sorry, wrong thread. I had too many pages up.

We pay far more to keep people off drugs than it would cost to save every person who has over dosed. We might even get less over doses because people would know the strength of what they are taking. I don’t know if I am liberal or what but I don’t think the government should regulate anything that does not affect other people. I live in Jersey and all the mercury that the more western states expel in their coal plants lands on us and gets into our fish.

As well, the citizens of Iraq who are not actively engaged in trying to kill our soldiers almost surely have developed tremendous respect for our soldiers.

Fu** the leftists who claim that we have diminished our image abroad. What the fu** do they know about it? And CW – Germany and France are the best evidence that Europe goes that way, too.

On April 28th, 2008 at 2:48 pm, caligulajones said:
Colombia has been a far better ally than Mexico has. But because of the selfish-bastard effete egotism of some a*****e Americans who enjoy snorting Colombia’s chief export up their noses, Colombia’s civil war has been prolonged from the 1960’s until today. Their civil society has been shredded by terrorism and corruption. They have bled and burned and died because criminal losers in America and abroad wanted to feel happy and sexiful for a few minutes, and didn’t care if they broke the law to do so.
Maybe it is our unconstitutional drug prohibition laws that finance their terrorists. The nanny state that thinks they know what Americans should eat smoke or snort. Talk about elitism at its worst. Conservatives should be for legalization if they believe in personal freedom.

Except that you guys want us to pay for the healthcare costs of those who crash or OD when they choose to eat, snort, or smoke various intoxicating substances that are currently illegal. Why don’t we have the freedom not to pay for someone else’s stupidity?

Understand, I’m not opposed to loosening up the nation’s drug laws. (I have a bit of a libertarian bent, I do.) I just find it funny that some liberals want to legalize various substances, but are against deregulation in other areas of life, or want to stick us with a healthcare system where sensible people are legally mandated to pay for the mistakes of others. That seems a bit hypocritical to me.

Colombia has been a far better ally than Mexico has. But because of the selfish-bastard effete egotism of some a*****e Americans who enjoy snorting Colombia’s chief export up their noses, Colombia’s civil war has been prolonged from the 1960’s until today. Their civil society has been shredded by terrorism and corruption. They have bled and burned and died because criminal losers in America and abroad wanted to feel happy and sexiful for a few minutes, and didn’t care if they broke the law to do so.

Maybe it is our unconstitutional drug prohibition laws that finance their terrorists. The nanny state that thinks they know what Americans should eat smoke or snort. Talk about elitism at its worst. Conservatives should be for legalization if they believe in personal freedom.

On April 26th, 2008 at 7:20 pm, BrianNY said:

lgm, I seriously question your sourcing of “The Center for Media and Democracy.” For starters, they claim an organization, like the CSIS, that boasts twelve prominent democrats and democrat Presidential appointees to be a “right wing think tank.”

To lgm and CMD, those 12 prominent democrats are right wing.

For many years, CSIS was also seen as a think tank where right-wing “officials-in-waiting” could wait until their next appointment in government.

An interestingly biased summation of the CSIS, especially when the current list of board members includes the following democrats and democrat appointees:

1. Sam Nunn, (D) a Democrat Senator from 1972 to 1997.
2. Harold Brown, (D) former Secretary of Defense under President Jimmy Carter.
3. Felix Rohatyn, (D) long term adviser to the US Democrat Party, and US Ambassador to France under President Bill Clinton.
4. Reginald K. Brack, (D) trustee for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund – formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.
5. Zbigniew Brzezinski, (D) former policy advisor to US Presidents John F. Kennedy, (D) Lyndon B. Johnson, (D) and Jimmy Carter (D).
6. John J. Hamre, former Under Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton (D) and former Deputy Secretary of Defense under the same President Bill Clinton (D). Also, a former Deputy Assistant Director for National Security for International Affairs in the Congressional Budget Officed from 1978 to 1984 (six years of House and Senate control by Democrats.)
7. Leonard H. Marks, (D) appointed director of the United States Information Agency by President Lyndon B. Johnson, (D) helped President Johnson and his wife acquire the television stations that built their fortune.
8. William Cohen, former Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton (D).
9. Benjamin W. Heineman, Jr., former Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation with the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Carter, (D) and a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (a very liberal department.)
10. James R. Schlesinger, former Secretary of Energy under President Jimmy Carter, (D)and Special Assistant to President Jimmy Carter (D).
11. James Woolsey, Jr., former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Bill Clinton, (D) appointed to the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the U.S under President Bill Clinton, (D) appointed to the National Commission on Terrorism under President Bill Clinton, (D).
12. Robert S. Strauss, former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1973 to 1976, Chairman of President Jimmy Carter’s (D) election campaign in 1976, former Special Trade Representative in the Cabinet of President Jimmy Carter, (D) Personal Representative to the Middle East peace negotiations for President Jimmy Carter, (D) previously held the Lloyd Bentsen Chair at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas (a very liberal organization.)

