I mean his entire premise rests upon the assumption that you could actually manipulate the chess board in such a way that you could use the EXISTING laws and institutions of the US to profit personally through extortion and exploitation of various peoples and resources.

Existing, meaning keep the status quo, go up against the KELO Act by the judges, treat emminent domain as it has Always been treated, that is conservative. BigA thinks that the power cliques don’t need to change anyof the status quo to benefit, because they already are the status quo.

Of course he is wrong, he would be wrong even if I hadn’t studied numerous examples, hypothetical and historical, of how actual power groups obtained power. Hell, he would be wrong even if Venezuella and Chavez didn’t exist in this time continuum.

Sure, socialism brought on by Democrats with good intentions during the Great Depression has had fatal consequences for our country. Yes, that was the beginning of the slippery slope. But I find it laughable that you all think this is just about the liberal/socialists. Fascist “self-proclaimed” conservatives are using all the government beauracracy (created during the 20th century) as a smoke screen to MAKE MONEY and GAIN POWER.

The loss of habeus corpus when it comes to being “classified as an enemy combatant by the executive branch of the government” took away exactly 9 out of 10 of the Bill of Rights. Unwarranted wiretapping and spying on American citizens has also assulted our constitutional rights and individual security. I have been arguing for years that there is not much remaining about the Republican party that is conservative. Barry Goldwater said “conservatives like me will soon be called liberals”. Real conservative fiscal policy would NEVER allow our country to get into this much debt….real conservative philosophy would never strive to legislate morality, nor would it believe that the United States should go the way of imperialism. Real conservative policy would never try to inhibit the rights of people to do what they want on their own private property (smoking ban). Fascism is basically a marriage between corporations and government…and this has been the TRADEMARK of the Bush Administration. How come nobody on this post BESIDES ME, ever talks about MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX–this, my friend, is what is causing fascism in the USA. Telling people “they are helping the enemy”
if they question the President or any military actions–THAT’s FASCISM. Encouraging patriotism with out encouraging education and knowledge and telling the American people “to go on about your business of living your life, and we’ll worry about the business of running the country”–THAT’s Fascist.

Watch “Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers”.

Watch “Who Killed the electric Car”

Watch “Why we fight”

This current situation of “war profiteering” is not unique in U.S. history and certainly not unique in world history.

However, that does not provide an excuse for citizens and elected-officials to not constantly strive to account for every penny of government money rewarded to corporations. For every penny given by the government to a private company for some government project, there must be a detailed and logical explanation accounting for what goods and services were actually provided by the private company and the actual fair market value of the work provided. Unfortunately, we are currently in a situation where the congressional committees (designed to hold these private companies accountable for the work they promised to do) have consistently failed to do so. Patriotic Americans should be crying foul at every street corner and every internet blog. Our government was designed with the assumption that people in government will always take advantage of power for personal gain if not held in check.

This is about accountability with public resources.
This is not about political parties.

If elected-officials are not holding private corporations accountable for the goods and services they promised to provide–then we, as patriots, must assume the elected-official stands to gain from the lack of accountability.

It goes deeper.
The argument against welfare generally states that “people will not work for something if they know they can get it for free”. Every single time the government gives money to a corporation without accounting for the actual goods and services provided (along double checking the fair market value of the work) they are giving the corporation motivation to: 1)not actually do the work they promised to do; 2) to seek more government contracts; 3)provide campaign contributions to politicians they know will not hold them accountable.

Basically, the lack of accountability motivates people to STEAL public resources

Government needs accountability. Period.

Anything less is dangerously flirting with fascism.

I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican or Libertarian or Green…if you push for more government accountability you are most likely a patriot.

Lastly, we must remember the most common cause of no accountability: big government!
Big Government provides the smoke screen that allows people within and outside of government to not be held accountable.

Nevertheless, I can achieve that in the same way that I achieve never staying in a motel/hotel room polluted by such exhalations - by refusing to patronize the businesses who don’t care enough about my preferences to accommodate me.

It’s fundamentally tyrannical to demand that the government impose your standards on businessmen in a free society…..

And, by the way, there is good data showing that smokers MORE than pay the costs of their medical care, at least in part because they die (on average) so much sooner and save us all a lot in Social Security payments. But, if the cost of paying for other people’s health care costs is an argument for anything, it’s for getting the government out of that business, not loading another unconstitutional mandate on our Federal nannies.

But that scale did shake a lot with the gambling ban. Forevermore the name Frist will be an expletive to me.

Not trying to be a prude, but smoking does infringe on other’s liberties and it’s about time smokers become ostracized. I’m sick of Medicaid and Medicare picking up so much of the medical expenses (which would be at my expense) for smokers. Come on now, we’ve had “smoke out” propaganda for over thirty years now and to choose to smoke is just insane.

Don’t get me wrong, I want big tobacco to flourish. Let’s just sell the crap to Russia, France, North Korea, China, etc… I think their military men and women could use a good smoke.