WoW! I got banned from FTL

[dalebert]

I wish you would have acknowleged my questions or at least attempted to answer them but instead you just wanted to say the same stuff you have been posting since day one in this forum.

I've lost count of how many of my questions have been ignored by Luke. He can't answer them sensibly. Luke, you need to watch that video of the hearing at the state house about reducing penalties for marijuana possession in NH. It's about 45 mins long. Does someone have the link? They address lots of fallacies about marijuana, particularly in how it compares to other drugs like alcohol and tobacco.

[Landon Jeffery]

I wish you would have acknowleged my questions or at least attempted to answer them but instead you just wanted to say the same stuff you have been posting since day one in this forum.

I've lost count of how many of my questions have been ignored by Luke. He can't answer them sensibly. Luke, you need to watch that video of the hearing at the state house about reducing penalties for marijuana possession in NH. It's about 45 mins long. Does someone have the link? They address lots of fallacies about marijuana, particularly in how it compares to other drugs like alcohol and tobacco.

I doubt even if you had the link he would acknowledge the harmlessness of pot.  He seems to set in his ways.

[Caleb]

So again, there is no "right to get high", and looking at the simulation that Caleb provided for us, it's pretty apparent why the Founding Fathers didn't create one, and why contemporary legislators are in no rush to create one, either.

Who are these "Founding Fathers" that you speak of? Would George Washington count as a founding father?  Do you know that he grew marijuana, and begged his fellow Virginians to plant it instead of tobacco.

The more you know... 

[Caleb]

Now let's go back to Caleb's simulation of marijuana smokers that he has so graciously provided for us:

"Whoa, dude, these bricks they're like hard but they're also soft. They're like sand, if you rub them sand comes off, but like, they're also, like, hard, like steel, only not like steel. But hard like steel. Kind of like a penis, if you think about it. hard. but soft. It's like they're sandy, but at the same time inpenetrable. But if they're made of sand, that makes them, like, glass, or chemically, or maybe, spiritually, the same as glass. But not glass, cause you can't see through it. But I wonder, I bet you can see through it. Like, maybe you just have to be at the right vibration or pulse or...I don't know the word, but I think like, if we were in a different phase, or dimension, we could see through the bricks. Whoa. That's like, really deep. I'm tired."  Lays down, and looks up at the sky. "Dude ... do you think those clouds are like ... alive? I mean, we don't know what they're thinking ..."

Again, it's obvious that these people are in a very delusional state, as they are speaking complete and utter nonsense. If they are convinced that that brick has a "secret spiritual dimension" in which it is a see-through brick, what's to prevent them from thinking that they heard that brick talking to them and telling them to break into somebody's house?  If they are convinced that those clouds have the ability to think, what's to stop them from becoming convinced that those clouds also have the ability to talk, and are telling them to go out and steal somebody's car?

So again, there is no "right to get high", and looking at the simulation that Caleb provided for us, it's pretty apparent why the Founding Fathers didn't create one, and why contemporary legislators are in no rush to create one, either.

Its satire man - an exaggeration that apparently fits your very naive misconceptions of a pot smoker.
Pot is not a hallucinogenic - bricks and other inanimate objects aren't perceived to be talking when you smoke it!
No one who wasn't already dellusional while sober, is EVER going to be convinced by a brick that they should do anything.
I have to wonder, with your bizarre ideas of what a pot smoker is and does, if you're not high...
I think everyone here who has had experience with both would agree, that alcohol is far more of an interference to your mental and physical capacities than pot. And yet thats perfectly legal isn't it?

Exactly! It was satire of your ridiculous idea to send potsmokers to build a fence.

And this is not news to you. Despite me already correcting you on the actual effects of mj usage, you continue to quote me all over the place as rationale for your drug war, despite the fact that I am clearly not in agreement with your ideas, and have explicitly rejected your interpretation of my comments. This is not honest, Luke.

I will say it again:  Pot causes you to ponder possibilities. It doesn't cause you to see things that aren't there or any other sort of thing like that. If you have statistical data (rather than anecdotal data) to back up your assertion that pot causes people to become violent, then please show it. Otherwise, quit acting like an expert on a subject which you have, by your own admission, absolutely no experience with.

