You ain't in it!

George Carlin sums it up quite nicely (NSFW):

Solving our debt, naive though it may be

I'm am going to make this short and sweet. Excuse my naivete, but this is how it should work. If we're going to have income tax, it should be on a sliding scale. The lowest wage earners get the lowest tax rates, the highest wage earners get the highest tax rates (and I'm talking about the 90% range as it was in the 50s). The smallest businesses get the smallest tax rates, the biggest corporations get the highest tax rates (and I'm talking about corporations such as GE that didn't pay any taxes in 2010. In fact, it got a $3.2 billion tax refund!). No loopholes whatsoever.

We have a choice. As Chalmers Johnson says in his Blowback trilogy, we can be either an empire or a democracy, but not both. Therefore, we should cut defense spending by at least half, more likely three quarters and eliminate the majority of our bases around the world and in the United States.

According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories.

We should quit invading and bombing countries that do not have any imminent threat against us.

We should not even THINK of cutting entitlements. I agree that we continue to try eliminating waste in the systems. That's always a good thing. However, cutting benefits is outright wrong. We are not animals who throw the sick and infirm out of the pack.

Any Senator or Representative who disagrees with this is not representing our country honestly and should be voted out of office. Of course, this goes back to my "people are not smart" opinion.

But this is how it should be.

MSNBC's "Moral Outrage"

So MSNBC suspended Mark Halperin last week for calling President Obama a "d*ck." The exact quote: “I thought he was a kind of a d*ck yesterday...”

Now I'm not going to get into the discussion that Halperin was goaded, that everyone on the set acted like a bunch of high school kids who were giggling over at a one-cheek sneak, or perhaps the Morning Joe new producer didn't know how to work the 7-second delay. Instead I want to address MSNBC's statement after the corporation suspended Halperin indefinitely;

Mark Halperin's comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst.

Inappropriate and unacceptable? Yet it was totally appropriate and acceptable to fire Phil Donahue for his anti-war beliefs leading up to the Iraq War? A war, I might add, that cost hundreds thousands of deaths and injuries, displaced millions more and sent the country of Iraq back into the Stone Age.

Here is a part of the memo which stated that Donahue was a

"difficult public face for NBC in a time of war......He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives."

Instead of canning him, how about having THAT kind of "high level of discourse"? Nope. Instead, MSNBC chose to gag any kind of discussion that opposed the war.

So calling the President of the United States a "d*ck" is inappropriate and unacceptable for MSNBC, but jumping on the War Wagon leading to the ruination of millions of lives is perfectly acceptable and appropriate.

"High level of discourse," indeed.

Another shining example of "The People" NOT being smart

Last summer, I wrote about how "The People" are not smart.

Another fine example has come to the fore in Illinois:

(Former Illinois Governor Rod) Blagojevich becomes the second straight Illinois governor convicted of corruption. His predecessor, George Ryan, is now serving 6 1/2 years in federal prison.

What's really ridiculous is the current governor and state congress leaders seem to be right in the thick of some questionable activity judging from this comment:

Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady:

“I'm glad that the verdict is finally in on Rod Blagojevich. However this closes only one chapter of Democrat corruption in Illinois. Illinois Democratic politicians who now try everything they can to hide their past support of Rod Blagojevich should look themselves in the mirror and remind themselves that little has changed since the day Blagojevich was arrested.

“Our current governor (Pat Quinn) has appointed lame duck legislators to high paid positions after they changed their views and voted for late night tax hikes. The Speaker of the Illinois House (and state Democratic Party Chairman Mike Madigan) is partner in a law firm that has reaped millions in appealing tax assessments in a relationship that even Forrest Claypool (now a member of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Administration) said ‘has caused our taxes to go up and the level of faith in government to go down.’”

I ask you, just what are the Illinois voters thinking? Another excellent example of the people NOT being smart.

Over the past year I found a great quote by George Carlin reinforcing my argument regarding "The People" not being smart:

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of them are stupider than that.

Unfortunately, it's just not Illinois' "People." This is why our country is in the horrible shape it's in. Guaranteed.

