What bothers me most about the SUV thing is something Lil K has touched on--owners of these vehicles frequently keep them shiny clean and new-looking, they don't drive off road, they don't haul people out of the ditch, they're not on farm business--in short, they may be "Sport/Utility vehicles," but they're not being used for any kind of sport, and they display no more utility than a minivan. Worse still, the damned things are growing. Compare an Explorer of today with one of six or seven years ago--must have added at least a ton to the weight. I generally don't consider the older Explorers and Jeeps to be in this category, just because what is called an SUV today is overbuilt, and largely ornamental for the owner. My jeep gets great gas mileage, and i fold down the back seat to carry material and equipment for my employer when expedient (and get gas money in return). Because it's a jeep, i can drive over churned up, muddy construction sites without worries, and drive over kerbs whenever convenient. The SUV craze has gone out of all reasonable scope . . .
setanta; i totally agree but the fact is the people buying them may be using bad judgement/taste but that does not make them terrorists, i have an old GMC Jimmy 6 cyl, that i occassionlly use in the mtns and to haul stuff around.
I saw a Brink's truck drive down the street the other day--one of those armored vehicles for hauling cash around--and I thought, "There's the next SUV, something even bigger and more menacing than the Hummer." And there are probably designers out there already working on it!
No, Boss, i wouldn't equate their mindless dedication to fashion with terrorism. It is worth noting that a good deal of our oil DOES NOT come from middle eastern sources, nor does such a source necessarily qualify as a haven for or a promoter of terrorism. In the case of the use of cocaine, however, there is a clear connection between use of that substance, in whatever form, and the narcoterrorists who haunt South America. Reefer-juana is more problematic, as so much is grown in the US these days--it would be much more difficult to link that drug to terrorists. These people need to go after the buyers of diamond rings, based on their standards, inasmuch as "terrorists" in the form of insurrectionist have used diamonds in Africa to fund their activities just as the narcoterrorists use drugs. It's all quite a stretch to accuse the American consumer, except in the case of cocaine.
While there's no doubt that drug buying supports drug lords in South America, I think there's something a little disingenuous when they're lumped in with the terrorists we started paying attention to after 9/11/01.
Our gov't has tolerated all sorts of mischief in Latin America when it suits our interests. Now that the work "terrorist" can be invoked to enforce all sorts of behaviors, we call the drug lords "narco terrorists" to shame drug users out of their bad behavior.
Well, Boss, i agree that any connection to 9/11 is specious, but the narcoterrorists have been in that business for a very long time. Our efforts to break up the Cali cartel were reasonably successful--with the result that insurgents in Columbia took over the production and distribution end of the thing, and the Sendero Luminoso in Peru moved into Bolivia as well, and took over the production operation for the coca leaves from which the drug is decocted. This took place many years ago--the term narcoterrorist goes back quite a few years, as well.
Agreed, Setanta, that the narco-terrorist term has been around a while, and these guys are, arguably, terrorists. It's the recent use of "terrorist" in these ads that I take issue with, because I think the ads intentionally imply that pot smokers are supporting Osama Bin Laden...
I'm in complete agreement with you there, Boss--it disgusts me when people capitalize on that event to push an agenda, the more so since that event was NOT used as an opportunity for our nation to review its relations with other nations, and other peoples/religions/ideologies. Instead, we have flag waving (and flag decaling) and repeated attempts to exploit the 9/11 events for political or ideological ends.
Well, when people like Ari Fleischer can say, with a straight face, that an end to the dividend tax somehow relates to the war on terrorism, you know that anything goes right now!
i can only assume Ari drives an SUV
It doesn't compute, anyway. "Make cars that get mileage that's two or three times as good; that way we only support a third to half of the terrorists." If the sentiment was genuine, they would be trying to advocate alternative energy sources, not new versions of essentially the same technology.
(For the record, I mostly drive a Honda Civic; an old dented Buick gas-hog comes out when it snows or the Honda's out of commission.)
Would you mind my suggestion that the united states is a terrorist nation?
Visiting death and destruction on innocent peoples around the world, and just like other regions the population probably doesn't approve, it's conducted by a few out of control leaders.
