Archive for the ‘War On Drugs’ Category

Did ya guess I’m furious?

Where exactly does the rub lie you ask?

I’m a little at a loss for words here.  Don’t worry, it won’t last.

Heh.

It’s just that this is so important.  In a country as wealthy as ours, health care is not a privilege, it’s a right.  Fuck me, every living being deserves it.  How embarrassing that far poorer nations are getting it?  Until we can make it available to us and for us equitably and fairly, how can we even advocate for it with a straight face for anyone else?  It’s moral and ethical and shouldn’t be political but it is and that’s just ugly.  Fucking disgusting.  The very idea that it’s being debated in our corridors of power just confounds me.  We have the money and the resources and everyone wants it.

We stood up against the Nazis and humiliated Japan.

For this most humane of causes, we battle our own.  We fight those elected by us to advance our very best ideas, interests and needs.  The fight for what we deserve is with our own alleged democracy.  They mock us by allowing it to even be a contest.  What is right is clear.  What we expect is obvious.  Why they represent us is clear.  What we want is clear and still, the outcome is in question.

You inglorious fucking bastards.

Ahem.

We’re talking about the public option amendments proposed by Chuck Schumer and J. Rockefeller today before the Senate Finance Committee in the precipitously spectator friendly fight for health care reform.  Note to elected reps, you’re being watched.

Okay, I understand this is the first authentic punch in this fight.  I’m well aware that it was meant to be ceremonial; a shot across the bow if you will.  Schumer and Rockefeller admitted as much.  Both amendments pretty much went down in flames.  The reckonings were 15 opposed to 8 and 13 opposed to 10.  Chuck was all smiles for the post game, saying that they did better than he’d anticipated and momentum is building.  I’m a little lukewarm on Schumer but I admit to having a soft spot for him.  His assessment is likely more cogent and certainly better informed than mine.

Pisses me off when he defends Baucus though.  Shumer wishes they weren’t running those ads.  Buacus is a pawn and an officious prick.  He deserves it and we’ll be talking about it here in a minute.

Here’s what chaps my ass.  Max, four million bucks in campaign contributions from big pharma and big insurance, Baucus.  After a suspiciously protracted process of negotiation, Baucus puked up a bill so lame, so transparently in favor of not just maintaining the status quo but adding bulkhead after bulkhead to protect and enrich insurance companies at the expense of the common American,  I’m simply in awe anyone in what was once the world’s greatest deliberative body can pretend to take him seriously.

I harbor dark oozing contempt for this man.

Let me give you an example.  His bill mandates that every American, regardless of income level, purchase health insurance.  Any American citizen who does not not purchase health insurance would be subject to a fine.  Either way, whether an individual buys in or not, monies for premiums or penalties for not buying in, go directly to health insurance corporations.  No reach around, just straight up cash.  All it does is give access to the money of the forty or fifty million uninsured to the insurance industry they haven’t otherwise been able to get their hands on.  Needless to say, without a public option to foment reasonable competition for rates and service, his bill is nothing less than a totalitarian dictate to further enrich an industry that has been ripping off the average American for decades.

Max Baucus really sucks.

Max tells us today on national television that his job is to deliver a bill that will garner sixty votes on the floor of the Senate.  Bullshit.  Where is that written?  Where does it say that his job as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee is to do anything but deliver a fair and equitable bill in the best interest of his constituents and as committee chair, a bill that reflects the will of 65% of the American people?  Just what is with this sixty fucking votes thing?  It’s absurd.  It takes fifty one votes to pass a bill.  Sixty votes guarantees cloture and therefore prevents filibuster.  But it only takes fifty one votes to pass a goddamn bill and there are sixty of you spineless bastards.

The Democrats are so terrified of fillibuster they won’t bust a move without being able to prevent it?  So what?  Make the filthy Republicans actually filibuster.  Bring some sandwiches a cot and a laptop loaded with porn.  Have your aides set up a tent if you need to spank it.  Pretend you’re at the DMV.  Outlast them if it’s something you believe in and it’s the right thing for the American people.  You ARE the majority you know.  This is a walk in the park.

