The War On Drugs

My El Chapo Cap DTLA

Geez, is El Chapo on the NRA board?  When El Chapo was captured he was armed with machine guns and assault rifles and pistols along with thousands of rounds of ammunition.  Was El Chapo invited to speak at the next NRA convention?  Just like El Chapo, the NRA is entwined in the cluster of intrigue and violence of the "War on Drugs" that began in the past century.  

For many decades the NRA has been an essential advocate of the US arming up for the failed "War on Drugs."  The "War on Drugs" was splattered on the world in 1971 by the despotic and racist cabal of the Nixon Kissinger Whitehouse.  Of course, the NRA gets 100% behind anything that sells more guns.  

The "War on Drugs" was part of the Nixon Kissinger propaganda spin to distract the American rubes from their own heinous criminal acts including paying for murder in Southeast Asia and in Chile and Argentina and later in Columbia and El Salvador.  

Just like redneck speed traps in southern towns, the DEA and other federal and local police agencies have quotas to keep the money coming in.  Local cops confiscate everything found in drug arrests including homes and even the silverware in "Drug Houses."  After the conviction the agencies auction off the bounty. 

An additional benefit was how the "War on Drugs" could be used by local law enforcement and judiciary to lock up brown and black people to stop them from voting.  The felony convictions for drug possession for millions of Americans prevented them from voting in elections.  In most Southern and Mid-Western states, to regain voting rights requires a lengthy process and legal fees out of the reach of most poor black or brown people.  

And are we in America not sick of the fear factor of the tea party republicans and their shills?  Again listen to what Gore Vidal said about the "War on Terrorism" that is exactly the same scam as the "War on Drugs:" 

"You can't have a war on terrorism because that's not an actual enemy, it's an abstract.  It's like having a war on dandruff.  That war will be eternal and pointless.  It's idiotic.  It's not a war.  It's a slogan.  It's a lie.  It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented in America.  And we use it to sell soap, wars and presidential candidates in the same fashion." 

Money transforms lies into truths.  Thank you tea party libertarian Pay-Per-Vote™ republicans all over America. 

The "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror" are both dire sicknesses caused by ruinous billionaires who don't want to pay their taxes and the criminals they put in positions of power. 

The "War on Drugs" is a war on freedom and human values. 

The abuse of drugs, all and any drug, is an illness. 

It is a horrible illness.  But Illness is not a war. 

Gunshot Murder and Religion in America

Gunshot Murder and Religion in America

Dateline:  November 29, 2015

Put aside for a moment the terrorist horrors in Paris and in San Bernadino and in Orlando a few days ago.  The tragic event in 2015 Colorado reveals some very cruel truths about our America.  

The gunshot murders and injuries at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs are the direct result of screams for media attention by all of America’s republican candidates for President.  Words are wolves.  

The gunshot murders and injuries at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs are equally the direct result of many, many years of effort by the National Rifle Association, or the NRA, our premier gun lobby in Washington.  Guns cause gunshot murder.  

The gunshot murders and injuries at a Planned Parenthood office silenced all of America’s republican Presidential candidates for a few days.  For the first time in over a year, they halted the dog whistles and open rage for encouraging violence and the closing all Planned Parenthood offices.  

Borrowing a tactical move from the NRA, all the candidates take a break while the media sturm und drang subsides over the gunshot deaths of three and the gunshot injuries of nine others.  

Gunshot murdered Policeman Garrett Swasey, was once an Olympic class athlete.  Officer Swasey died trying to protect others in the Planned Parenthood offices.  

Gunshot murdered Jennifer Markovsky was simply a good neighbor at the clinic with a friend.  

Gunshot murdered Ke'Arre Stewart was an Iraq War veteran.  

Each of the dead victims had two children.  That's four fatherless and two motherless children.   

