Musings on the weed.

Started as a way to screw over migrant Mexican workers in the Southwest during the Great Depression, the banning of Marijuana has always been bad policy. There has always been a core of undiluted malevolence to the policy.

Flash forward to the sixties when smoking weed became part of the long dark night of the culture wars. The enforcement of the ban took on yet another aspect, that of hippie bashing. And then in the Regan Eighties that particular meme was placed on steroids by the wide-eyed, sainted wife of Don Reynaldo, Nancy Just Say No.

We have been very stupid about this for a very long time. Our whole drug policy reeks of moral panic and out of control Puritanism. We have allowed this panic to feed an utterly ruinous policy that shreds our forth amendment rights and feeds a demonic Prison-Industrial Complex. Nothing good has come our second period of Prohibition.

We need a radical rethink of the whole policy on drugs and the ban on Marijuana is a great place to start. I’m going to blow past most of the arguments for and against to go to what I consider the big guns.

The first big gun is that I don’t know of a substance that brings more enjoyment with so few downsides. Marijuana is ridiculously safe. First there is no LD50 worth mentioning; there is no way to overdose on weed. Maybe there are some who are allergic to MJ, who would suffer a reaction, but I have not heard a word of it. No one has died in gutter from the stuff. Trust me when I say we all would have heard, and seen, the results, of a fatal Marijuana overdose. The government and the Just Say No crowd would be showing us the images and trumpeting the news like the Second Coming. This is not Heroin, cocaine, barbiturates, alcohol, etc. which can and do kill if you take too much.

Going a bit deeper, there is no real proof of any real long term harm with Marijuana. Yes, there are “studies” that “show” some sort of possible harm but every last one has a matching study that says, in essence, “not so fast.” To put not so fine a point most of the studies pointing to harm are crap. There methodology is flawed, the sourcing is highly suspect, the results are contaminated at best or utterly worthless at worst. Besides, like it or not, we have been doing a very long-term epidemiological study since the 1960′s.

Yes, my dear and fellow baby-boomers in one way or another you and I have participated either as a test subject or as a control. If we really wanted to put an end to the debate the government could do a two to four year study and really look at the morbidity. The CDC could go through the data with a fine tooth comb and find out even the most trivial of causalities. “Hey, what did you know? It seems that long term and heavy use of marijuana causes excessive nose hair growth; go figure.” But we already know one thing; nothing really serious has occurred. No spike in cancer. No spike in respiratory disease (kind of a surprise to yours truly). No real proof of addiction. No real proof of habituation that causes any real harm. No sudden uptick in the number of people sporting two heads. Nothing. Bupkis. All the anti-drug forces have is anactodal evidence; e.i. garbage that can not stand the light of double-blind studies.

I’m not saying that weed is totally harmless, no drug is. Every drug out there has some sort of adverse reaction or side effect. Every drug out there has what the medical profession calls contraindications, reasons you do not take a drug. What I am saying is that compared to almost all the drugs out there, medicinal and recreational, weed is remarkably benign. It maybe be even safer than Aspirin. Hard to prove that surmise because we have spent so much time and effort demonizing hemp. MJ is illegal, so it’s really hard to get data points on use.

Unfortunately we, the unwashed public, will never get that mother of all epidemiological studies finally putting the debate to rest. The opponents of reform are way too clever for that. Deep inside they know their talking points are pure bull-puckey. Besides, there is the political a political gold mine to be reaped in hippie-punching. There are Red Team flag waving considerations that take precedent to sensible policy. It is way too much fun and way too profitable to demagog drug policy. Logic and science just get in the way; there are elections to be won by waving the bloody red shirt. Thus, even if we did get that epidemiological study it would be of no matter. Idiot Progressives would still playing a no-win game.

The argument Progressives should make is that there is gold in them thar hills. Allowing MJ to be sold legally will raise money for strapped federal, state, and local coffers. Being the evil bastard that I am, I would make it federal law linking the sale of tobacco to the sale of MJ. States would have to chain the age of tobacco use to the age of MJ use. Any prohibition placed on MJ would have to also apply to tobacco. Loss of a license to sell MJ would incur a loss of license to sell tobacco because it is same license — a license to sell tobacco and MJ. Yes, I do enjoy putting a finger in the eye of Red State yahoos.

I doubt we can re-purpose even part of 42 billion dollars thrown down the rat-hole of our present drug policy. That, unfortunately, is a battle for another day. It is going to be a hell of a fight just to legalize pot. If Progressives are smart they will use a little political Jujitsu and stress how by decriminalizing MJ, which is the most used illegal drug and a “gateway drug,” we can concentrate on the “more serious drugs” and prevent there use by slamming the gateway of MJ shut. While this argument will hold no water for Deep Red partisans, it will help with the mushy middle. When the Reds start screaming about the how the moral hazard legalized pot will present to our innocent youth, the Progressive counter must be “all the more reason to legalize it and then regulate it.” Progressive can then make a strong push for stricter enforcement of relevant laws on selling booze and cigarettes (plus MJ) to minors. I particularly like this notion because, as pointed out before, I just love sticking a finger in the eye of Red State hypocrites.

