Opinion-Columns.com

Crying Foul At the Hitler Reference

It fascinates me how thoroughly the Bush administration (and by that, I mostly mean George, Cheney and The Donald) have staked out and taken claim to the Hitler debate.

Nursultan “The Thumb” Nazarbayev Gets the Bush Red Carpet

No one will notice how the Bush administration kisses these dictators on both cheeks except the people who live there--or near there--or around there. Only a quarter-billion or so Muslims. That's what makes it such terribly dangerous politics.

Blogging From the Front and War Will Never Be the Same

Iraq is a war being blogged at the same time it’s being fought. Lebanon the same. There’s an active blogosphere among Israelis and Palestinians and one can but wonder if the traditional hatreds and prejudices can hold out against information.

Among the Policies That Don’t Work, Add the Drug War

Policies, we have policies.

Our government may be short on solutions and polarized beyond all help, transfixed in the headlights of what on earth to do about anything and satiated on K-Street loot for not doing it, but by god they have policies.

Policymakers are defined as “Someone who sets the plan pursued by a government or business” and the nearest synonyms are important person, influential person. Lotta harrumphing in the policymaking business and damned little responsibility for what has been wrought. Which makes it serious and blameless all in the same context. No wonder so many flock to the trade.

Then of course we have taken to having ‘wars’ on anything that gets serious consideration in the policy departments of government. That singular achievement has made the waging of war and the waging of policy equally meaningless. So we have devised a set of rules to definine policy. Certain standards must be met, that include but are not limited to

• Seriousness
• Blamelessness
• Meaninglessness

A lot of 'nesses,' but the requisites are absolutely perfect for political purpose. Lawmakers have gone into the business on a full-time basis.

From Wikipedia-The Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress noted in a 1989 report that the nation's war on drugs could be considered to have started in public policy dating to November 1880, when the U.S. and China completed an agreement that prohibited the shipment of opium between the two countries. By February 1887, the 49th Congress enacted legislation making it a misdemeanor for anyone on American soil to be found guilty of violating this ban. It became officially the "war on drugs" in the 1930s, with the marijuana scare that banned possession and cultivation of cannabis (including hemp).

Marijuana scare? Immigrant scare would be more accurate. Mexican immigrants were known in those days to smoke a bit and since there were no jobs during the middle of the depression, it became convenient as well as necessary to deport the no longer needed. An interesting story there.

But it was President Nixon, whose legacies include his War on Drugs in 1971 as well as the breast-feeding of such current political scourges as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Nixon characterized the abuse of illicit substances as "America's public enemy number one." Turned out the most illicit substance was Dick himself.

Nixon policy sought to cause a massive surge in the cost of drugs, the idea being that they would price themselves out of the market.

Ah, the unintended consequences of policy-making.

He succeeded big-time, raising the market value of the trade in highly targeted drugs such as cocaine and heroin to over a trillion dollars. For the monetarily bleary-eyed (and who wouldn’t be in these times of absurd numbers?) a trillion dollars is a thousand billion.

A thousand billion adds up to more than the Marshall Plan, more than (up to now) the cost of the Iraq war by twice, more than the cost of building the nation's schools (primary and secondary) including all the teachers in the nation. Breathtakingly, it is almost as much as George Bush has given away to the rich.

Which is why this policy of tricky-Dick’s, that did for market value what McDonalds and Wal-Mart could only envy, has provided incentive on a level never before seen in the history of the world. Nixon’s marketing miracle took ordinary dope-heads and financially elevated them to rock-star status in the poorest neighborhoods of America. He single-handedly, with the stroke of a presidential pen, turned two-bit petty criminals into moguls.

Suddenly they were driving Cadillacs, murdering one another with impunity, terrorizing neighborhoods and enticing your and my kid to try whatever it was they had to sell. Formerly  near-worthless pot and meth and mind-altering substances that few had cared about or been involved with, became the food of the gods.

There was so much money where there had been none before that dealers were able to pay off (or kill) judges and whole juries. At borders and checkpoints they were able to pay off (or kill) DEA agents. In South American and Middle Eastern countries they were able to pay off (or kill) entire governments. In businesses and banks worldwide, the formerly-poor and morally-questionable were able to pay off (or kill) anyone who objected to their demands for entry.

In the year 2000, 17,000 souls cashed in from all drug-related causes in the U.S. We have, thus far in 2006 (another 3 mos to go) spent $33 billion for enforcement. If I have the zeros properly sorted out, that's just under $2 million per death.  Does something about that equation seem strange to you?

As all good things will, extreme amounts of money floating around led to extremes of all associated kinds and flavors. The end result has been a financial, legal, governmental and business melting-down that stuns the average law-abiding mind. Born of what began as diversionary politics, the simplistic get-our-kids-off the-streets covering up equally simplistic politicians with hands in our pockets began to have a life of its own.

But it’s run amok, out of control and has come to subvert our entire nation as well as other nations of the world. Instead of a few poor fools needled-out on urine soaked mattresses, we now have neighborhoods where drive-by shootings are the norm, prisons filled to capacity and a drug-based mafia that makes the Italians look like school-kids.

The Russians are coming has taken on a whole new meaning.

