Impeachment Time?

[Soggy in NOLA]

Well, treason ain't exactly my area of expertise Barb, but what do you call this?

Words I agree with Maddy. I'm an open borders girl. Enforce the labor laws for everyone, strengthen the unions, decrease the power of corporations to ghost-write our legislation, and most of the stuff everyone is pissing in their socks about would disappear. This is a wedge issue based in xenophobia, class conflict, and misplaced economic fears.

Yeah.. that's the ticket. Boy, you really nailed it.

 

[Sky Dancer]

President Obama has not committed an impeachable offense.

I tend to agree... being an incompetent puppet isn't impeachable. I wish it were though.

Not liking the guy is not an impeachable offense either.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Well, treason ain't exactly my area of expertise Barb, but what do you call this?

Words I agree with Maddy. I'm an open borders girl. Enforce the labor laws for everyone, strengthen the unions, decrease the power of corporations to ghost-write our legislation, and most of the stuff everyone is pissing in their socks about would disappear. This is a wedge issue based in xenophobia, class conflict, and misplaced economic fears.

....Hardly a unique-issue, down El Paso way......

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvUgJEhQ5cY]YouTube - Grass, A Marijuana History - Narrated by Woody Harrelson#Part1#[/ame]
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Note: >>Fast forward>> to 3:50​

 

[Old Rocks]

So, what exactly would you folks impeach him for?

I wouldn't. I'd rather just focus on beating his crappy ideas with common sense ones.

Right. The way the last Conservative admin showed us such good sense.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

President Obama has not committed an impeachable offense.

I tend to agree... being an incompetent puppet isn't impeachable. I wish it were though.

Agreed.

 

[Sky Dancer]

So, what exactly would you folks impeach him for?

I wouldn't. I'd rather just focus on beating his crappy ideas with common sense ones.

Right. The way the last Conservative admin showed us such good sense.

The Republicans all say 'drill baby drill', but blame Obama for the spill. They show such common sense, lol.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

President Obama has not committed an impeachable offense.

I tend to agree... being an incompetent puppet isn't impeachable. I wish it were though.

Not liking the guy is not an impeachable offense either.

....Or, the simple fact he's the first Black-President.​

 

[Madeline]

Well, treason ain't exactly my area of expertise Barb, but what do you call this?

Words I agree with Maddy. I'm an open borders girl. Enforce the labor laws for everyone, strengthen the unions, decrease the power of corporations to ghost-write our legislation, and most of the stuff everyone is pissing in their socks about would disappear. This is a wedge issue based in xenophobia, class conflict, and misplaced economic fears.

Well, now here we go. Let's go toddle off to a new thread and dialogue. I happen to think if we attempted amnesty for the illegals who are here today, the US would become an insty-third world country.

I'd LOVE to embrace every poor Mexican. They have been screwed over like almost no other Latin American nation. But we just do not have the resources, Barb....my feeling is we should step on the Mexican government to return some wealth to its citizens, apart from the elite. And step HARD.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

So, what exactly would you folks impeach him for?

I wouldn't. I'd rather just focus on beating his crappy ideas with common sense ones.

Right. The way the last Conservative admin showed us such good sense.

....And, they surely got an early-start, on that!!​

 

[Old Rocks]

President Obama has not committed an impeachable offense.

I tend to agree... being an incompetent puppet isn't impeachable. I wish it were though.

Agreed.

Shaman, had that picture been correct, we would be in far better shape. The puppet master was not George 1, but Cheney. George the Elder tried to get Junior to listen to Brent Snowcroft, and was told to butt out.

Junior finally listened to Daddy after the economy went into a death spiral after meltdown Monday.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Well, treason ain't exactly my area of expertise Barb, but what do you call this?

Words I agree with Maddy. I'm an open borders girl. Enforce the labor laws for everyone, strengthen the unions, decrease the power of corporations to ghost-write our legislation, and most of the stuff everyone is pissing in their socks about would disappear. This is a wedge issue based in xenophobia, class conflict, and misplaced economic fears.

Well, now here we go. Let's go toddle off to a new thread and dialogue. I happen to think if we attempted amnesty for the illegals who are here today, the US would become an insty-third world country.

I'd LOVE to embrace every poor Mexican. They have been screwed over like almost no other Latin American nation.

"...almost..." being the operative-word.​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

I tend to agree... being an incompetent puppet isn't impeachable. I wish it were though.

Agreed.

Shaman, had that picture been correct, we would be in far better shape. The puppet master was not George 1, but Cheney. George the Elder tried to get Junior to listen to Brent Snowcroft, and was told to butt out.

Junior finally listened to Daddy after the economy went into a death spiral after meltdown Monday.

Granted, Uncle DICK was callin'-the-shots, but to suggest there were (absolutely) no links between two, old oil-men, seems somewhat naive.

As-far-as Daddy Bush's economic-acumen goes, though..... ​

 

[Barb]

....Hardly a unique-issue, down El Paso way......

