Yesterday Sixty Minutes had Amenijab or the president of Iran on. He's the one who wants to lay a wreath or something at ground zero in New York and say a few appropriate words. I don't see why we shouldn't let him. We're just kind of being snobs by making an issue out of it. Also there those who don't want the Iranian president speaking at Columbia University. That would be funny if someone insulted Amenijab and got tazed by the cops! Dream on! The bigger issue last night was this whole idea we are fostering that the President of Iran has nuclear weapons. He said over and over again that Iran didn't need nuclear weapons and that the whole idea of nuclear weapons was obsolete in this world. After all, they didn't prevent the Soviet Union from disintegrating back in the 'eighties. The Sixty Minutes reporter kept baiting the Iranian president with the notion that Bush wants to start World War III and how Bush despizes him, and all the Iranian guy wanted to do was to talk peace, and give George Bush every benefit of the doubt, even when it comes to his own personal religion. It's clear by the media hype even Sixty Minutes, as liberal as they are is getting sucked up into- - - is the notion that Iran wants to start a nuclear war and that they are developing "weapons of mass destruction". Bush is playing off the same prompt card now five years later with a different country and he's hoping we buy his act. The fact is we did do Iran a favor by getting rid of Saddam Hussein. But does that make up for eight years of war with Iraq that Iran had to fight where we backed Saddam? You tell me. The Iranian president seems correct in saying that the U S keeps backing away from a chance at peace. Bush doesn't want peace. For Bush to say he wants peace would be as alien to him as it would be for Joseph Stalin to announce that Russia only wanted peace. It's not what this type of individual is all about, and has been from before he was elected.
Then we have that Russian chess champion. He took on twenty opponents and beat each and every one in the space of an hour and a half. Now he has turned his energies to the dangerous world of Russian politics. In this realm people don't play by the rules, and a lot of victims have been killed in the process. There are two emerging police states in the world now. One of them is Russia, and the other is the United States. In everything that Russian chess champion said there was an odd sense of deja vu. He says "Well I don't think Vlatamir Putin is going to candle the election next March. The polls right now say eighty percent of the people will vote for him, but if Bush has as much control over this country as Putin has over Russia, eighty percent of the people would favor Bush now. In his words were the same sentaments of how the Russian people are happy with their jobs getting wasted on vodka every night but managing, just as people in this country turn to their prescription drugs to help get them through their day of over work and under-paid jobs. The people in neither country want to rock the boat. The fact that the elections of 2008 in either this country or Russia haven't been suspended yet is more a function of "they haven't gotten around to THAT yet" more than it is any natural adhorance to the idea. I'm sure both Bush and Putin must have thought about it. We are an emerging police state and so is Russia. We've killed people and they've killed people. The Giuliani crowd in this country doesn't care about Civil liberties and neither do the Russian people. They have no appitite for anything with the word "dissent" in it. When that chess guy talked about all those "fringe" party candidates, I thought of Barry Goldwater's words, "Extremism in derfence of liberty is no Vice; moderation in pursuit of justice is no Virtue". I guess the "fringe" parties as people on CBS called them, over in Russia are kind of like Ron Paul's campaign here. They are people who, in Thom Hartman's words, "aren't afraid to speak the truth". These people are getting fewer and fewer. The idea of any party running on a libertine platform seems equally alien to both people in the Soviet Union, excuse me "Russia", as it does in this country.
Of course among the forces that "sell out" to foster a police state in this country is Religion. Who would have guessed that Giuliani would be the darling of the Religious Right in this country, or that Giuliani would be most popular in South Carolina. It seems that Christians don't care about all that "other stuff" they've been talking about like a person's personal life or his divorces, or his position on gays or immigration or gun control or abortion. The overriding position now is how do they feel about starting World War III? That's the big issue. Do they favor "Security" alias the Police State? When Gene Scott first became the pastor of Faith Center he did this "woe is me" routine, "Oh I'm divorced; I'm not sure whether the people down here will accept me as their leader". Of course that's before he began fooling around with his future third wife while touting his second wife as the perfect marriage. Oh I was talking about Gene Scott- not Giuliani, I see where the confusion came from! And now there is a whole new threat to religion from the government. It's something that emerged just after the 2004 election. There is a church in this area where the pastor gave an anti war sermon just before the November 2004 election. Now the I R S is after them for expressing a political oppinion from the pulpet. Something I've always found adhorant and a fundamental violation of the first amendment is that government would in Any Way dictate what is said from the Sunday morning pulpet by a pastor. And yet people like Thom Hartman speak of some "deal that was made during the Johnson Adminestration". I never heard about it and if Hartman's words are true there would have surely been an explosion of contraversey back in the 'sixties were such an idea to be proposed that "You muzzle what your pastor says and the IRS will go easy on you". If "separation of church and state" doesn't allow a pastor to speak his contience before God to his people- - that is speaking what God has impressed upon his heart to tell his congragation on any given Sunday- - I'd like to know what the hell the first amendment is all about if not this. This is the Bush Adminestration using the IRS the way Nixon did, to terrorize an individual and religious freedom. God and government machinations don't mix!
Then we have the marijuana laws in California. In the segment, California was portrayed as a "wierd" state for allowing marijuana "dealers" to poliferate. The point is we passed a law, and it was a law brought about through lawful processes by a vote of the people as provided for by the State of California, proposition 215, that says that you can use marijuana if you have a note from your doctor. I don't see how anything could be clearer. The federal government has no business being involved in this issue any more than they do in the abortion issue. It's an area of States Rights they need to stay out of. If the Supreme Court wont affirm this basic truth, we need to get justices on the court who will. The only problem I see with marijuana distribution is certain zoning factors like too much traffic obstructing parking, and late hours in a residential neighborhood. These problems can be dealt with in the normal manner. I think all these abortion people need to come out and demonstrate saying "We need to respect the relation between a patient and his doctor". The point of fact is that marijuana is useful for a lot of medical ailments, as well as for various textile and oil purposes. Obviously it's a drug that can be abused, but then so can Vallium. I don't know for sure but I think Vallium is in fact more addictive than marijuana, yet there are no mass protests against Vallium. Where is Larry Elder on this issue? He keeps saying he's a libertarian but he never seems to step up to the plate. As you know from that 'sixties Beatles program, marijuana also fosters musical creativity, the whole "flower power" movement in both art and music is marijuana influenced. Of course at the end of that program they had to say "This program in no way sponsors drug usage". Or as they say in Rock & Roll doctor, "We merely prescribe drugs, we don't advocate them".
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