What was all that stuff they always babble on about freedom and fighting tyranny?.... The GOP is an extremist organization, no different than the Taliban- violent, misogynist, anti-intellectual and education, mono-religious, and antidemocratic. It’s high time that the US national security apparatus begin approaching it as such.

There is little difference between "Sharia Law" that repulses them and the fascist "Christian Nationalism" that they are hell-bent to install but to the Taliban's credit there is a slight difference between the GOP and the Taliban. The Taliban allows abortion if the woman’s life is in danger and in other situations.

laowhy86, who made the underlying video, lists his sources in his YouTube description as:

* https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/health-china-bgi-dna/
* https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/08/its-high-time-germany-fund-and-fix-its-military/159149/
* https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/Directors-Select-Articles/Nanatechnology/
* https://nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/scientific_risk_assessment_genetic_weapon_systems06_cover.pdf

I've not checked the video's claims against his sources, but didn't hear anything about bioweapons or the PRC/CCP's interest in them that seemed surprising.

The video did strike me as partisan: I have no doubt that the USG is also working on weaponizing precision medicine. While I don't like partisan presentations, I recognize that may be acceptable to keep a topic tractable (thus, "Chinese genetic bioweapons" v "all genetic bioweapons").

I think this is a very important topic, so would like to see the _ideas_ discussed - not just our political differences exposed.

Can anyone expressing concerns about the original video indicate which _ideas_ they think are incorrect or overstated? (I'm not interested in the partisan aspect of the video: I'm aware of that already.)

No LOL from EP1. But it wasn't a bad thing to me because I feel the constant panning of all things Star Trek ever since the reboot movie from the die-hard fanbase is making the ST franchise extremely depressing. So it's high time to try to inject something fun into the ST universe.... even if it's just OK comedy. At least I don't have to take ST seriously all the time.

Fucking kids. Stop breeding, people. It's high time we let the androids take over from here.

Awesome to have real concrete information presented in a way that seems very distinct from what you'd get from sources on the far ends of the spectrum, like High Times or the DEA.

I'm quite surprised that smoking pot seems to carry an increased risk of bronchitis, like tobacco, but apparently NOT lung cancer (unlike tobacco). Are the carcinogens in tobacco cigarettes all from additional ingredients? Could people be growing their own tobacco and rolling their own cigarettes and avoiding one of the biggest health consequences? If so, shouldn't there be a market for tobacco cigarettes without any added ingredients?


I have never smoked pot OR tobacco. A lot of my reasons for avoiding either come down to a hatred of and pretty real sensitivity to / negative reactions to exposure to smoke. Some of my bias against that transfers into bias against pot in general, since smoking it is the default method.

At the same time, it seems ridiculous to me that pot is double-secret schedule 1 illegal while alcohol and tobacco are both perfectly legal. Especially when it seems apparent (although I don't really know what I'm talking about since I've never used it myself) that the intoxicating effects of pot are comparable to but generally LESS dangerous than alcohol, and the negative health consequences of pot are FAR LESS than either alcohol OR tobacco.

Getting real facts and knowledge out there like this video is doing has to have a positive effect on that very questionable policy.

Blacked out
Pop queen, amphetamine
The screams crashed into silence

Tapped out
Doused in the gasoline
The high times going timeless

Decadence
Death of the innocence
The pathway starts to spiral

Infamy
All for publicity
Destruction going viral

Light it up
Ah, light it up
Another hit erases all the pain
Bulletproof
Ah, kill the truth
You’re falling, but you think you’re flying high
High again

Sold your soul
Built a higher wall
Yesterday
Now you’re thrown away

Same rise and fall
Who cares at all?
Seduced by fame
A moth into the flame

Twisted
Backstabbing wicked
The delusion absolution

Perjurer
Fame is the murderer
Seduce you into ruin

Light it up
Ah, light it up
Another hit erases all the pain
Bulletproof
Ah, tell the truth
You’re falling, but you think you’re flying high
High again

Sold your soul
Built the higher wall
Yesterday
Now you’re thrown away

Same rise and fall
Who cares at all?
Seduced by fame
A moth into the flame
Burn

Guarantee your name, you go and kill yourself
The vultures feast around you still
Overdose on shame and insecurity
If one won’t do that fistful will

Death scene
Black hearse the limousine
A grave filled with seduction

Vaccine
Fame does the murdering
She builds up for destruction

So light it up
Ah, light it up
Another hit erases all the pain
Bulletproof
Ah, no excuse
You’re falling, but you think you’re flying high
High again

Sold your soul
Built the higher wall
Yesterday
Now you’re thrown away

Same rise and fall
Who cares at all?
Seduced by fame
A moth into the flame

Addicted to the
Fame

Gotta love Krugman.. not as an economist but as a world class hypocrite rivaling Molière's Tartuffe. He's getting paid $25,000 a month to do zero work, while calling for the end of income inequality. <scoff> I wonder if he's ready to give up 70% of that to the federal government like he says all "wealthy" ought to do.