Why, why, why do the Democrats insist on being such pussies?  I’ll tell you why.  Because so many of them just as shamelessly beholding to the same forces as Baucus.

Procedurally, if Democrats stand together, they have enough votes to prevent filibuster on specific amendments.  What is the goddamn problem?  This is doable.  We have a majority in congress because the people have spoken.  65% of Americans favor a public option.  Between the congressional majority and the overwhelming majority on the part of the electorate, we have what I like to think of as a motherfucking mandate.

Fer fuck’s sake, do the math you retards.

It’s no secret that during the last decade profits have rocketed towards what Baucus and friends intend to be an apogee, while service, care and the number meaningfully insured has cratered below sea level.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely and dickheads like Baucus don’t give a mad fuck about being re-elected because his next gig will be with the very cabal of ruthless, greedy swine he’s now representing instead of the interests of the people who elected him.  The same can be and is said by me for Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, Bill Nelson and Tom Carper.  Spineless, greedy sycophants all of them.

Cowardly inchoate vaginas that are looking forward the next cush gig.  Man, I hate these guys.

There is nothing wrong with prostitution as far I’m concerned.  It’s a contract, a transaction between two consenting parties.  You want to fuck for money?  Have at it.  Baucus however, is a filthy, disease ridden whore.  His entire reason is to let someone else screw you without your consent and get paid by them and you simultaneously.  He wouldn’t do it if it hadn’t worked so far.  How’s that make you feel?

Sucker.

He thinks you’re stupid.  He underestimates you.

Maybe.

Sucker.

Like I said in my last blog, shave a few points off defense spending, end the reprehensible, ineffective and exorbitant War On Drugs  and we’ll be swimming in cash.  Health care will be an “oh yeah, let’s do that” kinda type a deal.  Free cable and comic books for everyone.  The return of $4.99 buffets and all you can eat breakfasts.  We’ve got plenty of money, we’re just really stupid.

Sucker.

And for the record, fuck Roman Polanski.  He gave drugs and alcohol to a thirteen year old girl and raped her.  If I believed in hell, I’d advocate for him to roast on a spit there.  Guess I’ll have to settle for throwing the prick bastard in prison, introducing him to Big Jim Slade and tossing the key.

If more Americans believe in UFOs than oppose a public option, where does that leave me?

Drinks for my friends.

I hardly know where to begin.

Just when I think the army of ignorant, mouth breathing retards who oppose all things Obama, consistently and without grace or agility and discrepant against their very own interests, cannot possibly get anymore hypocritically and incoherently shrill, well, they pull down their pants, run around screaming, shitting and pissing themselves.

Now these roundheads are encouraging their children to skip school on Tuesday to save their fragile minds from some evil socialist indroctination by the President of The United States.  You can’t write this shit.

My old friend Gabby put it this way:  “Don’t worry kids, Obama’s not gonna ask you to procreate or practice loading your 45s.  He just gonna ask you to do your homework, which I guess from the conservative stand point, is a horrible thing.  Ok, so all you Republican Kids, just go back to your unprotected sex and guns.”
-Gabrielle Birchack

Racism, ignorance, stupidity and fear are alive and well in America.  It reminds me of leaving wet food as a treat for the warehouse cat at work, only to discover the bowl squirming and glistening with maggots the next morning.  I remember my disappointment and nausea inducing disgust vividly.  It was summer and I was a little saddened that my gesture had been so perverted by some of earths lowest creatures.

Well, it’s summer.

They would have us believe and likely believe themselves, that health care reform will:

1) Ration care, deny treatment to the elderly based on whether a government death panel deems them worthy and deserving.  It will do neither.  Um, by the way, health care is rationed rather egregiously in America today.  Weeks, sometimes months for an appointment with your doctor if you have insurance.  Automated phone voices instruct us that in the event of an emergency, meaning care is needed any more urgently than say, a month, hang up and call 911.  The chances of your insurance paying for the specific treatment, prescription etc. that you and your doctor have agreed is most efficacious is as low as sixty percent in many cases.  People have died and are dying as a result of the insurance company coming between patient and doctor.

