Sounds & Fury
So, two states — Colorado and Washington state — have made (or are about to make in the case of Colorado) recreational use of marijuana perfectly legal for adults effectively putting Mary Jane in the same class of dope as that good ol' dope of the masses, alcohol.
Sounds like a good idea to us and also offers the possibility of eventual legalization for adults of all so-called "hard drugs": coke, heroin, ecstasy, methamphetamines, opium, and whathaveyou. That sounds like a good idea to us as well. It also offers the possibility of lifting this country out of its current and crushing economic difficulties, the trillion-dollar per annum national debt included, in one three-step fell swoop. The plan goes like this:
Step 1: Legalize all dope nationwide which will establish whole new industries for manufacturing, distributing, and selling FDA-approved high-quality stuff to the public OTC the sales having a fairly stiff but not at all prohibitive tax (say, 15%-20%) attached. This will, of course, have the nifty side benefit of putting out of business drug cartels worldwide and sidewalk dope dealers nationwide and reducing as well all drug-related crime nationally to near zero levels.
Step 2: Dismantle entirely the DEA and release all its thousands upon thousands of thugs and consign it and them to the rubbish bin of well-intentioned idiocies which is a far more gentle fate than either deserve.
Step 3: Issue Presidential Pardons nationwide to every convict now serving time exclusively for drug use. That will reduce by about one-half our country's prison population and with no moral problem attached. None of those prisoners should have been incarcerated in the first place.
The income and savings obtained by the above three actions alone will, within a year or five, not only wipe out the national debt but result in a surplus and at the same time boost our economy to levels it hasn't seen since [fill in the economic banner year of your choice].
It's not as far-fetched a plan as it sounds, boys and girls. All that's required is finding elected politicians with sufficient balls to set that most excellent plan in motion.
Right. Talk about far-fetched. Good luck with that.
More On The Current Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
[The following is a reprint of an article posted originally by me in January 2004 on a now defunct predecessor blog to Sounds & Fury and was then occasioned by a particularly murderous Palestinian bombing of a bus in Jerusalem that resulted in a great number of Israeli civilian dead, many of them children. Its re-posting below is occasioned by events currently taking place between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinians in Gaza.]
With each passing year of the more than half-century-old "conflict" between the Israelis and Palestinians the real bottom-line nature of that conflict, as well as why the conflict has been so resistant to any lasting solution, becomes more and more clear. That is, more and more clear to me. To those in positions of power worldwide, even some in positions of power within the governments of the combatants themselves, the bottom-line nature of the conflict seems to have become more and more clouded and fraught with myriad and impenetrable subtleties and difficulties that defy even clear definition; hence the perennial putting forward of doomed-to-failure "peace plans," and the earnest engagement in impossible and equally doomed-to-failure Pollyanna "peace processes."
And what's become more and more clear to me concerning the bottom-line nature of the conflict is the manifest and incontestable circumstance that the Palestinians (as well as the Arab world generally) will accept as lastingly satisfactory no solution to the conflict that includes the continued existence of a sovereign Jewish State of Israel. No matter what concessions to Palestinian demands the Israelis are willing to make, no matter what they're willing to give up for the sake of peace, the Palestinians (and, again, the Arab world generally) will not be lastingly satisfied if, at the end, the Jewish State of Israel remains a sovereign and powerful entity in the region. Every Israeli concession, every partial surrender, will be (as it has been) looked upon by the Palestinians not as a step toward a peaceful coexistence with Israel, but as one step farther taken in the resolute march toward the Palestinians' (and once again, the Arab world's) ultimate, intractable and uncompromising goal: the sovereign Jewish State of Israel's utter destruction as a viable entity in the region.
If I'm right about that (and it's manifest I am), then it becomes immediately clear that every apparently successful step toward a lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that in the end leaves Israel sovereign and powerful is merely just that: apparently successful, but in reality little more than a for-the-moment-palliative stopgap at best, and at worst, an insidious progression forward in the process of a slow suicide for Israel.