For me the three points for legalization are:

Marijuana is benign, no real harm has been shown after near fifty years of use by a large section of the population.

Legalization of Marijuana will help in the battle against more dangerous drugs by:
1. Closing a gateway. Less people may be tempted by “harder” drugs because the gateway drug of MJ is slammed shut by legalization. Why go to a suspect dealer when you go to a 7/11 for your weed?
2. Resources can be re-targeted to interdiction of harder drugs once MJ is legalized gaining more bang for the buck.

And finally the truly big enchilada; there is a ton of tax and other monies to be made by legalization. Granted, once legalized the farmers are going to get screwed, MJ is going to become a commodity and its value per pound will plummet, but everyone else will make out like bandits. There is gold in them thar green hills and all sorts of taxes that can be had for cash strapped governments, local, state, and federal.

Libya; It's the Policy Stupid!

I'm reading about the smoking gun de jure of the long, unending Republican Primal Scream that is "Benghazi!!!!" Shall we get impolitic? We shall. We must.

First let's pull the chains holding the two 800 pound gorillas of our foreign policy: Afghanistan and Iraq. Almost all of our military power was diverted there. So when Ghaddafi decided he wanted to wipe out vast swaths of his own population, and then broadcasted the message, our options were very limited. While I can not get into the head space of the our man Muammar he must have looked about and seen how bogged down the preeminent military power in the world was and thought he could get away with mass slaughter.

Unfortunately for the man, his broadcasting of his intentions was a challenge that had to be answered. If he had pulled an Assad, and provided even a soupcon of plausible deniability, he probably could of gone on his murderous way.

Thus was the “humanitarian” intervention into Libya born. But there was still the problem of boots on the ground; the problem being being we had none to spare. From the beginning there was no after action plan for Libya. There was no provision for the day after Ghaddafi.

Adding fuel to this tinderbox is how NATO then went about its business. It armed every insurgent force with a grudge against Ghaddafi without fear or favor. Not a really good idea as these divergent groups only shared a hatred of the regime and nothing else. Once the object of their hate was gone, their divergent ideologies and divergent goals insured that chaos would reign in post Ghaddafi Libya.
With the collapse of the regime all manner of Pandora’s boxes were opened. Large cashes of arms which were under the control of the Libyan government became available to brigands and non-state actors. The flood of arms is destabilizing a wide swath of the Maghreb and Saharan Africa. Mali came withing a whisker of becoming a radical Salafi state. Only the quick action of France prevented that outcome.

The intervention in Libya was always a high risk affair; a high wire act with no net. Not providing boots on the ground for the post-Gaddafi Libya had high probability of ending in tears. Granted, I have no earthly clue how Obama could have sold a proper intervention. I have no clue how those troops, even if provisioned, could have cleanly intervened. Hundreds of thousands of foreign troops tear-assing around Libya is not my idea of a good time had by all. But an even less fun time is what we have now, hundreds of thousands of armed men in diverse and disperse militias and criminal gangs tear-assing around not only in Libya, but further afield.

Could Obama done nothing at all? Not really. I do not see how Obama could have allowed Gaddafi to butcher whole swaths of the Libyan population. I know that the Republicans would have gone into high dungeon if he had opted to do nothing. I also know that the default of our policy, to do something, would have been hard to overcome. It would not be politic for Obama to come out and say “because of the commitments we already have in Iraq and Afghanistan and because of the degradation of our military caused by those commitments our nation can not intervene in Libya. We have no real capability for the necessary follow-on actions post-Gaddafi and neither do our NATO allies.” It would have been the truth, but as Jack Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men” would observe “you can’t handle the truth!”

Thus we cobbled together a plan that involved massive air power with questionable ground assets. It got the job done, and it got it done ugly. And that ugliness came back to bite us. Libya is being torn apart by centrifugal forces. The nation is riven by faction and regionalism. As in much of the post-colonial world the borders of the Libya do not reflect the facts on the ground. The only reason unity held was because a truly evil bastard was willing to enforce it with force major.

But in the making of the Libyan omelet by our man Muammar, a lot of damage was done. The oppression and violence of the regime has left a nation and people deeply injured. By using force to overthrow the regime we almost guaranteed that the violence would continue. We also have an excellent chance of having an even more evil bastard rise up from the ashes of Libya and take charge.