Maybe it is because our America has been at a corrupt and misguided war off and on since 1991, and human life is not as sacred as in the past.  Our America has more people in prison than any other nation.  Our best friends the Saudi Arabians beheaded more than thirty people last year.  Only last summer the Saudis ordered a girl to be stoned to death for infidelity.  The Saudis recently ordered 200 lashes for a girl who was gang raped.  The Saudis also privately help fund the ISIL gang.  Our collateral damage rate for drone strikes must be in the range of thirty bystanders killed for every target identified dead.  

Stoked by screams of Christian pastors, state and local legislatures and governors create laws to precisely regulate all birth control methods and thereby all women’s bodies.  

Before Roe vs. Wade in 1973 gave America legal abortions, Our Bodies Ourselves the women’s organization, estimates about five thousand women died each year from abortion attempts.  Many religious people all over America vehemently advocate a return to those murderous days.  

Over twelve thousand Americans died from gunshot over the past year excluding gunshot deaths by police and gunshot deaths by suicide.  Americans privately own over three hundred million guns adding up to about one gun for every man, woman and child in our America.  The hospital costs for gunshot injuries are approaching a billion dollars a year.  Many of the pious religious who fume about birth control and abortion, encourage the patriotic ownership of firearms for all.  

Guns are like cigarettes. Guns maim people and we all pay for it.  Guns kill people and we all pay for that also.  Because of multiple gunshot injuries every day, Americans pay for treatment in emergency rooms everywhere.  So we all are paying a hospital tax for some gun manufacturer in Europe?  How much do we taxpayers spend on police investigations and ER's for gunshot violence?  

Most Americans are sick and tired of the media playbook by NRA gun fools, and how American murder by gunshot has become so quaint and so everyday. 

The NRA and all their shills aid and abet gunshot murder every hour in our America!  

Religious zealots endorsing violence by dog whistle or by sermon are directly responsible for more and more gunshot murder and injury in our America!   

Likewise, at first all the republican candidates bide their time and wait off camera, shrewdly preparing to delight their base inhumane and racist faithful.  Every single one of the chosen then leap into close ups all over the dime store cable TV channels where they scream for more and more biblical payback.  

This is not acceptable, America!  

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Gunshot Murdered at Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs

University of Colorado Police Officer Garrett Swasey

Jennifer Markovsky and Ke'Arre Stewart

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Where is the Marshall Plan?

Marshal Plan Logo 1948

The War on Terrorism is like the War on Drugs.  It is an advertising ploy.  "It's like a war on dandruff," said Gore Vidal.  It is a completely planned and constructed media matrix.  

One more thing is an old rule about wars:  When a nation destroys another nation in war, the victor must put in place an enormous program to rebuild the conquered nation.  This is to prevent a repeat.  Remember the Weimar Republic in Germany in the years after WWI?  The Germans were required to pay heinous amounts of money as reparations to all the victor countries.  That little scheme and it's consequential social and economic disaster gave the world Adolf Hitler.  It took another ten years to vanquish that evil doer.  Despite the tens of millions murdered and maimed, some small good for America came of this.  General Eisenhower later led our nation as President.   The last helpful republican to hold the Oval Office, Eisenhower certainly knew about the rules for conquest and giant wars, and so did Ike's predecessor Harry Truman.   

Named for the Secretary of State, George Marshall, the Marshal Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was originated under democratic President Truman with both US State Department officials, William L. Clayton and George F. Kennan, and Brookings Institution and the republican Senator from Michigan, Arthur H. Vandenberg who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Please note how the Senators of the opposition actually wanted to make some good for our nation and the world.  Not so in the present congress.  

The Plan was huge.  The money was in the hundreds of billions in present day money.  The Plan worked incredibly well.  Counter to present day dogmas of the tea party republicans, the Plan endorsed productivity with ethical business methods and the Plan encouraged labor union membership.  Unlike Afganistan and Iraq, the Plan did not sub-contract with American front corporations like Haliburton and others for rebuilding infrastructure.  All the money ended up in the hands of the Europeans.  