So, what then is the answer to the question of a genuinely lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? One thing that for certain is not an answer is sitting down at bargaining tables. After all, one cannot even begin to bargain in good faith with an opponent who will be satisfied only if at bargaining's end you end up dead. Bargaining conferences have been (and are) nothing but charades used by the Palestinians in an attempt to jockey for a better position in their march toward their ultimate real goal. And if I'm also right about that (and, again, that I'm right about that is manifest) that would seem to leave but a single effective strategy for Israel: an unambiguous and loudly declared promise of an overwhelming military response to any act of deadly aggression against her sovereignty or her people, ending, if necessary, in all-out war with the Palestinians (and with the Arab world as it could not help but be) with but one of only two possible outcomes: 1) Israel loses, in which case the State of Israel will cease to exist as every Israeli man, woman, and child will end up dead either at the hands of the Arabs or, Masada-like, at the hands of the Israelis themselves; or 2) Israel wins, in which case the Palestinians and the Arab world will have no choice but to accept a sovereign Jewish State of Israel in the region on Israel's terms, hate it though they (and, I suspect, much of the rest of the world) surely would.
And what part the United States in such a war threat, and war itself if it came to that? Unambiguously determined. We back Israel to the hilt against all her enemies with whatever is necessary. We could do no less and still preserve even a shred of our moral or practical authority. In the entire world the United States has but two genuine friends: Britain and Israel. All our other "friends" — many of whom (all of whom, in the Arab world) actively but often secretly hate and/or are contemptuous of us — are contingent friends only, and would without compunction turn on us in a heartbeat if they saw any self-serving gain to be secured by doing so.
But all this is unthinkable, is it not? World War III for certain and therefore something not to be entertained or even imagined, right?
Not right.
If things ever came to such a pass, and if the position of the United States were made unambiguously clear and in earnest, the intention and show of force would be more than enough. The rest of the world would stand back, much of the Arab world included, and offer no more than loud, aggrieved and condemnatory clucking noises at the U.N. and in the world press. Realistically, they could not do much more than that. They would, of course, hate us for our show of power in behalf of Israel, certainly, but they couldn't hate us more than they already do, or be more contemptuous of us, and so we would not only lose nothing by taking such a position, but would actually stand to gain in terms of the respect of and/or fear by other nations of the world (in the geopolitical arena, the two are the same in practical terms).
It's surely uncivilized and a not attractive thing to contemplate, I confess. But if the history of mankind has taught anything it is that in the intercourse of both individuals and nations, when nagging push comes to ineluctable and intolerable shove, there's but a single language that all understand and to which all respond predictably: overwhelming physical force or the real threat of same. He who carries and shows a willingness to wield the biggest stick wins.
Always.
Sympathy For The Palestinians?
For the past few days we've been glued to CNN following the ongoing deadly rocket battle between the instigating Islamist fanatics of Hamas in Gaza and the IDF in the Jewish State of Israel, and reading as well voluminous reports of the battle in the world's press. As always in such battles between the two, it's the Palestinian civilians in Gaza who are paying the steepest price in terms of loss of life, limb, property, and anything even approaching a normal, productive life. How could it be otherwise given that, as is always the case in such battles with Hamas, the craven terrorists operate and hide amid and around the homes, playgrounds, and schools of Palestinian children; the mosques of Palestinian men; and behind the skirts of Palestinian women.
We suppose one should feel at least some measure of sympathy for the Palestinian citizenry of Gaza, but except for the very young children whose suffering breaks our heart, we feel none. This current battle is yet another outcome of the Palestinians's own making; an ineluctable consequence of their never-wavering determination, public window-dressing to the contrary notwithstanding, to never live in peace alongside the Israelis but rather work to achieve Israel's destruction as a sovereign Jewish State; a determination that's existed since Israel's founding in 1948 and even before; a determination given particularly appalling voice in the Palestinians's free election in 2006 of Hamas as their governing body in Gaza — Hamas, whose founding document declares its sacred dedication to the utter destruction of Israel as a sovereign Jewish State.
Sympathy for the Palestinian civilians in Gaza? Except for the very young children, they are undeserving of such sympathy as Palestinians, in both Gaza and the West Bank, have been for more than a half-century now. They remain today what they've always been: a people determined to build their Islamist Palestinian State on the graves of the sovereign Jewish State of Israel and all her citizenry.
Proof Of Mencken's Deathless Dictum
The NBC TV comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live (SNL) had its first airing in 1975 as America's response to the BBC's transcendent comedy sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus (and we use the term transcendent advisedly; once exposed to the world as seen through the eyes of the Pythons one could then never see the real world in the same way ever again) which aired on the BBC from 1969 through 1974 and was first aired in the U.S. on PBS in 1974.