Sounds like rationing to me.  It’s not just the uninsured that are going bankrupt or literally dying.  Sounds like death and or bankruptcy panels to me.

2) All illegal aliens, undocumented workers et al. will be automatically covered at our expense.

Guess what?  They already are.  They, as well as uninsured Americans go to an emergency room, as there are laws in all fifty states mandating that no one be turned away from emergency rooms.  We pay for it in higher costs across the board.  It should be noted, there is no provision in any of the bills in committee, that provide for care to illegals.

3) This is just the first step in a government take over of health care.

My first reaction is so what?  We’re the only modern industrialized nation without it and the wealthiest.  Contrary to the opposition’s chronically mendacious bloviating, those people in those other countries are quite happy with the care they receive.  Perfect?  No.  Would they choose to do without it?  In a word, nofuckingway.  Then, the fact that Medicare and Medicaid are tremendously popular in this country, despite both programs being entirely administrated by the government and the appearance that most of the opposition are willfully ignorant of this, reveals the argument to be specious on it’s face.

They use Stephen Hawking as example of someone who would never survive socialized medicine, despite socialized medicine being the best and only reason Mr. Hawking is still with us.  They are full of shit.  Idiots.  Empty blowhards.  Liars.

The stated goal is to increase efficiency and foster competition to bring down costs and end the chronic, unchecked avarice of the insurance and drug industries.

Every year, insurance company profits go up, premiums go up and the the number of insured goes down.  Remember, one way or another, despite the rampant suffering, it’s you and me who pay for those uninsured whether we like it or not.  Some estimates have the price of health insurance requiring half the median income of Americans within ten years.  Are you ready for $20,000.00 plus premiums?

4) We can’t pay for it.

I will admit, this perhaps their most legitimate protest.  But first, I say to you who would tout it, so what?  Remember Reagan spewing the nonsense of tax cuts to none other than our children during a period of double digit inflation, interest rates and unemployment?  Remember your icon telling us that deficits don’t matter?  So why do you care?  Why all of the sudden are you so ardently in favor of fiscal responsibility?  Why so vehemently concerned about the price our children will pay?  I smell political opportunism.  I smell hypocrisy.  You folks stink of intellectual dishonesty.  You folks reek of goddamn stupidity.

I’m a firm believer that increases in efficiency and a slim tax increase on those who’ve prospered so plenteously the last eight years will go a very long way towards funding a program that will improve the life of virtually every American.  Failing that, let me say this very plainly, we could opt to spend somewhat less than the near trillion dollars we spend each and every year to kill brown people overseas.  It’s just that simple.  Kill less brown people and foment life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all of us, including the brown people.  

The fact is, that without a robust public option to not only cover the 50 million who have fallen through the the cracks, but to obviate the greed and vacuum of compassion of the status quo, any “reform” legislation is antithetical and more than likely worse than nothing at all.

See, it will fail to incentivise competition and nothing will change. The simplest and most comprehensive as well as comprehensible way to do this is expand Medicare appropriately.  A walk in the park.

As to the trigger idea that has surfaced of late, I’m calling bullshit on that.  Ostensibly, it would give insurance companies a few more years to clean up their act before a public option would be implemented.  It won’t work.  The dirty greedy bastards will conduct business as usual at best, daring the powers that be to do what they haven’t been able to do for half a century anyway.  A pretty safe bet on their part.  At worst, they will go for broke, wring us all dry in the time allowed, take the money and run, much like the Bush administration and it’s corporate cronies did with everything including the war, leaving a gigantic mess, nearly beyond repair.  For eight years it was open field running for the plutocracy under Dick-in-Bush.  It’s insane to think they’d behave any differently under the same circumstances.  These people care far less about you than your government and that’s a mouthfull.

