Weed for Votes in San Jose, but don't tell Maureen Dowd

On Tuesday in San Jose, California, local marijuana dispensaries gave away weed to anyone who voted in the primary and brought in their "I voted" sticker to prove it:

San Jose voters who brought their “I Voted” sticker – along with their medical marijuana ID card -- to about a dozen participating dispensaries received free or discounted weed on Tuesday, primary Election Day.

Amsterdam's Garden, a San Jose medicinal marijuana dispensary, was busier than most polling places on Tuesday. It’s not a voting precinct, but if you already voted and were a member, you got a reward: a free, pre-rolled marijuana cigarette.

[...]Juan Lopez got his, a little extra product to say “thanks for voting.”

"It's definitely a good idea to get people to vote,” Lopez said, sticking the joint behind his ear. “Offers like this don't happen all the time.”

No doubt Lopez is correct. But, if the so-called “weed for votes” plan works, expect to see it on future election days.

California Medical Marijuana Association Vice President Xak Puckett said says the incentive idea was part brainstorm, part social media campaign.

The San Jose City Council is considering a proposed ordinance to closely oversee medicinal marijuana collectives and cultivation in a city with 78 collectives operating illegally.

The unlawful pot businesses continue to exist since the repeal of a law governing them in 2012. The city did not have enough funds for enforcement to close them down, Mayor Chuck Reed's spokeswoman Michelle McGurk said.

The Silicon Valley Cannabis Coalition posted a list of their recommendations for candidates in San Jose who they believe "will take a reasonable approach to regulating cannabis clubs," founder of the All American Cannabis Club and SVCC member Dave Hodges said in a statement.

A list of clubs participating in the "Weed for Votes" program was posted on SVCannabis.org.

And here I am, in the most conservative county in the USA. (sigh)

If this "weed-for-votes" scheme was at all possible here in South Carolina, I know several people who would have been elected to the Senate by now.

Since that obviously isn't going to happen for awhile, please enjoy the story of Henry, a man who similarly tried to bring happiness to the people.

~*~

Instantly recognizable by the catchy refrain, rolling down the mountain going fast fast fast, this song has also been covered by the Grateful Dead and numerous other jam bands. (It was years before I learned the title was "Henry.")

Delightful steel guitar by Jerry Garcia.

Henry - New Riders of the Purple Sage



~*~

For you young folks who missed that wonderful movie classic REEFER MADNESS (1936) , you can get a modern update from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, who ate PART (!) of a pot-candy-bar in Colorado and flipped out.

Yes, that's the story, and she's sticking to it.

At least one of my friends believes her column is alarmist, invented bullshit, but I've often heard tales of certain neurotic newbies who were "wound too tight" and their paranoid first-experience with marijuana. (This describes uptight, prim Maureen to a T.) However, her purple prose is amazing, which is why I thought of New Riders of the Purple Sage.

And then, the Guardian got in on the act and Paul Krugman linked it. Maureen is now the subject of much mirth on Twitter and beyond.

Rolling down the mountain going fast fast fast...

In South Carolina news...

In local news, it looks like South Carolina will have uniformly BAD ROADS for another year, at least.




Our roads are secondary to the election. (Aren't yours?) Our awful Governor, Nikki Haley (at left, making excuses), does NOT want to be accused of being "pro-spending" before November. If you wonder why our roads are a wreck, keep this in mind. Safety is NOT as important as Nikki's re-election, of course.

Remember, when she was elected, I pointedly asked: Can the infrastructure of this state stand four more years of total neglect?

I was dead serious, although several local readers believed I was joking. Obviously, we see that I was pretty good at fortune-telling, even without my Tarot cards.

It's even worse than we thought, according to Nikki's ex-boyfriend and one-time mentor, Will Folks at FitsNews:

Three years ago S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley‘s Transportation Department (SCDOT) ran out of money and had to stop paying contractors. The result? All paving and maintenance work in the state ground to a halt (although totally unnecessary boondoggles still got their money).

Haley got her agency out of the jam by (wait for it) requesting and receiving a $52 million bailout from the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama. Just six weeks after she approved what at the time was the largest spending plan in South Carolina history …

Gotta love those “Tea Party” Republicans, right?

Anyway … what is past is prologue, it would appear.

This week, SCDOT commissioners met to discuss the agency’s fiscal outlook … which isn’t good.

Specifically, they admitted their cash balance would be in the negative beginning later this summer – a shortfall that is expected to last for several months. In fact the cash crunch could be much deeper – and extend into 2015 – if the federal government can’t (or won’t) pay states reimbursements from the recent ice storms. [...] At a recent commission meeting, S.C. Sen. Larry Grooms asked point-blank if the agency was going to have another problem paying contractors like they did in 2011. Agency leaders claim they have a contingency plan, but the ice storms were unforeseen, and the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) is already warning states that they will have to decrease payments, beginning in July.

“The trajectory for the highway account has worsened,” federal transportation undersecretary Peter Rogoff said at a hearing in Washington, D.C. earlier this month.

In fact the cash crunch may start affecting states prior to July …

SCDOT is currently run by Haley’s former college roommate. She assumed the position after the governor’s first pick, Robert St. Onge, resigned his office in disgrace earlier this year.

Ugh. Saints preserve us. This woman CAN'T MANAGE MONEY.

At left: Nikki Haley's independent opponent, attorney Tom Ervin.




Outside the local library, the well-scrubbed Tom Ervin partisans had tables all set up, taking signatures for Ervin, their Independent candidate. I usually sign all petitions for Independents to get on the ballot, since as a Green Party member, I want more parties involved in the process, in addition to the Majors. So, I joked to the well-scrubbed partisans that I was a socialist, red as they come, but if they want, I will sign.