Benghazi is the end game and end result of our policy of empire on the cheep. It is the result of trying to be world’s police man. We keep reaching for the hammer of military action seeing every foreign policy question as a nail for that hammer. It is a really foolish way to go about our business. Military options require a willingness to go in large and in charge. It means you have to be willing for the use of appropriate ground forces. You can only fully control a patch of ground with ground-pounders — full stop. If you are not willing to commit troops, don’t get involved, it really is that simple.

It is not like we have not allowed really bad things to happen in places far, far away. We did nothing for Rwanda. We never intervened in Burma. We actually supported the murderous Central American death squads during the reign of the Sainted Ronny Ray-Gun. We waited for damn-near forever when Yugoslavia fell into the ninth level of hell, only intervening when Kosovo started tipping over as well. We let North Korea slowly sink into the abyss of starvation and privation with only a murmur. We happy snatch up Chinese goods made with near and actual slave labor. Our morality is highly suspect. Would we have really cared for the Libyans if their land was not swimming in oil?

But none of this is going to be discussed. No, we are going to enjoy a nice, long, and ultimately pointless bit of political theater. We are not even going to bother to gather up some after-action lessons learned. We won’t even bother to beef up diplomatic security. The sequester is actually going to cut the already inadequate funding for that item.

So let’s rally round the flag boys and girls. Blue Team and Red Team assume your usual positions. Republicans will kick off and Democrats will receive. Ready? Steady. GO!!

Musings on Rubio and Immigration

The position of the Republicans viz Immigration is not a happy one. It is quite like the position a Thanksgiving Turkey is put in : do you want to be deep fried or baked? The wiser heads of the Republican Party can see the demographic freight train coming. They can see the hurt coming. They can look at the situation of the California Republican Party and see how the national party could become just as irrelevant.

Obama won because he crushed the Republicans in specific demographics. The biggest part of that butt-kicking came with Hispanics. They are a growing slice of the nation and they are going over to the Democratic Party in droves.

So what to do, what to do? And that is the dilemma the National Republicans face. The TEA Party folk are dead set against any kind of amnesty. They are still fans of "self deportation' and other really brilliant ideas like "securing the border." The big ideas being that if the nation will just build a bigger wall and act even more despicably to undocumented workers everything will come up roses.

The flaws to that ideology are at least two. There is no wall long, deep, and wide enough to keep undocumenteds out. You can only make the idea of building a wall plausible to people in U.S. because their geographic skills are so atrocious. Build the dang wall? Look at a map genius; thousands of miles of border with multiple areas where the landscape is impossible to guard and then thousands more miles of coastline with similar issues. Building a wall is nothing more than passing a Coyote Full Employment Act.

The other flaw with the ideology is that undocumenteds have already self-deported, thank you very much, and are not in the mind to do it again. They came here for better opportunities. They came here for jobs. They put down roots; they are not leaving. No matter how mean and vicious we become, we are not going to match the conditions these people left. If you have actually seen the Third World up close and personal, if you have had a even a small taste of what a developing nation looks, smells, and taste like, you know that no cruelty we can dream up will exceed what these people left.

But those inconvenient truths are even less palatable for Republicans than the 800 pound gorilla residing on the couch of national politics. Plainly put, the Republicans brand has no appeal for Hispanics. Thus a man like De Mint has a point. Why let these people become citizens, citizens that vote, citizens that vote Democratic? The awful truth for TEA Party Republicans is that they die a quick and ugly death if DREAMers and others get the right to vote. The TEA Party will be as dead as a stuffed Dodo.

But for the National Party the optics are different. The longer the TEA Party rules the roost on immigration, the longer the trek in the wilderness for the National Republicans becomes. Again, the example of California looms, dark and ominous, for the National Republicans. All during the 1990's the California Republican Party went on an immigrant bashing tear. And that is why in the early 21st century the CA Republican Party can not find a non-white vote for love or (tons of) money. Republicans can rock the white vote from now to rapture (and they still do, comfortably) but still loose because whites are now just another minority and because the Republican Brand is so toxic to the other minorities in CA.

In a way I don't envy Rubio's position. His personal and political argument is that the Republican have to accept quite a bit of pain now to avoid a whole world of hurt later. It's a hell of a high-wire act. Plus there is the added bonus that even if he succeeds, he is not going to have much to show for it in the form of Hispanic votes. Immigration is not the only thing that turns off Hispanic voters from the Republicans.

Personally I see Republicans acting to type. Obama Derangement Syndrome will kick in and De Mint will get his scalp to hang on the wall. I see some rather large chickens coming home to roost. I see chickens the size of Airbus A350s heading in. A whole generation and then some have been fed a toxic witch's brew of bigotry, resentment, fear, and hatred. They have lashed out in ways large and small. They have made the politics of resentment the national sport, the norm. And while doing this they have left a ton of people hugely pissed off. You don't work off that kind of karmic political debt with one bill. Deep down all Republicans know this. They know a reckoning is coming and they don't like it one little bit. But much like a cornered rat, the default will be to lash out as much as possible, to do as much damage as possible, to hold on to as much power as long as possible, and damn the consequences.