The real reason for such virulent opposition to health care reform is that it is literally the first, and therefore most important, domino to be tipped.  Should it lose it’s center of gravity, the horror show that is the great unwashed will be subject to any socialist whimsy we in the majority see fit to impose on their jingoistic, empty headed sloganeering asses.

We may choose to prevent bloody mass murders by over armed nut jobs by pressing for incrementally better gun control.  No, we’re not interested in taking your fucking guns away, even though you dress ridiculously to kill defenseless animals.  We may seek to at least make sure that creationism can’t be taught exclusively, but mandate that evolution at least be offered along side it.  We may just, *gasp*, insist that gay people be treated fairly under all aspects of law, including marriage.

The prerogative to get all bold and righteous will be upon us.

We might legalize the demon weed, in order to tax it, better regulate it and keep it out of the hands of teenagers.  Legalize hemp production and we’ve got oil, paper, textiles, plastics, even high protein food, all renewable in twelve weeks, no pesticides and no detrimental environmental impact whatsoever.  We may push to stop imprisoning all non violent drug offenders because we currently incarcerate more people per capita than any country on earth at $30k per.  You can bet we’ll pursue green industry more aggressively because even if we’re wrong about global warming, and we’re not, there’s nothing wrong with cleaning up the water we all drink and the air we all breath.

Our sun vomits more energy in an hour than we use in a millennium.  Might as well work that shit.  It’s free beyond the technology to collect it.

The whole human race can survive without war.

The churches will have to endure a renewed and vigorous scrutiny.  The message will be, get the hell out of and stay the hell out of politics or your considerable largess will be taxed.  Oh, and maybe, just maybe some real and actual campaign finance reform.  I’m getting carried away here but I hope I’ve scared the living shit out of all you neocons and thoughtless, unpatriotic, yes unpatriotic, dittoheads and obsequies followers of Hannity, Beck and O’Reilly.  Let’s be honest, you’re already scared shitless because a half African American, progressive Democrat is your President.

We know why you show up to town halls armed to the teeth.  It’s because you’re stupid and scared.  We’re not at all impressed.

The opposite also applies, should the first all important domino fail to be moved off it’s axis by the will of the people and a pantywaste full majority Democratic administration, any subsequent metaphorical monoliths will be twice as hard to encourage toward a capitulation to gravity.  We will be left with an administration weaker than that of Jimmy Carter and a better than even chance our next president will be some empty headed dipshit like Sarah Palin or crazy eyed Michele Bachmann (God will have whispered in her ear).

This is the first fight and it’s the most important because of the obvious and enormous precedent.  They know it on a sub-genius level almost as well as we do.  Get involved.  Contact your representatives, sign petitions.  You want change you can believe in?  Get up and get out.  This is no time to fuck around.

Drinks for my friends.

Bill O’Reilly, who’s likeness appears along side the definitions of both ‘hypocrite’ and ‘blowhard’ in the most reputable dictionaries, said in an interview today that he boycotts any film in which Sean Penn appears because of his political views. In the words of Snoop Dogg, “Fuck Bill O’Reilly”. And, “He’s a motherfuckin’ prick”. And, “Suck my dick”. And, “so I can kick his motherfuckin ass when the show is over with”.

I don’t really have anything to add here.

In other news, I thought it was pretty cool to hear that the CEO of GM, Rick Wagoner, was walking away at the behest of the Obama administration. That is, until I read the greedy bastard could tip the fuck out the door with as much as $20 million. Excuse me, there seems to be some sort of canker on my penis. Does this look infected to you? It’s like deja vu all over again.

Also, thirty thousand pythons as long as twenty feet are threatening to go forth, multiply and overrun Florida and there’s a million pounds of pistachios out there that will kill you in your bed.

The world is an increasingly perilous place and I’m almost out of pot again. It’s legal here in California as long as one suffers from a serious and/or chronic malaise like ingrown toenail, sebaceous cysts on one’s genitalia or say, brewer’s droop from drinking beer.

A prescription costs between a hundred and a hundred fifty bucks. My fridge is broke.

