Obama Justice Department ends raids on medical marijuana facilities

Washington D.C.--There's a new sheriff in town. Once again, we're seeing valid and significant change that we would never have seen under a Republican president and/or a Congress dominated by them. As Attorney General Eric Holder stated yesterday, it's "now policy."

For those who are cynical about the incoming administration (only in office now a little over a month, a bit premature and telling of the cynics), this is good news and a real change as well as a move away from wasteful government spending for law enforcement programs that do more harm to our society than good.

Marijuana drug pigs had their "last hurrah" at the end of January before the Obama administration could do anything to stop it, just three days after the new president's inauguration. Thirteen states have now legalized the licensing of production, distribution, and use of medical marijuana. It's not going to stop there, and the ranks of the police are turning against past drug interdiction policies.

The last two states to recently legalize medical marijuana were Michigan and Massachusetts in November of last year during the national and state elections. In Massachusetts, the police union initially lobbied against the legislation but have been coming around to the new reality. Nobody said change was easy to adjust to, but they're doing it in Massachusetts right now, and in several other states.

As part of Drug War policy, appointed "Drug Czars" who run the ONDCP (Office of National Drug Control Policy) are supposed to lie--yes lie--about the properties, medical uses and beneficial or benign attributes of marijuana. From Section 704 of the Reauthorization Act of 1998:

...[The Director of Drug Control Policy] ...(11) may serve as spokesperson of the Administration on drug issues; (12) shall ensure that no Federal funds appropriated to the Office of National Drug Control Policy shall be expended for any study or contract relating to the legalization (for a medical use or any other use) of a substance listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812) and take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance (in any form) that-- (A) is listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812); and
(B) has not been approved for use for medical purposes by the Food and Drug Administration;...

Incredibly, federal drug control agents and officials can even use government funds to meddle in local and state elections to effect the outcomes of any marijuana legalisation proposition up for vote during elections, a clear violation of the Hatch Act, but we don't need no stinkin' badges anyway.

Remember that this was passed under a Republican controlled Congress at the time back in their salad days of 1998. The Clinton administration did little to oppose it, but they were trying to save themselves over a lie told under oath about a blowjob, it being a national priority and obsession of the GOP at the time. If you don't like the government meddling in your lives, and you want a government that does less of it in general, hitting rightist and reactionary advocates of these drug policies is a good place to start. The time is ripe since they're losing on all fronts.

Sitting on our laurels isn't going to be a smart move for anti-prohibition forces and the point will be to keep pushing (back) until significant victory and precedent are achieved. All this aside, this is a state's rights issue, period. The incoming Obama administration supports this contention and the legitimacy of medical marijuana for those with terminal illnesses who need it desperately, and this isn't even mentioning all the green uses (including the production of needed biomass, food, and energy) from the cannabis plant. The Drug War is the finest and most obvious example of wasteful spending outside of the F-22 fighter and the failed "Star Wars" program, but in America, if it's broken, don't fix it.

But it really is a state rights issue. This is where I agree with Libertarians...but that's about it, and I'm hardly alone. For those who want to live in a police state, I advise relocation to Colombia or Russia, their authoritarian digs should be to your tastes. Our drug laws were originally crafted to legally harass people of color--Blacks and Hispanics in-particular. The support was bipartisan, but as is their wont, and when there are rights to be rolled back, the Republican Party tends to be leading the charge.

It's fitting that when we finally got a president of color, the walls began to fall regarding drug prohibition, ultimately race and class-based laws primarily for the purpose of arbitrary antidemocratic social control. Just over 75 years ago, the walls came down with alcohol prohibition in the face of an unprecedented economic crisis and sustained calls for its end. We live in similar times and in a much less "racialist" culture. There are other problems to address. Bluntly-put, we need the revenue. It's time to legalize and regulate (including taxation) of all psychoactive drugs, and a time to move towards treatment and away from the militarization of our police departments.

Cops Against Prohibition:

http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php

The Reauthorization Act of 1998:

http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/about/98reauthorization.html

AG Holder's statement yesterday in a Q&A:

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-A-15821

The New GOP!

Now self-destructing faster than ever! Whoo-hah! Got you all in-check!

On President Barack Obama's Town Hall in Elkhart, Indiana

Michiana--To say we're seeing a change and a change in tone from that of the Bush II administration would be an understatement, it's more than refreshing, it's exhilarating.

It's the feeling and knowledge that at least there's some genuine leadership in the White House and the Capital in general, a kind of civic feeling Americans haven't felt since before the Republican disgrace of Watergate. The paralyzing cynicism that has benefited the GOP and business sector for over a generation--for now at least--is abating.

69% of the American public approve of the route being taken by the Democratic majority in Congress and the White House, a majority. Obama's ratings on the same are 67%. But there are those who have decided to live in the past, to suggest doing little-or-nothing, and to insist on the same-old, same-old phony panacea of tax-cuts. But that's the minority of Americans today, it's not 2004, let alone 1928.

Yet the Republican minority still doesn't appear to have realized that they lost the elections in 2006 and 2008 and have reverted to their usual M.O. of obstructionism and the inaction of Herbert Hoover. If they don't relent in this behavior, 2010 appears to hold the same for them. America has bigger problems than this, but rather than pooling together with the rest of America to solve this economic crisis they're working to survive ideologically and politically thanks to the very crisis that was created at their strong insistence not just over the last eight years, but the last 28. The GOP exceeds in servicing the paradox and the illogical demands of unaccountable power, and the DNC has been their enabler until now, the reason they're throwing their tantrums.

