Statesmen lied, cheated, stole, used religion and spun the facts just as they do today. The only difference I see is the mytique has been removed because people are not as gullable over all as they were many years ago, that and the Politicians of today can not own slaves.

The Constituation was for Whites, if you happened to be of any other color see as sub human you wore a slag iron collar and ended up put to the whip for any ryme or even with lack of reason.

What put us where we are today is apithy and that is based in the fact that people have forgotten that it IS a government of the people by the people and for the people. Not Corporations, not foreign interests, not for future book deals or public speaking tours and definitly not future employment once a politician is out of office.

It is a catch 22 in the USA as far as the political machine goes. Congress is charged to be the voice of the people and yet they are forced to toe the line draw in the sand by one of the very key elements they are charged to keep in check from taking advantage of the people.

Yes we are ruled today and the person sitting on the throne was hand picked without a doubt, but we are no less ruled by anyone else who happens to find their way to that same throne. The political system is over bloated, broken, limping, wheezing and living on a promise and a prayer. The only difference between the two ruling parties is that one will smile and kiss you while doing the deed and the other brings along a cheerleading squad while it just knocks you down and rapes you (the people) with all it's friends and backers watching with glee cheering them on and then convinces you that it was not only what you needed, but what you wanted.

Expansion of Government on one path lends to corruption, squandering, manipulations, waste and little being done while that same little is held up as some kind of great acheivment. Conversly Privatization only lends to adding a few making monitary gains while again taking what little positive returns came from the other sides efforts and spreading it among a few.

Education for example in Florida has been totally screwed beyond belief with the voucher program and the leave all children still in public school behind. It is a scam, period.

The Death Tax is about as stupid a spin that anyone could have bought but people did buy it in mass. How mny people here will feel the crunch of an enharitence tax? But all you do is rename it the Death Tax, oh boy everyone dies...

Spin...

Hate to say it, but until people wake up we get what we deserve and that is just about where it stays...

Want change? vote...

either way, for anyone one you like, but vote...

Because the more time goes by since 9/11 the more the USA is starting to look as if it slides into real Communisim. Where the only ones who have a thing speak of, rights, food, toilet paper and much much more, are those who either are the government or those who have just a bit more than those with nothing that work for the government.

In My Opinion

anyway...

Bangkokboy - I agree - doom sayers come and go, and it's been shown that some people at all times in history have been convinced that they live in the "end times". It seems to be part of the human condition. Applying those predictions to now rather than any other time is similar to reading Nostrodamus to decide which horse to bet on....

I'd be interested though to see alternative translations from the "original" Sanskrit besides the version written in 1985 - just because it's always intersting to see how people tend to "translate" into terms relevant to the world they live in, thus making such things seem more relevant...yet when you go back to the source, it's often open to very different translations which would make them seem completely irrelevant.

Sput has spent too long "debunking" pseudo-science to take any one such translation at face value

or as a means of controlling the masses, with such as, oh I dunno, the religious books of the world for instance

....you might say that, but I couldn't possibly comment....

DavidK, it's interesting how you said we are 'living our final years'. I just read about something that is freakishly along those lines. Ancient Mayas (or Aztecs) developed a calendar based on the stars, that calendar was made in ~300 B.C., it was accurate and predated to 5000 B.C., but the catch is...that calendar has an end. The story says it's end is the marking of the end of the current life age, and the beginning of the new one, that date is December 23rd, 2012. Now, the real catch is how would that end come to be...but that can be saved for a new topic. Hehe...

Just an interesting bit of coincidental information.

Ironically Hus, it's exactly 3200 days until the end of the "long count" of the Mayan calendar... and your mention of it comes in post #32... what a coincidence

It's worth pointing out that the "end" of the Mayan calendar is also a beginning of a new age. Just as the pre-Colombian Hopi stories of the "Great Purification" talk of the end of this "sun" and the beginning of a new one. They don't give a date like the Maya but they say

"First they will bring back pieces of the Moon which will upset the balance and unleash disastrous forces."

"Near the day of the Great Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky."

