I like the compromise, as long as there is a way to verify election results, which we both seem to believe could be much improved.

I also agree with you about pork being one of the biggest, if not biggest, issues with our Federal government. When you look at the sum of money that our government spends it’s amazing that we don’t have more to show for it. I think a law requiring simple laws might be the answer here (yes, that is a bit of an oxymoron). Pork is so abundant in our government because each new bill is literally hundreds and hundreds of pages long, too long for the average citizen to be able to review. If laws were short and to the point, politicians would have less places to hide their projects.

I think we’re both fiscally conservative Douglas and thus I can agree with you that the federal government should be much, much smaller. However, I’m socially liberal and think parts of our government could be expanded (healthcare, environmental protection, corporate watch groups) while overall the federal government still would shrink (if we’re going to have a huge government, I’d rather it spend money domestically on social programs instead of abroad on military and aid to rich countries — Israel and Egypt received the most aid from the U.S.). In either case, returning more power to the states would be preferable to the behemoth we have now in D.C.

Many of my rants don’t make sense!
The point I wanted to make with the dictator and oil parts is that Bush and Cheney benefit from an increase in the price of oil as they hold shares in oil companies and Halliburton. Before I go on another rant, let me just sum it up by saying that there is a clear conflict of interest for Bush & Cheney to be running this show and using private contractors to get oil and dole out Iraq oil contracts to big oil companies.

My interest in your post is not the War on Terror, but the fact that you declare you will live without fear. I am fascinated by the concept of living outside a realm of fear and not allowing fear to overtake our lives. It’s an interesting concept to apply this to the War on Terror.

Still, I think people are deathly afraid of terrorists. I can’t say I blame them, but I wholeheartedly join you in living outside of fear.

I believe that the biggest challenge to keeping our politicians in DC honest is the issue of pork. Did you know that once they get a project through, they can continue to allocate the same amount of money every year after that without it even becoming an issue? Alaska got their bridge to nowhere money even after a stink was raised because they never went back in to take it from them. Alaska simply used the money for another project the next year.

Terrorism existed long before America and McDonalds. The people who do this thrive in countries that lack freedoms and education. They are angry and they really aren’t certain why. So when someone tells them that it is the evil American empire, they fall in line. The interesting thing about the Iraq war is that it has allowed Muslims all over the globe to see how brutal the terrorist really are. They now see the reports about Muslims blowing up other Muslims. This is why if you discount Iraq, terrorist attacks are actually down worldwide. Fareed Zakaria wrote a piece about this not long ago.

You can fight people who use a tactic and do things to prevent another attack. We did in fact capture the man who planned 9-11 and have killed others who helped him. We have shown others the true nature of the terrorists and have also beaten many of them into submission. We have also prevented additional attacks against our country since 9-11. Now I know that you will tell me that we haven’t prevented anything and that this is just what the government wants me to believe. But as much as I doubt my government, I do give them the benefit of the doubt over the terrorists.

Your rant about a dictatorship makes no sense. A dictator isn’t behind the scenes. I won’t defend Halliburton, but anyone who thinks that this war is about driving up the price of oil doesn’t know much about economics. Being in the business of commodities, I happen to know about things like increased demand from India and China. I also know a bubble when I see one, and much of the current price of oil is from hedge funds hitting the buy button with their clients money. And even if this were true, how does that make him a dictator? The warrantless interception of messages from foreign locations is the Constitutional right of the President. This is according to multiple court rulings and has been backed by FISA judges. They actually sat in front of the same Congress members who still complain and told them this.

You’re right that the lesser of two evils voting strategy has directly caused many of the issues we face today. I used that strategy in ‘04 and vowed to never again let such an argument hijack my vote. In this year’s primaries I voted for Ron Paul to show for the record that I oppose the viewpoints of the other major candidates and support Ron’s small government (to an extent). Though I was realistic and felt Ron wouldn’t win my state’s primary I still voted for him, because that is the only way to truly make your vote count. I really hate the argument that voting for someone not in the mainstream Demopublican/Republocrat party is throwing your vote away. Voting for someone you don’t really believe in is throwing your vote away.

I’ll have to argue though that there are conspiracies and that they are not even hidden that well. I use the word conspiracy in the literal sense, people in power plot against the majority of people to ensure they keep that power. A lot of the people in Congress conspire against the public everyday by sneaking pork into bills and trading away our liberties for security. Looking for conspiracies is a duty we the public must perform to safeguard the republic from tyrants. The media calls conspiracy theorists lunatics so that anyone questioning the mainstream view is disregarded, thus allowing the mainstream view to be hijacked by the elite and corrupted.

