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The link provided will navigate you to an open letter demanding that the "Transparency Award" be rescinded.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????

Lying on the Senate floor...think about it...LYING!

It really galls me not only what Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said in the Senate, but how most of the media is making light of it.

To say on the Senate floor an outright lie and making that outright lie a part of the permanent record is totally uncalled for. Think about it. Here is a a U.S.Senator blatantly lying about Planned Parenthood's function being over 90% abortion related. Total falsehood.

Fortunately, it was such an outright lie that the media picked up on it, and now the public has been informed that about three per cent of Planned Parenthood is about abortions.

The scary thing is that had no one called Kyl on his lie, there would be those who saw him make the statement thinking that 90% is the correct figure. I mean, to an average viewer, why would a senator lie about such a thing on the Senate floor? There will be those who heard/saw what he said that will now be going around thinking that Planned Parenthood is all about abortions ("Why, they devote 90% of their time to it!") never realizing what a lie that was. That's the dangerous part.

And to have a staffer say that the lie was not intended to be a factual statement? So...we now know that anything Kyl says on the Senate floor cannot be construed as a factual statement. I'm certainly not going to believe any stats he comes up with for the Senate record will be true. Of course, Kyl is backpedaling on the backpedal by claiming he "misspoke." Well, it certainly looked to me that he was reading from text when he gave that lying speech. Perhaps his keyboard "mispoke" as well. From now on, I'll figure he's just making up any figure to jive with his position on an issue. As far as I'm concerned, John Kyl has no more credibility as a U.S. Senator. Good luck, Arizona.

What I also find particularly interesting is the lackadaisical attitude by the media. For me, this is a serious breach of trust by an elected official. Yet most of the media is treating it as a humorous gaffe. Or even worse, they just shrug their shoulders and generalize that all politicos lie, so what's the big deal? Let's poke fun at it. Until we treat these liars seriously, they will just keep on shining us on.

What the deification of Reagan really means

There is a new Gallup poll out that finds Americans believe Ronald Reagan is the greatest President. Huh? For me it just shows how ignorant the American people are and how vastly they are influenced by current events. I'm speaking specifically here how our politicians have celebrated the 100 birthday of Reagan and how the main stream media goes along with the glorification.

Never mind all the horrific things Reagan did while in office. On Democracy Now! last week, one of the greatest minds alive, Noam Chomsky, offered his take on Reagan's Presidency. Please take careful note of the last sentence (Emphasis mine).

This deification of Reagan is extremely interesting and a very—it’s scandalous, but it tells a lot about the country. I mean, when Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy. When he came into office, the United States was the world’s leading creditor. By the time he left, it was the world’s leading debtor. He was fiscally totally irresponsible—wild spending, no fiscal responsibility. Government actually grew during the Reagan years.

He was also a passionate opponent of the free market. I mean, the way he’s being presented is astonishing. He was the most protectionist president in post-war American history. He essentially virtually doubled protective barriers to try to preserve incompetent U.S. management, which was being driven out by superior Japanese production.


During his years, we had the first major fiscal crises. During the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the New Deal regulations were still in effect, and that prevented financial crises. The financialization of the economy began to take off in the ’70s, but with the deregulation, of course you start getting crises. Reagan left office with the biggest financial crisis since the Depression: the home savings and loan.


I won’t even talk about his international behavior. I mean, it was just abominable. I mean, if we gained our optimism by killing hundreds of thousands of people in Central America and destroying any hope for democracy and freedom and supporting South Africa while it killed about a million-and-a-half people in neighboring countries, and on and on, if that’s the way we get back our optimism, we’re in bad trouble.