One of my all-time favorite headlines: "Obama Transparency Award given in secret"

That has to be one of the more Orwellian headlines I've ever heard of. The reason it was given in secret?

If the ceremony had been open to the press, it is likely that reporters would have questioned the organizations' proffered justification for the award

The link provided will navigate you to an open letter demanding that the "Transparency Award" be rescinded. It is signed by numerous individual whistleblowers and organizations.

I'm sure quite a few of you won't go to the site, so I'll run off a few of the 13(!) reasons the letter gives for rescinding the award:

1. President Obama has not decreased but has dramatically increased governmental secrecy!
2. There were 544,360 requests for information last year under the Freedom of Information Act to the 35 biggest federal agencies -- 41,000 requests more than the year before. Yet the bureaucracy responded to 12,400 fewer requests than the prior year, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.
3. Ignoring his campaign promise to protect government whistleblowers, Obama’s presidency has amassed the worst record in US history for persecuting, prosecuting, and jailing government whistleblowers and truth-tellers.
4. President Obama has initiated a secret assassination program, has publicly announced that he has given himself the power to include Americans on the list of people to be assassinated, and has attempted to assassinate at least one, Anwar al-Aulaqi.
5. The Obama Administration is also busy going after reporters to discover their sources and convening grand juries in order to target journalists and news publishers.

If you're interested in the entire list clink on the link. This is a chance for you to add your voice to try to stem the tide of civil rights violations by our government by signing the letter.

The neverending story: The War on Drug$

There will never be an end to the United States' War on Drugs. There is just too much money and profit involved for The Powers That Be to give it up. Think of how much would be lost if drugs were decriminalized. The police would have a dramatic drop in arrests, thus smaller police forces would be needed, the courts would have tremendously fewer cases on the docket, thus leading to less court time and less cases for lawyers and, finally, the Prison Industrial Complex would suffer major drops in profits (and guards - the union would not like that at all).

I believe all drugs should be decriminalized and treated as a health problem. Glenn Greenwald wrote a white paper on Portugal's decision to decriminalize drugs almost a decade ago:

On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were “decriminalized,” not “legalized.” Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm.

Mr. Greenwald's closing paragraph sums it up nicely:

The Portuguese have seen the benefits of decriminalization, and therefore there is no serious political push in Portugal to return to a criminalization framework. Drug policymakers in the Portuguese government are virtually unanimous in their belief that decriminalization has enabled a far more effective approach to managing Portugal’s addiction problems and other drug-related afflictions. Since the available data demonstrate that they are right, the Portuguese model ought to be
carefully considered by policymakers around the world.

It's very interesting reading and I highly recommend it.

Of course, there are those who agree with my assertion of dumping the War on Drugs. An example is The Wire creator David Simon, who was asked by Attorney General Eric Holder to create another season of his fine series. Simon's email response was,

The Attorney-General's kind remarks are noted and appreciated. I've spoken to Ed Burns and we are prepared to go to work on season six of The Wire if the Department of Justice is equally ready to reconsider and address its continuing prosecution of our misguided, destructive and dehumanising drug prohibition.

Unfortunately, as blog writer Ray Gustini of The Atlantic Wire says,

The exchange has at least clarified one thing: the chances of another season of The Wire are now exactly the same as America having a rational dialogue about drug law reform.

Of course, I will never see what should be done to handle our country's drug problem. We'll just keep pouring money into the rabbit hole so that The Powers That Be can keep making those profits and generating revenue from the masses. Maybe the right kind of people will be able address this issue correctly in the future.

Always remember, in these kinds of issues...follow the money.

My view on the OBL affair (As if anyone cares...)

George Carlin once said the he leaves symbols to the symbol-minded. I like that turn of the phrase and agree. I also agree with Glenn Greenwald:

The killing of Osama bin Laden is one of those events which, especially in the immediate aftermath, is not susceptible to reasoned discussion. It's already a Litmus Test event: all Decent People -- by definition -- express unadulterated ecstacy at his death, and all Good Americans chant "USA! USA!" in a celebration of this proof of our national greatness and Goodness (and that of our President). Nothing that deviates from that emotional script will be heard, other than by those on the lookout for heretics to hold up and punish. Prematurely interrupting a national emotional consensus with unwanted rational truths accomplishes nothing but harming the heretic (ask Bill Maher about how that works).