However, this time, the obstructionism is occurring in the face of an unprecedented economic crisis, and predictably, they're not changing their stripes. Quite the contrary, but we knew it was coming. The Republican Party, rather than changing and adapting to an unprecedented crisis, is attempting to go further to the right, and it's a sign of their dysfunctional nature. This refusal to change is going to come at an incredible additional cost for a party that's already disgraced on the national political stage and throughout the world.

Granted, an utter failure of ideology has never stopped the GOP, but events do. During the deepest, darkest years of the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover did virtually nothing in response to an unprecedented economic crisis, and the contemporary Republican Party are acting along similar lines. Hoover's inaction cost the GOP for over fifty years, putting them in an earned minority status. The public merely finished the job when they stopped voting for them as they had before October 1929.

While the GOP is openly admitting that there needs to be a stimulus package, they undermine what is a national effort to stem the tide of what could become a catastrophic crash if they continue to insist on the old rules of the game. Should there be wasteful earmarks in the stimulus bill? Of course not, and they should know full well that more tax-cuts for the wealthiest aren't going to do any good and aren't going to create any new jobs anytime soon either. It's truly the "end of an era," that of Reaganomics and neoliberalism, both essentially the same thing.

Trickle-down economic practices have bitten the dust, but you wouldn't know that from talking with a Republican or watching their hysterics on the mainstream news, C-Span, and through their echo chamber throughout the Internet and the mainstream media in general. This is a noise. It's just more "cut taxes," as though there's some magic panacea that's going to fix everything or that such practices didn't get us into the mess we're in right now.

Logic and experience tell us otherwise: The rich will hold-on to that money, hoarding it just as the banks have under the Bush II administration's poor stewardship of the banking bailouts. Why? Besides your basic greed, a lack of imagination and that inability to change in a rapidly changing world economy. That's nothing new, but the urgency of this crisis is.

Now, the congressional GOP are stalling and nit-picking over sections of the proposed stimulus legislation that covers public-spending, namely spending so that there is a future economy. Some of this is legitimate criticism, but holding-up this crucial legislation generally over social-spending is not, and just another indicator that the Republican Party has little to offer in vision or constructive action. When it comes to military-spending, the GOP are about as "conservative" as a sailor on shore leave after payday, no limits, no-holds-barred. We don't even need the F-22 fighter? No problem, we'll label it something other than "pork," that it's "vital to the defense of the nation," when the reality is that it doesn't create many jobs and doesn't make us any safer. The Democrats have problems in this area as well...

In addition, the GOP had no problem--John McCain and a few others in Congress notwithstanding--during the Bush II years in creating a grotesque distortion in our economy with a $1 trillion tax-cut for the wealthiest back in 2001, expected to sunset in 2010, but will likely be dropped as events in the economy take us into a deeper man made decline.

A new weapons system now? Fine, both parties can agree on that most of the time, but forget about cleaning-up the mess they created, it being primarily the GOP's mess. Breaking-up is hard to do, however, and the Republican Party has become accustomed to Democratic submissiveness to their agenda over the years since Reagan. Some so-called "centrist" Democrats in Congress also seem to have missed-the-fact that the old relationship is ending, but it doesn't matter. More political fallout for the GOP is coming and it's going to be a tidal wave coming from the public, especially if inaction clearly causes a deepening of this crisis. The time for political games is over.

Again: events are taking things down a specific and irresistible historical road that was created by the excesses of the business, financial, and political sectors. Deregulation made this not only possible, but inevitable at some point.

The plan President Obama outlined today was a breath of fresh air, and the skeptics are dwindling in a part of the country--the heart of the Midwest--which nobody would have thought would turn to the left anytime soon back in 2004, Elkhart notwithstanding. Events have a way of changing things, attitudes, and the way people view their lives. That means the economy, and our political process. The world is watching, and the world will be affected, almost immediately. They will not be pleased if we fail. It's time to set-aside petty differences and act as Americans by supporting immediate action by passing this stimulus bill now, within the next two weeks.

The President has warned that without acting now, we could have a "catastrophe" on our hands that could become irreversible for at least a generation. Credible economists are telling us this, not some political hack at the Heritage Foundation in their ivory tower office, but real economists, academic ones. This isn't about left or right, this is about rebuilding the economy of the United States of America. If we fail, we fail not only ourselves, but the rest of the world, and future generations of Americans. It's unacceptable.

Conservatives who claim government intervention isn't going to work are wrong (as usual): it's the only option left when over 25 banks have already failed in 2009--that's a situation in which the private sector is totally paralyzed--both by failed ideologies and by the fact that many of them have no capital left to spend...or borrow. Banks who have been given capital-infusions are hoarding previous bailout capital thanks to the flawed methodology (incompetence) of the outgoing Bush II administration's in expediting their bailouts.

Oversight and reasonable regulation would have fixed this proactively and it's just another example of how this mess began in the first place, and how it has perpetuated and expanded and deepened. It's also how it could become a much bigger crisis than the Great Depression. But for the GOP, nothing succeeds like failure, and their ideology has been tested and proven as such--a failure. The time for throwing fits is over, and it's time for America to grow-up and realize that the marketplace should never trump government ever again because it isn't sustainable.

The President has made it clear by inviting everyone in an unscreened town hall meeting in Elkhart that he is serious about the input of the public. This is new. He was asked critical questions and answered them, a situation that the last president was incapable of coping with his entire unfortunate duration in office with his hand-picked audiences.

