Welcome to Gaia! ::

it's good to hear reassurng news. you guys all know I'm a worry-wort.

anywho, I'mgonna be out of town for the weekend; either camping at a Boo party, or else hanging with a friend. depends, realy.

as it should be, in my opinion. life's not worthe living if it's easy or free. and we clearly need conflict in our lives for there to be any purpose to it at all.

I do hope you get your farming business up and running successfully. smile I've always personally wanted to run a Goat Ranch. also, to raise a Breeding Bull. >.> but that's more of a pride thing.

:hugs.: sorry dear. sad it could still be way worse. I wish I could help you out, but truth is there are alot of folks I wish I could help right now and can't.

if it helps, at all, the situation should be leastway a little managable. the worste part is just that it's on your birthday.

but, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! cause damnit, I'm gonna wish that on you anyway! gonk

I feel selfish when I post here sometimes, but it's hard to know what to contribute.

I'm really wishing for the best for you, Scarlet. That sounds so incredibly stressful among other things. It's so much to be thrown at you, and uncertainty sucks more than anything.

I hope your birthday at least is good to you.
Again, you have my well wishes and I'm sorry that's all I can offer. -hug-

The United States isn't a fair country. Neither is it free. Sure, if you have the right amount of money in your bank account you can do pretty much whatever you want and even law enforcement leaves you alone. However, if you're just like everybody else, trying to get by, they'll fight you every step of the way. They prey on the poor and keep them down so they don't gain any power and influence. It's why the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer, because people who become successful also become influential, and lord knows people like the assholes on Wall Street wouldn't want anybody to usurp their power and influence.

To be honest, I fully understand why some people have resorted to a life of crime just to get by. Law-abiding citizens gets shafted left and right, so I can see where some might call it easier to commit criminal acts like bank robbery so they can get out of the rat race. I'm not saying you should do that, Scarlet, just musing a bit.

Finally, I think I speak for a large number of people when I say I wish we had a Che Guevara-like icon in this country to try and bring a reform to this greedy country.

The Occupy movement has a very strong following here in Maine, especially around the city of Portland. The last time we were in the downtown area there was a long line of people who were part of the movement, marching up the sidewalk with their signs held high.

The problem is that, like you said, the mainstream media outlets are bias and obviously won't report on anything that doesn't comply with their political agendas, or more appropriately, the political agendas of the corporations that are sponsoring the media outlets. Have you heard about the stories coming from cities like New York, with unlawful arrests and use of excessive force becoming commonplace at the front lines? Or about that rich fellow who, according to the news articles, was upset with the protesters and showed it by driving his car into the crowd and killing two people?

The internet is this world's last bastion of freedom of expression, because we all know that mainstream media can't be relied upon to get the job done. That's the reason why companies are pushing so much for the abolition of net neutrality, because they want to be able to control the content that gets posted online, so anybody who has any dissent can be silenced easier.

Once Occupy Wall Street becomes violent, then the s**t hits the fan. The problem is in this country that, for every intelligent, free-thinking individual living here, there is a hundred brainwashed sheep who have no qualms about being spoonfed their information by televised media outlets which all have bipartisan leanings. Of course the news outlets aren't going to do anything that would make their sponsors angry, and even if they did, the companies would appeal to the FCC and have people removed.

Peaceful protest isn't going to solve any problems, because those in Washington stand to lose a lot of money if they don't give into the demands of the wealthy elite of this country. As much as I hate to admit it, I honestly believe that the only revolution or protest that could work is one where the American people physically remove the corrupted elements of our government, and stop allowing people with lots of money to have more power and influence than those who don't.

It's like during Che Guevara's time. He moved to Guatemala because he saw the steps being taken there to give the land back to the people, the peasants of the country. President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán wanted to do away with the latifundia system, so he seized 225,000 acres of land from the United Fruit Company to give back to the people. Problem is, John Foster Dulles, then Secretary of State, who was not only a stockholder of but also an attorney to the United Fruit Company, responded to the land reform by sending CIA-trained soldiers into the country to install a dictatorship that would support the United States. Che understood the virtue of a country's citizens standing up for their rights, violently if they had to. More people in this country should, I think, do the same.

I'm more worried about our own government turning on us before I'm worried about elements outside this country coming in when they sense our weakness. I'm waiting for the day they enact martial law and try to repress the rights of the American people for the sake of so-called 'security.' We live in a society that is becoming more and more Protectionist as the weeks go by, and if it's left unabated we won't be allowed to do much of anything, because those in government, who will claim to know better than we do because they are where they are, are going to whatever they can to wrest any and every bit of control from the American people. Then we'll be no better off than if the Third Reich had never gone away.