I watched the State of the Union Address last night and i have to say over all i think it is one of the best speeches hes given in his time as president. "In a whirlwind of change and hope and peril, our faith is sure, our resolve is firm, and our union is strong." good to hear but i think no matter what if we were going to hell in a hand basket thats what he would open with so you cant put too much stock in that but im willing to believe and at least it was well said. Now the first half of this speech was full of the normal gobble de gook thats always in these speeches, all the domestic crap thats not really going to happen, pushing up plans of reform for healthcare, tax cuts, social security, and unempoyment. Everything we want to hear and everything we know wont really change that much. However after that we were given what i think was a well laid out plea to america to get behind the president and to support our armed services in a war that we can almost certainly say is coming and coming soon.

"The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving." When he said this, i think everyone there, everyone watching, stoped for a moment and was captured. As i look at the words there, they dont seem to be anything to great just a sentance, but the power put into them by the President was true and his demenor was full of nothing but determination. The President, standing behind his podium at times remined me of what a man loks like just before fight, his eyes fixed and focused clear of everything but whats infront of him, his shoulders set back holding his chest out, a man ready to defend any attack that may come and to follow that defence up with a quick and powerful attack of his own.

"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?" I couldent have said it any better, noone could, what so many people are trying to explain to all these "well he hasent done anything yet" assholes. Look its simple, saddam is a lunatic, noone not even the tree huggingest liberal would disagree with that. We know WE KNOW! that iraq has the ability to destroy lots and lots of people, should we wait like we did with hitler for saddam to kill 6 million people befor we decide its ok to do something about it? should we wait till the VX gas is spreading through Iserael or he launches sarin gas on our troops waiting in sarounding countries before we attack? Should we wait for a small nucular explosion in Los Angeles? New York? Washington? why? Because of the idea of fair play? I hate to break it to you but this isent like anything esle weve ever had to deal with before. this is more like a global street fight than a war, no rules, whatever it takes to win. thats how saddam thinks. hes not the kid who wants to fight a fair one with you, hes the kid that jumps you with 10 other kids in the dark from behind and beats your ass into the ground with baseball bats except its not bats and kids its nucular weapons and terrorists. The best, really the only way to deal withs kids like that is to take them out, beat them so bad that anyone who was following them, or thinking about following them is too afraid. Thats how you beat a bully, and really thats all saddam is a big global bully. i hate bullies.

So if you dident catch it, or wanna read it over for yourself heres the link to the speech. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html 

The lyrics im about to post are from killswitch engage, never befor have they had more meaning to me.

Rise Inside

rise inside, free your mind
raise your fist to signify
we stand in defiance of hatred and deception
if i stand alone i will fight for you
the time has come to make a difference
why have we forsaken love
the time has come to raise our voices
so rise up and fight with me
embrace what we have
it might be the last time in this life we will rise
if we find the strength to unify
hatred is a weakness, you become the victim
i believe love will overcome
time has come to make a difference
why have we forsaken one another

If i stand alone, i'll fight for you!~KsE

948 out

Thanks for the response, Stone.

I actually wasn't trying to argue, especially not with a point (which is dodgy, at best) like, "no evidence of weapons...". I was just quoting that from one of the more recent articles I'd read. The reports from Mr. Blix and that other guy with the odd name, from what I read, are saying that so far the inspectors have found no evidence that Iraq has restarted its weapons production, which is much different from "no evidence of anything". I haven't read the report in full yet, but it's definitely apparent that the Iraqi government is being shifty and deceitful.

I'm not denying the existence of the weapons, either, but I just think we should wait for the vilifying evidence against Iraq so that we can have the support of the other countries. You know, just so we can say that our choice was completely correct. Either we get the evidence or Iraq bars us again like they did in '98 and we attack them either way. I'm not against the war, since what you mentioned about the oil (something I've never read in the Times and never thought about on my own since oil isn't a big concern of mine at the moment) will be incredibly useful in addition to the other items and also since Hussein is a pile of human feces, in general.

But man, if you're having arguments with people who say things like you put down, I think you need to start staying inside more and talking to less people. Hehe. =)

Nah, I know that's mostly the international set, but still. Phew. Do I ever get that far out there (aside from the "war is wrong!" stuff)?

Oh, by the way, how about them Raiders?! Hell of a score to get beaten by when the team you're playing against is known almost exclusively for defense! Oh well. Back to the drawing board! Ah, man, only three more months left until my sport begins. Should be a good season.