This wasn't the case today.

There were no "loyalty oaths" to sign for everyone coming into the event as there were in the Bush II years, only a normal security screening. Nobody was thrown-out--unlike during the Bush II years--for disagreeing with the president, and Mr. Obama fielded them, he answered them directly, honestly, and reasonably. The entire process was informative in a way we haven't seen from a president in decades. Good job, Mr. President, you have my full support on this stimulus plan.

Will it work? Nobody knows, not even economists, not the GOP, and not the president. But we must try. We can come out of this with a much better America, and handily, but there are forces in this nation who would drag us down into the muck with them to save their petty privileges for just one more day.

Five days left in the eight year illegal occupation of the White House

Washington D.C.--And so, it's ending, and not with a whimper (except from Georgie boy). President-elect Barack Obama is going to do his darndest not to prosecute these bastards, trying to make us think that Congress can't do likewise. It's all just bait-and-switch, the oldest game there is aside from the shell game.

Demand, demand, demand the appointment of a Special Prosecutor armed with subpoena power and the immense resources that it's going to take to unravel the mess left by yet another criminally-inept Republican presidential administration and era.

This will happen again otherwise--if we're even able to emerge from this man-made economic crisis intact. Indeed, we all own our little part of this mess, but George W. Bush and his administration and a Republican Congress created the lion's share of the corporate crime wave we've been living under since 2000. Truth be known, it's been much longer in duration, stretching-back decades. That's how big this is, it's literally the end of an era and possibly of an order.

My hunch is that Obama and the rest of them in Washington are going to try to do things as they've always done, attempting to save a rotten barrel. When that doesn't work, they're going to keep fighting the reality that market capitalism is really and truly over, waste valuable time they could be finding constructive solutions, and drive us further down into a mess that's going to dwarf the Great Depression. Congress will also lend-a-hand in creating this catastrophe.

But there's a alternative: mount a massive and aggressive prosecution on the soon-to-be former Bush II administration's most obvious offenders. There must also be the formation of prosecution units to take-on Wall Street offenders, and there must be prosecutions, there must be accountability. No accountability means no renewal of faith in the financial and political system, and the evidence criminality will be found where it ran riot in government under the Republicans and in the private sector.

But we have to quit fooling ourselves. It's also going to be found in the ranks of Congress itself, the reason why there's no will to prosecute the outgoing Bush II administration. They were complicit with them, and they compromised themselves.

If President-elect Obama is the political hack that I suspect he is, he's in as much trouble as Alberto Gonzales already, which is saying a lot considering the fact that no law firm in North America will hire the disgraced former Attorney General. We don't need any repeats from the last eight years, America cannot survive it and remain America. Hope is great, but false hope is just cynicism by another name.

Songs from the Site Meter: The return of the turds from SAIC over Ret. Col. Ron Roughead

Site meter--They just keep coming, which is fine, they're spending money on something other than all the other evil, destructive shit they do--and with our tax-dollars! Maybe sometime they, Col. Roughead, and I, can sit down and have a little chat over tea. You know, a little explaining about why one of their operatives with a high level security clearance was calling Pamela Martin Associates (the late DC Madam's escort service).

$$$ In hoc signo vinces.™ $$$

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George W. Bush's final press conference as president

Washington D.C.--What did you expect? It was always going to be pathetic. George W. Bush has always been the kind of personality who wanted to be liked. Based on this fact, it was strange to put someone in there to use-up all of his political capital and the public's goodwill for the purposes of making the few richer, and he's feeling the heat like never before.

He should be after being the one who did as much deregulation of the economy as he humanly (and illegally) could. George W. Bush has presided over what can only be called the largest corporate crime wave in American history, the list is almost endless. What's more, it probably has no other human precedent just based on its own sheer scale. But he had help, and it was bipartisan: Congress.

That he's "feeling the love" these days is good, and President-elect Obama is also being confronted to create a special prosecution to investigate the crimes of the Bush II administration from many quarters that cross the artificial boundaries between "left" and "right." Welcome to the electronic frontier, Mr. President-elect, we're watching. The honeymoon has already ended, and it's time to deliver, and fast. Yes, the economy needs top priority, but we're going to have to be insistent on a special prosecutor to investigate the crimes of the Bush II administration. That's why he was throwing his little fit today--he's got that hunted look in his eyes again, and it's something to treasure for the rest of our lives.

The majority of Americans want justice and accountability from this outgoing administration and aren't going to accept Obama's mealy-mouthisms of "putting the past behind us."

As the president blurted today: "Pathetic." Yes, that sums-up his tragic time holding office in the White House. It also sums-up the GOP and those loyal to her. Fun's over GOP, don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out. You and your cronies had a weird sense of victimhood, because it was fictional and based on your queer sense of entitlement to do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted to. Game over.

If the Republican Party doesn't change with the tenor of this new era, they're done for. I have no problem with this, but then it's going to be time to dismantle the Democratic Party.

To all members of the Bush II administration, both former and present: We'll be watching you and pursuing you in the world's courts--all the co-conspirators under George W. Bush's watch--for the rest of your natural lives if necessary. Think about that the next time you purchase an airline ticket to another country, or when you enter specific counties, New England towns, and a growing number of cities within the territorial United States.

