The anniversary of hope. What was and will never be.

It should be becoming apparent to even the stanchest believers that the office of the President no longer wields the sort of power that it may have at one time in America.
The system is far too convoluted and fractionalized with those powers being distributed between industry, banking interests and the flow of capital from these entities and into the halls of our representation in Washington to the point where America itself has become a corporation, silently controlled by the will of huge financial investors equivelant to stock holders and proxied interests.
Our Presidents, (and specifically this President) have been reduced to just one more voice in the crowd (albeit a louder one) with no more control over the processes than steering the predesignated course of this country's real but unseen navigators and occasionaly standing on the bow of this ship alerting us when either shoals or rocks or land is visible from his vantage point.
The presidency (and again this President in particualr) is not lacking, faulty or broken. The system is.
The hull of this ship called America has been breached for 100 years and it is all we as it's crew or any given president can do but to bail and pump so that we don't swamp completely. And the water rises with each decision, each bill and each term served by elected officials.

Until we as a nation recognize and accept this for the reality that it is, we can never hope to make the necessary repairations to stay afloat and perhaps once again set sail on our properly intended course because we have handed the helm over to privateers and mutineers who have as much to gain or more through our sinking as they do with our returning to a safe passage.

Fun Facts from Zach's Almanac: Got any spare change for a smoke?

The Primaries:
We have so many candidates in the primaries talking about change I feel like I'm standing in a Laundromat where the coin machine is broken. In this, as in so many other primaries and elections over the last 60 years everyone runs on the promise of "change". Then why is it the mismanagement of government in America never changes? It still takes takes two to three generations to get things that the American people desperately needed like, yesterday addressed, voted on and passed on Capitol Hill?

The Tobacco "Act":
Can anyone explain to me why our government insists on making and keeping natural, non-lethal, mind altering drugs illegal, while the drugs that are known to kill people by the tens and hundreds of thousands each year, like tobacco and alcohol remain legal, available and generate revenue through the taxes levied on them??
Bet you can't.
And yet, we still somehow think that our government has the best interests for the health and longevity of the American people in mind?
Actually these are rhetorical questions.
I already know the answer and so do most of you. It's right there in the way government conducts it's business.
Our government obviously holds mind control and profit in higher regard and at a higher level of of priority than it does actively promoting the longevity and good health of the American people. Why? Well, because it's good for the medical and pharmaceutical industrial complex and the lobbyists that provide our "representatives" the funding to run for and stay in office.
(I hope you weren't waiting for the memo to come to that conclusion.)

And finally...
What does it mean when someone says that something is an "unqualified success"?
If it's a success, shouldn't someone be able to qualify that as such?