Path for America

[tristanbgilb]

I went into NAVY BOOTCAMP right after graduating from Cheney high school in 1989. I was discharged honorably just over 2.5 years later out of a 6-year obligation. Following boot camp, I received a couple of years of technical training until I qualified as a Nuclear Power Plant Operator with specialties in Reactor Plant Chemistry and Radiation/Contamination control. There are so may diagnosis from so many doctors. I diagnosed myself as Genius Insanity which is perfectly fine unless it goes to madness. Madness overtook my mental health while serving this country in the Navy.

I am compensated for my sacrifice. Now I want the Cannabis Freedoms and medicines for myself and others that could be helped. Smoking cannabis flowers is not all that helpful for someone as ill as I am. Clinical trials of cannabis seem to be mostly limited to smoking flowers. Cannabis smoking doesn't seem medical at all. Instead, for serious medication, cannabis oil pills synthetic or pure plant extracts seem more plausible to pull people out of the darkness in their minds into a kinder state.

I entered into a life in the Methow Valley angry at a society of evils that I no longer wanted to be part of. I came across 7acres of Twisp River waterfront and bought it with my state welfare check for $2000 down and $200/month for a total price of $16000 or so. Life was so tough being a homeless man in those days, I found hope in myself and others that befriended me and helped me get through some physical and mental challenges while surviving in my new environment homeless by government standards, but a new swamp home and life for me. Now some 30 years later. I am no longer homeless and seem to be successfully raising a family with all the trials and tribulations of an American middle-class household.

I think people in the Twisp Valley took to me cautiously when I first arrived on the scene. Over time, friends realized I would die trying to stay here as opposed to going back to the life I escaped from. Folks didn't really take me in until they realized there was no getting rid of me. Now I have children who have never known a home aside from the Methow Valley.

[PAL]

Agree with you there, Tristen. It's what makes the Valley a great place.

[tristanbgilb]

As far as those VA Benefits, if they are cut, then what?

We can start in our own Methow Valley community by supporting our own local veterans.

[PAL]

Yeah, I hope you can just take that pill without hassle. As far as those VA Benefits, if they are cut, then what?

[tristanbgilb]

This picture of me and trump was taken at the VA Medical Center in Spokane WA.

When I was driving around the country looking for a vision, I went through Utah and Salt Lake City. I was just a young man right out of the US Navy. I will always remember the young Mormon kids warning me not to go to Texas. "They Hang People Like you in Texas", the kids would tell me as we partied together. I took their advice and have never stepped foot in Texas.

I was locked away in the Spokane VA Hospitalized this year in the loony tune ward. I am always so terrified to get locked away with my life at the hands of doctors, some extremely evil and others so helpful and kind. They almost killed me at the Spokane VA Hospital some decades ago due to their malpractice. I quit going to doctors at the VA and began getting care in the community. I really was unable to find a psychiatrist qualified to deal with someone of my nature, so I am back at the VA in Spokane for Medication Management.

So here I was at the VA in Spokane and scared to get committed because I don't enjoy torture and beatings, but I check in at the suggestion of my dad. I explained to him that I don't enjoy being locked away and tortured. I explained its torture to go without pot and the last time I was locked away in sacred heart in Spokane that they held me in solitary confinement for three months and then sent the VA a bill for over $100,000 for the torturing they did to me.

Only this year was different. I told my psychiatrist that I can't go without cannabis because I become sleepless and psychotic. In the controlled hospital environment, I was given THC in pill form. For the first time in my life, my need for cannabis was satisfied. I began sleeping at least a little. My mood was good, and I didn't fight much with staff.

I really went a couple of months in the VA loony tune ward and had a wonderful memorable experience. After years of being in and out of torture chambers It really brought hope to my heart that the medicine I need may be one day available to me outside the hospital. Previous experience has been that doctors would rather kill me and watch me die than let me have THC. Weeks without sleep, locked away destabilized without cannabis, is a very dangerous situation for me and others around me. Once I took on twenty security guards and with a little help from bubba, we gave them a fight for their money as they tried to detain me. I heard them call out, "WE have him" as they dog piled me. From under the pile, I began locking them up with my legs and arms. Then I took their knuckles and started grinding them together as they squealed in pain and realized I have them so tangled up that they couldn't get off me.

They began pulling the security officers off me one at a time and then drug me into a seclusion room. Here a kind nurse came in and told me that the guards want me beat up and injected with chemical restraints even though I was locked in the room already.

She kindly looked for a chemical that might not cause me to go into a seizure like the Haldol injections have done to me over and over again in psychiatric emergencies.

Anyway, many of the old-school tortures are being illegalized and being phased out like lobotomies and so forth.

Even many of the torture drugs they forced me to take have been illegalized.

I think one day I will be able to just take a breath and swallow my THC pill without being discriminated against.

[PAL]

Tristen I know you believe in Trump and I must say that that photo of him is a rare one of him smiling. He seemed so down turned at the mouth at his rallies. Very droll and taciturn. And kind of mean sounding.
But you probably wouldn't want to see the VA benefits cut. Many of these cuts Congress has to review. Let's hope they do and don't let harmful cuts happen.
I see Texas wants to make cannibas illegal. This state most probably will not follow suit.
Lotta billionaires in the new admin, yet making cuts.