There are already warrants for your arrests patiently waiting to be served in many of these places. Now, I understand that your former-and-disgraced Attorney General Alberto Gonzales cannot find a job with any law firm. Welcome to reality, because when large law firms do this, it's because they know the long arm of the law is coming, soon. Time to feel the love. What a terrible president, the worst that I'll probably ever live to see, and I can remember Nixon. Both Republicans, both embarrassing, neither were men, but stupid people have to vote too. Sometimes, they steal elections and manage to fight their way into office. Bye-bye, asshole!

The U.S.S. George H.W. Bush: Obsolete before it ever leaves port

Norfolk, Virginia--Costing over $6 billion before all the other fittings and aircraft, the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush was not applauded as it was commissioned today in the presence of its namesake, his mentally retarded son and his family, President Dick Cheney, and the largest gathering of Village People fans in human history.

The gathered dignitaries were applauding themselves and the fact that they were still bilking the American public for defense contractors and corporations everywhere, their latest contribution coming in the form of a now-obsolete weapons platform, the aircraft carrier.

Why is the aircraft carrier obsolete? The U.S.S. George H.W. Bush is the last of ten in the "Nimitz" "supercarrier" class, the kind of hulking behemoth that was rendered useless the moment the Enola Gay dropped its payload on Hiroshima to keep Soviet influence off of the Japanese mainland. Subsequent weapons platforms have made the obsolescence of the aircraft carrier a strange part of the arsenals of many nations, but it's good for the gander. Like the former president it's named after, the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush is part of a dying order, a hangover left to us from the WWII generation.

What's so remarkable is that the ship isn't even finished, but far be it for the Bush dynasty not to have an occasion to cry for themselves, never mind their victims. All that said, naming a boat after just one more executive war criminal and systematic human rights violator doesn't seem such a bad idea, since it's emblematic of the dead-end of a militarized society and economy. War and the unleashing of violence by the Bush dynasty have been its hallmarks, it's history, and a big part of America's history in general. Naming it after a washed-up warmonger with his draft-dodging son present in his last days as president has all the airs of reality parodying itself. How Bush of them.

When the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush is finally torpedoed, sunk by a low-yield nuclear device, or simply destroyed when it's anchored in port, nobody's going to care. When there's no more money to help the American public in an unprecedented economic crisis, it's going to be because of the frivolous spending on worthless weapons systems like this one, and the wars in the Middle East.

It would behoove the incoming president-elect to shutter these types of programs that are currently in the developmental stage, such as the longstanding "Star Wars" (aka "Missile Defense Shield Part I") space defense program that scientists have told us "does not work, and will never work" for over twenty years. The Star Wars program has cost an estimated $107 billion since the 1980s, just one more gift from Ronald Reagan and his cohorts, many of whom will be leaving and entering the White House after January 20, 2009.

The Bush II administration increased spending on the Star Wars program by 20% during its tenure. It's unlikely that a President Barack Obama will end the program--or others like it--however, because nothing succeeds like failure. But, with money running as short as it's appearing to be, he and Congress might have no other alternative. The Senate can enable all it wants, and the GOP incumbents in it can obstruct all they want, but eventually that wall called reality is going to rear its ugly head. The horse and pony show will be over. That time is coming very soon.

"Opinion: The First Cut is the Deepest," The Harvard Crimson, Dylan R. Matthews, 12.03.2008:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=525673

"5 Reasons the Aircraft Carrier is Obsolete," NewWars.blogspot, Mike Burleson, 09.04.2007: http://newwars.blogspot.com/2007/09/5-reasons-aircraft-carrier-is-obsolete.html

Joe the plumber™ (really Sam, but "Joe" sounds more iconic) to be 10-day war correspondent in Israel-Gaza conflict

The Gaza Strip, Palestine--It would be a damn shame if he was killed by "friendly fire," a damn shame. The plumbers' unions of Toledo would hang the flags at half-mast for weeks, honoring a scab who had that hint of charm so often found in retarded people. Oh sure, he's Ernie Pyle, only he comes of like Mr. Clean™ running on two brain cells--and Joe the Plumber is a fictional character.

Oh yeah: Russia has stopped all natural gas shipments via-pipelines through the Ukraine to Europe. Just thought I'd mention it, since the press doesn't think it very important. Please, make Sam Wurtzelbacher head of the RNC, I want to see the GOP collapse faster.

A message to Hamas: aim for the head, then the wallet.

The Bush II administration's time is finally ending, but...

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."--Abraham Lincoln

It's incumbent on all of us to demand a Truth Commission on every single crime committed by them from the 2000 elections until their final day in office. The involvement of the RNC and her operatives should also be thoroughly investigated. This Truth Commission should be hydra-headed because of the multifarious nature of the crimes due to their breadth and scope and the fact that they were ongoing.

Every single pertinent classified record of the Bush II years must be declassified and reviewed by a special non-partisan prosecution and investigation team and all records must be preserved. If key records are found to have been negligently destroyed or eliminated with a dark purpose, all federal laws applying punitive legal sanctions should be employed swiftly and aggressively.

Any loopholes found in procedural laws regarding the executive branch should be noted, legislative proposals made to seal them by the special prosecution, and Congress should act swiftly with enforceable legislation to heal the breach. The whole point of this is not to allow the policies that expanded executive power to stand, this being a system of precedents. Each expansion of power should be challenged at every turn.

It would behoove President-elect Barack Obama to renounce these policies in no uncertain terms and it should be part of his first 100 days in office, making the top of the list of Bush II executive orders that must be rolled back with his pen. This is where the wildcard factor comes into play with the new president: for a past constitutional law scholar he's shown peculiar voting behaviors, made especially obvious in his "yea" vote for retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies in the Bush II administration's warrantless surveillance program. This is just one of many troubling signs, but it begs-the-question of whether they were votes predicated on every occasion with a hint of a political calculus. He wanted to be president, after all.

