It's an agricultural reference...

What, you plant them in the ground? Shouldn't you wait until they're dead first?

How the hell do they have the resources to fight the "war on drugs" when they can't even keep the national parks open?!?!

It's an "essential" service to keep the market from becoming saturated and driving down prices.

WWII wasn't won in a single season. And the career minded bureaucrats that ran every war since then don't have a very good record. Hell, they did a lot to prolong WWII itself through their clumsiness and politics. Look, I fully understand your position. Self preservation runs strong, but you're taking this entirely personally. It's not personal, it's strictly business.

...under Bush...

Too young to remember Nixon, eh? If you took a little glance at history, you would see that this has been going on for 215 years. Are you people ever going to stop obsessing over Bush? Who the fuck cares? He was a mistake, our mistake. A mistake that was repeated with Obama. Don't blame other people for your failure to learn from those mistakes, which will be repeated for all the foreseeable future.

Oh please! Just stop...

Ah, but I do take responsibility for my vote. I encourage others to be careful also. I don't just follow the herd like those who reelect crooks because they look good on camera and make promises they have no intention of keeping.. It is WE the voters who are responsible. You cannot claim you are against something and then vote to keep it in place. Your post makes no sense.

And political cronies made billions from it. Now you see what these "crises" are about?

Bullshit. Peoples willful ignorance is what keeps an honest person off the ballot. They follow the bling wherever it goes. Turn off the TV and go to opensecrets, or votesmart, or better yet, congress itself. Yay! They're still up!

There is no excuse...

...ignorance is the cause, not malice.

Yeah, on the part of the voters. They are the key, no one else. The 'chains' they find themselves in are self made.

Republicans are hired "red noses" to drive just enough people to the democrats (who play "rope-a-dope") to barely win or lose an election. It presents a nice moving target to prevent fixing blame on one or the other, and the illusion of opposition. Gene Okerlund and Ronny Piper (They Live is a documentary!!) should be calling the play-by-play. We reward this behavior with our votes. They drive the markets up and down a tiny bit with these little "crises", and their friends make billions overnight. What incentive is there for them to do anything different? What a great scam!

People vote like they are told.

What, and you blame the media for that? I hope you're not one of those people who say video games have no effect on children...

Real change must be made from the outside.

Outside of what? The government? The human race? The universe? Where is this "outside"?

It takes time to identify & cultivate leaders.

When I hear 'cultivate', indoctrinate comes to mind. It doesn't take time, except for boot camp training. It takes experience. That's what promotions should be based on, not on the best, fastest, most senior pencil pusher. Young punk draftees won the war, and the guy who produced the best kill ratio got the promotion (Yeah, I know, a lot of the leadership were lifers, but they screwed up pretty bad in the early days of the war themselves, again, experience, not 20 years of marching). After the war they should have all gone home, hung their medals on the wall, and written manuals for the next generation of drill instructors. And you never know, draft them again for a tour in civilian politics. See how good they really are.

Sorry man. No careers in public service, of any kind, including the mailman. It's a service, like jury duty. Let's keep it that way. Let's make it that way first.

Funny how the subject in the subject line is so appropriate right now :-)

Why not military also? They're the greatest threat with all the damn guns and stuff. I don't want then to get attached to the job. That's my whole point. No careers, period. We don't need to make more generals for being good desk jockeys and interior decorators and pay them huge pensions. Promotions are for wartime. In peacetime, it's 'back to the farm' for all of them, and like you said, high rotation for those occupying other countries, 3 to 6 months.

Ten years is way too long. 5 max. Okay, 6, for the senate, no reelection is cool with me. You do your tour and get the hell out. You're finished. Go grow some hemp, write a book, and play with the grandkids.

For instance? And why? Let the FDA handle all consumables.