There was an editorial in the New York Times by John Tierney, The Czars’ Reefer Madness that everyone should read. Unfortunately, the NYT has cordoned it off behind their $40 annual “Times Select” usury policy. But it describes Amsterdam honestly and accurately. I have been to Amsterdam a number of times and attest to the successful Dutch civil policy toward drugs.

We are all policymakers of a sort; the New York Times ‘Select,’ the Dutch government and Richard Nixon.
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Read also;

• John Tierney, NYT-The Czars’ Reefer Madness (requires membership)
• PBS, Frontline-BUSTED America's War on Marijuana
• NYT-Crosses of Bedford Park Are Still Waging War on Drugs (free)
• Washington Post-Are Civil Liberties Collateral Damage In The War on Drugs?
• Drug Sense-Drug War Clock

The Last Throes and The Final Stretch—Defining an Administration

Thus the necessity of not failing has become a cornerstone of the new reality within the Bush White House. All talk of success in Iraq has been taken off the menu, like yesterday’s leftovers.

Carry-On Luggage? Who Needs It?

Come to think of it, flying without any kind of hand baggage might just be a pleasure.

Pat Buchanan, Racist Extraordinaire

Pat Buchanan wants to preserve the dominance of the white race in America. Now where the hell's my white sheet?

Dumb Luck Will Have To Be Good Enough

Obviously, sometimes it’s not. But if we get a change in political control of the House and Senate after the mid-term elections in November, we will have received dumb luck by virtue of an opportunity to upset George Bush’s strangle-hold on government at the same time his popularity is in free-fall.

Smart luck hasn’t worked, blocked at every turn by a combination of Republican control and Democratic hesitancy—in fact it has largely been Democratic uselessness at fault. Nevertheless, we've run on as a nation, loose cannons, indictable offenses, hysteric punditry and fear-based politics overwhelming the courage and optimism that made us great.

It’s no longer a partisan issue to claim the choices made by this administration have been wrong. Americans, by a two-thirds margin agree. Democrats, in my view voice too loud a complaint without any real programs, solutions or ethical integrity of their own. Republicans, desperate to maintain their majority, try every which way to distance themselves from their own administration’s failed policies and still remain Republicans.

But the facts beyond dispute find us with.

• Another unwinnable and wrongheaded war on our hands, this one in the Middle instead of the Far East
• A Congress, hopelessly at cross-purposes, viciously partisan and devoid of ethics, on both sides of the aisle
• A president whose every venture into policymaking has crashed and burned, embarrassing and alienating everyone in the world except himself
• A level of hubris, enemy-listing, prevarication and lawlessness that pales by comparison with the discredited Nixon administration

Trusting to dumb luck is a weak stick to lean on, but it’s better than no stick at all. Mid-term elections are for the most part a national ho-hum, of little importance to anyone other than the entirety of House members and third of the Senate that are running. So mid-terms have traditionally garnered less interest and smaller voter-turnout than the already embarrassing percentages that attend a presidential election.

This year may be the exception that proves the rule.

• Terrorism seems to have had its fangs pulled as the predominant issue now that five years have elapsed without a repeat since 9-11.
• The continued killing of American troops, a number that has eclipsed the WTC dead, is a primary issue and the hollow lie that Iraq was connected to WTC has been exposed.
• Immigration is a hot topic and 50 million Hispanics will be heard from on that issue.
• Bush’s crocodile tears from St. Louis Square, followed by turning his back on black New Orleans will energize 45 million black voters.
• The total incompetence with which the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, the CIA and the Pentagon have been run, is finally a factor.
• The truly chilling amount of debt left in the wake of this administration is beginning to sink home to those who will be left to pay it off.

And last, there are no coat-tails upon which to ride in a mid-term election. The truly vitriolic levels of personal attack against presidential candidates were horrific to witness, but they were (to our national dismay) effective. Lacking a national candidate, the business of local issues and party discontent play out entirely differently.

If this mid-term fails to overturn the Republican hold on Congress (and that is a distinct possibility), freedom as we know it will not disappear from the American scene. Nor will the world (probably) fall any further apart than it already has in the next two years. What will happen is we will have lost the opportunity to bring this administration to justice. The course that two out of three of us find unacceptable will not be reversed and the precedent of lawless disregard for Constitutional freedom will go unpunished.

Abraham Lincoln said, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

This president reads about Lincoln and compares himself to Lincoln, but bears no discernable resemblance.

So what he will not yield we must take from him. That has not been possible in the current configuration of control of all three branches of government by his party, nor will it be unless his grip on the levers of government is broken 12 weeks from now. Dumb luck presents us an historic election at precisely the time winds of change are blowing across the nation.

What comes of that is, quite properly, in the hands of the electorate.
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What's being said about the mid-terms;

• Market Watch, Dow Jones-High gas prices loom over mid-term elections
• Fox News-McCain Predicts Tough Midterm Elections for Republicans
• Washington Post-Elections Are Crux Of GOP's Strategy

Are Political Pundits Smart Enough to Advise the Nation?

Pundit is defined as ‘someone who has been admitted to membership in a scholarly field, an initiate, a learned person, savant.’ In politics? Are you kidding?

Rearranging the Digital Furniture

In a digital age, every business is technologically on track except for the nation's business--the federal government.