Knaa'mean?

Rereading your post, maybe you didn't expect the strength of response, dunno.

Anyways, even the idea that a friendship of mine could be so illusory as to be lessened by a change in political beliefs offends me. If you think I'm a lesser person for believing what I do, then that would be offensive, although the idea of that is unbelievably absurd - too much confidence for that to effect me in any way.

I am, I guess, a bit worried that the forcefulness of my beliefs makes it hard to talk to me - I know that's, this, is at times, at least, true. You used to be able to talk to me when you agreed, now that we don't, it's not fun being around me, or something along those lines - discomfiting, and it's a thing I worry about, particularly when I'm surrounded by people who don't particularly like conflict.

Maybe it's not really any of that, I dunno - I like me now a lot more than I liked me then, for good reasons, you not,. Ah, fuck, whatever, you'll come around eventually.

Plus:

Me ❤️ Confrontation

All your base are belong to us.

Okay, so, I've been thinking. There's this news show on Fox News called Hannity and Colmes. Sean Hannity, a normal looking white guy, is the conservative voice on the show. Alan Colmes, the other one, is the show's liberal. They face off, have discussions, so on. Here are some pictures of Alan Colmes:

Fair and unbiased my ass. The man's a fucking goblin. Fox goes out to get the left wing counterpoint on one of their shows, and hires a man who looks like he eats children, who could make babies cry. They're sneaky, I tell you, sneaky - trying to find the most repellent person possible to represent the left.

Stone

Well.. shouldn't those in the religious crowd out there accept cloning? You aren't cloning souls right? So either the clone will have no soul or will be a normal baby with its own fresh soul from that big jar of souls up there. The only problem there is what happens when you don't have a soul.. are you this evil entity that unmercifully kills everything in sight, or don't you function? Who cares.. I think its mostly bullshit. Hell, if it isn't God's will.. why would He let us invent this shit anyway? (like that? I said 'He' and not 'he')

Then there is the 'every baby needs to be loved' crowd.. maybe you adopt that child and you love it.. but if you can't love it because its part of you, do you love it the way someone loves their pet dog or cat? Adopting a baby can sound like adopting a stray from the local pound. Why breed dogs if there are strays?

As far as genetic variation goes.. it shouldn't matter. If your clone has kids, think of it more like you having kids. Genetically the clones kids would also be your kids. What's a few extra kids.. how about the guy who has 17 kids with his 11 wives in Salt Lake City, or that time you fucked a few sluts in the back lounge in Reno and got one of them pregnant.

At the very least, your clone will be quite different to you. Could be very very very different if you believe we're all a product of our environment, something I see as at the very least partly true.

Someone tell me why cloning is bad.. I can't think of any real reasons.

Hmm, I don't know who to agree with on this one. Lio makes some excellent points, and so does Calliander. It's interesting to debate cloning. It's not necessarily important in any of our lives, but it's an issue nonetheless. Calliander, it seems, doesn't want to discuss it because he's already developed his old solid opinion on it, and that's fine.

But the issue DOES still remain, whether anyone feels it should be debated or not. Whether cloning is "good" or "bad" is not for me to decide, and I will not get into a debate about the "moral" implications of it. But there ARE implications of it, and serious issues could arise from the abuse of that kind of technology. The majority of us being Star Wars fans, should realize that. I can see where cloning is absolutely acceptable. Allowing someone to have a child of their own blood is definitely an acceptable situation. But then again, people would argue (and I might be one of them depending on the day) that there are plenty of innocent children already alive who could use the love of good parents (of which there are so few). There's nothing wrong with adopting a child. Whether the child is your blood or not makes no difference. Being a "mommy" or "daddy" goes FAR beyond blood relation. You adopt a baby boy or girl, and raise it as your own, that child is YOURS. YOU'RE the one he or she will call mommy or daddy for the rest of his or her life, even if he or she does decide to one day search for his or her "blood" parents.

Cloning existing people, however, this will cause issues. I don't want two of me. I can't think of ANYONE who would want two of me or two of anyone else, for that matter. First, there's me. Gatekeeper of The Dark Side, with 21 years of my own life and experiences. Now pretend I have a clone of me. What the hell do I DO with it? It's highly doubtful that physically cloning me will also clone my personality, experiences, by entire non-physical being. Right now, from what I've heard and read, cloning can only recreate exact genetic duplicates, not exact physical duplicates. They cloned a cat, but the clone is a kitten, or something like that. Having a baby me would cause hardly any problems at all. It'll be a new form of life who can grow up and have his own life and experiences and all that. But imaging what would happen if the technology gets to a level where we can EXACTLY clone people, physically and mentally. I'm left with someone EXACTLY the same with me up until the point the cloning took place. You all have to admit, that would be kind of fucked up. Kind of neat, but kind of fucked up.