[Caleb]

Ok, I will read the book. But right off the bat I'd like to say that I find Oliver North's actions absolutely disgusting, and even quasi-treasonous. Oliver North sold US weapons to an enemy of the USA in order to fund an illegal war that has absolutely nothing to do with the USA. I don't know how in the world he got out of going to prison. Fact is, he should have gone to prison, and to this day he should still be in there for what he did.
I am very much for making examples of lawbreakers, as many conservatives are. But in addition to that usual conservative stance, I think that government officials who are caught breaking the law should have the biggest examples of all made of them.

Luke, Oliver North wasn't the criminal. Well, he was a criminal. But he was also the fallguy.  This wasn't some new idea that Ollie had, some "never before tried" scheme. The CIA runs drugs routinely as a way of funding their operations.  This has been known to the dissident community long before Oliver North. There are mainstream cultural references to CIA drug-running. For instance, the Lennon song John Sinclair, (performed live on December 10, 1971) accuses the CIA of drug running. "If he'd been a soldier man, Shooting gooks in Vietnam. If he was the CIA, Selling dope and making hay. He'd be free, they'd let him be. Breathing air, like you and me."

And remember this, Luke:  Even though Ollie was running drugs AND selling arms, he only got in trouble for selling arms, and that's because the CIA had been specifically forbidden by Congress to continue funding the contras. Why wasn't he in trouble for running drugs? Simple. A little thing called the Clandestine Service.  I refer you to a 1996 Congressional Report on the Clandestine Service (a CIA department):

The CS [clandestine service] is the only part of the IC [intelligence community], indeed of the government, where hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day (easily 100,000 times a year) DO [Directorate of Operations] officers engage in highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment to the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals and, more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself.

The short answer is that it isn't illegal for the CIA to run drugs. They are, by law, permitted to break the law.

[Luke S]

And remember this, Luke:  Even though Ollie was running drugs AND selling arms, he only got in trouble for selling arms, and that's because the CIA had been specifically forbidden by Congress to continue funding the contras. Why wasn't he in trouble for running drugs? Simple. A little thing called the Clandestine Service.  I refer you to a 1996 Congressional Report on the Clandestine Service (a CIA department):

The CS [clandestine service] is the only part of the IC [intelligence community], indeed of the government, where hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day (easily 100,000 times a year) DO [Directorate of Operations] officers engage in highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment to the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals and, more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself.

The short answer is that it isn't illegal for the CIA to run drugs. They are, by law, permitted to break the law.

Ooooooooooooohh mmmmmmy Goooooooooodd.

And it's right on the government's website, too.

http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house/intel/ic21/ic21009.html

Well I'll be damned. Sending agents to foreign countries to commit extremely serious crimes...Oh my God.

It doesn't mention the countries that they sent the agents to, or what crimes exactly they committed. But in any event, they admit that they're doing it. And the law allows them to do it. Well I've never heard of such a crooked thing in my life. I mean, it's not like I didn't know that the government does illegal things behind the people's back, since all governments do that, but I had no idea that what they did was that bad.

Furthermore, what if the other countries find out that these are US agents? What if the US begins to get a reputation for being a rogue nation that sends agents everywhere to subvert the laws of other nations?

What if this causes the people who are the victims of these crimes committed by these federal agents to become terrorists and attack the US? What if the countries in which they did the crimes decides to fund the terrorism? Especially with those itty bitty little nationalist countries where you never know what they're going to do next.

This really is not only immoral, it's absolutely reckless. I mean, did the CIA think about this before they did this, or did they just decide to do this for no particular reason? I guess we'll never know. And where was Congress when all this was going on. This was a Congressional report, so somebody in Congress must have known about this. Was their brain in the off position somehow that day?

[Landon Jeffery]

Ooooooooooooohh mmmmmmy Goooooooooodd.

