Crying 'Fire' in a Crowded Theater

For thirty years reforming marijuana prohibition was not the kind of liberalization that could be allowed to people like you or me. So our "leaders" screamed hysterically about the dangers of pot, causing the deaths of millions and the imprisonment of tens of millions.

But it was easy enough to repeal the banking regulations that kept this country prosperous between 1945 and 1980. Wham, bam, and thank you ma'am, and our prosperity flew out the window and into the Swiss bank accounts of 1% of our population.

I try to keep my faith in what we call "democracy" but it ain't easy.

More Electric Trucks

Obama Should Have Handled That

Obama should have taken 15 minutes to handle the DOMA thing. The Bush holdover who wrote the brief should have been moved, the brief withdrawn, and a different brief, or none at all, filed. I don't fault him for the initial mistake, but for his failure to fix it.

There is no excuse.

Wrong-Footed

Obama really wrong-footed himself when he dissed the legalization of marijuana. Read any comment thread- nothing brings us together like the legalization of pot. Rightwingers and leftwingers agree- the time is now.

Naturally we can't expect that every President is going to stand up like Harry Truman or Dwight Eisenhower and do the right thing at the critical moment. And Obama can't expect we will vote for him again if our own lives are unchanged by his first term.

Electric Trucks

The pictures come from here.

Enablers

Republican 'leadership' is lost in a thicket of their own making. It's hard for them to see this, because the media they have long derided as 'liberal' is, in fact, rightwing. Republicans dominate the talk shows, have their own propaganda network, and a supporting cast at the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post.

So they will continue to drift, never really challenged in their breezy assertions of how things oughta be. And the dead-tree newspaper industry will continue to wonder what they could possibly do to support their 'news model'. After all, doesn't everybody want to read more Bill Kristol?