Hehe. I've tried moving out of the country several times, but I have been unable to secure a job, which is my primary concern. That said, I've been successfully supporting myself independently for the last 2 years, so if I can sustain, I may be able to finally do it someday.
Thank the gods for the internet.
@chingalera - I'd recommend Costa Rica. They have gulf-side beaches, it's the most stable democracy in central America, the food is amazing, the women are beautiful, and living expenses are wonderfully cheap.
The only caveat for me is that, in the case that global warming continues to push the climates to more extremes, tropical/equatorial regions will not be fun to live in.
Regardless, that's my main draw next to Sweden, Germany or New Zealand, but make no mistake: the rest of the world will slowly follow suit eventually.

@Confucius

thank you so very much for taking the time to clarify your position.
but i think we are in a fundamental disagreement.
and here is why:

1.manning approached wikileaks.not the other way around.
2.is manning a traitor or patriot? i guess it depends on the perspective.
but manning was quite clear his reasons behind revealing those documents and none of those reasons were of being naive' or subverted by a third party.

when you consider the oath of military responsibility,an i oath i took over 25 years ago,the line that stands out is "to protect from enemies both foreign and domestic".
could those documents be seen as subverting the american people?
and if so,would that not make revealing those documents a patriotic act?

again,perspective and i guess we disagree.

conversely, if we use your premise then we would have to view this man:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg
as a traitor.
now the 70,000 plus documents HE revealed exposed the gulf of tonkin AND extremely sensitive data concerning the vietnam war.i would go as far to say that without this mans courage (yes..courage) to expose the lies of our government,vietnam may have lasted for a much longer time.ellisberg fascillitated the beginning of the end of the vietnam war

the documents manning revealed just left the american government red faced and embarrassed but nothing of strategic value.ellisberg on the other hand revealed much MUCH more.

traitor or patriot? by your definition:traitor and a far worse one than manning.

and on that we disagree.

what we agree on is that governments lie.
we are in unison on this point but we diverge on how to deal with the situation.

you suggest to work within the bounds of journalism or becoming a politician.
now who is being the naive one?
this implies that the 4th estate is in perfect functioning order and that politicians are informed on all matters.

i submit that neither is the case.
a corporate run new media which engages mainly in sensationalism and hyperbolic opinion rhetoric and a legislature that is mostly subserviant to their financial backers( basically wall street) are not the institutions to tackle and uncover government malfeasance and outright lies.

they have been corrupted.see:iraq war

so i find it disturbing when the government hi-jacks 200 ap reporters emails and phone records.

or when a low level private reveals low level ambassador documents.

or my government's justice department prosecutes SIX people under the espionage act but not ONE indictment concerning wall street.

the message is clear:we are the US government.fuck with us and we will fuck you up.citizen or non-citizen.
there will be no journalism.
there will be no leaking of anything.
sit down and shut up.

or we will ruin you.

government by the people for the people right?

I'm sorry but you are simply wrong. America is rich largely because of it's slavery past which was cotton, which was textiles. It's why we grew so quickly and put ourselves in a place to overtake everyone after World War 2 when we literally had half the worlds wealth. There's plenty of economic history of this that you can research if you care to try.

The fear thing is pretty unique in America but not unique when you compare it to say a authoritarian society. Americans are a terrified people and it's easy to use it. You can look back at the first Gulf War when people were buying guys and camo and readying themselves in case Saddam came to attack the US. Which is insanity. In the Iraq War we were more terrified of Iraq than Kuwait and it's citizens were, and they had been attacked by them and were their closest neighbor. You can also see the fear today about taking peoples guns away, if we don't have guns we're all doomed, the government is coming or al qaeda is coming and we're all gonna die. Most of the rest of the world looks at us and laughs when we react all scared to nothing.

This cartoon pisses me off for one reason. It reminds me about the South Park guys bitching and moaning about how it was put in after Matts interview, so it looked to idiots like they had made it. Apparently that was enough for them to bitch and moan about it, I lost a lot of respect for Matt and Trea because of that.

Excuse me, what? This isn't us being fanatic. This is more simple dismissiveness. You haven't convincingly demonstrated significant wasteful spending. Your arguments are all hypothetical or anecdotal. Give me data to sink my teeth into and I might bother to show you fanatical.

Of course there are other priorities, but maybe basic science and medical research don't even register in the budget. You're the one defending defense research, remember? I would send citizens buried by medical expenses (like myself) knocking on your door. I wouldn't suggest they consider cuts to research that experts in biological sciences have agreed show promise. I hate to think how many advancements we aren't funding as it is.