[tristanbgilb]

[Rideback]

Cuts to VA
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/07/politics ... index.html

[mister_coffee]

Another thing to keep in mind about spending. A reasonable ballpark figure for the cost to deport an undocumented immigrant is about $100,000. If we have ten million undocumented immigrants it will cost a trillion dollars to deport them all.

Of course, something north of 40 percent of the people employed in agriculture and food production are undocumented. That large a hit to food production will mean that millions of Americans will starve. You can only live six weeks without any food and it is vanishingly unlikely we could work out an emergency stopgap measure to deal with that large a labor shortfall that quickly. Also keep in mind that a lot of agriculture work happens in relatively narrow time windows and if you don't have the workers at the right time the food rots in the fields. Mass deportations will mean mass death for Americans.

[Rideback]

The man of the people as Trump likes to call himself, has now appointed 14 oligarchs to positions in his administration. These are people with little to no experience in the administration of the offices they will hold. But, as oligarchs, they are keenly aware of an opportunity to line their own pockets.

[mister_coffee]

Yes, in absolute numbers you probably have a lot of wasteful and unnecessary spending. But the really big social insurance programs (Social Security and Medicare) and service on the federal debt are the very largest spending obligations (outside of defense) and on the average are pretty efficiently run. Bluntly you could cut 100 percent of non-defense non-social insurance spending and it really wouldn't make much difference.

Defense is kind of a different story. We've committed to an all-volunteer military -- which means we have to pay people fairly and provide generous benefits. We've committed to a relatively small high-tech military, which implies that military is superbly trained (expensive) and superbly equipped (even more expensive). Yes, you can trim around the edges here and there but I doubt you can make significant cuts without making significant changes in our international commitments, and I really doubt most people would want that as soon as they worked out the implications. We live in a sometimes dangerous and messy world.

Yes, I agree there are some fairly silly government programs that we could probably kill (my favorite is the Federal Helium Reserve, which we have been trying to get rid of since the 1990s) but in practice nearly all of the silly programs are pretty small and as the Helium Reserve example shows, it takes a long time to make any of them go away. So it is kind of a Sisyphean effort to make any progress on that front.

[PAL]

Those cuts Rideback lists could really be hurtful. The things you list Ken, are not on that list. I do agree that needless government expenditures need to be looked at and gottnen rid of. The problem is, what do Elon and Vivick think is needing to be cut and will they make harmful cuts?
I am all for the stopping of wars, lowering energy prices, of course the drugs and human trafficking. Middle East peace, as long as there is fairness for the Palestian people. Which is not the same as Hamas!
But from what I have read that Trump wants to increase military spending. And create an iron dome like Israel has. I heard him say it in one of his speeches.
I read the website post, Rideback and someone did point out this:
"And all together will add up to less than the new corporate tax cuts they will bring in."

[dorankj]

What is evil about getting out of and stopping wars?
What is evil about lowering energy prices and getting independent from others?
What is evil about having a secure border without drugs and human trafficking crossing?
What is evil about Middle East peace?
What is evil about reducing needless government regulation and waste?
What EXACTLY is evil about allowing the citizens of this country to elect (democratically) our president with the popular vote?!

Maybe you and Rideback can go to counseling together and split the cost!

[SharonLaVonne]

That's exactly how I feel about you, Ken. Your lack of understanding about the evils you are perpetrating on our Nation by following Herr Trump is mind boggling, to say the least.

[dorankj]

You’re so full of crap Rideback! You should seriously seek help.

[Rideback]

https://bsky.app/profile/tristansnell.b ... mdvwsu6c2q

So Musk and Ramaswamy want to cut
- cancer research
- law enforcement
- veterans’ healthcare
- Alzheimer’s research
- low-income kids going to college
- low-income kids learning to read

They want to make America sicker, less safe, less educated — and WEAKER

Cuts to VA benefits are $119 billion

[tristanbgilb]

[tristanbgilb]

The current path for the US Government appears to be criminals getting richer while the middle class is suffering just to pay for the necessities of life. I would like to concede that my path to kindness is a difficult one. I require Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) to function which is one of the active medicines in marijuana. There is a pharmaceutical solution for my needs with this cannabis oil. Synthesized THC is available as a schedule 3 controlled drug and is difficult to get unless one is on their death bed with AIDS or cancer. The FDA could easily reschedule this THC pill called Dronabinol or at the least we need to be able to get a doctor script for this THC pill for what would currently be off label uses.

Cannabis has so many medical uses. It's a human rights violation, a breech in human rights, to criminalize medications that can help so many people. This civil war on cannabis is needs to end. My vision for America is the end of the drug war which has destroyed the United States to a point that we are nearing for self-destruction and Kaos.

Cannabis and the medicines it provides, can in fact heal rather than destroy human life. Our US government is good at destroying. We are near a world war in this place without cannabis freedoms. Give us back the US constitution by legalizing Religion of cannabis sacrament for quieting the mind in a world of evil distractions around us.

This is my path to a better America.

We need to end the drug war, legalize cannabis so that we can put an end to this atrocity in our own country, and make dronabinol more widely available.