And it's right on the government's website, too.

http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house/intel/ic21/ic21009.html

Well I'll be damned. Sending agents to foreign countries to commit extremely serious crimes...Oh my God.

It doesn't mention the countries that they sent the agents to, or what crimes exactly they committed. But in any event, they admit that they're doing it. And the law allows them to do it. Well I've never heard of such a crooked thing in my life. I mean, it's not like I didn't know that the government does illegal things behind the people's back, since all governments do that, but I had no idea that what they did was that bad.

Furthermore, what if the other countries find out that these are US agents? What if the US begins to get a reputation for being a rogue nation that sends agents everywhere to subvert the laws of other nations?

What if this causes the people who are the victims of these crimes committed by these federal agents to become terrorists and attack the US? What if the countries in which they did the crimes decides to fund the terrorism? Especially with those itty bitty little nationalist countries where you never know what they're going to do next.

This really is not only immoral, it's absolutely reckless. I mean, did the CIA think about this before they did this, or did they just decide to do this for no particular reason? I guess we'll never know. And where was Congress when all this was going on. This was a Congressional report, so somebody in Congress must have known about this. Was their brain in the off position somehow that day?

At first I thought you were being sarcastic.  But of course that is why terrorists are attacking the people in this country.  Finally we have heard some good sense from you.

[Luke S]

R U sure about that?

Scott, 999 times out of 1000 I would have dismissed what Caleb told me about what was said on the congressional report as just a crazy conspiracy theory, believe me I would. But this time there's no way I can deny it, as it is right on the government's own website.

I suppose it's possible that the congressman who wrote the report really hated the CIA and wanted to frame them for something they didn't do, but if that was the case, then where were all the other congressmen in the committee that released the report? In la la land?? Or maybe they all hated the CIA? If the entire House Select Committee on Intelligence hates the CIA, then there is a lot they can do to make the CIA's life difficult. Because if I'm not mistaken all bills pertaining to the CIA have to go through them. So they all could have made a great big stink every time a bill about the CIA came up and done all sorts of things to hamper it. But as far as I know, that didn't happen, so I don't think they released the report that they released just because they hated the CIA.

[Caleb]

Furthermore, what if the other countries find out that these are US agents? What if the US begins to get a reputation for being a rogue nation that sends agents everywhere to subvert the laws of other nations?

Well, we wouldn't want the US to begin to get such a reputation.    Luke, that IS the reputation that the US has around the world. Go anywhere else in this world, (except maybe Israel, or another client state like Micronesia or someplace like that,) and you will find anger against the U.S. for precisely that reason. They don't hate us for our freedoms, they hate us because the American government has been destroying their lives since the end of world war II.

Ok, so you have the drug war set up for several reasons actually. Of course, they want to keep the drugs war to drive drug prices up high so that they can sell them and make money, but let's not forget who started the drug war in earnest:  Richard Nixon. Not exactly a saint, with nothing on his mind but helping free people from their addictions. Nope. Nixon, of course, was all about power. So what do they do as part of the drug war? Of course, we have to keep track of all of people's financial transactions so we can see whose "laundering money."  Laundering money is a ridiculous charge. Basically, laundering money is the art of trying to keep the government from knowing your financial business. Not exactly a crime against humanity, is it? But Uncle Sam knows that keeping track of your financial business is crucial to maintaining control. So the drug war gives it the pretext to keep tabs on you and invade your financial privacy.

The Drug War and the War on Terror(TM) are the two main justifications for every intrusion into your privacy. And they are trying to add a third, The War on Mexican Immigrants. Which has already brought us a Real ID and Internal checkpoints, and is already showing signs of promise in permitting the government to intrude even more onto our lives. So when you say stuff like, "I agree with you on 90% of the issues, I just disagree with a couple things," well the couple things are the foundation. The couple things are the things that permit the government to do all the other 90% of things that you agree with me on. They create these bogeymen "Scary Mexicans" "Scary Drugs" and "Scary Muslims" to scare us into letting them walk all over us.