The headline might as well read, "Rich economist constantly holds forth on the evils of income inequality, while...." You get the point. Here's the back-of-the-envelope math on his recent windfall:

Not counting the $20,000 in non-transferable travel budget, moving bennies, etc. that they offered him, CUNY is paying Dr. Krugman a nine-month salary of $225,000. I presume he won't be working summer semesters, so let's say that's all his salary from CUNY for the year. Now normal tenured senior professors at CUNY make at most $116,364 a year. Adjuncts at CUNY make about $3,000 or so per course; you can teach at most 9 hours a semester. So let's say you're an adjunct maxed out at a 3/3 load; you make about $18,000 a year for that. So if Dr. Krugman wanted, he could pick out 6 adjuncts at CUNY and *double* their yearly income, just by giving away the amount of money he personally makes *over and above what the best-paid senior faculty make*. If he were willing to do the job (*) for a nominal fee (as you may know, Prof. Krugman has another line of work), he could literally pick some lucky adjunct at CUNY and double their entire year's income -- *every month of the year.

And honestly, @radx, what did the "progressives" expect would happen? This so-called "Democracy" can never be anything other than an "oligarchy," if not a governance by "mob rule" (and sometimes a combination of the two). If "Democracy" is the "least bad" kind of state/government possible as some (like Mark Twain) have claimed, then it's high time "the people" climbed out of the dark ages and lived without rulers, altogether.

The resultant "chaos" that would ensue would not be any worse (and in fact far better) than the kind of unintended chaos that results from the centralized power structures of state governance.

------

*Which, let's be clear, involves no teaching load, and seems to mainly mean that maybe he'll drop by the office every few months to share his brilliance with whoever happens to be there. The point for CUNY is almost certainly to purchase some of the aura from his name on the letterhead

High-time to get out and dodge some REAL cars then...

Or alternatively, "According to Independent Researchers from High Times Magazine..."

This video was nice because it seemed less like propaganda from either side, and took shots at both. So much of the talk about marijuana out there comes either from the War on Drugs or High Times extremes; nice to see something more in the middle.

High time for me to go cuddle and hybernate.

I spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown
While living in Norway
I felt the darkness of the black metal bands
But being such fawn of a man
I didn't burn down any old churches
Just slept way too much, just slept

My mind rejects the frequency
It's static craziness to me
Is it a solar fever?

The TV man is too loud
Our plane is sleeping on a cloud
You turn the dial, I'll try and smile
We've eaten plastic weather
This family sticks together
We will escape from the south to the west side

My mind rejects the frequency
It's just verbosity to me

I spent the winter with my nose buried in a book
While trying to restructure my character
Because it had become vile to its creator
And through many dreadful nights
I lay praying to a saint that nobody has heard of
And waiting for some high times to come again

My mind rejects the frequency
It's static craziness to me
Is it a solar fever?

The TV man is too loud
Our plane is sleeping on a cloud
You turn the dial, I'll try and smile
We've eaten plastic weather
This family sticks together
We will escape from the south to the west side

My mind rejects the frequency
It's just verbosity to me

Dirty old shadow, stay away
Don't play your games with me
I am older now, I see the way you operate
If you don't hurt me then you die

My mind rejects the frequency
It's static craziness to me
Is it a solar fever?

The TV man is too loud
Our plane is sleeping on a cloud
You turn the dial, I'll try and smile
We've eaten plastic weather
This family sticks together
We will escape from the south to the west side

My mind rejects the frequency
It's just verbosity to me

I've never had pot, or any other illegal drug for that matter. I have never smoked or chewed tobacco, and I actually didn't drink alcohol until I turned 21, and only very rarely since then.

I don't really have any interest in it. I *hate* cigarette smoke, so the primary method of consumption (smoking) is repellant to me. With regards to alcohol, a light buzz is a somewhat good sensation for me but I strongly dislike the feeling of being drunk. I don't mean being hung over, I mean that when I am drunk I can tell that my brain isn't operating at peak efficiency and it just bothers me. That minor positive feeling I get with having 1-2 drinks honestly doesn't justify the cost of alcohol vs other beverages, and that is before the risk of drinking too much and the discomfort of being drunk.

I don't mean to push any of that on anyone -- I know and am friends with a lot of people who like getting drunk, quite a few that like to smoke, and some that smoke pot. I just mention it to present my perspective.