Where I will fault science is in their incapacity to efficiently communicate. Our job description amounts to summarizing the unintuitive. For my money, this communication gulf accounts for most of the perceived waste in science. When you're inside you see how all the ant work science (both metaphorical and literal) contributes. Most of the great discoveries end up looking more like great summaries. Every field has someone come along once a decade or two, but it's hard to know who. Then the universe is easier to understand; and everybody wins.

Here's an example. Studying gill-withdrawal responses in sea slugs provided the foundation for what we now know about neuronal learning and memory. This was circa 1952. Reasoning similar to yours would have prohibited that expense. That would have been dumb. I agree if your point is simply that we should do a better job of convincing you of that.

ugh hate this guy, even Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson don't give much creedence to global warming scare. And he has already shown that if global warming did occur it would cause a new ice age cause if the polar ice caps melted enough the fresh water would change the gulf stream and could cause a global cooling as the Earth auto corrected as it always has.

They used that premise to the extreme in that stupid movie 'day after tomorrow'. But there has been mass global warmings on larger scale than anything humans could do in a million years before like what killed the Dinosaurs caused massive warming which resulted in a major ice age.

I'd rather believe Michio Kaku, Neil Tyson, Stephen Hawking, than some political bias television shows.

Off topic I do wish someone would nuke American media fox, msnbc, cnn, current, and the "left/right" various talk show crap.

Kuwait is a tiny country, and didn't have nearly the military that Iraq had because of US support of Iraq. Do you remember until he attacked Kuwait he was a big Ally, we loved him and supported him right through his greatest atrocities.

The Gulf War was just us rolling over them, it wasn't even a fight it was us flexing our muscles and a good sign to other countries not to step out of line. We then allowed Saddam to stay in power by letting him crush the resistance against him which was serious and would've most likely overthrown him. We imposed sanctions that were in the words of Dennis Halliday "Genocidal." And which when asked if killing 500,000 Iraqi children was ok Madeline Albright said "We think the price is worth it."

Iran isn't like Iraq at all, either before the Gulf War or Before the Iraq War. It's got a much more powerful and technological military. Also the US is simply not as powerful as it was. Remember the Gulf War was just after the Wall Fell, we were the worlds only super power. The Iraq War was against a basically helpless nation (even Kuwait wasn't afraid of them anymore), and we were stuck there for years, it was ridiculous how we fucked it up so amazingly. Russia in Chechnya is pissing themselves over how we fucked it up so badly. If David Petraeus could do what Putin did, he's probably be considered the greatest military man the US had ever seen.

I'm sorry but we cannot invade Iran like we did Iraq, simply because the world is changing too quickly. It's not going to happen, and if it does, you'll see a real uprising in the US. The OWS thing has more sympathy than people think, it's just bubbling under the surface. If it's given a huge cause the troops will have to be called back to the US to control the population.

Also contrary to popular belief Wars don't make money, they cost money. Preparing for War makes money, the Military Industrial complex wants to always be spending money Preparing for War and not having to fight one that would take significant resources, like getting bogged down in Iran.

I'm sorry but it's just nothing like the same thing going on. I don't think we're going to be invading Iran on the ground ever do to the change in the power system and the enemy.

No sir, empathy and tolerance go hand-in-hand, I'm not a fucking out-of-touch dinosaur- I ALSO recognize that racism is an issue that garners that gut-reaction simply from seeing the word typed or written on a page with certain types of peeps too distracted by ancillary clap-trap (pretentious, insincere, or empty verbiage) to have any effect whatsoever on the world of the "real", whatever one perceives that to be.

I see Colin Powell's talk of racism in the republican party as a complete non-issue as in, "Why should I give a fuck about this Uncle Tom, proverbial, "house-nigger" who acted anything like a general or statesman when he addressed the U.N. in a rambling justification for bankrupting the country into the Gulf War(s)-He should regret his actions under Bush and go fuck himself into obscurity and stay the fuck out of politics forever, kinna like Nixon when he bellied-up and bailed-out before impeachment, and was subsequently pardoned by that OTHER ineffectual tool, Gerald Ford.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/06/13/colin-powell-regrets-u-n-speech-justifying-the-iraq-invasion/

The fantasy world I speak of you refuse to consider though under your nose where it rests and obfuscates world view.