But if ever there was a clear violation of the precepts of the Constitution of the United States, it was this NSA program whose entire scope we still don't know, but assuredly violated the Fourth amendment rights of tens of thousands of American citizens. What did the Bush II administration tell Obama and others in classified briefings about the program and the necessity for it? Did they lie to him and other members of Congress to intimidate them into an agreement to extend it and grant unprecedented legislative immunity? What is President-elect Obama's current knowledge of the program now that he's been given intelligence briefings?

With just 19 days left for the sordid Bush II administration, it's time to breathe a little easier. After taking those long, deep breaths, it's going to be time to roll-up our sleeves again and to begin demanding a Truth Commission. Democracy in North America depends on it. Our rights are non-negotiable and it's time to start acting like it for a chage.

President-elect Obama has said that Abraham Lincoln is his favorite American president, and as flawed as Lincoln was, I concur with him. He's always been my second favorite after FDR. But both men did things that caused significant damage to the rights of Americans at the same time they were adding to them. FDR and Lincoln began systematic extralegal surveillance through technological means of their perceived political enemies through the us of wiretaps.

So many presidents have engaged in this kind of behavior that it's a bipartisan tradition, and one that needed to die with the twentieth century, but has its convenient place when power feels threatened. It's the gun that all would-be presidents want to keep in the vest-pocket of the executive branch, as Noam Chomsky has pointed-out.

Time for some real gun control. The late President Lincoln's name is being bandied about a lot these days without much substance to it. We should change this, we should be sincere--we should say what we mean, and mean what we say. Without that, the future looks anything but bright.

The coming meeting at the White House of all living presidents, Dick Cheney...and Donald Rumsfeld

Washington D.C.--George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney...and Donald Rumsfeld are meeting at the White House in what's a very rare occasion indeed. The meeting is being announced as having the ostensible purpose of "helping President-elect Barack Obama in his transition" in extraordinary times. OK, I can buy that--but why Rummy?

The meeting is scheduled to take place on January 7th, 2009, with just thirteen days left in second presidential term of George W. Bush.

I think there's a very strong possibility that they're going to start talking about international law and the issue of war crimes and human rights abuses emanating from the Bush II administration's conduct in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the war on terror domestically and internationally. This would mean Donald Rumsfeld's role in abuses, as well as Dick Cheney's, and perhaps the roles of others in Bush II foreign policy.

Jimmy Carter is bound to have some comments ready on human rights, which he'll be sure to whisper so that he might be overheard. Bill Clinton? He'll smile a lot and slap a lot of backs. I'm sure he'll have some constructive advice for the president-elect.

Rumsfeld's role in creating a "smooth transition" for the incoming Obama administration has a hollow-ring to it, he's a wild card here in some way. The story is being put out there that Cheney and Rumsfeld are being brought in to advise the incoming administration--Rumsfeld was President Gerald Ford's (still dead, so he won't be able to make it) chief of staff, Cheney succeeded him.

Both are well-known friends and associates.

Certainly, they're going to acquaint the incoming President-elect with "the ropes" of running an administration, although considering the disastrous ones that they all led or served under cannot be good examples. But, nothing teaches better than failure so they should have a lot to offer. Still, it nags-the-question: why Rumsfeld? War crimes issues? Executive privilege and legal issues? Who to fire at the Pentagon? Surely, these are going to be some of the topics. It's a very curious meeting. Will it be a "Mad Hatter's Tea Party"?

With Henry Kissinger having advised the current-and-outgoing president in the last few years, it just looks like another indicator of a lack of leadership in the White House, a final collapse, the crashing of a facade. We've been leaderless for a very long time.

Man throws shoe at outgoing President George W. Bush at Iraq press conference

"This is a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog!"
--Muntadar al-Zedei, displaying more courage than the entire American public since the 2000 inauguration.

Baghdad, Iraq--Where was the Secret Service? Guarding the real president, Barack Obama back in the states.

Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi did what no American has had the moral courage to do since the 2000 inauguration when the public threw ice-balls, snowballs, and rocks at the then president-elect: throw things at George W. Bush out of a well-earned disrespect. The Al-Baghdadia television correspondent did what most of us have wanted to all along (if not much more), this time not throwing something at a television screen but the actual source of irritation.

Disappointingly, he almost connected, and didn't, but it sums-up the president's relationship with Iraq and the world. This must be some kind of hell for a man who has always prided himself on being liked.

Unfortunately, the president's intelligence on the shoe size and its trajectory were a little off. But his experience in baseball and his indefatigable ignorance saved the day--he ducked the spitball. Hey, they dragged Al-Zeidi away by force (authorized by Congress in 2002), so he's making sure everyone knows he's still "fearless leader," our great Generallisimo, until January 20th, 2009. Still, where's the blame for the CIA in this one? That leads us to...

Statistically, a mere sect (located somewhere in West Virginia-by-way-of Idaho), a cult, still supports the war in Iraq in the United States. They're overeager believers with a pinch of fear, paranoia, and desperation. That's because something should happen to people like them.

Throwing the full weight of the law on top of Bush would be more appropriate, or simply enforcing it, but that's inconvenient and could be messy.

