Archive for the ‘Eric Holder’ Category

The Obama administration has decided, with the wind of wisdom and intellectual honesty at it’s back, to prosecute various conspirators participating in the events of 9/11, in open federal court.  In America.  Land of the free.  Home of the brave.  I applaud this without reservation, but with some necessary modicum of concern.

The venue is correct.  After eight years of bullshit, so is the system and it’s location.

Military tribunals are for pussies and those with something to hide.

Worse case scenario results in some, if not all of the handful being tried, receiving reduced sentences or significantly decreased punishment because of their treatment under the auspices of the Dick-in-Bush administration.  Torture.  I’m here to tell you it’s a legitimate concern.  I understand it from every angle. So yeah, really, the only thing that might possibly mitigate the process in any way is the fact that we tortured the fuck out of them.

We did.  Shut up.  We did.

Wouldn’t that suck.

I do believe Eric Holder is a bright guy and has taken these egregious and flagrant circumstances into account.  Despite the obvious malfeasance on the part of the Dick-in-Bush dynasty, he will get his pound of flesh.  He has the facts m’am.  It will be allright, they do know what they do.

For what it’s worth, we’re no longer dealing with boneheads.  It really is different now.

I hesitate to judge, but I imagine they’ve got this figured the fuck out.

Outside the circle, there is every concern that collateral damage will obviously be brought to light and necessarily prosecuted along side.  There is legitimate hand wringing over what open testimony will focus the antiseptic of sunlight upon.  Beyond Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being waterboarded 183 times.  A practice by the way, we tried and executed a number of Japanese for.  A practice by the way, that allowed us to define various Japanese as war criminals for engaging in.  We killed them for it and we did it to one man one hundred and eighty three times and by all accounts, we got all of our information from him before we engaged in it, and nothing but fucking nonsense thereafter.

By “we”, I mean Dick-in-Bush.

By “we”, I mean idiots.  Fucking clueless fucktards.

What happens when everyone who hasn’t been paying attention discovers this glaring fact?  What if there is more that we don’t know and I bet there is?  Oh, snap.  Fuck me.  Fuck us.

This might be good.

I hate America, you see.  I’ll bet you can tell by my t-shirt.  Or maybe because I will tell you to your face that the the very least of my concerns is or are terrorists.  I think toxic waste is a bigger threat for example or the lack of health care.  Anyway.

It is here we discover the consummate fear of the right wing over this decision to present the facts against these men in in open court.  Military tribunals are a notoriously secret affair.  The record for terrorists by the way, is military tribunals or commissions = 3 (three) convictions.  Class C federal courts = 350 (three hundred fifty) convictions.

Do the math.  Orange whip anyone?

Does this look infected to you?

No one on the right or the left legitimately fears our ability to incarcerate these fucks.  We are really good at putting people in jail and keeping them there.  We do so with more of our people per capita than any other country on earth.  These guys are douchebags compared to your average imprisoned gang member.  Give me a break.

All of the right wing hacks, The Human Shitsmear included, fear that the policies of the Dick-in-Bush administration will be on trial as well.  The irony is that these fucks are now promoting a complete lack of faith or trust in our Constitution and system of justice, ideals they spend every other waking moment, breathlessly pontificating on the liberal lack of respect towards, deliberate corruption thereof or willful disregard for.  Now, abruptly, they revoke all faith in a system of beliefs which has served us for more than two hundred and thirty years; a construct of ideals for which they have never failed to accuse any and all who would seek to define them further, to be in blatant and shameful violation of.  They now denounce blatantly, the idea that this very system can serve us at all in the most extreme, important and precious of contexts.  These people are fucking fools.

I know, that’s convoluted but stay with me.

They fear the truth and justice of the American way of getting to the Goddamn bottom of things.  They fear that we’ll all learn more truth than they intended.  They hate that we will discover where they stepped over the line and made matters so much worse.  That Americans will know what the rest of the world already does.  That we prosecuted multiple wars for no real reason and that it was never in the average Americans best interest but only served to enrich already ridiculously wealthy Americans and that our liberties and rights were simultaneously eroded and allowed to atrophy by razing us with empty fear, empty nationalism and overt jingoism.

They did it all on purpose.  The very same thing the Right wing whackjobs would and do accuse the the mild and sensible Left of is what they panic about us discovering they’ve been up to.  Fuck these guys.  Notice Cheney has shut the fuck up?  Where’s his little dog Liz?  They know we’re getting close.

