Jesus in the Jungle - how the F hard can it all freakin be folks????

[The Straight Story]

Here we are in the US of fucking A - a country with some of the great minds of science and invention, and yet we have not been able to do jack shit over these 41 years I have been alive on the issues?

Our schools sucked back then. There was Vietnam, now Iraq. Poverty. Homelessness. Health care issues. Corrupt politicians. Murder. Rape. Robbery. Drugs. Police brutality. I could keep going on, feel free to toss out a few.

And here we are 41 years after I was born and we still got the same shit. We can go to mars and rove all over it's red ass and we can't get a person a place to sleep, a hot meal, and health care? We can't create solutions to issues in the ME without blowing the fucking thing to little pieces and putting kids into coffins?

Sure, we have made progress. I will give ya that. Good and bad.

I just cannot believe in a super power like the US problems don't get fixed. They get talked about, shuffled about, money gets spent, and the rich get richer and the poor get screwed without even so much as a reach around.

I love my country, it just pisses me off at times.

The solution starts with each of us - I think it always has. Problem is we have to march for years and kick ass all the damned time to get the people with the power to implement changes. Things that should be done simply because they are the right thing to do don't get done or take insane amounts of years to get passed.

And some things don't change with either party cause that fear card gets played real damned well. Instead of going all the way we back off so as not to piss off people and lose the next election. Remember gays in the military? That was gonna be fixed, but we had to tone it down out of fear.

Why, just this last election people were talking about how not to impeach yet because not only would it not pass but it would cause people not to vote for us. We won. Now the same type of thinking is seeping out: we want to win in 2008 right and keep our majority? Play it safe. We win in 2008 and then in 2009 and 10 it will be the same thing.

So I got a message for our leaders. Full speed ahead, screw the fear, make real changes that will help Americans and they will vote for you, instead of against them. Don't compromise so much, especially when you truly believe your way is gonna help the most humans in this country and on the planet.

Don't make me come back here when I am 82 and retype this :)

[mike_c]

1. K&R-- wow-- what a post! Thank you for saying so articulately...

...so many of the things that I'm feeling.

[JeffR]

2. That's a big K & R from me

and I'm looking forward to you reposting this when you're 82. Chances are I'll be reading it from beyond the grave, but read it I will.

[The Straight Story]

3. Hell I'll be lucky to make it that far myself :)

Especially the way repugs are running the world...

[JeffR]

4. As the old song goes, "We shall overcome

someday."

[HCE SuiGeneris]

5. Don't make me come back at 82...

:rofl:

An excellent rant sir! :applause: :woohoo: :applause: K&R

[lvx35]

6. Well, a stranger is listening to you in Olympia WA

and he will repeat good points you make to freinds in town, who will repeat it to friends and so on. This didn't exist before, so at least the Internet is something...:)

[The Straight Story]

7. Indeed, there has been some good progress - the internet is one

but give em time and they will fuck it all up too :)

[midnight]

8. What will it take. We are taxed to the hilt, and receive poor

services in return. It was Deming who warned us about maintaining excellent service.

[driver8]

9. I've been thinking the same thing.

I know that we've got Hybrid cars now and that's great. But why has it taken so long to get this far? Oil and gas have been a problem since the seventies (that I can recall) -- why is it taking so long?

[The Straight Story]

10. Test Kick

Elad is making changes, so doing a test kick to see where this goes.

[Porcupine]

11. We keep buying the Potemkin village.

We keep buying into health care plans that won't give us 1/2 the security of say France at 3 times the cost.

We keep buying into the concept that environmental protections are somehow going to cost us jobs when they never do.

We keep buying the fiction that we have to maintain the worlds biggest military force to defend us from Mexico and Canada.

We keep buying the lie that placing more of our citizens in jails for longer somehow makes new criminals cease to appear.

We sit on our ass year after year as our government engages in torture, destroys the constitution and kills it's own citizens.

We keep pretending that more crap and bigger houses will somehow make us feel better after our divorces. So we spend more time at work than any other first world nation.

We keep pretending that we will someday win the lottery so Bill Gates and Warren Buffet can have more wealth than all the citizens of our six poorest states.

We earned this shitty state of affairs!!

[tavalon]

12. The reason things don't get fixed

is that there is no will. I think there is will down here but up in the echelons of power, no will. This country can and has done anything it has set it's mind and will upon. No will, no progess. Where there is will, there is the moon.

My love for my country is slowly seeping away. It isn't gone. I'm still fighting but sometimes there is that small voice that asks me just what I'm fighting for. That maple leaf is looking better and better. Still, I keep fighting. I dunno.

[kentuck]

13. Excellent questions...

I have been asking myself the same...

[The Straight Story]

14. Sadly I get the feeling we will be asking them for a long time....

Let's hope I am wrong.

[donkeyotay]

15. Real changes. Yeah, what The Straight Story said

"Don't make me come back here when I am 82 and retype this."

[La_Fourmi_Rouge]

16. We need a leader, like this old fellow:

Henri Auguste Grouès, the Abbè Pierre, priest and campaigner, born August 5 1912; died January 22 2007:

<http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/23/europe/EU-GEN-Vatican-Abbe-Pierre.php>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abb%C3%A9_Pierre>

<http://www.europaworld.org/issue32/abbepierre27401.htm>

<http://www.emmaus-international.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=49>

PARIS: Abbe Pierre, a feisty but humble priest who battled more than a half-century on behalf of the homeless and became for many the conscience of France, died Monday at age 94, sending the nation into mourning.

President Jacques Chirac planned a national homage Friday for the bearded priest who was a familiar figure with his beret, black cape and staff.

One of France's most beloved public figures — sometimes referred to as the "ragpickers' saint" — Abbe Pierre died at Val de Grace military hospital in Paris, his foundation said. He had been admitted with a lung infection Jan. 14.

Abbe Pierre — known by the code name he used during his work in the Resistance during World War II — had served as a spokesman for the homeless since the 1950s, when he persuaded parliament to pass a law forbidding landlords to evict tenants during winter months.

[The Straight Story]

17. Indeed - I posted a thread about him as well :)

Damn shame he has passed on.