So with keyboard in hand (because I didn’t want to have the delay inherent in my usual method of correspondence (postal mail), I used the Whitehouse contact form and wrote:

I find that I agree 100% with Mr. Olbermann’s comments as stated in this article “Ruined Senate bill unsupportable – Conservatives have destroyed this version of health care reform”. I believe the worst thing that could happen is to have this offensive (”must by insurance”, “no public option”, etc etc) bill pass. I earnestly would rather the thing be scrapped than this abysmal give-away to the very groups that one supposed would be the target of “reform”.

Here is the link to the editorial I reference above. Thank you for your time.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34455168/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann

PS: I just removed myself from your (barackobama.com) mailing list as I am not recognizing the man I voted for.

Ack, typo. (by vs. buy) Oh well.

Republicans, religion, and the triumph of unreason. (Doesn’t that just say it all? From the [UK] Independent)

As a result, 18,000 US citizens die every year needlessly, because they can’t access the care they require. That’s equivalent to six 9/11s, every year, year on year. Yet the Republicans have accused the Democrats who are trying to stop all this death by extending healthcare of being “killers” – and they have successfully managed to put them on the defensive.

These increasingly frenzied claims have become so detached from reality that they often seem like black comedy. The right-wing magazine US Investors’ Daily claimed that if Stephen Hawking had been British, he would have been allowed to die at birth by its “socialist” healthcare system. Hawking responded with a polite cough that he is British, and “I wouldn’t be here without the NHS”.

Not anxious to start taking any statins anytime soon.

Mark this site: PolitiFact has a great Truth-O-Meter for catching out political lies.

15 cool and crazy ways to tie your shoelaces (spotted via the inimitable Liam)

CSM: The “war on drugs” needs a timeout. (The failure drones on.)

But I just opened my monthly mailing from Senator Mike Crapo and about spewed my tea reading his “survey” this month. This is what I wrote (via his email form) in response:

Sir:
I just wanted to ask what sort of numbskull in your office devised this month’s “survey”? I’m sure the results are terribly (un)informative since the answer options are skewed to a limited field — bad job!
Just for the record, I am *not* unsure. What I want and what I *know* that this country needs is single payer. Of course that won’t happen because it’s too efficient and logical and there’s not enough money in it for all the greedy hands.
As a second choice I want a public option.
Please look for a letter from me in the near future. Thank you in advance for your response.

The letters to the Idaho delegation (for what good they’ll do) and Pelosi and Reid and as yet undetermined others are going out next week.

The Statesman gives some recent (2008) history on the machinations…

House Minority Leader John Rusche, D-Lewiston, said the stakes in this latest gas tax debate are so small – just $36 per year for the average driver after 2013, according to the proposal Otter now insists on – that this surely must be about something more than just a tax hike. “This is about the hearts and minds of the Republican Party,” Rusche said

But the real pièce de résistance is this second post which gives it the smell of a Stalinistic purge (albeit without any real blood).

Meanwhile the Republican Party has lost the ability to effectively govern. It is no longer about what might be best for the state of Idaho. They are so consumed with their party war that the people of the state of Idaho are being left out in the cold.

As the Republicans move further to the far right, the ability to craft consensus legislation that serves the people is lost. Instead we get a litany of legislative initiatives that have unintended consequences, cater to the most conservative element of their party, are either unenforceable or represent empty messages instead of good public policy, or provide special interests with benefits at the expense of the people..

How do you like the tons of money (that’s $100 billion a year) hunkered down like a skunk in off-shore tax havens?

Because you never know. The Unofficial MacGyver How-To Handbook (at scribd).

Failed drug laws. The elephant in the room. Wasted money. I say again: start with legalizing marijuana. Tax the hell out of it. Use the funds to set up and maintain free drug treatment facilities. (But those who have a horse in the race as far as maintaining the status quo — think of all those jobs — will quash the idea in its crib.)

Addendum 4/25: the Wall Street Journal (Steven B. Duke) agrees with me on marijuana, cocaine, and other drugs.

A most impressive experiment has been underway in Portugal since 2001, when that country decriminalized the possession and personal use of all psychotropic drugs. According to a study just published by the Cato Institute, “judged by virtually every metric,” the Portuguese decriminalization “has been a resounding success.” Contrary to the prognostications of prohibitionists, the numbers of Portuguese drug users has not increased since decriminalization. Indeed, the percentage of the population who has ever used these drugs is lower in Portugal than virtually anywhere else in the European Union and is far below the percentage of users in the U.S.. One explanation for this startling fact is that decriminalization has both freed up funds for drug treatment and, by lifting the threat of criminal charges, encouraged drug abusers to seek that treatment.

We can try to deal with the Mexican murderers as we first dealt with Al Capone and his minions, or we can apply the lessons we learned from alcohol prohibition and finish dismantling the destructive prohibition experiment. We should begin by decriminalizing marijuana now.