The New World Order is happening, it's the mechanism of disinformation, obfuscation, world economic manipulation, etc, that has you right where you don't want to be, a willing slave, complicit in the breakdown of human societies worldwide. Welcome to the Matrix Wendy, enjoy your preoccupation with guns, racism, and voting booths


Oh, and for the record once again, I am apolitical and believe the parties democrat and republican interchangeable, and the equally meaningless terminology of political discourse in light of the fistfuck being perpetrated on all nations of the world, a complete and pathetic distraction.
The goddamn whore of Babylon wants your mind, money, and muscle and you're standing in line to be first on the train, in my , "fantastic" world of illusion.

Those are seagulls...could be anywhere near the gulf coast near there..looks like a wallyworld south t'wards Galveston on 45

Doesnt say where in Houston. Depending on the exact location they could be pretty close to the gulf and this would be common enough to say Ive seen it before.

Must have went through the gulf of mexico, picked up some new mutations.

@NetRunner Would you have given LBJ a pass on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution? Is the escalation of war/violence somehow different now than it was then?

I've explained my position about as clearly as I can. I'm asking you to do the same. You claim that 1) invading Iran would be "without cause", and 2) that Obama would not do so despite his willingness to continue another war which he didn't initiate. Please provide evidence or reasoning to suggest that either of those statements could be true.

>> ^NetRunner:
I say that temporarily increasing troops in Afghanistan is very different from launching an invasion on Iran without cause, and that Obama's willingness to do the former doesn't imply he's likely to do the latter.

1 more comment have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

I'll just respond to these in bulk, since it's quite a pile of manure.

The following state things happened that never happened:

>> ^lantern53:

First President to violate the War Powers Act.
First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.
First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.
First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.
First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.
First President to terminate America's ability to put a man in space.
First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke-out on the reasons for their rate increases.
First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory.
First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.
First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.
First President to go on multiple global 'apology tours'.


The following he wasn't the first to do, or wouldn't have been if it weren't also part of the block above:

>> ^lantern53:

First President to violate the War Powers Act.
First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
First President to defy a Federal Judge's court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law a duly passed Act of Congress.
First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.
First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect.
First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.
First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.
First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayer.
First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.
First President to take a 17 day vacation.


Many of these he not only wasn't the first to do, they were things Bush did when he was in office. Some, like "arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it" and "require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party" happened back when the founding fathers were still alive.

Let's see, what's left?

>> ^lantern53:

First President to spend a trillion dollars on 'shovel-ready' jobs when there was no such thing as 'shovel-ready' jobs.


There's a lot wrong with this one. First, it wasn't a trillion dollars. Second, "the President" didn't spend it. Third, "shovel-ready" was a term to describe projects that could begin work sooner rather than later, and amazingly enough, those existed. Fourth, this wasn't a "first" -- the New Deal was bigger when you adjust for inflation. Fifth, it was a big help to our sagging economy, and we should've done a second round of it.

But I do agree, the President deserves credit for getting the stimulus passed. So does the President -- the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka the stimulus) is featured prominently in the video above.

>> ^lantern53:

First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.


That's because Republicans in Congress came within seconds of forcing the US to default on its debt.

>> ^lantern53:

First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.


No argument from me on this one. Is this supposed to be a bad thing?

>> ^lantern53:

First President to repeat the Holy Quran tells us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.


I suspect if we check the record really carefully we can find Bush (Jr. or Sr.) saying something similar, but in any case is this supposed to be a bad thing?

President Obama's record is one he should be proud of. I was hoping he'd be able to do more, but honestly I underestimated the totally craven hostile bullshit that having a black Democrat in the White House brought out of the Confederacy. Excuse me, I mean the "Republican party."

Did they mention these?

First President to preside over a cut to the credit-rating of the United States.
First President to violate the War Powers Act.
First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
First President to defy a Federal Judge's court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law.
First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.
First President to spend a trillion dollars on 'shovel-ready' jobs when there was no such thing as 'shovel-ready' jobs.
First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.
First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.
First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.
First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.
First President to terminate America's ability to put a man in space.
First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly spoke-out on the reasons for their rate increases.
First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state it is allowed to locate a factory.
First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.
First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-Corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
First President to appoint 45 czars to replace elected officials in his office.
First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office, 90 to date.
First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.
First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.
First President to go on multiple global 'apology tours'.
First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends paid for by the taxpayer.
First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.
First President to repeat the Holy Quran tells us the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.
First President to take a 17 day vacation.