And then in the 80s, the Reagan administration allowed our streets to be flooded with cocaine to help the Contras fund their war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

Reviewing evidence that existed in the 1980s, CIA inspector general Hitz found that some Contra-connected drug traffickers worked directly for Reagan's National Security Council staff and the CIA. In 1987, Cuban-American Bay of Pigs veteran Moises Nunez told CIA investigators that "it was difficult to answer questions relating to his involvement in narcotics trafficking because of the specific tasks he had performed at the direction of the NSC."

Robert Parry, Salon.com How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal, 25 October 2004, retrieved May 15, 2010 from How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal - Salon.com 6

The rich white weren't enough to cope with the supply of cocaine that was purer, and was cheaper by half. The market had to adjust down to “retail” the product to the poor.

Contrary to popular belief, the introduction of crack did not institute increased dug abuse. Heroine and powdered cocaine were already common, and often used in tandem in the form of “speedballing” by IV drug users. Neither did crack use predominantly begin as a problem in African-American neighborhoods, although it was most visibly depicted as such by the national news media.

However, the socially constructed image clearly shifts in the mid-eighties. In his history of dug policy, Baum notes that, by the end of 1985, media no longer show the cocaine user as white, rich, attractive and tragic. Now the user is black or Hispanic, and menacing as well.

Ibid

When crack use did become more of a problem in the inner cities than suburbia, it came in tandem with the results of Reaganomics, the outsourcing of factory jobs, as well as white and black middle class flight from the cities. The only growth market in the inner city community was drug sales, and if one lived, one could make a comfortable living in the dismal1980s economy. Without any critical thought, government acknowledgment of guilt, or media analysis regarding how the crack trade came about, the crack “epidemic” served the twin theories of flawed character and racial inferiority that white middle class communities find so comforting in dismissing urban poverty as just desserts for their own bad acts. As quiet as it is kept, while the distribution of crack and other forms of cocaine is conducted in the inner cities, use is still more far-reaching than many like to believe.

The war on drugs intensified in response to media portrayals of frightening black gang members and irresponsible welfare mothers smoking crack while pregnant. These were the public faces of the crack cocaine epidemic, and in response to the fear and disgust generated, the sentencing guidelines became stricter for the crack form of cocaine while sentencing for powdered cocaine remained at pre-crack levels. Budget allocations for the war on drugs were 50% more for incarceration and punishment than for treatment or prevention, and the war on the growth industry of the 1980s inner cities became a very profitable growth industry in itself.

Michelle Alexander explained the racial motivation of the Reagan Revolution regarding the administrations’ focus in the “War on Drugs:”

President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. From the outset, the war had little to do with drug crime and nearly everything to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation, busing, and affirmative action.

Michelle Alexander, Mother Jones The New Jim Crow 8 March, 2010, This story first appeared on the Tom Dispatch website retrieved May 15, 2010 from The New Jim Crow | Mother Jones,

Alexander went on to assess how successful in re-segregating and disenfranchising the black population these policies were.
• More black people are in prison or parole today than were slaves in 1850.
• “Felon disenfranchisement laws” effectively and legally evade the Fifteenth Amendment.
• Coupled with the label of “felons for life,” these laws also permit discrimination in housing, employment, education, and deny participation in the political and justice systems that decide the fates of those so branded, and the fate of their children.
• Because of the enormously high rate of imprisonment of black fathers, and increasingly of mothers, a black child today is less likely to live with both parents than they would have during slavery.

Because the “Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1977” mandated the states to “initiate the termination of parental rights proceedings” in the cases of children in placement for 15 of 22 months, mandatory drug sentencing guidelines too often serve to permanently rip children from their families. As a result of the racialized nature of the targeted arrests and sentencing in poor communities, loving and perfectly stable family members can be disqualified from keeping a child within the family by offering their home as refuge. This disqualification can be based on any minor criminal offense, “such as resisting arrest, or drug related offenses as much as five to ten years old.”

While the motivation of erring on the side of caution can be appreciated, the best interests of the children are not served by separating them from their family, and too often an allowed consideration becomes a mandatory requirement to prevent the reunification of family ties. This has grave consequences for children ripped from their parents, from their siblings, and finally from any sense of family or community care. What must these children think of a society that treats them so carelessly? How should they feel about such a society?

There is less resentment in a society that believes the system is fair, but when society perceives that winners win by creating losers and preventing mobility and participation in the political process through predatory practices in a rigged system, the clash between economic classes becomes much more relevant. The ‘War on Drugs” and the problems caused by the racialized application of the laws created just such a rigged system. The biggest “kingpins” responsible for flooding America’s streets with cocaine worked in or closely with our own federal government. While investigated and found guilty, not one was ever convicted. That is a stunning miscarriage of justice in itself, but when we consider who has born the ultimate burdens of the results of that crime, and the casual malice of the “War on Drugs,” it becomes a national disgrace.

 

[Madeline]

....Hardly a unique-issue, down El Paso way......