If we won the War against the USSR, where was the Marshall Plan?  If we won the War in Afganistan, where was the Marshal Plan for rebuilding democracy like we did in WWII Europe?  If we won the war in Iraq, where was the Marshall Plan.  When Russia transformed from the dictatorship of seventy years, there was nothing other than advice from the smug gang of pre-tea party republicans running things.  There was no Marshall Plan at all.   For Afganistan there have been a few projects to help, but not a Marshall plan.  The same in Iraq.  In the Middle East building a few bridges and a school or two is a spit in the desert.  

Why does our US Congress not know this?  Why did not the Reagan-Bush v1.0-Bush v2.0-Cheney-Rumsfeld victors in Russia and Afganistan and Iraq know this?  Oh, it must be those old "anything goes" libertarian tea party fools in power and their myopic dogmas for solving economic and social disasters with even more disaster.  

As I said a couple of months ago, "How many libertarian tea party fools does it take to make a destroyed economy work?  Answer:  None the free market and god will take care of it."  
  
Well, now we have the free market Putin who is a throwback to Krushchev.  Most importantly, we have the god of ISIS taking care of things in Iraq and Syria.  Thank you tea party republican fools in our US Congress.  

James Brady Was Murdered By Gunshot

The Biblical Constitution
Dateline:  August 8, 2014

James Brady and the Brady Bill
On August 8, 2014, thirty years after James Brady was shot with a dime store handgun, a Medical Examiner in Virginia ruled that the death of Ronald Reagan's former Press Secretary was an act of homicide. After the shooting, Brady spent the rest of his life with partial paralysis and slurred speech. Brady and his devoted wife Sarah lobbied nonstop for improved handgun controls and assault weapon restrictions for twelve years until the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, known as the Brady Bill was passed finally in 1993. In the decade long process of enactment the Brady Bill overcame wave after wave of legal maneuvers and media ridicule, all darkly bankrolled by the NRA and other gun people. 

Since it was passed, the Brady Bill has been further corrupted by those same NRA and gun people. In one crude sidestep of the law, gun people can attend a gun show for buying weapons and many of the Brady Bill rules do not quite apply to those ostensibly private sales. To help their guns and gun sales promotions, the NRA and gun people originated the slogan, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." That catchphrase has now gone beyond overused, and sensible people know it is meaningless. Another trivial motto is the NRA and gun people's constant and rigid refrain of the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment as if it were a biblical commandment. Here is an exact transcription from the original document of 1787. 

The Second Amendment  

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security 

of a free State, the right of the people 

to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." 

The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution
Exactly like the founding Fathers of our nation, let's apply good American common sense to reveal and flesh out the contorted legal twists that have been used to justify personal ownership of deadly weapons in our nation. The Preamble is the beginning and the biblical guide to everything that follows in the U.S. Constitution. 

The Preamble

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form 

a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic 

Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 

promote the general Welfare, and secure 

the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and 

our Posterity, do ordain and establish 

this Constitution for the United States of America."

The Preamble is the basic structure of our U.S. Constitution including our first commandments, our ironclad rules for all the rules that follow. The Preamble trumps any of the later "Amendments."  That means the Second Amendment is secondary to the Pre-Amble. So the Preamble demands that "Justice" and "Tranquillity" and "common defence" and "Welfare" and "the Blessings" for our children not be further destroyed by the NRA and gun people across our nation with their grossly flawed interpretation of our U.S. Constitution.

Now let's dig even deeper into a few concepts of Constitutional Law that are used by our U.S. Supreme Court in their decisions. Sometime after the days of Chief Justice Earl Warren and the tremendously important decisions of the civil rights era, the Court majority changed from progressive to regressive. The Court majority came to rely on a new theory of microscopic and extreme interpretation of the U.S. Constitution named by Justice Antonin Scalia as "originalist." 

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger
Served on SCOTUS 1969 - 1986

Chief Justice Burger was first a trial lawyer in St. Paul, Minnesota and then Assistant Attorney General under President Eisenhower. He was a professor of law and a deep thinking jurist who certainly knew what he was talking about. Chief Justice Burger was an early iconic "originalist" who used that theory of constitutional law to exactly determine the meaning of any provision. Conservative republican President Richard M. Nixon nominated him to the Court. 