Then I did a little research on your source (The Center for Media and Democracy) a liberal activist organization out of Madison, WI, and found their listing of staff biographies:

1. John Stauber: a democracy advocate whose leadership on controversial public issues began in high school when he organized to end the U.S. war in Vietnam and for the first Earth Day. He is a non-paid adviser to Iraq Veterans Against the War. He has co-authored ‘Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq’ (2003) ‘Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing Is Turning America Into a One-Party State’ (2004) and ‘The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq (2006).
2. Sheldon Rampton: activist and co-author of ‘Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq’ (2003) and ‘Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing Is Turning America Into a One-Party State’ (2004).
3. Judith Siers-Poisson: Judith holds a Masters degree in Russian Imperial History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2001, she received the Sally Sunde Award for social justice work from Community Shares of Wisconsin. She lives in Madison with her husband and daughter, and is proudly French by marriage, especially when they refuse to go along with American-led wars.
4. Diane Farsetta: a founding member of Madison Women for Peace: a Code Pink Affiliate, she has a background in journalism and activism, Diane has been interviewed on or quoted by NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS’s NOW, Pacifica’s Democracy Now!, the Washington Post and Diane has reported for WORT 89.9 FM, Madison’s community radio station and a Pacifica Network affiliate. Her free-lance radio features and articles have run nationally on Free Speech Radio News, in Off Our Backs and Z Magazine, and via the Progressive Media Project.
5. Patricia Barden: before starting with the Center in June 2005, she worked as the web developer for the Wisconsin office of Defenders of Wildlife. Patricia is both an environmental and gay/lesbian rights activist. Her interests include bicycling, playing guitar, bird watching, and taking walks with her Jack Russell terrier, Dixie Doodle.
6. Anne Landman: Anne discovered that tobacco companies were paying generous placement fees to retailers in exchange for strategic placement of self-service cigarette displays out of the line of sight of clerks and near the doors of the establishment. She lives in western Colorado with her husband Steve, in an energy-efficient solar home made of over 4,000 used automobile tires and 900 pounds of aluminum cans.
7. Bob Burton: co-authored ‘Secrets and Lies: the anatomy of an anti-environmental PR campaign’. In 1992 he was entered on the ‘United Nations Environment Program Global 500 Roll of Honour’ for an outstanding contribution to the protection of the environment.

lgm, I seriously question your sourcing of “The Center for Media and Democracy.” For starters, they claim an organization, like the CSIS, that boasts twelve prominent democrats and democrat Presidential appointees to be a “right wing think tank.”

Secondly, this liberal activist organization describes the US attempts to push back 1980s Soviet aggression in Central America, and Sandinista/Ortega complicity, as a “War against Nicaragua.” I daresay that the Contras might have a problem with that false description as well.

Lastly, I ONCE AGAIN am disappointed in your inability to correctly associate proper moral equivalence. Your “as for Colombia” comment, and linked article documenting the horrendous murder of a labor official, hardly equals the thousands of Colombian lives that leftist terror groups, such as the FARC and ELF, have destroyed over the past 40 years. In fact, this leftist/rightest equation is as farcical as saying that the devastation inflicted upon society by John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo is equal to that wrought by the Bloods and the Crips over the past 30 years. All are examples of terror, but the scope of each group’s terror is certainly not equal.

lgm, do you acknowledge that leftist terror in Colombia has a history of being far more coordinated and devastating than rightist terror over the past 40 years?