As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren’t hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below.

Since we’re strictly through-the-air TV now, we miss out on the pontifications of these “smart guys” — oh, please do watch. It’s cathartic.

People like Brooks don’t merely expect that political officials will ignore and violate their own campaign commitments once they get into office. They think that political officials should do that, that it’s naive and foolish if political officials actually take seriously the commitments they make to citizens during a campaign.

the political and media establishment joining together to deliberately distort American public opinion and thus render it irrelevant in what the political class does [...] The most significant fact of American political life is that political journalists (of all people) see their role primarily as defenders of, servants to, spokespeople for the Washington establishment. That’s how they obtain all of their rewards and remain relevant.

Tie this to this op-ed by Frank Rich (“They Sure Showed That Obama”) in which he describes the hysteria by the media following several moves by Obama (including the most recent stimulus) wherein the sky was falling to the Beltway insiders and talking heads but Americans in general felt diametrically opposed (or “in a parallel universe,” as Rich quotes Axelrod).

I’m further encouraged in skimming this article (to which I’ll p’rhaps return later to read in full) in which Obama is seen as savvy and practical (or as the title says, “An Eternal Optimist — But Not A Sap“). High points: clarity about goals but flexibility about tactics, constant reevaluation of efficacy of plans, elasticity, responsiveness, the long view:

and open to adjusting his own course to bring others along or simply to respond to evidence that his ideas aren’t working. But repeatedly he declared that no one should interpret that to mean he lacks any clarity about his goals: “My consistent bottom line is: How do we make sure that the American people can work, have a decent income, look after their kids and we can grow the economy.” Any compromises or course corrections, he argued, must serve those overriding priorities.

It’s very interesting that the “steering from point to point” is much in line with a book (excellent, thx Z.), on project management, advocating setting short term deliverables and inherent tasks with precision, but adopting a more flexible approach for items further out which may need to be adjusted or for which circumstances may dictate change.

It’s clear that the raging irony of the spendthrift past eight years at that party’s hands means nothing. So crossing off Crapo. Worthless. That’s what I get for living in one of the 2 or 3 most conservative states. Even our hard-won D seat (Minnick) is too much a weinie to do anything but cower with the Rs in the House.

So I wrote President Obama this a.m. The Whitehouse has a contact page. Isn’t that cool. And I have a feeling the messages are even read.

I told him (crunch this into 500 characters and not revising my first draft):

Dear Mr. President, I wanted to say that I am with Mr. Krugman (economist, writes for NYTimes) in that I am worried that in attempting to garner bipartisan support for your (stimulus, in this case) plan, the beautiful, excellent, very smart plan you started with (money for infrastructure and smart, renewable energy improvements) has become watered down and will be, not as effective as it needs (as our country and the world) needs. Republicans want you to fail so they win. Stand up. Stand strong.

Look. This is not about being popular. If you’re in there for four years and you can get what needs done done, no one in the country will give a shit about what the professional windbags and talking heads have to say. I voted for the guy because (well, one reason was DUH!) but the other reason was because I believed in the concepts he was putting forth. They were commonsensical and forward-looking.

So full steam ahead.

The article is pretty comprehensive. Things you don’t think about. Like how did this whole thing with illegal drugs (because there are plenty of legal ones still around; let’s not kid ourselves) evolve? The article focuses mostly on marijuana. Turns out the reasons are mostly in the familiar strains (let’s hum that tune): race issues, corporate profit, manipulating average citizen’s fears.

Here’s my take. I think the whole drug war thing is a huge rip-off. It solves nothing. It’s going nowhere. It pads the pockets of a lot of people in a lot of places who have no interest in it ending because their paychecks would be gone then, too. It has precious little to do with angst over human misery.

Do I think illegal drugs are blanket, across the board okee dokee? Nope. But neither do I think that legally prescribable drugs bring no problems in their wake. And, hello!: alcohol and cigarettes? They’re legal. Why? I’ve had friends who’ve gone awry from getting out of whack with all three classes of drugs (illegal, legal, and the “non-drugs”, alcohol/cigs.)

I don’t have several hours to articulate my thoughts on this topic, and no rare visitor to these pages is going to take the time to read it in any case.

If I had to put it all in a nutshell, this would be it. What’s being done isn’t working and never will. There should be a measured move toward legalizing “illegal” drugs (and start with marijuana), and tax the hell out of it. And take those funds, a dedicated minimum amount, a generous dedicated minimum amount, and set up rehabs all over. There sure as hell aren’t enough resources now for people with problems that do want to quit.

People have been getting high since before Adam and Eve and aren’t going to stop any time soon. Some people don’t let it ruin their lives. Some people do. What idiocy and waste and arrogance to think that’s going to change.

Find what works. Do that. Repeat.