My guess is the goal of our AG Mr. Holder and the Obama administration is to bring these dishonorable methods to light while they debunk their efficaciousness, highlight the inequity, and ultimately demonstrate that torture is a bullshit methodology and beyond unnecessary in convicting these bastards but potentially jeopardizing and tainting it all together nonetheless. 

Pretty ballsy if you ask me but I like it.  I like it a lot.

And guess what?  The first pricks that decided to try and bring the towers down were dealt with in the same way.  By our flawed system of justice that exists for all Americans.  They’re all in American prisons for life.  Duh.  Remember?  Back in the nineties?

May I have extra sauce?

It’s an opportunity for our imperfect but still shining system to glow a little and show the world that the standard we have for our own can still apply to any who would wrong and kill us on our own soil despite where they come from.  It is my hope that the process will reveal a further glimpse into the complicity of our own and perhaps that is what they are most afraid of.  Nevermind the context or the circumstances, our system is beyond adequate in this instance.  It can, when challenged, mete out judicature in a manner that just might reveal as much flaw as it does direction for recompense and justice.  Ultimate and severe as should be the case.

Extra cheese too?

Nothing to worry about.  No matter.  We will see justice served.

If for whatever reason, convictions are not attained, we will still be supplied fairness with an eye opening understanding of the last administration’s transgressions and the compromises we’ve all become victims of.  Either way, justice will be served.  I am prepared for either outcome.  Are you?

I trust our system in this case.  I imagine it just might be a ripe and timely test of it.  I’m hoping it serves us well.  I’m really looking forward to the process of jurisprudence presenting some very difficult questions.  I’m counting on this being very interesting.  If it fails to at least be interesting, I imagine it will have failed us in general.

As an American, it’s all I can ask and no less than I have right to expect.

I’m asking for pickles on the side.

Waitress?

Drinks for my friends.     

A trifecta of issues have been chapping my ass of late.

ITEM ONE:

Is there a more appropriate term for the completely contrived “protest” by whackjob flat-earthers other than “teabagging”?

Methinks not.

“the insertion of one man’s sack into another person’s mouth. Used a practical joke or prank, when performed on someone who is asleep, or as a sexual act.” -UrbanDictionary.com

I love this shit.

In effect, they will protest the single largest tax cut on America’s middle class, working poor and impoverished in our history. They will actively lament an increased tax burden on America’s wealthiest five percent that still ends up being less than what their sacred small government charlatan Ronald Reagan imposed.

These people are idiots.

Not only does it pervert and vulgarize the original defiance by colonists who orchestrated and participated in The Boston Tea Party, it’s a knock kneed, anti-intellctual parody of genuine patriotism. I’m here to tell you these fuckers heads are as round as the average potato. Think pineal.

The lockstep conservatives have chosen the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. They are retarded and unable to wipe their own snot bubbling noses and drool weeping, recessed chins. Pathetic.

No one but Fox News seems to notice. Can you say ‘marginalized’?

ITEM TWO:

Looks like the GOP is resolute in blocking the release of actual legal opinions produced by the Bush administration’s OLC (Office of Legal Council), regarding torture. There are in fact three such memos issued by the OLC, one of the highest legal offices in the land, permitting and allowing for, under the auspices of American legal authority, the sadistic treatment and physical violence upon captured individuals in violation of Geneva Conventions as well as human decency and longstanding American ideals related to the treatment of prisoners of war.

Actual legal opinions proffered by the Bush administration that are apparently so profound and disgusting that Senate Republicans are willing to engage in blackmail to prevent their being released to media and the public.

“A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public. The source says these threats are the principal reason for the Obama administration’s abrupt pullback last week from a commitment to release some of the documents. A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward…” -Scott Horton, The Daily Beast

Fuck me running.

They all stood right in front of us and swore up and down that America does not torture. That we don’t kidnap and “render” to countries that attach electrodes to the genitals or nearly drown “detainees”. That we don’t beat and humiliate or emasculate. They are fucking liars. And now, sitting members of the Senate, the world’s ‘greatest deliberative body’, openly engage in foul and despicable brinksmanship designed to keep the official sanctioning of that truth from our citizens.

Fuck you John Yoo. Fuck you Alberto Gonzales. Fuck you Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. There is nothing and no things any of you could possibly do to right this wrong you all so willingly and zealously fomented and encouraged. The stain you leave will be visible for centuries and the damage you have wrought will be your legacy long after worms have consumed your rotting corpses and shat them into soil.

ITEM THREE:

Al Franken.

Hey Norm Coleman. Shut the fuck up and start looking for a job. Al Franken didn’t clean your clock but he won. Have some dignity or maybe some vanity. Sheezus. You lost. Everyone agrees. Have you no shame? A whip smart comedian bested you in a public contest. Ten out of ten dentists agree, time to look for a job. Maybe you could be Michele Bachmann’s pool boy.