I'm especially disturbed that it was a "shoot to kill" operation, though there has been some backtracking from that original statement. I want our country to take the moral high ground. We may not have been able to take him alive, but we won't know for sure if that opportunity was rejected outright until the video (if there is one) of the operation becomes available. I would like to see how the whole thing went down; however, I doubt we see that in our lifetime.

I'm really not interested in the dead photo of OBL. I really don't care one way or the other if it's made public. I'm really amused, though, by the argument that making the photos public will "infuriate" the Middle East. Let's see... We invade their countries, decimate the towns and countryside, murder 100's of thousands of civilians, make millions of other civilians refugees and now by showing the death picture they're really, really going to get mad? Now that's funny!

I was really disgusted the original "propaganda" that was tossed out there by Obama officials saying among other things Obama used a woman as a shield, he was armed, etc., thus making him even more dastardly. Or as Greenwald puts it:

Virtually every major newspaper account of the killing of Osama bin Laden consists of faithful copying of White House claims. That's not surprising: it's the White House which is in exclusive possession of the facts, but what's also not surprising is that many of the claims that were disseminated yesterday turned out to be utterly false. And no matter how many times this happens -- from Jessica Lynch's heroic firefight against Iraqi captors to Pat Tillman's death at the hands of Evil Al Qaeda fighters -- it never changes: the narrative is set forever by first-day government falsehoods uncritically amplified by establishment media outlets, which endure no matter how definitively they are disproven in subsequent days.

Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 21 years, calls them the "Fawning Corporate Media" (FCM). I agree. A very interesting man. There's a DVD series running around called "Speaking Freely." He is one of the speakers. He gives a fascinating talk on how the CIA went from an information gathering agency (Truman's intent) to becoming the President's personal, private army. I highly recommend it.

For me, it was the Bush Administration that elevated OBL into the major symbol that he is by making him and his minions an army to be fought on the field of battle. I've always believed these thugs should have been treated as criminals and international detective work used to apprehend them.

Of course, if one does not celebrate by shouting "USA,USA" you will be looked at strangely. Again Greenwald:

"Recall what happened in 2003 when Howard Dean interrupted the national celebratory ritual triggered by Saddam Hussein's capture when he suggested that that event would likely not make us safer. He was demonized by political leaders in both parties, with Joe Lieberman finally equating him with Saddam by accusing Dean of being in a 'spider hole of denial.' That will be the same demonizing reaction targeted at anyone who deviates from today's ritualistic script."

I agree.

Of course, the far-reaching impact will most likely be the re-election of Obama. I figured he would be re-elected already (barring unforeseen disasters), but this about clinches it. Or as Matt Taibbi puts it:

First of all, for the next eighteen months, Obama is going to respond to every single foreign-policy question by holding up Bin Laden’s head and swinging it in front of him like a lantern (metaphorically speaking, of course). It doesn’t matter what the question is: ask Obama about the Irish debt crisis, he’ll answer, "The Irish have been important allies in our fight against terrorism, which as you’ll recall resulted recently in the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden …

Finally, way too much coverage the last four days. But that's the 24-hour cable news FCM. And while that's loudly been going on, two nobody Republicans quietly filed for the candidacy of the presidency and the abortion law (trying to tax health plans involving abortions) is quietly being passed in Congress. From Daily Kos:

"According to the National Women's Law Center, the bill will increase costs and taxes for millions of women and small businesses, which, as as David Waldman pointed out yesterday, completely violates those precious Tea Party values of shrinking government and cutting taxes. In fact, it will raise taxes on men too—because anyone who has a health insurance policy that covers abortion, whether they use it for abortion or not, will not be allowed to take a tax deduction for that insurance policy."

Who knows what else is currently being quietly done behind the scenes? Then we will look up one day and say to ourselves how did THAT get by us????