Bam! Just like that!: Justice For All??

Jack Abramoff was sentenced Wednesday to shy of six years in some form of prison for committing fraud in the purchase of a fleet of gambling boats. The whole enchilada revolves around Jack and his cohort making a deal and copping a plea arrangement for "concocting a fake $23 million wire transfer to make it appear they were contributing their own money toward the purchase of the $147.5 million SunCruz Casinos gambling fleet. Based on that fraudulent transfer, lenders provided the pair with $60 million in financing". Nice work if you can get it. Or get away with it. And given that it's unlikely that this was Jack's first foray into this sort of affair, at least in this instance, he didn't. Well at least he scraped past the punishment fitting the crime possibilities, completely.
A car thief averages a five year term, just one year less for stealing a Crown Vic or a BMW than this white collar guy got for pilfering tens of millions, but when you got the connections Jack has these days, he can count on the kind of breaks even an honest to God Tony Soprano can only fantasize on.
You see, Jack has also been a busy boy in purchasing various congress-people from both sides of the aisle for some time now. A much more insidious activity and an easily interpreted act of subversion and perhaps treasonous behavior which in effect holds conspiratorial overtones involving manipulating and impeding the very functioning of our government…but as yet, little has come in the way of jurist prudence, even in this post 9/11 world of homeland security and tribunals for others for far, far lesser transgressions.
Back to the trial that was the diversion from those facts that it was. Jack will remain free while helping prosecutors with a vast bribery investigation involving members of Congress. This is truly more irony at it's best considering this is definitely a matter of the fox snitching out the chickens in the very coop in which the fox was performing his B&E. Smell like entrapment? After all, what's Jack possibly going to contribute to the investigations but the names of the very people he himself led down the garden path with plump and greedy promises. For this some of those he tempted with the apple will be publicly humiliated and if the voters even care months from now they may be cast from the Eden known as Washington.
For his cooperation, Jack will get an even further reduced sentence than his pending minimum plea-bargained one.
Lady Justice surely is blind. And more than likely tone deaf to boot!
In a country which hinges it's pride on equitable justice for all, there are people doing seven years for tampering with their electricity meters and under the laws of fifteen states you can get a life sentence for a nonviolent marijuana offense. To put as fine a point on this as necessary, there has been many more than one case documented in America of people getting life without parole for a joint or less.
In Montana you can get a life sentence for a first offense for simply growing one (that's o-n-e!) marijuana plant.
But relax, if you're charged under federal law, you might get off with a ten-year sentence.
Not Jack, however.
Sixty million plus in swindle, with who knows how much was then filtered into whose re-election campaigns and Voila…less than six years and diminishing based on whatever satisfaction pending Prosecutors may attest to at some undisclosed moment in the future.
Listen. The point I'm making is not a call to arms to legalize a natural substance which has been proven scientifically harmless, especially when compared to others that are truly destructive yet widely and legally available to the public.
My point is that there is a gross imbalance in our laws and justice system when Blue Collar Johnnies can face a decade of incarceration for a benign personal practice which harms no one and Jack Abramoff and the likes of Ken Lay and his posse can swindle, cheat and lie to the detriment of hundreds of thousands on a national level and have it pretty much swept under a rug because those high ranking people entertaining associations with these felons don't wish to be further implicated or exposed for putting their own interests ahead of those of the people, our government and our constitution.
These are the laws which we are told we must all live by. These are the laws that are manipulated through misdirection and contrivence by the very people we depend on to uphold them in perpetuity to the end of equal distribution for all.
Today's news about Abramoff just confirms what we've all seen repeatedly before.
And I don't know. I don't get it.
Justice like this doesn't mean Jack to most Americans, I figure.

Bam! Just like that! "Something wicked this way comes..."