Even at its very best — namely, its first two or three seasons — SNL never achieved the heights and the penetrating depth of the Python show, and after SNL's third season it declined rapidly into the crude, simpleminded American TV comedy show it remains to this day. To our way of thinking, no American TV show in history that survived beyond its initial few seasons has ever been better proof of Mencken's deathless dictum that "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." Witness, for instance, this SNL take on last week's first presidential debate:
Wise Up!, Mr. President
The failure of the Obama Administration to make any real headway over the past four years in solving America's many crippling problems is largely traceable to a single, initial cardinal error on President Obama's part: he didn't understand that his first priority on taking office was to begin breaking Republican legs. Instead, civilized man that he is, he was determined to deal with Republicans collegially. An admirable position to take, no doubt, but lethally misplaced politically in this case. If you're Barack Obama, today's Republicans are in no way your colleagues; the "Loyal Opposition". They are in fact your mortal enemies and their first priority — one they cherish above all others — is to make certain your past term is your last term and they will use any means to hand, civilized and honest or otherwise, to achieve that end. You want to deal with today's Republicans collegially? Well, you can do that. But first you must break their legs. Then you can deal with them collegially.
We watched the presidential debate last night and it seems to us Mr. Obama has yet to learn that crucial lesson. The President dealt with Mitt Romney as if Mr. Romney were the Loyal Opposition instead of the political assassin he in fact is. And to make matters worse, Mr. Romney was in top form — a form the likes of which we never imagined him capable — and turned in a truly bravura performance ending by appearing more presidential than the President. Talk about a game-changing so-called "October Surprise"! Mr. Romney took charge of and commanded the stage throughout the entire debate and made Mr. Obama appear to be no more imposing and threatening or challenging to Republicans in general and Mitt Romney in particular than your typical college professor gently correcting, yet once again, one's errors of reasoning and logic but is too polite to call one out on one's outright falsehoods and distortions of the truth.
Wise up!, Mr. President, or your past term will indeed be your last term.
It's All Over
As of today the presidential election is pretty much over for Mitt Romney thanks to his appalling and lethally revealing "47 percent" remarks. The coup de grace will be delivered in the 3 October debate and, happily, that will be that. It frightens us to think just how close the election might have been otherwise.
A Lecture Of Unparalleled Brilliance
A law school professor and former criminal defense attorney, speaking at a mile-a-minute pace, explains why, when questioned, you should never, ever talk to the police without a skilled criminal defense attorney present and representing you, followed by an articulate cop giving a cop's view of the matter (he agrees). In all cases, refuse to give answer to any of their questions beyond name, rank (U.S. citizen), and serial number (street address). (That last bit beginning with "beyond", our suggestion.)
XKE
I watched Mad Men last night (yeah, I watch that prime-time soap) and to my utter astonishment found myself actually choking up with emotion on Don's pitch to Jaguar for the E-Type account. The pitch was perfect, the sexually charged tagline spot-on, and the sequence produced in me an overwhelming nostalgia that took hold of me absolutely unawares.
By way of explanation, a short personal history.
During my twelve or so years as a young (mostly twentysomething), card-carrying bourgeois with far too much disposable income on my hands for my own good, I was what some might call a car freak and during one period in the early '60s owned at the same time five (5, count 'em!) cars: a Chrysler Imperial (my conservative "company car" dubbed by my coworkers Black Beauty for its black exterior set off by a tan leather interior), a red Mustang convertible (for my then-wife), a tan Studebaker Avanti, a "British racing green" Lotus Elan roadster (the original Lotus Elan), and a "British racing green" Rover 100 sedan (called in Britain at the time, the "Baby Rolls").
In short, I was a material-object-satiated happy man — until, that is, I saw Her in the flesh for the first time and knew that I would never again be happy unless I could possess Her, Her being a newly minted 1963 Jaguar XKE coupe. It was not only, then as now, the most beautiful production car ever built, but simply the most beautiful material object I'd ever beheld and I quite literally ached to own Her. Silver-gray, she was, and I bought Her on the spot (the below photo not my XKE but a replica grabbed from Google).
Peggy
We've pretty much all seen at least one of the Discover Card "Peggy" series of TV commercials and their semi-black, ironic humor never fails to resonate true beyond one's customer service contacts with the credit card industry which is the commercials' instant concern even though the Peggys with whom one usually finds oneself dealing tend to be Indian rather than Russian.
One of the episodes of this series stands out as particularly resonant due not so much Peggy's shenanigans as the response of the hapless customer and her one-word final cry of impotent consumer rage.
Posted by A.C. Douglas on 23 January 2013 | Permalink