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UNbelievable.  CNS news is reporting this week that Senator Dianne Feinstein (D) California has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate information that virtually all drug trafficking in the U.S. is controlled through gangs operating wtihin our own state and federal prisons.

Feinstein reported back from a meeting she had with drug enforcement teams in the San Diego area who briefed her on drug enforcement efforts.

“…all of the narcotics traffic in this country, the routes that drugs travel, the people who control those drugs, the hits that are ordered, are essentially controlled by certain gangs in federal prisons and some state prisons today.  Drug enforcement officials even gave me the names of the prisons.”  said Senator Feinstein.

Pictured above is a state prison, pictured to the right….a federal prison where even while incarcerated, professional drug dealers operate under the very eyes of law enforcement.  The facility pictured,  looks like a hotel.  Read more about Feinstein’s findings here.

Political pundit and former national candidate Pat Buchanan is not someone I usually quote, but today his comments hit right between the eyes on the future of California, and the desperate financial reality that one out of eight Americans now live in California and almost half have amnesty on taxes.  We don’t need a bail-out, we need a re-birth.   The only candidate for Governor with the kind of skill set we need to redeem this valuable state is brilliant E-Bay creator, Meg Whitman.   It will be fascinating to see if California voters will see through the smoke screens of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome and Attorney General Jerry Brown, and recognize that our only hope now is to vote for the keenest business mind we can find.

California still possesses all the natural resources, opportunities and manpower to be the greatest state in the nation, or the 8th largest country in the world.  We are desperate though, for a real leader who doesn’t wish for a long career in politics, who will tell the truth and break the news that greatness only occurs when EVERYONE PITCHES IN.

We need to initiate a flat tax so that millionaires can’t hide in their tax shelters.  There must be a pathway for the poor to begin to own a piece of the state if they work for it, and regulations that require illegals to earn a legacy in this state instead of just taking it.

The present condition of California was summed up perfectly for me this week by a Department of Water and Power conservation employee who was policing properties that violated the present “drought” watering restrictions.  One of our neighbors turned us in because our sprinklers accidentally turned on.  Californians are only allowed to water on Mondays and Thursdays this summer.  After apologizing to the water police, I asked how we had gotten into such a pickle with our water reserves.

“There are just too many people living here.” said the DWP cop.

Read here for Pat Buchanan’s brilliant diagnosis of our state-wide headache.

I have to hand it to the President.  He is doing a Grade A job as national messenger.  I like him much more than I ever expected to.  I didn’t even vote for him, because for some reason I felt like I had to vote for…..a war hero, who apparently “deserved” his turn.  Whatever.  That was the Republican Party’s own little homemade disaster.

Barack Obama is nothing, if not consistent in being nice.  He and his managers, and I’m sorry to say I think they are managers, are beautifully crafting his daily schedule so that he is EVERYWHERE.   He looks like he is in charge.   The only time I get a little nervous is when he has to sink down into actual policy and action.  The stuff on the prompter he does beautifully.   Still, I don’t feel comfortable that the President has a full understanding of the consequences of adding 13 Trillion in debt to a shuddering economy.  I also didn’t like the distinct note of hesitancy from the Oval Office when Iranians began dying for change last week.

As much as I loved the presidential theater last evening when ABC’s Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson became official White House spokespeople for health care initiatives, I turned off the TV feeling like there was a Big Mac in the pit of my stomach.   President Obama made it very clear that he is an expert on understanding the problem of health care in America.  Now he needs Governor Mitt Romney, the most qualified man in the country,  to actually fix it.

And that’s never going to happen. Listen to the President outline the challenges we face:

We all know what the problem is.  Autoworkers in Michigan know that healthcare costs have tripled.  School teachers in California know that out of pocket expenses have gone up 62% in recent years.  I know that my 23-year old son is asked to work part-time,  just short of 40 hours a week  at a state university, because the school can’t afford to add him full-time with benefits.  Too costly.

What I didn’t hear from the President last night was how we are going to stop providing health care for the WORLD AT LARGE, instead of only Americans.  That’s the real problem.  We have to create a pathway for those who are draining our emergency rooms and hospitals of health care while the rest of American taxpayers are billed for it.

We can’t add 46 million new people to a government-funded health care plan. The government can’t hand out any more free health insurance.  Are we crazy?  We can’t pay for all the giveaways we have now.

We keep circling the problem because it is not politically-correct to confront it.

Somehow we have to re-teach the principle that every one of us is required to work to pay our own way.

Franklin Roosevelt wanted to open the federal purse generously too.  He also created a pathway where Americans could work for it.   The WPA.