In the end I think the Republicans will refuse to give Obama a win, any kind of win, even if such a win is in the long term interest of the Republican Party. It is not even just about Obama. The Republican Party still believes in the Rove-ite dream of a one Party state, a nation solely ruled by the precepts and programs of the Republican Party. They don't accept any Democratic president as legitimate. They don't accept the Democratic Party as legitimate. In such a zero sum ideology, where your loss is my gain, any "win" for Democrats is unacceptable. I fear 10-12 million people are going to have to wait for the Elephants to finally, irrevocably be swallowed up by the coming demographic tsunami before any real reform comes their way. 

A Damn Fool Thing In The Korean Peninsula

The ghost of Otto Van Bismarck has been whispering in my ear. He hovers over me, murmuring warnings about the situation in Korea. Bismarck quietly reminds me of how the recent crisis in the land of the morning calm resembles the damn fool thing in the Balkans that ignited the World War One.

I keep looking at Korea through this lens and I do not like the view. The first thing I notice is that a series of alliances makes the Korean Peninsula a very dangerous place indeed. The U.S., Japan, and South Korea are wound very tightly in a defensive coalition backed by mutual interest and the nuclear stockpile of the U.S. The North Koreans are supported by China. Russia is the odd nation out. It is a neighbor of Korea and used to be a confederate but with the collapse of Communism in Russia relations between the DPRK and the Russians are much less simpatico. Still, the Russian can and do act as a break to the Washington/ Tokyo / Seoul nexus.

If the alliance structure was not worrisome enough, the leadership issues are even more troublesome. Watching Kim The Third, Kim Jong Un, and listening his rhetoric is a nerve-wracking experience. Only three years ago, he was at best a shadow prince, a barely real presence in the obscure and secretive nether-land of Pyongyang. Today, the boy-king waddles though the halls of power, his porcine face adorning every possible nook and cranny of the public space. Not even thirty years old, he controls one of the largest armies in the world.

Jong Un is the not only worry. The South has just elected their own deeply disturbing leader. Park Geun-hye has followed dear old dad’s foot steps into political power. In this case it is more like foot stomps as dear old dad was Park Chung-hee, a brutal military dictator that was finally put to bed by assassination. Showing a little more filial piety than is warranted, even for an Asian female, Ms. Park has followed dad’s predilection for authoritarianism. 

I should talk about Tokyo’s leader here, but that is a fool’s game. Japan has been playing musical chairs with its leadership with the present seat warmer being Yoshihiko Noda. The man may just mark his first year as leader on April 21, 2013; or not. 

This leaves us with “The Leader Of The Free World” the oh so dreamy Barack Obama. Our man Barry has just swapped his own Iron Lady, Hillary Clinton for a Boston Brahman, John Kerry. The new SoS has long experience in the trenches of foreign policy having been the lead Senator on the Foreign Affairs committee. What Kerry does not have is much room to maneuver as Obama is a top-down kind of guy.

Unfortunately for my peace of mind Mr. Obama has often demonstrated a very transactional frame of mind. Barack’s “let’s make a deal” default is exactly the kind of values-free mentality that can lead to real trouble. I also wonder if Obama has the mental landscape to adequately deal with the serious weirdness coming out of Pyongyang. How does “No Drama Obama” deal with the Drama Prince of the DPRK? 

Obama has a poor track record in this regard. While the Republicans in Congress are a little less obstreperous and cannot back their brinkmanship with nuclear weapons, they have been richly rewarded for their bad behavior. If Obama cannot deliver a smack down on Mitch McConnell, what chance does he have with Kim?

Circling back to Mr. Kim, I do wonder if the 29 year old has the seasoning and gravitas to truly lead. Other than the accomplishment of becoming morbidly obese in a land ware  millions a starving, what else is there? He was not groomed for office like dear old dad, Kim Jong-il. Only three years on the job, and very young at that, Kim Jong-un is a wild card in a deck stacked with jokers. 

Yet the crisis escalates. Missiles are being moved. Embassies are being threatened and the DPRK gets ever more hysterical in its propaganda. Meanwhile, the US is quietly stacking up military hardware in the region like a real world version of “Risk.” B-52s and B-2s have popped up and with the Air Force in town can the Navy be far behind? Just like just before August, 1914 the military is on the move. And just like in 1914 the leaders are acting cavalier about those movements. It’s a case of “nothing to see here, move along.” 

