragedy is going, "Hey, here's a nest of stark-raving crazies who are not bothering anybody outside their compound except by being weird and crazy and weird... let's go poke them with a really big stick!"

Come on man, they were raping children, is that really not hurting anyone? And What is a collection of unlawfully modified weapons going to be doing if not at some later point ending up involved in murders. They weren't acting capaciously.

How much is credible evidence that child-rape was occurring, and how much was demonization after the fact to justify the raid that led to such tragic results? As for the weapons I'm a gun-geek so I'm unsympathetic to the laws making those modifications illegal in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, David Koresh was an asshole, and he abused his influence and power over his gullible followers.. but what about the decision process leading to Waco and Ruby Ridge was smart? "Hey, there are these guys out here who are forting up and hoarding weapons out of paranoia that they'll be raided by federal agents.. let's go send federal agents in to raid them."

How much is credible evidence that child-rape was occurring, and how much was demonization |[i]sic| after the fact to justify the raid that led to such tragic results?[/i]

You know what Leslie, I don't know. I could fucking spoon feed you the time line and facts, or you could go on having an outrageous and radical opinion of the incident without ever having investigated any of the salient facts, in your heart of hearts, which do you really prefer, because I think I know which , and that's why I'm not going to link you to the publicly available accounts from law enforcement and cult survivors.

I don't think the federal officials deliberately and willfully firebombed a bunch of weirdos and then destroyed the evidence in the name of fascism and gun-control, wow.. what a radical opinion.

Thanks for comin' around.

Is it bad that I have a liberal mindset geared toward change for the better, yet I get pretty darn nervous when I hear anyone talking about overthrowing the entire system as it now stands? Maybe free speech isn't so prevalent in the media as it seems. They say anything they want against an individual, but you have to dig out the most radical of liberals just to hear a squeak about true reform.

America doesn't have a true organized left wing. Obama's health care reform, or his cap and trade environmental bill are perfect examples. Both proposals in congress were inadequate to the scope of the problems they were addressed toward, public health care, and slowing global warming respectively, but were chipped away at by so called moderate democrats, who are, in my opinion, quite right of center, until the bills have become little more than symbolic gestures that don't truly do anything except admit that the US government recognizes there truly is a problem with the climate and with our health care system. There aren't enough true progressives, reformists, dare I say liberals in American politics to advocate for real change.

I personally am dubious of any attempts at combating 'global warming' as from what I've been able to ascertain the perceived threat assumes too much inherent instability in climate systems, and if those systems were so unstable why haven't we been having extinction-level climate events every century or so?

But, assuming that it is, cap and trade is a bogus way to do it. One proposal that had some merit was a flat 'carbon-tax' levied on fuel with a corresponding draw-down of payroll taxes. The tax on fuel would encourage business to become more efficient and/or invest in non carbon-based energy production and the impact on the economy from fuel expenses would be offset by making it cheaper to hire and employ more people. This proposal barely got out of committee before it was shot down.

Cap and Trade is inherently unreliable. Supposedly it works by allowing those who cannot easily make significant reductions in carbon emissions to pay those who can to do so on their behalf. The problem is, who verifies those carbon 'credits'? There's next to zero transparency in the system and often the credits can be had from carbon-reductions due to actions companies were going to take anyway so the net effect of cap-and-trade encouraging new carbon-emission reduction is zero. With the stroke of a pen Carbon Credits can practically be created on-demand which is what Politicians like about it so much, more gifts and favors they can hand-out to their campaign contributors.

I'm totally with you that cap and trade wasn't an effective plan even in it's original and most potent proposed form. As for your dubiousness about the existence of global warming, that's fine I guess, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but me and a world of scientists might say you're not entitled to your own facts.

Cue the ranting about how the IPCC is a part of the Illuminati's new world order for the benefit of international Jewish bankers, and the pull back from fossil fuels is just the learned elders of Zion's attempt to punish the Ford motor company because Henry Ford and Hitler were such close friends.

Hmm, nope. Sorry to not jump into a frothing anti-semitic frenzy because you disagree with me.

Oh, Fun Fact! On the Census you are only Legally Obligated to tell the nice person from the government how many people live in your house. That's the Constitutional Purpose of the Census, to determine population so they can calculate representation. You don't have to tell them Anything about your race, religion, political affiliation or income-bracket, 'demographic' info they later use to tailor-make new legislation to put fetters and blinders on you later.

I so glad now that Obama's in office and I can pretend to feel good about myself and act like I'm part of a genuine multicultural society while he guilt-trips us to death with passive aggression and media stunts like having a beer with angry black professors and confused and angry white policemen.