I watched a comic tonight on Comedy Central. Josh Blue. Self deprecating, brave, honest and very funny. He suffers from cerebral palsy. Walk a mile in another man’s shoes but never forget about the man with no feet.

I’m an agnostic. My position has more to do with the abject silliness of just about every organized religion on the planet, as opposed to some sort of soaring epiphany. Honestly, I owe my stake more to the vacuum of logic that exists in every dogma fomented by people of faith on up to, but not exclusively, the goddamn Pope.

For example:
YAOUNDE, Cameroon (March 17) – Pope Benedict XVI said condoms are not the answer to the AIDS epidemic in Africa and can make the problem worse, setting off criticism Tuesday as he began a weeklong trip to the continent where some 22 million people are living with HIV. -AOL news

Don’t lose sight of the fact they boink all the little boys and girls they want.

Good luck with that crap you pointy hatted pontiff. I’m not sorry to tell you that Catholicism just may be the most egregious and archaic “faith” practiced in America certainly, and under the world’s proscenium without a doubt. I will be as blunt as possible here. Catholicism encourages me to root for Satan. Catholics are fools. So are Baptists, Mormons, Anglicans, Protestants, Muslims and especially Evangelicals and Born Agains.

They are all petty children in the eyes of the universe.

My sincerest apologies if I left any one out.

Buddhism occurs to me to be the only discipline that bothers to address the existential nature and uniqueness of the human condition. I just can’t help but appreciate a fat guy with a shit eating grin in the context of all the other tragic and sometimes stigmatically bleeding religious icons.

Most of it is about guilt and non intellectually curious blind shithouse faith. What I mean to say is it’s spectacularly dumb.

You gonna eat that?

Drinks for my friends.

I’m fourty four years old. Sometimes I think about that and it impresses me. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve done a lot.

I’ve seen a kid on a bike launched by a car doing sixty. I’ve seen people splattered and dying face down on warm asphalt. I’ve been rushed to the hospital bleeding in an ambulance. I’ve met governors and senators. I’ve seen comets and eclipses. Managed a Der Wienerschnitzel. I’ve rolled end over end off the side of mountain in a Subaru. I had a knife pulled on me. Been to a whorehouse and ridden miles above in a giant balloon. Lost my mind on hallucinogenic drugs. Got booked on a felony and made the front page of my hometown paper.

All by the time I was twenty one or twenty two.

I always wonder how many other people flirt with insanity as much as I do. I don’t think I’m going crazy or anything but I wonder about everyone else. Imagine working in a hospital. People with there shit hanging out or infected with insidious diseases. There are so many professions I’m automatically excluded from because of my prejudice for gore and human or animal excretions be they voluntary or not.

I am grateful to be an American. Despite her flaws, copious and profound, I’m happy I was born here and not anywhere else. They call India ‘the worlds largest democracy’, yet the caste system in India allows for a man’s only employment prospect to be diving in the crude sewage system to clear obstructions. These poor fucks have little beyond facemasks, gloves and snorkels. They climb out of manholes covered in shit.

Fuck me.

Welcome to Planet Earth.

“So, let us not be blind to our differences – but let us also direct attention to our common interests……For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” -JFK

He said that nearly a half century ago. How far have we come? We’ve elected our first bi-racial or racially mixed President. A very high watermark. To my dismay we are still coated in fear, willfull ignorance and graceless stupidity. Still so disasterously handicapped by institutions and insipid indoctrination. People actually lament the end of Dumbya’s dynasty. Millions still believe reproductive rights to be a priority beyond any other issue. Millions still have mullets and poor dental hygiene. They all listen to Rush Limbaugh.

We can’t ignore these bastards. They used to just be stupid. Now they’re mad. Not a welcome development. Seems like the only thing to do is marginalize them. Zeitgeist appears to endorse that notion. The pendulum is in motion and it’s arc seems to favor sensibility. I don’t trust these zealous fuckers, they may be mad now but they’ve always been insane, that’s how it all happened in the first place. It’s been welcome to the monkeyhouse for eight goddamn years.

“…..in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity….”