The message of “Keep Calm” is the most unsettling part of the present crisis. To quote Don Rumsfeld there are far too many unknown unknowns for real comfort. Things can go real wrong real fast in Korea. I can see a real disconnect between the overly transactional Obama and the untested Kim causing a major snafu. I don’t trust either of these men to do the right thing. I especially don’t trust Obama. Obama is far too much a inhabitant of the brain-dead DC bubble conventional wisdom. There is no bigger oxymoron than the DC “Conventional Wisdom.” The same kind of unexamined group-think (mis)guided the European Powers into the destruction of WWI and then WWII, thereby ending European hegemony. 

I shudder to think what kind of disaster the present unexamined consensus may bring. I’m seeing Kim Jong Un as a wild card of history. Those wild cards; Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Mohammed, Gavrilo Princip, Genghis Khan always leave a swath of devastation behind them. I do not like what I see in Korea gentle reader, part two of the Korean War is not a sequel worth the price of admission. 

What Adria Richards Wrought

Once more I’m late to the party, really late. An eon ago, March 18, 2013, Ms. Adria Richards decided she needed to call out the inappropriate behavior of some attendees at the PyCon event. There offense, being misogynist jerks via the old rubric of bad jokes. 

Now I have no desire to do a masters class in what constitutes comedy. I will only point out that the “jokes” in question were both inappropriate and lame. Nerd humor quite often lacks polish. The commentary by the offending party added nothing to the discussion and was offensive, especially at an event who’s purpose was to be inclusive.

Ms. Richards decided that action was require and used the tech weapon of choice, the Tweet. Little did she know her Tweet would become the digital equivalent of a mob call. The murder of crows flocked all about and both Adria and the offending coders got axed from their jobs.

I am constantly surprised by the lack of common sense in the world in general and in tech specifically. Adria had every right to call out these men and PyCon had every right to discipline the offenders. What was not correct was the over reaction of the coders company. Yes they were poorly socialized jerks, but if you fired every poorly socialized jerk in tech, there would be no tech. And the sacking of Ms Richard was beyond idiotic.

But for true idiocy and crass stupidity you really cannot top the inevitable victim blaming and hostility hurled at Adria. What an epic shit storm that has become. How much do the manly men hate Adria? Let me count the ways. Bravely hiding behind the cloak that the internet and social media provide, they have launched every racist, sexist, and Anti Semitic trope at her imaginable. Fortunately David Futrelle has waded in to this toxic cesspit so I don’t have to. 

But even on her own blog there are people who are missing the point. I guess some people still can not get over their male privilege or bother to get a clue. At the time of her tweet Ms. Richards was only trying to put a stop to unwarranted behavior. She deployed what to her was the best solution that she thought would create the least drama. She had no idea that others would escalate this beyond expectations or reason. There was no way to predict the knock-on effects of this would bound beyond excess, and straight into the nuclear option. She sure did not expect the backlash she would get for decisions she had no part of.

Calling out her interlocutors was appropriate, they needed to be named and shamed. They were at a public event and behaved wretchedly. They made the wrong assumption that they could act that way because they were mere faces in the crowd. That was wrong, you are responsible for your actions at all times and in all places: full stop. Don’t want to get your ass fired for making rude comments? Don’t make rude comments. Don’t “know” what rude might be? Well no, you do know, you can read this and that means you were not raised in cave by wolves. But if you really are confused maybe you should just not talk about anything that is not germain to the subject at hand? Thus if you are at a tech conference, and the subject is programing, off color jokes about “dongles” should be avoided. As a matter of fact unless that dongle you are talking about is anything other than a true computer peripheral no one really needs to hear about it.  

While Tech has been part of the Heman Woman Haters Club for a rather long time, it need not continue to be so and will not be so sooner or later. Those icky girls are here to stay and are only going to become more numerous. The Darwinian imperative is now in force : Move, Adapt, or Fail. For those committed to a career in tech your options are really only two: Adapt or Fail. You can upvote the tribal consensus until your blue in the face, change is coming, change is here, this is no longer your dad’s male dominated tech. 

This is going to take some time to work out, but follow the bouncing ball; women are going to increase their role in the professional fields--all of them. Women are not staying in shitty paying pink collar ghetto of the secretarial pool, they want the real money. As their numbers increase some “traditions” and assumptions are going to fall by the wayside. 

So quit your whining about how mean Ms. Richards was. Your male privilege card is about to expire. Your “right” to have a work place that is hostile to women (and others) is going the way of the Dodo. Don’t fret, you still have plenty of opportunities to be a petulant, bigoted, misogynist jerk thanks to Reddit. You have plenty of opportunities to slut-shame, harass, belittle, taunt, and other wise act like the inner spoiled five year old that you are. You can even thoughtlessly, wantonly, cruelly put someones safety and life at risk by broadcasting their address on the web. Don’t worry little one, your ability to act like an asshole will only be moderately curtailed.