God has no place in this discussion. A serious discussion can't be based on something that may or may not exist, and I don't want to get into that right now. Whether God would "want" something or not is irrelevant. Human beings being able to do something is what's relevant. Certain types of cloning definitely can upset a balance that nature is usually in control of. It's okay, grandma. If you die, we'll just clone you, and then we can keep doing that forever. I think that'd be bad. B A D. Bad. There's enough people on this tiny little rock of a planet already. People need to be born and people need to die without interference, or there quite possibly could be serious repercussions. Someone loses an arm, clone them a new one of their own, sure, that's fine. I need a kidney. Beautiful, take some of the cells from my good kidney and make me one. I think this kind of cloning is excellent and beneficial. Anything further than that might be a little TOO much. Then again, I could be wrong.

So Speaks The Gatekeeper...So It Shall Be!

I've never posted a news post before, and I wanted to. Here's some fucking news for you all, my alarm clock sucks shit.

About 2 years ago, I think (maybe Pappy can correct me, for some reason he will know the exact date) Pappy and I needed alarm clocks. So, we went to this shitty as dead mall in Hadley, or whatever... It's about 3 minutes away from UMass. All I wanted was a cheap, working, alarm clock. So, we come to this real piece of crap store named Rex... it's one of those stores with HIGH PRESSURE SALESPEOPLE, thank god I'm only there for an alarm clock. The thing cost $4.66 before tax, or something, so it was what I was looking for.

I've fucking hated the thing since the day I bought it. The only good thing about it is that it picks up radio stations from Hartford that I sometimes want to listen to. For some reason, the genuises at GE decided to design this alarm clock with not only a snooze button, which lets you snooze for 9 minutes (why not 10?) but a DELICIOUS "sleep" button. Heres what the sleep button does - it lets you sleep for an HOUR. What kind of motherfucker sets their alarm knowing that they will have an HOUR of sleeping time they will want to snooze through? Just fucking set the alarm for when you want to get up, or stop being such a lazy bitch and get up and re-set the alarm if you need a fucking hour more of rest.

So, anyway, the buttons on the fucking thing are identicle, and in a hazy, usually substance induced coma of a sleep, you just reach out and press one of the buttons.. Usually I'm good enough to hit the right button, which lets me sleep for 9 more minutes. I took a fucking knife to the SLEEP button, so that it's all sharp and shit, so that I wont press it, if you're wondering how I am lucky enough to hit the snooze button every time.

Well, now the alarm clock has given me its final dick fucking.. the snooze button now lets me snooze for an UNDETERMINED amount of time.. that's right, you hit it, and the fucking thing never goes off again. I'm thinking thats how it was designed, to make the alarm clock go off after a random number of seconds, and that I was just lucky for a while that those seconds happened to be 9 minutes worth.. Those GE faggots sure can design a mean piece of electronics.

So, with any luck, I will get to k-mart or walmart or some fucking mart that isnt REX and I will purchase another alarm clock.. Probably another piece of shit, but definetly not this one, and all will be well again.. I have to be in at 8:30 at my new job, which sucks enough ass on its own without having to worry about the alarm clock not going off.

FlyingTim - To quickly answer your question, I lost my sense of humor somewhere around MMMBop. And we cool, but aint nobody gonna fuck wit my bitches.

Oh, and I'm as guilty as english major bashing as the rest of you, but I think that some of them actually do work, and shit.. I don't know, FlyingTim is busy with papers and reading and shit, and I don't see him playing frisbee. I know my lit class sucks the soul out of me.. and I fucking hate every second of it. But, I do see alot of english major motherfuckers doing nothing all day.. The same goes for art history majors.. I listen to these annoying little fucks bitch about their projects and papers all the time... They make me want to KILL KILL KILL.

I missed my first class due to that fucking alarm clock, I should go before I miss my second.