If you listen carefully you may hear the faint sound of the drums of war being beaten to the cadence of our imminent and pending invasion of Iran. It's not quite as catchy as say, Ginger Baker, although there are some strains from "Toad" to it. Ok, maybe toadies would be more accurate. But it has all the repetitiveness that was offered up in the Gulf War I and II to remind one of Wipe Out, fer sure.
The chain of events are quite similar to what preceded our most recent invasion of Iraq. The leadership and the roles they play are pretty much the same. The initial rumblings and the creation of headlines based on "whisper campaigns" are being mirrored as well. Only the impetus and causes have shifted to any real noticeable degree. Yet you and I will hardly notice it for all the misinformation being treated as factual information. Actually the differences can hardly be detected at all if one considers that it all really boils down to sheer media manipulation and yet another crusade based on the creation of a nationalistic social environment built upon willfull suggestion and what will also most likely again later be revealed as yet another unfounded atmosphere of fear staged for just another less than genuine cause.
Given that more than a few impartial historians and military analysts have publicly expressed their conclusions that Iraq is now actively in the throes of a civil war and has been for approximately six months now, despite the claims of the Pentagon and our White House (that the car bombings and explosions have been driven and directed by "foreign insurgents" and al Queda whose only interests are anti-American activity,) there's evidently this and a whole lot of information about the current Iraq situation that remains beyond the grasp of those same millions of American taxpayers who, when polled to this day still believe against all evidence that Iraq has WMD's and poses a genuine threat to America. Many of them probably also believe that Elvis can still be spotted at the local roadside diner if they just remain ever vigilant for his arrival.
The truth however, I believe goes a little something like this.
In the event of an official civil war in Iraq between, (as the factions involved actually are,) the Shiites and the Sunni's, the US will no longer have a viable part in it other than having created the very power vacuum that allowed this civil war to be born, nurtured and grown into what it is today…A mess. As such, not only would the US lose it's valued foothold in ol' Mesopotamia, but our leaders will have even less than the vapor-ware they already maintain as a reason for our military efforts to date or to remain in that area of the globe since we as an occupation force can hardly favor one side of this civil war over the other without admittedly imposing our design on the very country that we so righteously claim to have liberated for the purpose of establishing Iraq's self determination. Can't have that now can we? At least not right up front.
So, what are the options? Well, if we just had another small country somewhere in the neighborhood where we could bivouac our troops, say in the name of American and world security in much the same way Iraq came in handy. Or due to the threat of nuclear weapons and WMDs in much the same way Iraq came in handy. Hey. Forget about the fact that Iran's President was elected democratically. It wasn't what our leadership considers a real democracy, anyway. Besides, technically, Saddam was elected by the people too. But again, not by the standards of our leadership. Maybe a few hanging chads and people turned away at the polls would have been more acceptable. Or perhaps eliminate the popular voice of the people completely and have a Supreme Court pick the winner…There…now we're talking a true democracy! At any rate, let's suppose we could get a few admonishments and imposed sanctions from the U.N. just to get the ball rolling. Again, in much the same design as was used with Iraq. Then, after generating just the right climate politically we can totally disregard the call from the U.N. to use diplomacy and once again "go it alone" with our coalition of the well heeled 3rd world nations and enter Iran…Well, hell. They were warned! But here's the beauty part. Ready? Once we have boots in Iran, we can just sit out the civil war across the street in Iraq, deliver training and weapons to which ever side we think would best uphold our ideals for a week or two at a time and then waltz back in whenever and as often as we can see an opening or the opportunity for a covert operation. Brilliant!
Stay in the middle east…annex two countries for the price of one and no one back here at home will be the wiser because, hey! Ain't you glad we're fighting the terrorists over there instead of in small town America??? You bet!
If you've been reading/watching the news lately the same scenario is beginning to play out as it did leading up to Iraq. Just yesterday, having not gained enough comfortable traction with the nuclear threat some would have us believe Iran poses (just like Saddam did)for us, the politico-military PR men have now started to accuse Iran of supplying new, special and much more dangerous explosives to the insurgents to use against our troops in Iraq. This is based on the same maybe's and might be's that were used to build a case for invading Iraq in the first place, if you recall. And still fails to hold any basis in fact.
Our political and military complex (if I may be so redundant) has perfected making statements to the press and international boards and bodies to the full extent of generating their own desired results for a select agenda in direct opposition to the better welfare of our nation and have repeatedly pimped a manipulated world response. Unfortunately, behind all too many of these sort of reality moldings, from Iran-Contra during the Reagan regime through now two gulf wars these proven falsehoods, although an effective means to a variety of agressive and futile ends have been found to be lacking in both honorable intent or factual accounting with an impecable consistency.
The signs are all around us, people. And here we likely go again. History has left us with little else to reasonably expect from these folks who currently lead us.