Iraq: A country whose Future was Stolen (Jamail)

Today, not to put too fine a point on it, Iraq is a failed state, teetering on the brink of another sectarian bloodbath, and beset by chronic political deadlock and economic disaster.  Its social fabric has been all but shredded by nearly a decade of brutal occupation by the U.S. military and now by the rule of an Iraqi government rife with sectarian infighting.

 www.juancole.com/2013/03/country-stolen-jamail.html

Irony Alert

The irrepressible "Anonymous" has struck again. This time s/he wanted to offer some cheap auto insurance on a post of mine called "The Things You Learn From SPAM." Now that is really Meta, no?

Bloody Vikings!

Mission Not Accomplished

A little more than a decade ago our nation blundered into one of the biggest foreign policy disasters in its history. In a place where Marcus Licinius Crassus  and Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus (Julian The Apostate) came to grief the United States of America found out that the waters of Babylon are still just as treacherous as they were in ancient times.

While the Iraqis did not manage to turn George W. Bush into a wall decoration like they did to Publius Licinius Valerianus Augustus (Valerian) they did make The Shrub a by-word for gross incompetence.

But it take a village to make a village idiot. George W. Bush had a lot of help in making the mess in Mesopotamia. The nifty Neocon idea of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and installing “freeeeedom!” had its roots all the way back in the reign of Bubba. It was the Big Dog that made it official U.S. Policy that Saddam be show the door.

President William Jefferson Clinton never did put a “sell by” date on the idea of regime change in Iraq, making the notion more of a wish than a serious consideration. In the wink and nod game that was Oil For Food, Saddam’s family made out like the bandits they were, and the Iraq people got stuck with the bill. The regime did not change, Saddam was still there-- larger than life and twice as ugly.

Still, in the U.S., the damage was already done. The official policy of the U.S. was regime change. The policy laid on the table like a loaded gun in a Chekov play; and wouldn’t you know there was just the political actor more than willing to use that gun.

That man was not Incurious George, the upwardly failing Scion of George H. Bush, but Richard V. Cheney, the other dry drunk in the Administration. A man whose sole purpose in life seems to be to prove the cliche that “Truth is stranger than fiction,” Cheney’s fingerprints can be found all over the Iraq invasion.

Cheney was a NeoCon in good standing and has a huge chip on his shoulder going all the way back to the Nixon Administration. Being a big fan of the Imperial Presidency Cheney was itching to restore the overarching power of the executive and had found his sock puppet in that endeavor; Bush the Younger.

Cheney proceeded to set up WHIG, the White House Iraq Iraq Group, a cabal/conspiracy to find a casus belli for war with Iraq. By cherry picking raw intelligence Cheney was able first convince Bush and then the nation that the Mushroom Cloud was coming to a neighborhood near you if Saddam was not put to bed and pronto.

Thanks to Osama bin Laden and his unhappy campers toasting marshmallows in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, Cheney and Bush had the set up they needed, the 9/11/01  Terrorist Attack on the U.S. In a rush of hyper-patriotism, anger, and desire for revenge the U.S. Public was sold a bill of goods: the Iraq War.

If one can be dispassionate about such things, one can admire the evil genius of Cheney and Bush. Cheney created the policy and Bush sold it. Give The Shrub his due, the man played hardball politics like no other man in office of President since LBJ. He placed the feckless Democratic opposition in a no-win political vice and kept tightening it. Even bright, dedicated Senators who should have know better, yes Hillary Clinton I am talking to you, voted for the war. The dereliction of duty by the Legislative branch was both nauseating and utterly predictable. Bush was riding sky-high polls and the 4th branch of government, the check that was supposed to be the Media, was AWOL or worse a 5th columnist collaborator in the rush for war.

A few words on the press. The abject failure of the press to do its job, to apply even a soupçon of skepticism to the Bush Administration’s talking points was appalling. They also saw those sky-high Bush approval ratings and had no stomach to do their job, to act as a seawall to the jingoistic tsunami that Bush was creating. Instead, for ratings, they decided to join the flag waving and the general blood-lust of the moment. Thus was paper-thin evidence like the aluminum tubes , Yellow-cake uranium from Africa, and mobile Anthrax Labs given a pass. Stories that would not pass muster in a Bond film, that is in fiction, were treated as infallible doctrine handed down by the deity and the host of angles.

But a strange thing happened on the way to be showered with flowers and kissed by a grateful Iraqi people; the whole thing went to hell in hand basket. The unwarranted and reckless rush to war turned sour. Shock and Awe did not turn the natives into pliant supplicants to our Imperial will. The coalition of the Willing was found wanting. There were not enough troops on the ground for a proper occupation, and it only got worse from there.

