Its all about their gun fetish.

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Friday June 23, 2006 · 5:54 PM PDT

2006/06/23 · 17:54

This enrages me. The UN is attempting to move the considerable mountainof illegal guns and the illegal gun trade. From a progressive point of view, an extremely noble task. There are simply too many cases of uprisings, sustained militia warfare and simple everyday murder. I'd have thought it was a no-brainer. The less illegal guns around, should equate to less deaths.

However, that ideal hasn't accounted for the NRA. The National Rifle Association, has taken umbrage at the idea sending 100,000 letters to the man responsible claiming the UN is doing nothing other than attemping to take away their member's guns. Read More

Is this Sierra Leone or the US?

VisionThing

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Thursday March 23, 2006 · 8:02 PM PST

2006/03/23 · 20:02

The present political landscape in the US is more reminiscent of a corrupt african state.

The president has been caught red-handed illegally wiretapping citizens the solution offered is to simply change the law.
The vice-president has actually shot a man and had the victim apologise.
The Secretary of Defense has authorised the use of torture on suspects and prisoners.
Negroponte, strongly associated with 'Death Squads' in Salvador, has been appointed as the first US Ambassador to Iraq
Imprisonment without charge or trial is becoming accepted, and not only in gulags like Abu Ghraib & Guantanamo Bay but on the mainland. (Jose Padilla, anyone?)
Pat Robertson, a prominent religious leader and senator, publicly calls for the killing of a legitimate head of state.
Tom Delay indicted on conspiracy charges of funneling money to candidates.

Such things are (sadly) more at home in a corrupt, civil war-ridden African nation, not a powerful western nation. What has the US become?

The next presidency is a poisoned chalice

VisionThing

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Wednesday March 22, 2006 · 5:29 PM PST

2006/03/22 · 17:29

Bush has managed to set up a scene in which the next presidency is simply a poisoned chalice that only the truly brave or foolhardy would want.

Obviously, they inherit a war. Bush only recently admitted that a pullout date would be determined by a future president. Even the costs of the war which were estimated to be as low as 1.7 billion are now a quarter of a trillion dollars!

Spending has been conducted in a reckless manner, the national debt has risen to a near unserviceable 8.3 trillion and rising.

The 'Patriot' act has been renewed, as laws banning assault weapons been allowed to lapse.

Tax cuts have been given to the wealthy, under the pretense of stimulating growth.

Job growth has consistently failed to meet expectations, and real incomes have gone down.

What about the political scenario the next president walks into?

VisionThing

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Monday March 20, 2006 · 7:24 PM PST

2006/03/20 · 19:24

The first thing I should say is I have been brought up in Australia. Australia is second nation (after New Zealand) to implement universal suffrage in 1894. However, in addition Australia has compulsory suffrage. Basically, every citizen of the state must vote. Failure to vote attracts a fine. On average, there is a 95% voter turnout for an election.

I'd like to move away from how the electoral college system works, Diebold voting machines, supreme court rulings and suggestion of voter intimidation on the effects they have on having a functioning democratic system, but simply how apathy in the voting bloc could be considered a form of disenfranchisement.

VisionThing

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Saturday March 18, 2006 · 6:06 PM PST

2006/03/18 · 18:06

Depending on which right-wing lunatic you speak to, the US is under numerous existential threats. Well, I'd like to offer you a centrist's existential threat!
The end of the Cold War left the paranoid nothing to be truly paranoid about. Fortunately, bin Laden popped up and gave them an even better thing to be scared of. In the subsequent years, its become a whos who of ethereal, scary threats to the US way of life. They are all people or states. What about currencies?
What about the evil, Godless Euro?
Read More

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Its all about their gun fetish.

Is this Sierra Leone or the US?

The next presidency is a poisoned chalice

Does institutional voter apathy constitute a form of disenfranchisement?

The real existentialist threat: the Euro?