Heres your second piece of news, you news hungry fags - This weekend is daylight saving time... During that hour that we get to repeat, go fuck the dog or something.. You can just claim to your drunk friends that it never happened, since you wouldnt have had enough time to do it otherwise. Work the dog over real well, I'm sure he could use it, especially after all the times you come home from work or home from a date and kick the shit out of it.

J-Ditty

Wish number one, calliander can you please decide weather you are a proud american or a flag burning asshole cus im confused, every other post is about a contradicting opinion of whats going on. find a spot in the woods and take a shit.

Wish number two, that people dont start to think that the "northern alliance" are a good group of guys, honestly there just about as bad as the taliban is but 1)they dont harbor bin ladin and 2)they are not the talibon. so were going to use them for a little while but dont think for one minute that there like the struggling hero of the middle east that wants to right all the wrongs, they simply want the power of the talibon thats all nothing more nothing less, they have no "stance against terror" there just some fuckers with a few more guns than the pesants and a few less than the talibon so fuck them too.

other than that, flying tim is fucking right we need to get off our little bitch asses and stand up for our country, i mean, if we dont who will? isent that a scary thought? goodnight and goodluck or something.

I'm ranting because I'm procrastinating, you see, the fine educational institution that Southern Connecticut State University is, has deemed that we don't need tomorrow, the National Holiday of Columbus Day, off, like the rest of the goddam planet. So I now have homework to do. Plus, I'm sick, and my nose is leaking like a fucking sieve. At any rate, he's my post.

I read Calliander's post this afternoon, and if left me puzzled. It was as if he was using our friend James as a justification for his more than liberal views on the war. I'd like to clarify a few things, if I may.

When James signed up to join the army, he did so to get money for school, like thousands of other in his position. Instead of taking a menial and brain numbing job, he decided on the noble task of defending the country. When he did that, he knew that there was a possibility that he was going to be called to arms to do his job as part of the military. So just because one of your friends is now involved with the war, you can't call the whole thing off because of it. James knew the risks. Deal with it. He is.

We Americans, especially our generation, have become rather lazy in the patriotism department, and we take many of our freedoms for granted, because they have never been challenged. And it's because of people like James that will most likely remain so. We can't sit back and dismantle our military because we're America, and no one would dare challenge us. We need to be aware that there are many other countries on this planet, who live very different lifestyles than we do. You get an evil person like Usama bin Laden, and this is what happens. We educated him at Harvard, and he then educated his own people in the terrorist training camps. Using religion, he got his followers to commit these acts. If he was a real believer in what he preaches, he would have been on one of those planes. He's a fraud. By bastardizing Islam, he tells his followers that making the ultimate sacrifice, the act of martyrdom, by damaging the people that want to end their religion, they will have earned themselves a spot in the afterlife, their heaven. Religion is not his agenda. He is protected by the Taliban, the reigning rebel group in Afghanistan, who the Afghan people fear. The majority of the Taliban's income comes from the taxation of drugs, mainly opium. Heroin and cocaine as well, who they sell to who? The United States. Not only is he killing innocent people in our country on our soil, but he is also associated with a rebel group, who also kill hundreds of innocent Afghans, that supply our country with drugs.

The war is a necsessity. It was coming. We sat on our hands when the WTC was first hit in 1993, we did nothing when the USS Kohl was hit this summer. What did we expect to happen? We played the diplomacy game. It didn't work. More of our citizens died than ever should have. You can't reason with people who tell their citizens that they can't sing or listen to music, who send their wives and children to look for mines, and who tell their women that they cannot go out unless completely covered. They beat to death an old woman who fell and accidentally exposed her ankles. The time for talking has ceased.

It should be noted that we are not attacking the country of Afghanistan, we are attacking targets inside of Afghanistan, namely terrorist training camps and air defense outfits. When the missile attacks end tonight, when the sun begins to come up there, we will begin to drop food, medecine and other supplies to the Afgan refugees. And when Usama bin Laden has been taken care of, we will move on other terrorist hotspots, such as Iraq.

I don't want to hear any more whining about this. It's not Vietnam, a place we had no business being in the first place. We were attacked on our home soil. It defands a retaliation. This is part of existing among other countries. Sometimes, others will want to topple you. And you have to defend yourself, just to keep on existing. If you have something intelligent to say against the war, then fine. I'd love to hear a well thought argument on why we shouldn't be there. Give me some options. What else can we do? Too many people say that we shouldn't be at war, but can't give another solution. It takes all kinds to make the world go around, and it takes a special kind to keep the world going around.