[feralfae]

There is absolutely no "right to get high" enumerated in the US constitution, nor in any of the constitutions nor statues of any state. There is, however, a duty of each government within the US to protect its citizens from criminals and the crimes that they commit.


[/quote]
Ever read the 9th Amendment? There's where your enumeration is bro.
[/quote]

And there is the whole concept of ownership of one's body, the right to manage it any way you choose, as long as your choices don't harm any other human.  Choose your toothpaste, your t-shirt, your mood-altering substance, your ice cream flavour, whatever you want.  Just be responsible for your choices.  So if you eat a lot of ice cream, don't ask taxpayers to pay for your liposuction.  You get the idea.

Ownership of one's body - absolute ownership of one's body - is the antithesis of slavery, by the way.
ff

[alohamonkey]

Luke,

You're giving my home state a bad name.  Read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins.  It gives a good run-down on the foreign policy of the U.S. throughout the last few decades.  If you think Ollie North's actions were an anomaly, you are genuinely naive.  The same goes with Taft and Ney.  Crooked behavior by politicians and government officials is more normal than abnormal. 

Which part of Ohio are you from?  Do you think it's right to lock up an 18 year old kid for smoking a joint?  Do you think imprisoning misguided, nonviolent kids is a good use of taxpayer's dollars?  Ohio's tough stance on drugs does nothing to ebb the flow of them.  I'm speaking from experience working with troubled youth in Ohio and also from watching many people from my hometown get arrested and thrown in jail in Ohio for nonviolent offenses.  Hell, Ohio prisons can't even keep drugs out of the jails!!!  How do you expect them to keep them off the streets?  Throwing our youth in jail for nonviolent offenses just limits their future opportunities in life and steers them toward a life of crime. 

[Caleb]

Scott, 999 times out of 1000 I would have dismissed what Caleb told me about what was said on the congressional report as just a crazy conspiracy theory, believe me I would. But this time there's no way I can deny it, as it is right on the government's own website.

I'm like Michael Moore. I don't believe in conspiracy theories. Except the ones that are true. 

[J’raxis 270145]

The Drug War and the War on Terror(TM) are the two main justifications for every intrusion into your privacy. And they are trying to add a third, The War on Mexican Immigrants.

You forgot Protecting the Children. Pretty much all offensive Internet legislation is justified in order to stop "child pornography" or otherwise protect children against supposed online predators. (The remainder of attacks on online freedom is usually about protecting "intellectual property.")

[Free libertarian]

 Luke, you seem to have twisted things around a bit. You imply the rights we have  somehow come to us from the Government as if they are granted to us.   When did this happen?  Did I miss a Constitutional Amendment or something?  Did the Pope come here and crown GW Emperor? What did I miss?

  What do you think of live and let live...is there any room for that philosophy in your world?
   How does taking a person who has harmed nobody and incarcerating them benefit society?
   To put it another way, if a person is smoking pot, none of your business, if a person is smoking pot and
   throwing garbage at you, then it becomes your business, they've stepped over the line.  Are you sure
  they weren't just throwing stale nachos or something? Cuz if they were fresh nachos, the stoners would
  have eaten them,  there's no way they'd have thrown them...but I digress.

  What is preventing you from allowing another person the right to exist in a way, that you wouldn't
choose for yourself?
Think of all the negative energy that goes into forcing people to do things...think how much better we'd all be if we decided what worked for us and left that same decision to others to make also.

I mean none of us should be a "decider" for anyone but ourselves right?     

Do you like nachos?  Shouldn't they be made illegal? I mean they have stuff like peppers and chili sauce on them and can burn your tongue so they are potentially harmful right? Plus some mushrooms are psycho active and eating loaded nachos could be a gateway to pot smoking. Maybe they should be by prescription only?  I think there may be a corellation between Nachos and Reefer, didn't Mexican migrant worker types come here and bring reefer, now it's common place...ditto nachos, nobody ate them back in the wonder bread 70s, now we're over run with nachos! Yup definitely a connection there.  Quick build a border wall, keep the reefer smoking nacho pushers out !   

   

[kola]

reefer on nachos?

not that I gotta try!!

kola