I just have to say this. As fucked as we are, these dipshits want to stand at every hole we attempt to fill stomping and screaming about how we shovel or what we use to fill the hole. The Republicans, after all this time pissing and moaning about the budget, finally produce a document we’ll have to call an alternative. We can’t call it a budget because there are no goddamn numbers in it. I haven’t read the whole and I refuse to. I have neither the time, the patience or the humor. It’s a joke.

And another thing, most of the people who manage to get a degree in this country end up owing an assload of money. In their early twenties they are desensitized to the idea of humongous debt. So, duh. No wonder so many are so confused. They were working and now they’re not. They had savings and now they don’t. They were living check to check and now they live hand to mouth. They lived in their cars and now they live on a sidewalk.

Another indicator of just how bad the shit is hitting the fan is conflagrations on our southern border. Juárez is occupied by the Mexican military. Thousands dying every year. Far more than our wars across the globe. It is blowing up. This shit is fucked up and it’s because of our senseless, pointless, compassionless and thoroughly ineffective ‘War On Drugs’.

Evil, draconian policy arriving home to roost. Hillary showed up, I don’t know what she did. People who buy pot, smoke pot or even sell pot should not be behind bars anymore than people who buy booze, drink booze or sell booze. It’s that simple. It’s that regoddamndiculous.

My cat Beddy likes to sit on my back while I take a dump. She let’s me know with her eyes and one of at least ten variations on the sound of a pigeon. She’s petite but I still need to lean forward a bit. She turns every direction of the compass. Otherwise she doesn’t approach me in the bathroom much. She’s transfixed by the water closet however. I call it that because of her. It’s a story for another day.

It’s just that we are still so plumbing the depths.

I no longer buy bottled water.

This is the strangest place I’ve ever been.

Drinks for my friends.

The Republicans have been putting on quite a show lately.

It is with limp wristed Liberal delight that I watch a cavalcade of blowhard conservatives stumble over their own dicks. I should point out I’m wearing my frilly liberal blouse to give you a better visual. No boots but a handsome silver tiara.

RNC Chair Michael Steele used the words “Ugly” and “Incendiary” when discussing Rush Limbaugh on D.L. Hughley this weekend.

Did I mention my artfully encrusted codpiece?

It speaks volumes about the current state of the Republican party that Michael Steele says what he thinks in a candid moment about Rush Limbaugh and then back peddles, getting tangled up in his own phallus while attempting a mea culpa for the pleasure of the notorious Human Shitsmear.

Weak and stupid.

Some suggest we only launch against the Shitsmear for the sake of ‘strawman’ tactics. Villify Rush and prove our priorities have nothing to do with substance and policy. Nope. Ring the buzzer. We are here to expose him for being full of shit. He’s a loose lipped caricature stomping the stage to regurgitate talking points and rigid ideology back to the great unwashed like a carnival barker.

He is here for the stupid. The base.

Rush Limbaugh wields more influence and therefore more power than any single other Republican. Think about that. He’s not a journalist, he’s not a pundit, he’s not a politician, he’s an entertainer. When a disingenuous, hypocritical bloviating drug addict speaks…………..wandering clueless Republicans listen.

Then there’s the notion that Republicans can contemporize conservative ideals by by applying them to “….urban-suburban hip hop settings.” -Michael Steele/The Colbert report. The show went on to include Michelle Bachman (R. MN.) telling Steele that “You be the man”.

Sheezus. This is fucking pathetic.

After nothing less than renting our once proud nation asunder, the Republicans are desperate to remake themselves in any way, by any means possible and put as many miles as possible between them and their wreckless sins of avarice and division.

News flash. The likes of Limbaugh and Coulter cannot possibly lead you people out of these woods. They are your problem, no chance of them playing part in a recipe for the magic poultice. Their baseless vitriol, the fundamental components of which are hate and fear, will only further poison your message and perception. We are encouraged by them to view all Republicans like racists still clinging to the mantra of seperate but equal.

The Human Shitsmear obviates that you just don’t get it.

You people are idiots.

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.