Chief Justice Burger was a most severe conservative. He voted for the death penalty. He voted for life imprisonment for the convicted perpetrator in a $100 check fraud. He saw nothing wrong with the Watergate burglaries of the Nixon scandal. However, in a 1991 PBS interview, Chief Justice Burger twice called using the Second Amendment to justify anything-goes gun policy a fraud. The right to bear arms cannot be separated from militia service. The right to own guns is not individual. The U.S. Constitution exactly allows only a group, a militia, to own a gun. That important "originalist" interpretation was later ignored by the Court in the infamous mistaken decision for District of Columbia v. Heller in which the individual right to keep and bear arms, or in our era own a gun, was allowed counter to the wishes of the people of the District of Columbia. 

Compromise And Parsing Death

"The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of the Parts," said the Berlin School of Gestalt psychology. Gestalt has an organic, living power in our modern world. To combine all the parts of our America into a more organic and humane and productive society, the time has come to severely restrict all personal gun ownership. We need to severely regulate how guns are sold. We need to severely restrict all gun ownership. We need to completely outlaw the ownership of any military or assault weapons. We need the U.S. Army to confiscate and destroy all unregistered guns and deadly weapons.  

We must disarm America now before it gets any worse. Our children, our teenagers, the best of the best die because we do nothing to regulate guns. Many gun people say we need to find a compromise. There is no compromise. There is no middle ground between life and death. We must save lives now by confiscating all deadly weapons. 

The Brady Shooting

At this moment alongside President Reagan six agents and police officers were armed with various handguns and one agent with an Uzi submachine gun. Shootings are over in seconds. No officer or agent was able to stop the shooting. There was not enough time.

Over the past two hundred years and more, the U.S. Supreme Court has relied on many, many different interpretations and moral codes to sanction it's rulings. But each Justice certainly agrees that all of the law in our United States of America is based on the Judeo-Christian bible. The biblical and the legal of the U.S. Constitution must be reconciled with respect to the Second Amendment. The Preamble takes first position. 

We Americans must do our duty set in our Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. We must "...establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence..."  and protect all the citizens and all their children from deadly weapons all over our America. We need rigorous laws to control each and every deadly weapon in our America and we need to do it now.

To research and write this essay, let's say any regular person would spend about one hour. That hour is sixty minutes.  During this sixty minute period more than three people will die from gunshot in our America according to F.B.I.'s data. Every hour on the hour, every day after day, during every hour of our entire lives in our America three of our people die. That is three friends, girls, boys, fathers, mothers, police officers, first responders, regular people. That's three regular people that you may know and you may love. All of these people are dead. Dead because we do not have effective realistic legal controls on deadly weapons in our America.    

Hey NRA.
Here's the body count for kids gunshot murdered in October 2014.
Twenty-Five children dead.
White kids, brown kids, black kids, all dead.
Stand their faces in your mind in your next miserable life. 

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(Please note this post updates for the fourth time, the commentary originally published in January 2011. The story of guns and gun people has become a continuing American cliche of horror and unremitting disgrace. The NRA has found a way to stop any legislation in the U.S. Congress, and the NRA is targeting Colorado legislators who voted for gun regulation. The NRA is clearly a propaganda cabal that aids and abets murder.) 

Listen Up America • Update Spring 2014 "Just like tobacco, guns do kill people."

Let's install a chip in every gun in America. If a gun is found without a chip the gun is to be scrapped and melted down. We Americans have GPS chips in our cars and in our phones and in our laptops and in our dogs and our cats and on many felons with ankle bracelets and even in some of our kids. So it is proven the technology works and works well. Authorities would have access to the position of any gun, anywhere in America at any time. This is not an invasion of privacy. This is a reasonable step in the prevention of gun murders and gun accidents in our nation. This could save untold lives. The NRA and gun people will not allow our congress or our states or our cities to effectively control gun sales and misuse so let's simply track where the people with guns are located. Then if some people kill or maim with a gun we'll be able to find them and the weapon for police and the courts to use as evidence at trial. 