This shit is ridiculous.

Drinks for my friends.

Oil and pot. One syllable, three letters each. What’s the only difference? One’s legal and one’s not. People die, get kidnapped and beheaded at the behest of both. A simple product. A commodity. The bad people get rich either way. The terrorists are just as sexy.

Among the most dangerous and foolish of games.

The prison industrial complex. Mexican warlords. Where the money goes has not changed since Nixon. The only significant change has been the amount of money. Can you say exponential? The gleaming city is underwater. The levees have failed. The cash overflows. America’s Drug War is the second or third stupidest thing we’ve ever done. After slavery, Viet Nam and Iraq.

It may be the second or third most expensive.

Then there was The Pet Rock, The Osmonds and Spam as meat.

Lives lost and innocent imprisoned in numbers staggering and shameful. Pigs at the trough, persecuting, prosecuting and killing their own while they horde the filthy lucre. You want terrorism? It’s on your southern border and it’s blowing the fuck up. Terror not mutually exclusive with the North American continent anymore.

It’s state sponsored, by your state, by the US of A. As we speak, it spills over. Civilians slaughtered. Juarez, Tijuana, El Paso and San Diego. Every American city bends and groans under the weight of our archaic policies and a draconian incarceration non-solution.

Enforce, enforce, enforce.

We learned in the thirties that prohibition is wrongheaded and the furthest thing from efficacious mankind could possibly muster. Stupid then, stupid now. It gave rise to a brand of crime we came to call ‘organized’. I wonder why we called it that. Seems kinda non-nefarious. A non sequitur. What it is today, is bad news. Organized crime like this, is American made. Homegrown like Jazz and The Blues. Just like a gorgeous and unique art form, we are worldwide with the violence and the ignorance.

I worry about my parents. They winter in Yuma. They have the world’s best insurance but they still cross the border to save money on a few things.

This is where we are. This is what we’ve allowed to happen. It’s sick. The War On Drugs and The War On Healthcare. The conversation with my mother will be about their safety on the border, because of The War On Drugs and The War On Healthcare. Because they could be killed on a lazy Sunday.

This is bullshit. We need to shut this nonsense down. We reap what we have sown. Did you know Reagan dealt drugs? He also dealt arms to folks we’d all decided as a country we couldn’t do business with because they were brown and kinda socialist. Or was it the other way around? I forget.

Even in my world the clouds part.

Then there’s Our Man’s choice for Drug Czar (head of the ONDCP), Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. I don’t know much about this guy yet but he looks to be pretty progressive. Alternet calls him “a relatively enlightened cop.” Seattle is goddamn liberal. They’ve lowered marijuana as an enforcement priority and have needle exchange.

Maybe there’s potential.

United States Attorney General Eric Holder has confirmed he will not be pursuing DEA raids on medical marijuana clinics. A policy shift that’s precisely 180 degrees out from the previous administration. It’s a waste of time and money and it foments distrust and fear. Smart move. Makes me smile.

Pretty big deal the aggregate of these issues alone. The departure they represent, despite them not being secondary or even tertiary to the electorate these days, it’s awesome. Forgive me but it is. It reveals a compassion and pragmatism people won’t recognize because it’s been so long since they’ve seen it.

Trust me, this is big.

My sincere hope is that it’s harbinger of things to come.

It he tells us he’s closing Gitmo, ending torture and the war in Iraq. Gonna wind down the defense budget a little, spend lots on infrastructure, healthcare and education. He seems to understand this is a long term deal. This is not your father’s President. His short game looks good too. Aggressive and decisive. Perhaps we should do something to revive the patient as opposed to speculating ad nauseum over what will be it’s demise.

If we could just stop spending money to kill people or be able to kill them better in the future. Not forever. Maybe for a few years. You know, a three year moratorium would just about get us out of this mess. It could work pretty well in the short term.

End the drug war, stop killing folks. Stop putting them in jail. Let the masses self medicate and get off your asses and allow America to cultivate hemp. Oil, nutrition and textiles in a crop requiring no pesticides that can be turned around every twelve to sixteen weeks. It’s illegal because it scared the shit out of Hearst (paper) and Rockefeller (oil) back in the thirties.

Good green bud has Pfizer horrified and vomiting.

Life is not a game and we’re not necessarily here to compete all the time. But when people succumb, when they become overly cynical and bitter. They have lost. They are losers on the human stage. They may succeed in some ways, but when they lose in important ways, nobody gives a damn.

Drinks for my friends.