Category: Politics

I try to be even keeled.

After all, I have been watching this shit, this slow erosion of the HUMANITY part of our country, of our laws and politics, for all of my life. The death of individual rights by fiat of evil executives and judicial rulings and now for the last seven horror filled years, the brutal assault on everything that some of us hold dear about America, everything that is high and noble, about our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the wonderful Declaration that made all of this possible.

I have watched them take, or try to take ALL that is good about America away, out back, to be thrown in the dumpster. The things that set America apart from all the other nations…the written and codified guarantees that the Person was and is more important that the State. That Freedom was more important than government. That government itself ONLY existed to raise up and protect The People, and was not an entity unto itself…with it’s needs and wants transcending and trumping those of the citizens it was created to serve.

Just back from Bill Clinton’s appearance at the historic Stock Pavilion on the University of Wisconsin Campus. When Gary Storck and I approached, we were directed across the street by the most polite pair of Secret Service agents I’ve ever dealt with, but, as it’s a narrow street, not an unreasonable “Free Speech Zone.”

Our signs referred to Bill’s encounter, as a Candidate, with Jacki Rickert of Mondovi, Wisconsin in 1992. Jacki had been approved for the federal medical marijuana program, but not yet admitted when Bush I closed the program to new admissions in 1989. She caught up with Bill in Osseo on his post-Convention Mississippi River bus tour. After she explained her odyssey through the federal bureaucracy, Bill “I feel your pain” promised “When I’m President, you’ll get your medicine.”

Come the Inaugural, Jacki sent letters, made calls seeking fulfillment of that commitment, but got back only form letters. “If drugs were legal, my brother Roger would be dead.”

Delivering on this promise would not have required action by the Congress, as the Controlled Substances Act does not prohibit medical use of Cannabis, rather, it requires a permit, issued at the discretion of the Secretary of HHS. At the time Jacki was blocked, there were 14 patients receiving medical marijuana from the government’s pot farm in Mississippi. They were grandfathered in. 4 survive, and get monthly deliveries.

As Bill disembarked today, we caught his eye, and I was close enough to shout, “You priomised Jacki Rickert you’d get her Medical Marijuana in 1992.”

If I’m correctly reading body language, he turned to State Democratic Chair Joe Wineke, asking “what’s that about?”  Joe knows Jacki’s story, he was around for the ceremony last fall on the introduction in the Wisconsin Assembly of the Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act.  

As Congress voted to grant telecoms immunity, I ask myself… what does this mean, in the larger sense?

This news item is a few weeks old, so I apologize to those who have read it already, rolled their eyes, and punched a wall. It aptly illustrates that we haven’t quite arrived at the station aboard the post partisan express, and maybe, just maybe, talking about race and gender is instructive. It is also proof one can still turn the verbal double play all in one conversation and be racist and sexist at the same time. Certainly takes a special talent. The short article appears here.

A county judge in Hagerstown was reprimanded for calling three black female lawyers “the Supremes” in court and advising the defendant to get “an experienced male attorney.”

Washington County Circuit Judge W. Kennedy Boone has acknowledged that his comments suggested racial and sexual bias. In his written response to a complaint, Boone said he was trying to protect the three public defenders from representing a difficult defendant.

Oh, I get it, he was trying to help them, ah the burden of the white man must be excruciating. What is a guy to do when he is surrounded by those he is certain are beneath him? There is no chance that these lawyers went to school to learn their profession and could be competent. Maybe he was gravely concerned that they went to one of those girl law schools where they teach you to dress cute and make a darn good cup of coffee for the men and might be overwhelmed by the challenge of …. being a lawyer. Was he worried they went to the singing law school, you know the one that black women all go to. After all, if an experienced male attorney was assigned to the case he might be able to fix up one of these women with an appropriate husband. Isn’t that why women of any color go to law school? To find husbands? Besides, these women were taking honest work away from experienced male attorneys and somebody has to stand up for their rights.

Clinton at the Pier, Seattle 8:30 PM Feb. 7, 2008 – 5000 people
Obama at Key Arena, Seattle 11:00 AM Feb. 8, 2008 – 17,000+ inside (capacity), 3,000 -10000 (outside)
McCain at Westin Hotel, 5 PM Feb. 8, 2008 – unknown

Trying to make their last impressions before our caucus 1:00 PM Feb. 9, 2008

My son went to Obama – said it was all lit up electronically like at a Sonics game with the camera panning around at people dancing to music, doing the wave, etc. & they showed it on four-sided big screen that hangs from the ceiling. He said there were an amazing number of young people but all ages too, lots of minorities, and so many who took off work for it. He had friends who took the day off and couldn’t even get in.

Obama said he is looking forward to a debate with the presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain. “I think it will be fun.”

The emails are starting to come in:

I recall going to the Cow Palace in San Francisco to see JFK during the campaign and they shut the doors after 20,000 jammed the old barn. That’s when I knew something special was happening.

and

Suzy and I drove over to Key Arena to hear Obama!! Went past the Pacific Science Center and saw A LINE OF FOLKS ALL THE WAY FROM THE KEY ARENA past the PACIFIC SCIENCE CENTER and down to the STREET! Finally got parked, walked 5 blocks upto the THE KEY. The MOB was 15,000 capacity inside [no we didn’t get inside!] and another 10,000 folks outside. Lots of announcements about keeping FIRE EXITS clear!!! Amazing !!

PS -Hillary got 5,000 at Pier 30 last night! GO OBAMA!!!

buhdy wants to know…  what should we do to fight evil?

harsh and simple: stop partnering with it.

Empowerment.

The big, new-century term. I hate it.

Almost as much as i hate that last century throwback, political correctness.

Two ideas that both disable and imprison people. IMO.

Ideas like these are what make us like our pet dogs: in a perpetual state of puppy hood… needing to be fed, cared for, and looked after throughout our lives.

It’s time to toughen up. And it all starts with the way we think:::::: about ourselves.  

This is my problem lately.

It seems that I’m (unfortunately?) old enough to have a memory. And unlike most Americans, who live in what Gore Vidal likes to call the United States of Amnesia, I can remember what politicians said and did, and what the outcomes were.

Throughout my lifetime, politicians who were correct about things generally are not remembered fondly, and they were often not victorious in the next election. Whereas the people who were wrong about almost everything keep getting more Friedman units from the voters, as if we just know they’ll someday get it right.

It seems being correct counts for nothing! We keep electing people who, if they’re intellectually honest, have to constantly apologize for all their wrongheaded ideas and their votes for things that didn’t come close to producing the promised outcome. Or if they’re sociopaths like Dick Cheney, they just deny that they said what you clearly heard them say. Or they deny the actual outcome, by producing phony measurements (aided by the “think tanks” like the American Enterprise Institute, whose goal it is to produce phony measurements while sounding “academic.”)

A scientist would never accept these kinds of results! In a scientific world view, correct predictions are the most important currency, and incorrect predictions are how you figure out what (theory) not to trust. Of course science doesn’t deal with broken campaign promises, but one would assume that would count against the politician who made them and didn’t keep them.

How can democracy be so screwed up?

Some (few) examples below.