Corruption in American politics is so deeply embedded that we barely notice the ripples on the surface

It was a busy day. In between planning home renovations and napping, I had occasion to peruse a few of my favourite news sites.

I like the Guardian. Nice middle of the road perspective, generally speaking. One of the first stories to catch my eye was a missive by Kevin Watkins about corruption in Africa.

Kevin built his story around certain revelations revealed in the "Panama Papers." Seems a whole lot of those African despots are crooks out the ying-yang. Yup, same old same old. African leaders are crooks... no news there! Hey, even my hero Dan Gertler got a passing mention in the story!

Elsewhere in my day, I read a story that Junior forwarded, about HRC's collusion in the Honduras coup of 2009. Not only does Hillary compromise the entire USA intelligence apparatus with her private (as in wide open to every semi-competent intel service in the world) e-mail accounts, but then she posts in her e-mails all the back-stabbing anti-democratic shenanigans that America's Secretary of State is conniving in!

Heck, that's corruption and incompetence on a scale that would leave those African despots wide-eyed with wonderment!

But wait, we're not finished yet...

A little further on in the Guardian, I come across this American crime thriller. Seems a certain Guerrero Chapa has been the de facto leader of the Gulf Cartel since 2003. As I'm sure you appreciate, Cartel leaders have many enemies; the law (but maybe not so much), rival cartels, ambitious underlings, and so on. Ten years after becoming the de facto leader of the Gulf Cartel, our man Chapa gets rubbed out in true gangster fashion while shopping with his wife in Dallas Texas.

But here is the sentence, dropped incongruously many thousands of words into our story, that caught my eye;

Guerrero Chapa lived legally in the US and was an informant for American authorities.

Say what?

The leader of the Gulf Cartel lived legally in the US and was an informant? The leader of a Mexican drug cartel is allowed to live legally in the US and continue running his cartel in return for what? Information on rival cartels? Which would make the entire "War on Drugs" infrastructure complicit in the drug trade they have allegedly been doing battle with, would it not?

How far up the hierarchy do you figure that rot has spread?

No wonder that after forty years of a supposed "war on drugs" your kids can still buy dope at their school playground.

And we're not done yet. Those drug cartels are small fry compared to the big dogs like Lockheed Martin. Here's a story from Sputnik about how the military-industrial complex has been cleaning out the US treasury while lining its own offshore accounts to the tune of billions while fobbing off unworkable crap like the F-35.

And it's all done in the name of the flag and patriotism and defending our freedom, don't ya know! Hell, they'll be lucky if they get approval to fly those duds over a NASCAR invocation, nevermind taking on an actual enemy.

But we see none of that. We're too busy rooting out corruption in Africa!