Fun Facts From Zach's Almanac: Anna's story...Support our Olympians...and DOH! Why the system is breaking down.

Having resurfaced from my previous dark, political postings and after cleansing my outlook/palate by catching up on some reading…(Vonnegut's Galapagos, actually, and just now digging into some Robert Anton Wilson, neither of which are likely to improve my jaundiced view of our species or our shared human condition…) I opened the news to find that our nation's highest court, having obviously vanquished and resolved the backlogged myriad of questions on justice for all which lay like a wasteland before it, posed to impact our nation of 270 million souls has turned it's focus on property law and whether or not one, lone person in the celebrity of Anna Nicole Smith is entitled to her 1.6 billion dollar inheritance. You go girl! So how many people really do you figure will be effected by this decision by the Supreme Court, anyway? Well there's Anna and her council…and the opposition and their council…and that's pretty much it if you don't count the staff at Elaine's or where ever Ms. Smith goes to celebrate her victory and inclusion into our history books as a precedent, afterwards…Well, there's me too. Because Anna and I go way back…Oh yeah…A little known bit of history that must have fell below the radar of the popparazzi…but that's a long story…and I'd really have to dream it …er, remember it first. As I recall "it was a dark and stormy night…"

The Winter Games are over…Well certainly not all of them as the press can attest to each day, but the ones that involve skiing and skating and curling. What the hell is curling about anyway? I can't remember the last time a bunch of kids waited anxiously for a car to pass so they could get back to continuing their game of curling on any side street of America. While no one could possibly doubt that our Olympians gave all these contests their best effort, we didn't fare as well as the media would have liked. Well, not everybody ever does. The disgust was obvious by the raspberries that immediately followed the games because our entrants didn't snarf up all the gold that was available. And let's face it. The same entities that generate profits from this volunteer sporting event stood to gain even more if we had swept the events. Bode, who was turned into the poster boy for down hill (and whose stock went like-wise after coming up short) was particularly dismissed after he failed to do what the hype had led everyone to expect from him. And Gawd forbid, our best figure skaters walked the thin ice of public admonishment after missing the opportunity for an international shut out. It would have been nice, if in the course of slamming these athletes representing the best in us after the fact, someone, anyone had taken a little front page ink to simply say "Thank you for your efforts." instead of dismissing them en mass and portraying them as a bunch of failures. If being able to compete with the world's very best and giving them a run for their money is failure…how many million of us, journalists included, fail to meet even that level of failure by miles? A fickle bunch we can appear to be when someone doesn't manage to bring home the gold in America. Or win a series or a Superbowl. Hell, from the press I've seen, even silver and bronze are worthless recyclable scrap unless they are awarded to some other country. Then just because we escaped it, it's value increases. It doesn't matter that the people who earned them are like up there with the very best in the world at what they do…And so much for teaching the kids that giving one's best is best and remains noble and appreciated. Careful folks our culture is once again showing. And in our culture, if you ain't first, you may as well be last because that's how you're going to be painted…and then of course, quickly forgotten.
Makes you wonder why our Olympians bother to try at all sometimes, doesn't it?

And finally…"DOH!"

CHICAGO Mar 1, 2006 (AP)—
The McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just one in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms. Americans apparently know more about "The Simpsons" than they do about the First Amendment.
Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half can name at least two members of the cartoon family, according to a survey.

Quick! Get me in touch with the Saint in charge of the Eternal Silver Lining!