As Bush stated so ineloquently but accurately, "So what if the guy threw a shoe at me?" Right, so what? He knows that he's done enough to warrant far worse and that at minimum he should be before the Hague, not a press conference in Baghdad for a bye-bye visitation with his victim, Iraq. From 2003 until now we went from Iraqis throwing shoes at toppled statues of a dictator, to an Iraqi throwing his shoes at the real deal, a strange kind of progress, but progress nonetheless.

Now Al-Zeidi's action is there for the ages, making him as immortal as Gavrilo Princip taking aim at the Archduke...and missing, but trying again until he hit his target. George W. Bush is going to have to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life, and eventually, the bill will come due. His nail-biting anticipation will be punishment enough, but these precedents must be rolled back.

Future generations will look at us as we look at past ones: "How did they put up with it? Why didn't they do something more? What were they waiting for?" Exactly. What were we waiting for all this time? The cavalry, of course, and it never came because life isn't a movie.

The lowest insult throughout the Middle East is to call someone a "dog," they're fighting words, and Al-Zeidi was echoing what nearly every single Iraqi feels. They will never give up, and they will never stop fighting to remove America or any foreign power from the region.

LBJ Library releases final recordings...and implicates Richard Nixon in treason

Austin, Texas--The library is reporting that these are the very last tapes, covering the final months of the President Lyndon Baines Johnson from May 1968 to January 1969.

What's revelatory is his discussion with Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen and the person-in-question, Richard M. Nixon. During the Watergate hearings Dirksen was the Republican congressman who stated that Richard M. Nixon would "split the party."

"This is treason," Johnson said, referring to people close to Nixon, during a conversation with Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen. The Democratic president never accused the Republican who would succeed him of treason, but said, "If Nixon keeps the South Vietnamese away from the (peace) conference table, that's going to be his responsibility." ("New tapes show LBJ worried about Vietnam, Nixon," AP, 12.04.2008)

So, he's stated that Nixon's operatives were committing "treason," yet never "accused" Nixon of them in the tapes directly. The problem is, he was telling Dirksen just those very words. Isn't it great to have the press tell us our history, even when evidence suggests otherwise, right before our eyes?

Nixon's operatives were in South Vietnam doing their best to scuttle peace negotiations until the elections were over in the United States, namely, after November 1968. Their approach was to keep South Vietnamese leaders away from the negotiating tables to hurt the chances of Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey. This is an attempt at prolonging a war, which is treason.

In our timeworn American political tradition, this was brought-up during the Watergate hearings and quickly swept under the rug like the allegations of CIA drug smuggling in Southeast Asia during the war and in the Iran-Contra pipeline.

Special counsel John Dohr's investigators discovered corroboration into these stories and LBJ sounds absolutely certain that this was occurring in Vietnam. He had intelligence and media reports to suggest this was so, and he went so far as to contact Richard Nixon--then running for the White House--and confronted him over it. LBJ continued to harangue the President-elect after the elections for several days. Nixon being Nixon, he lied and did his best to dissuade LBJ that this was not the case.

But never mind LBJ--he didn't know what treason or abuse of office was, he had no experience there...excepting in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, when he authorized wiretaps of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (with the aid of Bill Moyers) and many civil rights era leaders, strong-armed everyone who got in his way, and so on. A wolf knows a wolf.

Do a search on John Dohr and his role in the Watergate investigations and hearings, and while you're at it, try finding much of anything on the Watergate probe's findings in any detail. You're not going to find much. Why is that? Unsurprisingly, CBS neglected even one mention of this--the most important revelation--from their broadcasts, instead focusing on LBJ's reactions to the riots at the Democratic Convention and other errata. Big surprise.

"New tapes show LBJ worried about Vietnam, Nixon," AP, 12.04.2008:
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=32294008

The LBJ Library and Museum: http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu

Songs from the Site Meter: The Return of Mitre...

Site Meter--A very strange bot-visitor doing a very strange search for a very bizarre government contractor...

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Venezuelan and Russian interests begin to intersect

"[The United States is confident that its own relations with Western Hemisphere countries] "will in no way be diminished by a few, aging Blackjack bombers visiting one of Latin America's few autocracies." --Sec. of State Condaleeza Rice on the imminent death of the Monroe Doctrine, Ap, 09.18.2008

Caracas, Venezuela--Blackjack, or Applejack? As a point of fact, the "Blackjack bomber" Tu-160 isn't as old as our still-operational B-52 bomber (deployed after 1952), having first been deployed in 1987. The Tu-160 was stationed in the Ukraine, and by its appearance, was a response to the development of the American B-1 bomber. One look at it tells you that it works and that it's a worthy weapons platform, Rice's overblown rhetoric aside.

It's only logical that a nation will begin arming itself because a neighboring country has been illegally invading and destabilizing other nations and has become interventionist again, and that's exactly what Venezuela and Russia are doing these days. They aren't alone in this.

Iran and China are also entering into economic relations and blocs with nations like Venezuela. With American military aggression under the administration of George W. Bush and the last few sessions of Congress at a fever pitch, who could blame any nation for a defense buildup? The American press, of course:

Russia's economic influence is clearly expanding in the Americas. Bolivia announced Thursday that it would sign an oil and natural gas exploration deal with Gazprom. Terms of the deal weren't immediately disclosed.
And Sechin announced that five of Russia's biggest oil companies are looking to form a consortium to increase Latin American operations. State-controlled Rosneft, Lukoil, Gazprom Neft, Surgutneftegaz and TNK-BP hope to build a US$6.5 billion refinery to process Venezuela's tar-like heavy crude, Russia's RIA Novosti news agency reported. ("Venezuela-Russia ties deepen despite US pressure," AP, 09.18.2008)

Your point? The community of nations has good reason to think that such interventionism will not end with the Bush administration, even with a "President Obama." There are numerous historical precedents in American foreign policy history to believe this, and it has its beginnings in the years before our first great expansion westward.