And then in the 80s, the Reagan administration allowed our streets to be flooded with cocaine to help the Contras fund their war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

Reviewing evidence that existed in the 1980s, CIA inspector general Hitz found that some Contra-connected drug traffickers worked directly for Reagan's National Security Council staff and the CIA. In 1987, Cuban-American Bay of Pigs veteran Moises Nunez told CIA investigators that "it was difficult to answer questions relating to his involvement in narcotics trafficking because of the specific tasks he had performed at the direction of the NSC."

Robert Parry, Salon.com How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal, 25 October 2004, retrieved May 15, 2010 from How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal - Salon.com 6

The rich white weren't enough to cope with the supply of cocaine that was purer, and was cheaper by half. The market had to adjust down to “retail” the product to the poor.

Contrary to popular belief, the introduction of crack did not institute increased dug abuse. Heroine and powdered cocaine were already common, and often used in tandem in the form of “speedballing” by IV drug users. Neither did crack use predominantly begin as a problem in African-American neighborhoods, although it was most visibly depicted as such by the national news media.

However, the socially constructed image clearly shifts in the mid-eighties. In his history of dug policy, Baum notes that, by the end of 1985, media no longer show the cocaine user as white, rich, attractive and tragic. Now the user is black or Hispanic, and menacing as well.

Ibid

When crack use did become more of a problem in the inner cities than suburbia, it came in tandem with the results of Reaganomics, the outsourcing of factory jobs, as well as white and black middle class flight from the cities. The only growth market in the inner city community was drug sales, and if one lived, one could make a comfortable living in the dismal1980s economy. Without any critical thought, government acknowledgment of guilt, or media analysis regarding how the crack trade came about, the crack “epidemic” served the twin theories of flawed character and racial inferiority that white middle class communities find so comforting in dismissing urban poverty as just desserts for their own bad acts. As quiet as it is kept, while the distribution of crack and other forms of cocaine is conducted in the inner cities, use is still more far-reaching than many like to believe.

The war on drugs intensified in response to media portrayals of frightening black gang members and irresponsible welfare mothers smoking crack while pregnant. These were the public faces of the crack cocaine epidemic, and in response to the fear and disgust generated, the sentencing guidelines became stricter for the crack form of cocaine while sentencing for powdered cocaine remained at pre-crack levels. Budget allocations for the war on drugs were 50% more for incarceration and punishment than for treatment or prevention, and the war on the growth industry of the 1980s inner cities became a very profitable growth industry in itself.

Michelle Alexander explained the racial motivation of the Reagan Revolution regarding the administrations’ focus in the “War on Drugs:”

President Ronald Reagan officially declared the current drug war in 1982, when drug crime was declining, not rising. From the outset, the war had little to do with drug crime and nearly everything to do with racial politics. The drug war was part of a grand and highly successful Republican Party strategy of using racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation, busing, and affirmative action.

Michelle Alexander, Mother Jones The New Jim Crow 8 March, 2010, This story first appeared on the Tom Dispatch website retrieved May 15, 2010 from The New Jim Crow | Mother Jones,

Alexander went on to assess how successful in re-segregating and disenfranchising the black population these policies were.
• More black people are in prison or parole today than were slaves in 1850.
• “Felon disenfranchisement laws” effectively and legally evade the Fifteenth Amendment.
• Coupled with the label of “felons for life,” these laws also permit discrimination in housing, employment, education, and deny participation in the political and justice systems that decide the fates of those so branded, and the fate of their children.
• Because of the enormously high rate of imprisonment of black fathers, and increasingly of mothers, a black child today is less likely to live with both parents than they would have during slavery.

Because the “Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1977” mandated the states to “initiate the termination of parental rights proceedings” in the cases of children in placement for 15 of 22 months, mandatory drug sentencing guidelines too often serve to permanently rip children from their families. As a result of the racialized nature of the targeted arrests and sentencing in poor communities, loving and perfectly stable family members can be disqualified from keeping a child within the family by offering their home as refuge. This disqualification can be based on any minor criminal offense, “such as resisting arrest, or drug related offenses as much as five to ten years old.”

While the motivation of erring on the side of caution can be appreciated, the best interests of the children are not served by separating them from their family, and too often an allowed consideration becomes a mandatory requirement to prevent the reunification of family ties. This has grave consequences for children ripped from their parents, from their siblings, and finally from any sense of family or community care. What must these children think of a society that treats them so carelessly? How should they feel about such a society?

There is less resentment in a society that believes the system is fair, but when society perceives that winners win by creating losers and preventing mobility and participation in the political process through predatory practices in a rigged system, the clash between economic classes becomes much more relevant. The ‘War on Drugs” and the problems caused by the racialized application of the laws created just such a rigged system. The biggest “kingpins” responsible for flooding America’s streets with cocaine worked in or closely with our own federal government. While investigated and found guilty, not one was ever convicted. That is a stunning miscarriage of justice in itself, but when we consider who has born the ultimate burdens of the results of that crime, and the casual malice of the “War on Drugs,” it becomes a national disgrace.

100% correct, Barb. That was a truly stellar post.