With millions who want services, cities and states desperate to upgrade infrastructure, a nation that needs all hands on deck, what we need now is a federal agency that creates opportunities for everyone to WORK.  To produce and contribute to the nation.   Then everyone who needs healthcare will be able to get it with honor.

Two national icons have taken their last breaths.   Michael Jackson’s surprise death instantly stole the spotlight from the long-expected passing of television and modeling star Farrah Fawcett.  Both superstars will leave behind them a trail of sadness — and some scandalous details.  In the lives of both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, and despite their true strengths, there is substantial evidence that both were exploited.

Rock ‘n Roll hounds will dig till they drop on the Jackson death.

Meanwhile, it is crucial not to allow Fawcett’s sad departure to be too quickly bounced off  television in favor of sure-to-be quirky revelations surrounding the death of Jackson, the meteoric singer, musician, dancer, producer and accused pedophile.  As she goes to her grave Farrah Fawcett leaves behind a most valuable example for women everywhere, but only if they look behind the headlines and are wise enough to pay close attention to her life and her manner of death.

Six weeks ago, NBC aired a compelling 2-hour documentary detailing Farrah Fawcett’s agonizing battle with anal cancer.  During the program viewers were given an intimate and painful look at her jet-set life, and her complicated and somewhat uncommitted family life.

Ryan O’Neal played her long-time lover, as always.  His son and hers, Redmond O’Neal, had to say his death-bed goodbyes in a prison jumpsuit and chains.

Following the ratings blockbuster special, New York newspapers reported  that the Farrah Fawcett documentary covered everything except the most important advice on how to avoid anal cancer.

EVERYONE WHO IS FOLLOWING the debate over the massive health care policy proposals in Congress, and is wondering what the term “public option” means, should read Hugh Hewitt’s post today.  It tells you everything you need to know.  Excerpt:

The fundamental dishonesty [in President Obama's defense of his plan] is that the president refuses to acknowledge that the government option/public plan will be subsidized by the federal government in a number of ways and thus will be cheaper for employers to choose for their employees, and they will choose it, sending tens of millions of Americans now covered by private insurers into the public plan, dramatically driving up federal costs while crippling the private sector insurance industry.  Once dumped into the plan, the employees will wonder what happened to the president’s promise — often repeated — that “if you like your plan you can keep it.”

Read the whole thing, and send it to your friends.  Most important, call members of Congress and the Senate.  Hugh’s post gives you all the phone numbers.

I think it’s too early to say, but Reuters Blogs’ James Pethokoukis thinks so.  He asks and answers his own question: “So what happened?”

“How is it possible that Democrats cruised to a huge victory on Election Day in November 2008 and are yet again unable to make good on their top legislative priority? Why are the ghosts of Bill Clinton’s 1994 healthcare reform debacle suddenly flitting about Capitol Hill? What happened was the Great Recession, the political impact of which the Obamacrats completely misunderstood. Oh, they knew the financial and economic crisis helped sweep them to office. That part they got just fine.”

What went wrong, Pethokoukis thinks, is that the Democrats misread the public mood:

[T]hey also assumed that the downturn would create such a sense of economic insecurity that time would be ripe for the sort of expansive, government-led healthcare changes that the party has been dreaming of for two generations. Instead, the Great Recession made healthcare less of a priority for voters than economic recovery — as fast as possible, please — and job creation. A recent spate of polls shows concern about healthcare (and climate change and pretty much everything else) lagging concern about unemployment. Healthcare lags concern about the shocking enlargement of the federal budget deficit, which has grown partly due to government actions — such as the $800 billion Obama stimulus package — to deal with the recession, as well as by the decline in tax revenue caused by the downturn itself.

Finally, a most untimely (for President Obama) bit of reality raised its ugly head:

And then last week, the Congressional Budget Office, the respected arbiter of what new government programs might cost, calculated that the Senate Finance Committee’s health reform bill would cost more than $1.6 trillion over 10 years. That was determined to be a political no-go by Senate Democrats– a smart conclusion given the recent polling — and the committee moved on to a still evolving plan B.

Pethokoukis is an economic journalist.  Here’s the view of a “money guy,”Larry Kudlow at Kudlow’s Money Politics.  Kudlow wonders whether Obama’s problem is that the public will to support a massive change in the system just doesn’t exist:

According to a recent ABC News/USA Today/Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 89 percent of Americans are satisfied with their health care. That could mean up to 250 million people are happy. So why is it that we need Obama’s big-bang health-care overhaul in the first place?