In his December, 2nd, 1823 speech to the Congress, President James Monroe enunciated the three tenets of what would become known as the Monroe Doctrine, still an inherent-part of the State Department's doctrine towards the Western Hemisphere.

As anyone but Sarah Palin knows, this has meant--in practice--that the United States considers this hemisphere as its own backyard to do with as it will, high flown rhetoric aside. But Monroe wasn't exactly being coy about it. That's because he didn't have to be euphemistic at the time he made his comments. Attitudes have changed some since then, though not in ruling circles, and today the interventionism and the meddling has to be sold to the public in a softer, gentler tone, especially when they're in no mood for yet another intervention at their expense.

Like all land-grabs, it didn't take much for the Monroe Doctrine to embolden immigrants and pioneers to begin streaming as never before past the Appalachians. We can romanticize these folks all we want, but it was all fundamentally illegal and transgressive. In that same 19th century spirit, we look at Venezuela and Bolivia as part of our back yard, just as we still do with Cuba, Haiti, and the rest of this hemisphere. This is finally eroding, but are we are entering a new Imperial age with different players? My own hunch is no, at least in the case of Russia in this region, if not around the Caucasus mountains. However, that part of the world is of great interest to the State Department.
 

The Putin regime shows more of a tendency at reconstituting the traditional Russian Empire, not the global-wide interventionism of the American State Department. At this point, there is no "Putin Corollary" or a "Putin Doctrine" other than this reconstitution. The record of American foreign policy in this era is interventionist in a way that has no corollary currently.

As Sarah Palin should have known, the Bush Doctrine after late-2002 is to preemptively strike nations deemed a threat by our government, namely decided within the executive branch. This isn't very different from the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine of 1904, where the 26th president expanded the original doctrine to interventionism.

You don't need a Bush Doctrine in South America, invading Venezuela has already been covered withing the bureaucracy for over 100 years. Roosevelt wrote:

All that this country desires is to see the neighboring countries stable, orderly, and prosperous. Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may lead the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.

Of course, it was all rhetorical rubbish. We wanted our own sphere of influence rather than to spread democracy in throughout the domains of the old empires. At that time, we'd been meddling in Cuba, Venezuela, the Caribbean, and much of the rest of the Western Hemisphere. Once "the apple had dropped from the tree" of European influence, we went right for it, and boldly in the Spanish-American War. Untold atrocities were committed in the name of American Enterprise and Manifest Destiny that are continuing into the present.

But the rhetoric isn't all that different today: we're just always just trying to bring freedom to others, the American lot and "the white man's burden" of spreading a Westernized commerce and civilization. This might have washed with people in other countries 100 years ago as the old European colonial system was disintegrating, but it's laughable today, and why Venezuela and Russia are conducting some very pointed commerce of their own.

Rice's comments on Russian weapons platforms is telling, and can be viewed as a kind of commercial for American weapons contractors. Russia and China are now becoming very competitive at the arms trade, but anyone with even a little knowledge understands that the efficiency of the Ak-47 and the RPG is in how cheap and effective they are on the battlefield against more sophisticated and expensive weaponry. Over a year ago, Venezuela purchased 100,000 Kalashnikovs and is being aided by Russia in constructing a plant to manufacture more of them in the next few years.

These types of cheap and low-tech systems have kept us on our toes in Southeast Asia, Africa, Iraq, and everywhere else America has intervened. War brings-out an untapped ingenuity possible under no other circumstances. The Improvised Explosive Device (IED) is a startling example of this, and there have even been examples of exotic weaponry (gold-tipped RPGs) and tactics are being field-tested successfully against the American war machine in the Middle East.

Then, I have to look back at Rice's comments regarding Russian weapons systems: we have a strange way of combining our commercial culture with our political one. We sell expensive-junk weaponry, which is why you have to ply those representatives with so many gifts, meals, drinks, drugs, and women, that they say uncle and give-in to the demands of the war-profiteering sector. So does the press. Why else would be hearing endless stories about the Litvinenko affair, the so-called unilateral "invasion of Georgia," and-so-on. Our crimes simply don't exist. It doesn't matter.

None of this affects the reality on the ground very much these days (just ask the Treasury Secretary), and it's one where the guns are now being pointed-back, a lesson we're trying not to learn from 9/11. We've been bad, so very bad, and the check is coming due. Nations have a right to defend themselves, and we're the initiators of a new arms race. It's our fault, and a few decades of isolationism and a military drawdown would do us a lot of good.

The Roosevelt Corollary (1904): http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trmdcorollary.html

"Venezuela-Russia ties deepen despite US pressure," AP, 09.18.2008: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20080918/48d1d240_3ca6_1552620080918-1991993179

The Tupelov-160: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/bomber/tu-160.htm

Songs from the Site Meter: The SAIC Hollywood Trailer

Site Meter--[Cue Hollywood voiceover, a voice of authority--male, natch]

Announcer [black screen]: In a world where war-profiteers break their arms patting themselves on the back just miles from the graves of the victims of previous war-profiteers, there is SAIC. And where there is voter apathy, a dumbed-down consumer society, there stands...uh, a few hundred thousand who actually get it.