The thing that bothers me about most discussion about pot is that you only hear from the two opposite extremes. You've got your narc ATF-types that tell you that pot is highly addictive, it takes otherwise productive people and makes they lazy and apathetic, it is a surefire gateway to stronger drugs, it ruins lives, etc. etc. Then you've got the High Times-types that tell you that it cures every affliction known to mankind, it has no negative effects whatsoever, and that we might as well grind it up and put it in the water supply or something.

Having had no direct personal experience with it, my best guess is that pot impairs your judgement and mental faculties to a degree roughly equivalent to alcohol, possibly less so. Smoking it probably has negative health consequences roughly similar to smoking tobacco, but probably a little bit less bad -- for one thing, there are probably many more people who smoke a pack or two of cigarettes per day than people who smoke an equivalent number of joints. Less inhaled smoke probably means less detriment to health. In terms of addictiveness, it appears to me that pot is far less addictive than either alcohol OR tobacco.

Combine all that stuff together, and I don't understand why alcohol and tobacco are legal while pot isn't. Prohibition was a disaster, and the war on drugs (particularly pot) seems to be a failure to learn from that. That being said, if a high school student brings alcohol or tobacco to school and gets caught with them, they will probably be confiscated and given some punishment. Contrary to what Rogan says, I have heard of undercover/sting operations to bust underage drinking, particularly in order to punish adults to distribute alcohol to minors. All that is fine with me, probably a good thing.

In this clip, I didn't think that Dr. Drew's statements were all that extreme towards the ATF extreme side -- at least, not really any more than Rogan's were towards the High Times side. Still, upvote for presenting his viewpoint honestly and directly. I think that we need more discussion about this, with the likely result being that we get some real information that lands somewhere in the middle.

When you look on this stage
Under all these bright lights,
You just see some guys
That you don't really like
At all, grow some balls
When you choose tonight!

But if you vote for me
You'll be doin the country
A really, really big favor--trust me, you can thank me later
When I legalize everything

I can guarantee you'll be
Much, much more happy
With me
I can satisfy all your needs
For shady activities
As you please, like

Prostitutes and drugs
Panda skin rugs
Automatic weapons
Exposin your erections

It's high time
You vote for Einstein
I'll legalize everything

Euthanizin old people
Poachin bald eagles
I'll fire the regulators
Of asbestos toilet paper

It's high time for Einstein
I'll legalize everythiiiiing

If you vote for him
You'll be helpin the nation
- God's favorite nation -
Live like the founding fathers did
And never have to bother with
Laws against anything

He can guarantee you'll be
Much more happy and free
constitutionally!
If you wanna see tyranny's demise
Realized we should legalize

Public urination
Without taxation
Buying the election
Exposin our erections!
You got it!
It's high time you vote for Einstein
I'll legalize everything:

Extreme religious sex/sects
Interspecies sex/sects
If you're wondering how i spelled those
Then you'll just have to guess ...

It's high time for Einstein
He'll legalize everythiiiiiing
Every single
Inconceivable
Smokable, drinkable thiiiiiiing

it seems that the resistance imposed by the underside of the wing in comparison to the relative lack of resistance on the topside of the wing is, in part, explanatory as to why the wind takes longer to travel the underside than it does the topside and thus generates lift of the wing due to differentials in pressure...

Correct me if this is wrong, because I think, at the age of 32 and having flown on many airplanes, I think it's "high time" I understood the physics underlying the mechanism of flight.

There's a reason Ron Paul is hated by both parties a simple one too. He doesn't play by their rules. This is exactly the kind of person we need in office someone who refuses to let partisan politics influence major decisions that effect the Nation as a whole. By keeping the people at the forefront of his mind and not his "Party".

I'm sick of all this Left/Right bullsh*t it's time to do what's right for this Nation regardless of petty political agendas.

[edit] And I know exactly how the system works thank you very much. It work through the bowels of corruption and greed.

I think it's high time we flushed the system as it is and started anew.

>> ^Fletch:

@Auger8
If you think for a second that a President as despised by his own party as the opposing party is just going to walk into the White House on Inauguration Day and "make decisions", you have no idea how the system works. He will have NO EFFECT on the status quo, and the country will go through yet another four years of political gridlock while both parties look ahead to 2016.
I absolutely share your frustrations with Obama, and he isn't getting my vote this time. I'll write in Kucinich or Warren, or somebody. What I won't do is jump onto the short bus with the rest of the Ron Paul nutcakes. Yeah, voting write-in will have the same effect as voting for Ron Paul... it throws a potential Obama vote away. I've recently said I would grudgingly vote for Obama, but I've changed my mind. "Best of a bad lot" just isn't good enough.