In January 1936 Hitler's Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels declared, "We can do without butter, but despite all our love of peace not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns." And for once in his wretched life Goebbels said something truthful. As a result of his media deceptions most savvy people consider Goebbels the father of modern propaganda. Now even with all the delirious militant gun carriers in Fly-Over-America and the lavish NRA spin doctors in Washington let's try to put some reason in a look at guns and the impact of gunshot trauma on the regular people of our nation. 

A couple of years ago January 2011 in Tucson, Arizona US Representative Gabrielle Giffords was direly injured by gunshot. A beautiful and bright nine year old girl Christina-Taylor Green was murdered by gunshot. A US Federal Judge John Roll was murdered by gunshot. Representative Gifford's aide Gabe Zimmerman was murdered by gunshot. Her husband George tried to shield her, but Dorothy "Dot" Morris was murdered by gunshot. Dorwan Stoddard tried to shield his wife Mavy and he was murdered by gunshot. A church volunteer Phyllis Schneck was murdered by gunshot. Susan Hileman, Pamela Simon, Ronald Barber, James Tucker, Kenneth Veeder, George Morris, James Fuller, Randy Gardner, Mary Reed, Kenneth Dorushka, and Bill Badger were all wounded by gunshot. The shooter bought his automatic hand gun with an extended thirty shot clip at a mall sporting goods store. Prior to trial, the shooter was diagnosed with schizophrenia and he is now in prison. How could these murders have been prevented? 

In July of 2012 a dozen people were murdered and over seventy injured at a movie house in Aurora, Colorado. Most of the murdered were young people: Jonathan Blunk, Alexander J. Boik, Jesse Childress, Gordon Cowden, Jessica Ghawi, John Larimer, Alex Sullivan, Alexander C. Teves, Rebecca Wingo. The shooter used several weapons including a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 (military & police 15) assault rifle. How could these lives have been saved? 

Six months later, in December of 2012 another rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.  A very damaged man killed his mother and then drove to a nearby school where he murdered Rachel D'Avino a teacher's aide, Dawn Hochsprung school principal, Anne Marie Murphy a teacher's aide, Lauren Rousseau a teacher, Victoria Leigh Soto a teacher,  Mary Sherlach, school psychologist, and first grade students Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Olivia Engel, Josephine Gay, Dylan Hockley, Madeleine Hsu, Catherine Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Jesse Lewis, Ana Marquez-Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Emilie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Benjamin Wheeler, Allison Wyatt.  These are not just names. These are six year old and seven year old little kids. Twenty six people who were attending school or just teaching were murdered. After murdering all these people and wounding others the shooter killed himself.  The NRA gun people propaganda machine noted that the gun was given to the shooter by his own mother. The mother should never have been allowed to buy that gun. 

Recently this June 2013 a man firing an assault rifle along a street and at a college in Santa Monica, California killed five people. That man should never have been sold that assault rifle.

This past September week another twelve people were murdered in the Washington Navy Yard.  The shooter was a schizophrenic who heard voices in the wind, and the shooter was able to easily get cleared for a legal permit to carry a weapon by the vile adolescent cowboy culture of Texas.  

Now in June 2014 more murders of police officers in Las Vegas by psychotic white supremacists.  Last month a teacher and security administrator in Watts, Los Angeles was murdered in a drive-by shooting.  The murders continue every day in America.  The NRA and Wayne Lapierre continue to aid and abet the crimes of murder and child endangerment in our America. 

According to the FBI in Washington, every 58 minutes in 2009 someone in the USA was murdered by a gun either a handgun, or a rifle, or a shotgun, or some other unknown type of firearm. This statistic ignores the numerous wounded who may survive only to be subjected to months of recovery or those with spinal injuries whose lives are shattered forever. 

To not do something about all of these killings and all these sadistic injuries is cowardly and demented. It is simple ethics to consider how more murders may be prevented. What is the right thing to do about this? 