And in a country where a Black man can run for president as a Republican and be physically kicked-out of his own party's convention--let alone not implode up his own ass in a scene more camp than all previous others--anything is possible. [Cue announcer exhalation.]

Not content with accumulating a pile of petrochemical junk in-exchange for their souls, these heroes search the internet for corruptions, lies, and the scum who perpetuate it (politicians, the puppets of the Bawssmen). [Cue overemotional John Williams orchestral-sweep, then cut to a car filled with consumer items falling-off of a cliff, then exploding into flames. Cut to an image of sewers brimming with excrement.]

[Cut to black screen] Indefatigable in their well-honed wit, these heroes--just for one day--turn these vile forces back onto themselves, causing them to waste valuable time watching, monitoring, and reading these words you're reading right now. And if you stew cranberries like applesauce, they taste more like prunes than rhubarb does. Trust me.

These heroes days are spent researching and belittling that which begs to be ridiculed, slammed, and exposed for what it is: walking, shambling, pus-inflated deathclowns with a permagrin. [Cut to images of various Republican and Democratic politicians over the last 60-years, many of them laughing. Next, cut to an explosion without any context whatsoever for postmodernist academics and movie critics. Cut back to black screen.]
Their goal: attrition-humor directed at corrupt government contractors, while understanding at the same time that freaks like SAIC could only function on earmarks culled from the taxpayer and expedited through the canoodling (look it up goddammit) of numerous public officials who should have been aborted before birth. [Cue sound of Model-T horn]

Can they save human society from its own pathetic self-inflicted wounds? Who gives-a-shit? Any given Apocalypse has entertainment value galore.

Now: if only we could find a way to sell the rights after we're all dead... [mumbling]

[End]

Domain Name saic.com ? (Commercial) IP Address 198.151.13.# (Science Applications International Corporation (SA) ISP Science Applications International Corporation (SA Location Continent : North America Country : United States (Facts) State : Virginia City : Arlington Lat/Long : 38.8782, -77.1054 (Map) Language English (U.S.) en-us Operating System Microsoft WinXP Browser Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; InfoPath.1) Javascript version 1.3 Monitor Resolution : 1280 x 1024 Color Depth : 32 bits Time of Visit Sep 4 2008 8:02:11 pm Last Page View Sep 4 2008 8:03:49 pm Visit Length 1 minute 38 seconds Page Views 2 Referring URL Visit Entry Page http://chickasawpick...-hey-sites-more.html Time Zone UTC-5:00 Visitor's Time Sep 4 2008 8:02:11 am Visit Number 40,774

Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich's speech to the Democratic National Convention, and the American public

Denver, Colorado--I still cannot believe the DNC allowed him to make this speech, as they haven't exactly been supportive of him. Now that the Populist message is--well--"popular" again, they had little choice. But where was Russell Feingold or Patrick Leahy?

Of course, we know the condition was that he didn't spell-out that many Democrats aided-and-abetted the Bush administration and still are, but, what the hell? It's good to see and hear the truth for a change, and he sounds an awful lot like Ralph Nader.

Now, if only candidate Obama would start walking and talking like Mr. Kucinich, a man I wish was my representative. Joe Donnelly has decided to be on the wrong side of history, to his eternal shame and ignominy. He'll be remembered alright, just not fondly by anyone with a clue (or food, water, and batteries for flashlights in the ruins of civilization). Thanks Joe, you remind me that there are plenty of incumbents in the Democratic Party who have to go, and you're one of them.

The Speech:

It’s Election Day 2008. We Democrats are giving America a wake-up call. Wake up, America. In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the neo-con artists seized the economy and have added 4 trillion dollars of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defense, three times more for gasoline and home heating oil and twice what we paid for health care.

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their homes, their health care, their pensions. Trillions of dollars for an unnecessary war paid with borrowed money. Tens of billions of dollars in cash and weapons disappeared into thin air, at the cost of the lives of our troops and innocent Iraqis, while all the president’s oilmen are maneuvering to grab Iraq’s oil.

Borrowed money to bomb bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. No money to rebuild bridges in America. Money to start a hot war with Iran. Now we have another cold war with Russia, while the American economy has become a game of Russian roulette.

If there was an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging and misappropriating, this administration would take the gold. World records for violations of national and international laws. They want another four-year term to continue to alienate our allies, spend our children’s inheritance and hollow out our economy.

We can’t afford another Republican administration. Wake up, America. The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing. Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America. Multinational corporations took over our trade policies, factories are closing, good paying jobs lost.

Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more. War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration wants to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America. Weapons contractors want more. An Iran war will cost 5 to 10 trillion dollars.

This administration can tap our phones. They can’t tap our creative spirit. They can open our mail. They can’t open economic opportunities. They can track our every move. They lost track of the economy while the cost of food, gasoline and electricity skyrockets. They skillfully played our post-9/11 fears and allowed the few to profit at the expense of the many. Every day we get the color orange, while the oil companies, the insurance companies, the speculators, the war contractors get the color green.

Wake up, America! This is not a call for you to take a new direction from right to left. This is call for you to go from down to up. Up with the rights of workers. Up with wages. Up with fair trade. Up with creating millions of good paying jobs, rebuilding our bridges, ports and water systems. Up with creating millions of sustainable energy jobs to lower the cost of energy, lower carbon emissions and protect the environment.

Up with health care for all! Up with education for all! Up with home ownership! Up with guaranteed retirement benefits. Up with peace! Up with prosperity! Up with the Democratic Party! Up with Obama-Biden!

Wake up, America! Wake up, America! Wake up, America!