The outright waste and theft allowed by Paul Brener’s house of horrors, otherwise known as the Coalition Provisional Authority, was a case study in how not to rebuild a nation. Lead by a hodgepodge group of NeoCon goof-balls and Libertarian Wing-nuts, the CPA was Grover Nordquist’s wet-dream of government drowned in a bathtub. It was glorious, right up to point when the IEDs started exploding. To this day Iraqis still fear the things that go boom in the night, and the afternoon, and the morning. To this day the Iraqi still suffer from a lack of government, living in a twilight Mad Max land where the gun and the bomb are law.

The government is still a shambolic mess. The Kurds have gone their way, the Sunni Triangle is still a hot mess, and the Shias are divided amongst themselves. In the middle of the maelstrom is the U.S., still not really gone. The more obvious symbols of U.S. Hegemony gone horrible wrong are gone, the hundreds of thousands of U.S. military are gone, but don’t be fooled, 17,000 diplomats are still hunkered down in the world’s biggest embassy. There also are some 5,000 mercenaries, oops sorry “Security Contractors”, running around, hell for leather, in the land of the two rivers adding to fun and frolics.

So forget all that nonsense about how Obama has ended the war. The withdrawal was negotiated by Bush, with a end date certain. Obama tried to weasel out of that by changing the SOFA, but in a rare display of independence the Iraqi government said “no.” Obama continues to run that Embassy of 17,000 personal, and to hire those, cough, cough, “Contractors.”  We are no longer waist deep in the gore of Iraq, but we are still at least ankle deep if not shin deep. Happy tenth anniversary, mission still not accomplished.

Commentary: More guns but fewer gun owners in America .

Mary Sanchez | The Kansas City Star

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/01/184074/commentary-more-guns-but-fewer.html

A declining proportion of the American public is getting involved in gun culture — that is, the gun industry’s customer base is not growing — and yet business is booming. This should lead us to an alarming conclusion. The marketing of more lethal forms of weaponry and ammunition is how the gun industry has decided to shore up profits. The fierce resistance to bans on assault weapons and large ammo clips, as well as to background checks and any other hurdle put in the way of those who want to arm themselves, is not about defending the Second Amendment. It is about defending a business model — a sick, cynical business model.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/01/184074/commentary-more-guns-but-fewer.html

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/01/184074/commentary-more-guns-but-fewer.html
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/01/184074/commentary-more-guns-but-fewer.html#storylink=cpy

Some People’s Obsessions

“Oh bother,” as Winnie The Pooh used to say. It seems that some people in the Right Blogosphere have gotten their knickers in a twist. The subject, the FLOTUS, First Lady Michelle Obama. The offense, daring to show up at the Oscars.

Sweet Baby Jesus On A Pogo Stick! Can one week go by without some right-wing twerp denigrating the FLOTUS. I ask you, for the love of Mike, give it a rest. This is the most traditional, most straight down the middle FLOTUS we have had since Mimi Eisenhower.

No, seriously, take a look at her four years in the position. What was her first agenda item? Military Families. Now separate the two words and drill down a bit. Who is exactly against our men and women in uniform? Other than the last dregs of the Radical Left mouldering away in some Ivory Tower padded cell because, tenure, no one says a discoursing word about the troops these days. And who is exactly against families? No, again, seriously, who? The arguments we have about family is what the definition of family is. Liberals like to propose a more flexible and more inclusive model while conservative are just fine with old-school patriarchy mixed with large helping of misogyny. But every one is for families of one sort or another. So being for Military Families is about as mom and apple pie as you can get.

The next agenda item of Ms Obama, healthy diet. Again, seriously, how more mom can you get than “eat your veggies, they’re good for you?” Yet the yammering yahoos that infest Conservative Talk Radio went berserk and insisted that to be a true, full-blooded, American it was your civic duty to shove triple cheeseburgers down your gullet like there was no tomorrow. Weeks of precious airtime was devoted to unleashing this five-year-old temper tantrum.

Linked with vegetables was Ms. Obama’s next big crusade, getting kids active. Um, exactly when did it become a Communist plot when your mom told you to get out of the house and play? I kinda missed that. But once more the Oxycontin Blimp went into full alert. It was now you patriotic duty to consume those bi-pass burgers whilst encrusting your comfy chair. Real Americans proved their worth by being inert blobs shoveling junk food into there craw for God and Country.

The reelection of the Obamas has seemed to only increase the amount of spittle flying in from stage right. You know, its a shame that all that fluid can’t be redirected to Kansas and other drought struck states. Be that as it may, Conservative have not been able to get pass the anger stage of the Kübler-Ross model. Hell, many have still not got passed denial.

Michelle Obama has been an incredibly competent FLOTUS. She has been a 21st Century First Lady living in the land of Stepford Wife Washington. It has been a very long time since we have had such a down-to-earth, no-nonsense, comfortable-in-her-own-skin, powerful woman backing up her man. She is the very acme of a striving Middle Class Woman who made it on her own grit and determination. That she did this as a woman of color is damn near epic.