"The Purification will begin shortly after humans build a great house in the sky. By then there will be fires everywhere and greedy, selfish, power-mad leaders, internal wars."

In Astrology there is the beginning of the age of Aquarius which is supposed to start soon (no one seems to know when these ages change, there's such a murky boundary because of all the overlapping influences I guess).

Debunk all you want, it doesn't matter, no one is trying to convince anyone of anything. It's just some cool info that all seems to coincide with this 5,000 year period the Hindus called Kali Yuga. The best estimates I've seen for the start of this age are somewhere around 3000 BC.

My favorite doomsayer prophecies are the environmental scientists (the real ones, not the ones hired by the big polluter Corps) making wild predictions back in the sixties, around the time Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring was released. They were saying that if we didn't make some serious changes in our use of resources we'd be seeing irreversible damage in about thirty years. Look around you, there is no question we have damaged our environment with potentially disastrous consequences, like the ice-age that is being predicted for Great Britain in the next 10 years or so, or the loss of over 85% of the "food" species of fish in the oceans.

One of my favorite quotes:

"Our problem results from acting like cowboys on a limitless frontier when in truth we inhabit a living spaceship with a finely balanced life-support system."
David C. Korten

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...Ive read essays/articles recently that suggest that 'Global Warming' may be a 'myth'...
According to them, 'ice ages' and vice-versa are caused not so much by 'greenhouse gasses' but rather by Sunspot activity, or lack therof.

As far as 'the end is near'...

Anyone remember the thread a while back about 'John Titor'? (Guy who supposedly came from the future to 'warn' us about 'disasterous events'...then dissappeared without a trace) https://www.wincustomize.com/msgboard.asp?BID=WC&id=187021#187915 ...According to him, next year, we're supposed to have another 'civil-war' here in the US...

Like I said in the other thread (no rhyme intended)...Ill believe it when I see it.

http://www.globalwarming.org/

http://www.climatehotmap.org/

http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/index.html

http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/kids/

some links on Global Warming... including the EPA's

I guess this kind of fits in this thread now... The closest "near-miss" ever recorded in an asteroid fly-by is going to occur in about 2 hours from now Recently Discovered Near-Earth Asteroid Makes Record-breaking Approach to Earth

It was discovered yesterday...

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...don't get me started on global warming (and particularly Bush's cavalier attitude with his oil barron buddies)...I got hooked for about a year contibuting to the BBC science forums, arguing issues with some people on global warming who try who insist that it isn't real (turns out the "research" they rely on for this argument is all sponsored ultimately by the oil companies when you look into the financing of the research institutes and the individuals writing the papers).

....and while we're at it, don't get me started on homeopathy, ghosts, UFO's, miracles, intelligent design, sand "growinging into pebbles", dinosaurs being fossils because they used to eat limestone when it was soft, or Islamic lizards on Venus....all subjects I got hopelessly drawn into discussing there with various degrees of - .....I was going to say "deluded crackpots", but then there might be some people here who beleive in some of this pseudo-scientific babble so I'll just shut up...

I saw on the news yesterday that we will have, in the eastern United States, an invasion of locusts. It's already started in Australia. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/australia_locust_plague
Now what does that sound like?

Does it always do that in Australia? I know they're here in the spring, just not that bad.

don't get me started on global warming (and particularly Bush's cavalier attitude with his oil barron buddies)

What does Bush have to do with global warming? Did we just start using oil when Bush was elected? I forgot that when clinton was elected we all switched from oil to solar power. All the wacko leftists and enviro-terrorists do is complain about oil except offer no alternatives except "conservation".

All the wacko leftists and enviro-terrorists do is complain about oil except offer no alternatives except "conservation".

Wacko leftist?

Complain?

Offer no alternatives other than conservation?

That is so moronic a statement it is sad and not even laughable...

...........

Enviro-Terrorists?

Yeah there are definitely some sick pukes out there spiking trees and such. Just like there are Religious-Terrorists blowing up clinics and shooting people dead in the name of God.

If your going to go off, don't go off half cocked, and you'd best look around before throwing stones because someone might have not opened any of the Glass Houses windows before hand...