Week of 02/29/2016

“Establishment” Has Nobody To Blame But Itself
– by David Matthews 2

You know, I’m getting sick and tired of hearing about the so-called “Establishment” in the GOP whine and bitch about the 2016 Farce.

You know who I’m talking about.  The party bosses and party manipulators and K-Street and C-Street lobbyists and the millionaire-and-billionaire kingmakers who have turned our political process into a whorehouse and our country into a bloated war-wacky Raubwirtschaft. (Go ahead, look it up.)

Apparently they’re not happy with how things have been turning out so far in the presidential campaign season.  Never mind that they turned the process into a non-stop barrage of campaigning.  Never mind that they manufactured this “secret primary” run by the media for a whole year before the voters actually cast a single real vote in a primary or caucus.  Never mind that we have a situation now where presidential contenders can be forced to run early and then drop out before a single human vote can be cast in a primary or caucus simply because of what some poll says.

Never mind all of that.  Now that the real votes are being cast in the actual primaries and caucuses by real human beings, the political culling has begun, and all of those GOP “establishment” candidates... are the ones being kicked out of the clown car!

Senator Lindsey Graham, former governors Bobby Jindal and George Pataki and Jim Gillmore, the phony “libertarian” Senator Rand Paul, the pompous former governor Mike Huckabee and “frothy mix” Rick Santorum, and former CEO Carly Fiorina have all been booted from the clown car, and nobody really noticed too much.

But then the GOP lost Jeb!

Jeb!

You know, former governor Jeb Bush, who remade himself so his last name would be an exclamation point.  Jeb!

Yes, the third career politician from the Bush political dynasty.  The supposed “smart one”.  The one that everyone said was better than Bush Junior.  And let’s not forget that Junior is considered to be the GOP’s lord and savior.

Jeb was the “establishment” candidate.  The one that was supposed to be the nominee for the November Election, just like Hillary is for the Democrats.  All the party players had to do was to say his first name and people would just vote for him simply because of who he is.

Jeb is gone.  Gone!  He washed out after the South Carolina Primary.  The primary that he pulled out all the stops to win.  The one that the whole Bush family campaigned heavily in.  The state full of veterans and fascist war-mongers and bible-thumping theocrats heard his name and did not go running to vote for him.  So he’s done.  It was win-or-bust, and he busted out.

Funny, because he said back in September that victory in that state was assured and you could, and I quote, “take it to the bank”.  Well, Jeb, maybe you should have talked to your older brother about banks and the GOP.  Or just talk to your former constituents in Florida about trusting banks after what they did to the American people for the Great Recession.  Well, at least you can give up that exclamation point now, for all the good it didn’t do you.  Bye Jeb!

So now the “establishment” is supposedly in a panic.  The only ones left for the GOP are former governor John Kasich, Dr. Ben “Snooze” Carson, delinquent Senator Marco Rubio, the Canadian-born weasel-faced hypocrite Senator Ted Cruz... and the current leader, “The Ego” Donald Trump. 

Not a single “establishment” candidate left in the bunch!  Not one.

Carson is about as exciting as watching paint dry.  Kasich doesn’t have enough momentum from New Hampshire to keep up.  Cruz is so slimy and duplicitous that he can’t even be trusted to give the correct time of day even with an atomic clock displayed next to him.  And, of course, the party bosses and master-manipulators cannot control Trump, therefore they cannot trust Trump.

That leaves the “establishment” putting the rest of their eggs in the camp of Marco Rubio.  The boy-faced politician who can’t even bother to stay in the Senate to do his elected job even when he wasn’t running for President!

So... panic.

Well cry me a river, GOP bosses and master-manipulators, you sorry sacks of elephant dung, because let’s get brutally honest here... you pompous self-important self-righteous power pimps have nobody to blame for this situation but yourselves!

You were the ones that pandered to your so-called “base”. You were the ones that stoked their rage and their fury with phony birth certificates and manufactured scandals.  You riled them up, set up the “with-us-or-against-us” and “RINO” catchphrases, marginalized and hounded out all of the moderates and anyone that wasn’t signed-on with your precious political party.  And then you sold them out with brokered deals to keep the status quo going.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

And do you really think that you could keep this up forever without any kind of consequence?  You rile up a dog to be a killer, and you do it enough times, and that dog will strike out and kill without waiting for your permission.

That’s what you did, “GOP Establishment”.  You started it with Sarah Palin in 2008, and it has morphed into Donald Trump.  Happy?  This is all on you.  All of it.

So I’m tired of hearing about what “the GOP Establishment” will do if Trump gets the nomination.  You know what they will do.  They will hold their bile and shuffle their feet and then promote Trump for November.  Because at that point they will have no choice.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if they hope that he even loses, because their egos are about as monumental and as fragile as is “The Donald’s”.

But stop painting them as the poor helpless victims in this Farce.  They are the reasons why this is the 2016 Farce, and it is high time that they own it, and that they be bound to it like a heavy weight in the middle of the ocean.

Week of 02/22/2016

Georgia’s Pot Hypocrisy
– by David Matthews 2

Back during the holiday season, there was a story that really served as a kick in the genitals for anyone who was ever a child.

A nine-year old boy wanted a Sony PlayStation 4 game system for Christmas.  So come Christmas Day, he sees this big box under the tree for him, he tears open the wrapping and sees the words “PlayStation 4” and is overjoyed.

"This is the best Christmas ever,” he says twice, “this is the best Christmas ever, thank you Santa!"