But instead of being celebrated for what she is, she is abused in print, video and on the airwaves by privileged white male hacks with not a tenth of the grace and style she possess.

Ms. Obama is her own woman; a woman for the 21st Century. Comparisons have been made to Jackie Kennedy, but no, Michelle is not Jackie. Jackie never really escaped her finishing-school, debutant, gilded cage. Jackie alway had an air of brittleness and privilege that she never shook off. Jackie had style but it was always an unreachable, regal, Haute Couture, style. Jackie always made sure you knew that she was not one of the mere mortals. Michelle, on the other hand, could not be more grounded if she were wrapped in copper coil and ran to earth. She shops for some of her outfits at Target for heaven’s sake.

This whole Oscar Hubbub is beyond pointless. It is just some very mean and stupid people saying mean and stupid things because they are bullies and jerks. While Obama’s presidency still sits on the knife-edge between mediocrity and good, sorry kids greatness is not in his reach, I would put Michelle up there with some of the best First Ladies. She is a major assets to her husband, and she really has yet to strike a wrong note. She has played it safe with a very traditional First Lady policy program, with no sudden or awkward moves. Yet she has done this in her own inimitable style, and with no small amount of flair. The obsession that the bullies on the right have with her only shows how small and petty they have become.

Droning On

Something miraculous happened last week, the Moron Media and the rest of the Dim-bulb Elite suddenly noticed we have a Drone problem. Amazing, it took almost four year for our “betters” to suddenly notice that the Executive has seized powers that make the whole notion of Limited Government a farce.

Let’s not mince words, our drone policy is an abomination. With these automated killers in the air, our President has taken on the power to eliminated, with extreme prejudice, any man, woman and child who takes a dislike to. Obama has wrapped himself in the cloak of the Red Queen from Alice In Wonderland.

And boy has our Red Queen been busy. Over two hundred Drone strikes have occurred in the last four years. This is a significant increase over the Bush Years where the dry drunk president only managed to get around authorizing just over fifty. Obama has taken the Bush policy on drones and put it on steroids.

Not once has Obama been called to task on this. Not once has he been challenged. Not once has he justified these killing in anything other than boilerplate. Even after blowing up an American citizen, no challenge has been uttered. Anwar al-Aulaqi’s  name has not been mentioned to the general public, not even as a Final Jeopardy question. 

But now our fearless Congresscritters an Media Mavens are on the job and solutions will be offered. What kind of solution? The usual solutions: White Wash and Rubber Stamps. 

The bright idea of our elites is to set up a FISA Court for drone killings. How will that work? It will work exactly as FISA Court did; not at all. As pointed out by other commentators, the FISA Court has not exactly been a high bar to prevent Governmental snooping. It has not been the stout protector of our Forth Amendment rights. Of the 20,000 requests for warrants only six have been denied. 

If we had truly serious Representatives, they would be demanding a full trial in absentia of any Terrorist bad guy the President wanted to blow up. A full trail would be fully public, with a full and robust defense. No conviction would mean the neither killer drones nor Seal Team Six deploying.

But Congress is anything but serious these days, it’s a food fight put on by mental midgets. Democrats refuse to curb their guy because, well, he’s their guy. Because he is Obama, and he is a Democrat we, as a nation can trust him not to abuse the power he claimed for himself and the office. Republicans are not crying foul either because they want the opportunity to go all Dick Cheney when they finally grab the White House.

 Having given up on the duty to declare war sometime after Pearl Harbor, Congrescritters are now gladly handing over the judiciary power to the Executive as well. For the most part they are quite happy to have the President be judge, jury and executioner without all that pesky rule of law stuff getting in the way. 

It’s not really surprising, Congress has steadily withered as an coequal branch of government. Why bother with all that hard effort of upholding the Constitution when you can fob the responsibility off to the executive? That leaves much more time to dial for dollars, raising the funds for ever more expensive reelection bids. It also is a grand way to evade the responsibility of a foreign policy, or any other policy that explodes in unforeseen ways. It’s the “look ma, no hands” mode of governing. 

Still this utterly irresponsible Congress is only a reflection of an utterly irresponsible electorate. Mention Drones to most voters and they might vaguely recall the Droids in “The Phantom Menace.” They might give a passing thumbs up to the whole business as them drones are killing all them evil mooslim terrorist doing evil terrorist things in evil terrorist lands. “Kill ‘em all and let God sort them out” done on auto-pilot is the notion.

We won’t get better policy results until the general public, or at least the voting public start to understand why our Constitutional guarantees are more than one more side-show in the great game of Blue vs Red. Letting the president blow up whoever he wants to is a very bad idea, even if he does it in foreign lands. No man should be able to exercise that kind of power, not Bush, not Cheney, not Obama, no one. Fanboi politics is no way to run a nation.