Well, what happened after Reagan left office is that there was the beginnings of an effort to carry out a kind of—this Reagan legacy, you know, to try to create from this really quite miserable creature some kind of deity. And amazingly, it succeeded. I mean, Kim Il-sung would have been impressed. The events that took place when Reagan died, you know, the Reagan legacy, this Obama business, you don’t get that in free societies. It would be ridiculed. What you get it is in totalitarian states. And I’m waiting to see what comes next. This morning, North Korea announced that on the birthday of the current god, a halo appeared over his birthplace. That will probably happen tomorrow over Reagan’s birthplace. But when we go in—I mean, this is connected with what we were talking about before. If you want to control a population, keep them passive, keep beating them over the head and let them look somewhere else, one way to do it is to give them a god to worship.

Today's current god is Ronald Reagan. Who will be next? Until this passivity of the American people can be overcome, we are in for more extreme power of the wealthy and more control over the rest of the population.

Eugene Robinson is flat out wrong

Last Friday, on the Rachel Maddow Show, there was this exchange between Ms. Maddow and Eugene Robinson, MSNBC political analyst and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for “The Washington Post” (courtesy of the Rachel Maddow transcript):

MADDOW: Do you think that the long-time strategy of America‘s sort of addiction to dictators, supporting despots in the name of stability - do you think that addiction may be weaker now than before this happened?

ROBINSON: Well, just in numerical terms, I think there are likely to be fewer of them, fewer American-supported dictators because this region was particularly thick with them, and they seem to be falling by the wayside.

I don‘t think we will ever get to the point where an administration will say we will never have a relationship, friendly or cooperative relationship, with a despotic regime.

We have a relationship with China and China has a despotic regime. And it was good that we talked to the Soviet Union, et cetera, et cetera.

But the sort of client relationship that we‘ve had with some of these countries, I think, that era may be closing, and we‘re going to have to figure out what replaces it, what sort of relationship replaces it and how it can be adapted to the different situations in different countries.

First off, “sort of addiction to dictators”? Excuse me, but the U.S. wants dictators in power in those countries where we want to exploit their resources. God forbid the people rule the country (aka: “democracy”). We would have no control over the country.

It is far more in our interest to control one dictator by giving him money (or anything else he wants) and reinforcing his power than a citizenry who could change their minds if they determine we’re exploiting them. So “sort of” is weak at best.

And what’s this rhetoric from Ms. Maddow about “supporting despots in the name of stability”? I think Ms. Maddow is smart enough to know that the “stability” line is just a U.S. front for exploitation of the country’s resources. Come on, Ms. Maddow! Really! Of course we want “stability.” We certainly don’t want the people of a country rising up in defiance of our exploiting their resources at their expense. A dictator will do nicely to stop that from happening, thank you! I think Ms. Maddow should clarify her mention of “stability.”

Secondly, Mr. Robinson’s comment that “the sort of client relationship that we‘ve had with some of these countries, I think, that era may be closing”? I don’t believe that for a second. The U.S. will continue to front dictators to make it easier to exploit their national resources, and not rely on the whim of the people regarding the interests of the U.S. at the nation’s expense.

As Noam Chomsky points out:

…there is a playbook: whenever a favored dictator is in trouble, try to sustain him, hold on; if at some point it becomes impossible, switch sides.

Then, of course, we work to put another dictator in place.

As an example of this, let’s look at Chomky’s take on Bolivia:

Bolivia is a striking example. The mostly white, Europeanized elite, which is a minority, happens to be sitting on most of the hydrocarbon reserves. For the first time Bolivia is becoming democratic. So it's therefore bitterly hated by the West, which despises democracy, because it's much too dangerous.

And that’s why I believe Mr. Robinson is flat out wrong in saying that this type of client relationship such as we had in Egypt is “closing.” I predict that if a “democracy” does arise out of this protest in Egypt, the U.S. will work to undermine it and bring in a new authoritarian regime.

The sad part is, I remember as a child learning in school that the U.S. was out there fighting for democracy (i.e., truth, justice and the American way). Turns out we've been exploiting countries and fronting vicious dictators for decades. I wish it were not true. Unfortunately, I feel it's too late for us to change our ways...at least in my lifetime.