And then he opened the box...

And instead of a game system, there was a block of wood with a crude drawing and a note saying “You’re welcome”.

The boy was crushed.  And so was his father.  He took it back to the store, and, after some phone calls and some serious questions as to whether the store was being pranked, he got an actual game console along with a $100 gift card.

Thankfully there was a resolution to the problem, but it still did not take away the dramatic soul-crushing blow of that young boy when his greatest high of his so-far-brief life was smashed with the utter betrayal that only a malevolent universe could bring.  He will remember this betrayal for the rest of his life and it will affect how he sees things.

I know this from experience.  The “joys” of the holidays are diminished once you spend Christmas Eve in the Emergency Room, or spending Christmas Day by yourself while the rest of the family is enjoying festivities elsewhere.  The “magic” of the season goes away after that.  And it doesn’t come back once it is gone.

I’m sure a whole group of people in Georgia, children and parents alike, felt a similar betrayal last year.

In 2015, Georgia legislators approved legislation that legalized the use of cannabis oil for medical reasons.  They defied decades of entrenched mind-control from fascist “Drug War” fanatics and saw the need to help those in serious distress that only byproducts of marijuana could provide.

Even Georgia’s Governor, Nathan “Raw” Deal, seemingly saw reason and signed the legislation into law.

Unfortunately, instead of a medicinal PlayStation, patients and parents found a block of legal wood and the words “You’re welcome” scribbled on it.

You see, while the use of medicinal marijuana was legalized under specific conditions and specific situations in Georgia, the state still did not legalize the supply.  Patients and parents of patients can use all the medicinal marijuana they can get their hands on.  They just can’t get their hands on it without breaking the law.

They can’t go to states like Colorado, where marijuana is completely legal, and bring it to Georgia, because that would be a violation of federal drug laws.  And they can’t grow it in Georgia – even for your own use – because that too is illegal.

And Georgia’s Governor knew this when he signed it into law!  This is why he’s known by this commentator as “Raw Deal”.  It seems to be what this state has been getting from him.

Of course, signing the legislation seemed politically expedient.  Public opinion demanded it be enacted.  The pain and frustration recounted by patients and parents alike were too staggering to ignore.  And I’m sure even he could rationalize that it would be okay if he did it provided that it ultimately did nothing to change the status quo.  “The Pot” would still be illegal.  He was just substituting a legislative game system with a block of wood.

So this year, the legislators are trying to fix this.  They’re trying to enact legislation that would allow the state to provide a supply of marijuana that could be used in those very specific legal situations.

Unfortunately, they’re running into legislative roadblocks by the usual suspects.  The same fascist “Drug War” fanatics that are using the same tired-old broke-ass talking points about giving in on this one subject is somehow equivalent to legislating every chemical substance under the sun, and then, you know, we somehow de-evolve into a “Mad Max” society.

Funny, because the same fear was used when the subject of same-sex marriages came up, and that hasn’t materialized since the Supreme Court legalized it.  Makes you wonder if the whole “world will come to an end” line has been over-played just a little bit.

Anyway, one has to wonder if “Raw Deal” will sign off on this legislation should it make it to his desk, or if he will kiss it off and side with the “Drug War” fanatics.

Maybe a better question to ask would be which companies would be profitable enough to convince the governor to sign off on this idea.  After all, law enforcement on all levels have a financial incentive to keep “The Pots” as illegal as possible.  They can seize money and cars and physical property under asset forfeiture laws enacted because of the “Drug War”.  And it is money and property that they don’t ever have to give back, even if no charges are ever filed.  That’s a lot of money and power at stake, and you’ll need a pretty strong financial argument to counter it.

But the ideal question to ask would be why we’re even pussyfooting around on the subject.

Let’s get brutally honest here... as a practical libertarian, I see the subject of marijuana as one of individual liberty.  We were hoodwinked into making it illegal in the 1930’s, which was on par with Prohibition over a decade earlier.  A lot of the arguments that were used then are still being used now, only now we know they’re bunk.  Legal and legalized drugs, especially the ones coming from Big Pharma, are far more dangerous and are more of a “gateway drug” than marijuana ever was.

Hey, there are drugs being advertised on television right now where one of the side-effects given is death!  Death!  And that drug is legal!  There are other drugs that can lead one to commit suicide or have heart attacks.  They impair your judgement, impair your driving skills, cause serious and permanent health risks, and those are all legal.  But marijuana is supposedly the “bad” drug.

And all indications are that full legalization for consenting adults has been a boom for Colorado.  However, good luck convincing the fanatics of that.

So, maybe baby steps are the way to go on this.  First show the benefits of medicinal use (which, by the way, was never really done only because the fanatics imposed a Catch-22 on the subject), show that these people don’t later become meth-addicts or coke-heads, rip and burn the prohibitionist scripts into a fine ash and then smoke it, then talk about full-blown legalization for the rest of the adults. 

I know we’re fighting generations of “this is bad, let’s outlaw it” brainwashing here, but it’s not the first time that we’ve had this kind of problem.  But at the very least, if you’re one of the legislators that voted for legalization for medicinal use, you should be obligated to follow that up with supporting legislation that makes last year’s law more than just an empty gesture.

And that, by the way, should also apply to the man who campaigned in 2014 as the “Real Deal”, a.k.a. Governor Nathan Deal.  Give the people what they pushed for, a legislative game system, and not a political block of wood.