Saturday, August 2, 2008

Bush operative crashed Barney Frank's Press Conference: Why?

Diatribune has a good piece on the Repug obssession with refusal to sensibly modify medical marijuana laws, and on the War On Some Drugs. My first quote is a line that could be the quote of the day every day about Repugs in general:

I am truly sorry, but there is nothing at all responsible about believing bullshit and bragging about it.

Here we see the overarching need to have impeached Bush reflected again: from now until January 20th this ugly administration will be pulling out the stops and crashing through whatever remains of their agenda to utterly destroy this country.

Keeping the very unimportant marijuana plant illegal is a higher priority for the GOP than those who do not contemplate this issue can possibly imagine. We spend approximately $0 to $50 billion a year on the "drug war". I am told that $40 billion would fund a SCHIP-like program for more than 2 years.

Thus we can assert with confidence that enforcing pot laws directly prevents children from having access to healthcare. Good show! VERY Republican.

The "drug war" is about 90% marijuana prohibition, 10% about genuinely serious drug issues. Mostly its about enforcing the stupidity of reefer madness: laws against the cannabis plant, and maintenance of the propaganda stream, making sure that accurate information and genuine intelligent discussion are obliterated any time they break out.

That's why the highly-paid PhD liar was sent to crash Barney Frank's press conference: because Frank's bill represents serious, if incremental, progress in reforming these stupid cannabis laws.

Fixing cannabis laws ought to be a core element of Democratic party reform. It's a bad situation that can be fixed easily because it is entirely arbitrary. THere was never a salient reason to make pot illegal. People will cite a thousand reasons, none of them are remotely legitimate. It's all based on lies.

When we get verifiable factual assertions in the MSM, it will be like the collapse of Communism. When the lying finally stops the whole thing will just crash down.

The last two paragraphs, while true, make me wonder what the author was smokin'. As far as drugs go, most of us know that marijuana is pretty much lemonade, but it's been made into such a hot-button subject that it isn't likely to be 'a core element of Democratic party reform' anytime soon.

As far as 'salient reasons' why pot and other drugs were made illegal, it was largely about racism and government control, and still is. Some laws were needed way back when cannabis, opiates, and cocaine were widely available in over-the-counter consumer products and the whole country was stoned on them, but the modern (since the '30s) laws were pretty much designed to oppress minorities.

A pretty good overview of American narcotics laws and the waxing and waning of attitudes towards dope over the years in The American Disease: Origins Of Narcotic Control. Check it out.

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