A few years in the past Americans smoked cigarettes in bars and in restaurants and even in elevators and on airplanes. Sometime in the 1990's an awareness came over the social consciousness of our nation. Scientists proved that cigarette smoke cause cancer. The scientists later proved that people who do not smoke can also get cancer from cigarette smoke just by breathing smokey air. So we stopped smoking so much. We passed laws to prevent people from smoking in public facilities, and then in work places. One solid reason for the new laws was that each government entity held a responsibility to protect the safety and health of the people. A cowardly government may be brought to account for relinquishing that government's responsibility to protect the people. A gun is no different than a cigarette. A gun murders people just like a cigarette murders people. 

The gun people and the NRA people have a propaganda mantra about people killing people not guns. That is a lie. Guns do kill people. Proof positive, ask any mother from the Tucson murders or the Aurora, Colorado murders or the Sandy Hook murders. Replace that lie with something truthful like "Only cowards carry guns." The gun people and the NRA people certainly will hate this epithet. They are cowards. The gun people and the NRA people are fearful of unseen evils. The gun people and the NRA people have always clearly known the price of everything, and the value of nothing. 

Conservatively about 250,000 people are living with Spinal Cord Injury in the USA. Of those about 13% are a result of gunshot wounds according to the American Medical Association. That is 32,500 people who may be paraplegic by gunshot and confined to wheelchairs or sometimes they may be quadraplegics by gunshot and cannot care for themselves at all. In the most extreme cases care would be provided for the rest of their lives by their families or possibly through state and federal crime victim funds. 

The human sorrow from gunshot violence cannot be measured. The medical cost of treating gunshot injuries is multiple billions of dollars every year. The cost of ambulances and emergency treatments at the scene of the violence is multiple billions of dollars every year. And police investigations for gunshot crimes is multiple billions of dollars every year. All these costs are born usually by city and county governments. There is no other way to cover those costs except by taxing the purchase of guns and ammunition. But the federal government's hands are tied by the deranged and cowardly NRA gun people in Washington. 

That deranged Nazi Joe Goebbels tagged the first rule of propaganda:  Loudly declare that the evil you are doing is "really" being done by your opponent.  Psychologists call this projection.  If some psychopath has a bag of money to buy media time the spinmeisters can succeed easily in distracting many, many people from the real problem just like the psychopaths did in 1930s Germany. 

The gun people and the NRA gun people say that only people kill people.  But that propaganda lie gives us a warning that we should prevent psychotic gun people from getting guns and ammunition. We need to severely restrict the types of guns sold in America. We need to severely regulate how guns are sold. We need to put in place a precise and comprehensive investigation of any buyer's background.  Only cowardly people oppose background checks. 

Our city and county and state and federal representatives cannot pass any new laws that regulate the sale of guns. So let the President declare that sales of guns and ammunition must be regulated for the safety of the people of the nation under the US Constitution's Preamble "to insure the domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity." 

Legally and ethically the Preamble trumps the Second Amendment. We need to codify harsh penalties for the illegal sale of guns. It is a heinous failure of our local and federal governments to not protect the regular people of America. We have a "Do Not Fly" list. Why not a "Do Not Buy" list to prevent psychotic and criminal people from buying guns? 

There's some foul sickness in the body politic that we have not yet vigorously demanded laws to regulate guns. The infection continues to corrode America's future, gunshot murder by gunshot murder. Any controls will take enormous resolve.  The propaganda spin by the gun people and the NRA gun people is oppressively loud and lavishly financed. Perhaps now at last there's some change in the air to quash that flood of distortion. 

A dead tenderhearted girl. A dead young father in a movie theater.  A dead first grader in a sheltered classroom surrounded by one after another dead school mate. Only cowards carry guns. 

(Please note this post updates for the third time, the commentary originally published in January 2011. The story of guns and gun people has become a continuing American cliche of horror and unremitting disgrace. The NRA has found a way to stop any legislation in the US congress, and the NRA is targeting Colorado legislators who voted for gun regulation. The NRA is clearly a propaganda cabal that aids and abets murder.)