Terrorism exists because America sent its troops across the entire world and American capitalism put a McDonald’s on every street corner. Even though huge groups of people in certain regions simply wanted to be left alone, we continued to insist that American corporations be allowed to infiltrate every part of the world. These huge groups of people were opposed to this American occupation of the world and fought back using dirty guerrilla warfare tactics. Once a few thousand Americans died on American soil, we over reacted and killed hundreds of thousands of other people because we couldn’t root out the few who conspired to successfully attack us. In essence, if you don’t believe conspiracies then the terrorists lured us into a trap and are now showing the whole world how brutal we truly are, hence why the world is skirting away from America and its corporate-military super-behemoth.

You can’t fight people who use a tactic for they can easily change their tactic or hide it. The terrorist knew they could not win a war on American soil, so they drew us towards them, where our modern machinery would be neutralized by desert guerilla warfare. They’ve succeeded, as we’re still trying to find and capture or kill these terrorists even though we’ve already killed way, way, way, way more people than the terrorists ever did.

If this is not a false war, then our executive, congress, and military clearly did not realize that our problem was not offensive but defensive. Before 9/11, during 9/11 and post 9/11 we could and can bomb the heck out of many countries, but we’re pretty much no safer against terrorists hijacking airplanes and flying them into buildings. If we really wanted to “win” this “war on terror(ists?)”, we’d bring home every U.S. soldier and put every military resource we have into securing our borders and airspace, not bombing deserts halfway across the world.

The warrant-less domestic surveillance program is not a constitutional right. If it’s a constitutional right for the president to spy on us, then I say it’s also our right to spy on our president. Let’s see who has more skeletons in the closet, though Mr. Bush has a hell of a lot more closets than the average American. King George has already instituted his dictatorship. The best form of tyranny (for the tyrant) is the one hidden from view. Bush learned from his grandpa that you can’t openly overthrow the government, so he’s done so behind the scenes. Who has benefited from the last seven years of warfare? Oil companies and corporate militaries. Who worked for the oil companies and corporate military (Haliburton) before seizing the white house? King George and Prince Dick of course. The Democratic Congress was elected to end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan but they’ve all bowed down before the Republocrat-Demopublican tyrants for fear of disappearing.

The point I was trying to make was that the problem with our democracy isn’t a cover-up or a conspiracy to make sure your vote doesn’t count. The problem is that too many people are looking for the conspiracy instead of putting real effort into researching the issues and promises of the person for whom they are voting.

Do you want to hear the real conspiracy, if there is one? It isn’t a diebold effort to steal your vote. It isn’t the screwup of Florida. It’s a country of people who believe that they have to vote for one guy just to keep someone worse from winning the prize. I can’t tell you how many blogs and comments I read from people saying that they would like to have voted for someone like Duncan Hunter, but didn’t do so because they don’t think he can win the general election. They were convinced that it wouldn’t matter, so they voted for someone else.

Prove to me that my vote in 04 or 06 was counted correctly…you can’t. If the elections were done online and public, I could look up my number and see that the correct vote was captured. Verifiability is the first step to tumbling the current corrupt and belied system.

Just the same, a massive issue with the societal climate currently in this country is the lack of investigative or analytical though in the mainstream. I don’t believe the average American’s true voice is heard or shouted loud enough and as a result our mainstream is artificial, an attempt by the elite to talk down to us.

@barryb, you don’t. The people in charge are trying to create Orwell’s perpetual war and are using every threat, real or imagined, to push surveillance and dictatorship for the common good.

Thanks for the great comments Douglas, barryb and everyone.

barry

And the problem with our voting system isn’t diebold. The problem with the system is that most of the people in this country believe what they are told to believe. This is why many people believe that Bush is pushing up the price of oil. This is why people believe that tax cuts caused a credit crises. This is why no one pays attention to the Iraqi general who tells us that Saddams weapons systems were hidden in Syria. This is why people think that we can solve all of life’s problems by raising taxes. And it is why people think that elections are being rigged by diebold.

Politicians don’t need to use new technology to rig elections. They will stick to the old fashion methods. Elections are won by those who tell the best lies about whatever people are complaining about the most. The problem isn’t diebold, the problem is the belied systems of the people pushing the buttons.