They glared. They obviously needed signatures, because they grimly and wordlessly handed me their pen. So I signed. I told them to get rid of the governor, and they just glared some more.

So, Tom Ervin, teach your people to be NICE. Even if I AM a red, I vote strategically and have consequently voted for Ron Paul twice. My vote counts as much as anyone else's, whether I'm a red or not. Put that in your bong and smoke it.

Which brings me to say something nice (!) about the Governor. About the bong, I mean.

Nikki Haley Signs Medical Marijuana Bill Into Law:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) signed the Medical Cannabis Therapeutic Treatment Research Act into law Monday, clearing the way for children with severe epilepsy to use cannabidiol oil (CBD), a non-psychoactive derivative of cannabis, to help reduce their seizures if recommended by a licensed physician.

The bill, which passed the Senate unanimously and cleared the House with a 92-5 vote, will also designate a new clinical trial at the Medical University of South Carolina dedicated to evaluating the effectiveness of CBD in controlling epileptic seizures.

Seven other states -- Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin -- have also implemented similar CBD-only medical marijuana proposals in the past four months.

It's a start.

Mr Daisy joked that since several children have died in DSS care, Nikki figured she better do something for the children, quick. The election, remember?

The SC Department of Social Services scandal has resulted in Lillian Koller's resignation, and not a moment too soon. (Once again, I warned you about her too.)

From WLTX:

Columbia, SC (WLTX) - South Carolina Department of Social Services Director Lillian Koller has resigned amid continuing concerns about the agency that she ran.

Koller submitted her letter of resignation to Governor Nikki Haley Monday morning, and Haley accepted. In the letter, she said she felt her continued presence at the agency might be causing problems.

"It has become more and more apparent to me during the past few weeks that my being the State Director is causing a distraction and making it more difficult for DSS to continue the measureable improvements made to the Agency during my tenture that have improved the lives of citizens we serve."

She said it had been a privilege to be the director.

The resignation comes a day before state senators were to discuss a no-confidence vote on Koller.

Koller's agency had come under scrutiny over how it handled cases, including some where children died. One of those was the death of 4-year-old Robert Guinyard, a Richland County boy who died after being given back to his parents. Last week, his parents were convicted of killing the child.

In another case, also out of Richland County, DSS employees were criticized for failing to find a mother who Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott says didn't give her child the proper medical care. The coroner concluded the neglect led to the boy's death. In the wake of the incident, DSS changed an agency policy, saying it would request law enforcement help if it couldn't locate a child withing 72 hours on its own.

During a state senate committee hearing looking into allegations within the agency, concerns were also raised about the workload of DSS caseworkers.

Haley had stood by Koller through the criticism, and in a statement after the resignation, praised her work within the agency.

"Lillian Koller is a dedicated public servant and child advocate, and a wonderful and loving mother - and I am so grateful for her service to South Carolina," said Haley. "Under her leadership, DSS closed a $28 million deficit, moved more than 20,000 South Carolinians from welfare-to-work, and has done wonders to improve our foster care system, placing more South Carolina children in stable, healthy families."

Koller had been director since 2011. Amber Gillum will served as the interim director until a permanent appointment is made.

Closing deficits! Now, that's important.

Children? Safety? Roads? Our money? Not so much.

Governor Moonbeam declines spliff

At left: back in the day, when Governor Brown was more open-minded.






California Governor Jerry Brown was once MY governor when I lived on the West Coast. At that time, over 30 years ago, he was known as Governor Moonbeam.

There was a reason for that.

Now that he is old, staid, respectable and not hanging with sexy rock stars with well-documented cocaine issues, Governor Moonbeam has sobered up and got himself re-elected in 2011 ... and with a straight face, claims he doubts marijuana legalization is a good thing:

California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) said Sunday that he is not convinced legalizing marijuana is a good idea because the population needs to "stay alert."

"The problem with anything, a certain amount is okay," Brown said on NBC's Meet the Press. "But there is a tendency to go to extremes. And all of a sudden, if there's advertising and legitimacy, how many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation? The world's pretty dangerous, very competitive. I think we need to stay alert, if not 24 hours a day, more than some of the potheads might be able to put together."

A recent poll found that for the first time ever, a majority of Californians support legalizing marijuana. More than half of U.S. states are also considering decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana since Colorado and Washington did so a little over a year ago.

Brown noted that California already allows medical marijuana, but said he is not completely sold on legalizing the drug for recreational use.

"I'd really like those two states to show us how it's going to work," he said.

Unbelievably, the MEET THE PRESS media flunkies actually let the governor of the state with HUMBOLDT COUNTY in it, get away with that shit.

This is hypocritical, to say the least. Marijuana is a major cash crop of California, and it is reasonable to assume the governor is well aware of that, as is the rest of the world.

Ah, wait. I get it. (((strobe light comes on))))

Wow, Governor Moonbeam has come a loooong way since he allowed fruit fly infestations to get out of hand.

He has turned into a politician! Finally, at long last. He is hustling for his state's economy, as any other governor would. Stay alert, yeah, and get re-elected, those are the goals. Brown knows that California's economy will be hard-hit if marijuana is at last LEGAL. The enormous profits in Humboldt County are a direct result of its illegal status and the inflated prices that have resulted. There is huge concern that certain counties will totally financially collapse if marijuana is made legal.

Certainly, Governor Brown doesn't want that sort of economic crisis on HIS watch.

From Vice:

In the run-up to the vote for California’s cannabis regulation bill in 2010, which would have largely legalized the drug, there was a sticker plastered on trucks, shacks, and homesteads in this secluded, densely forested wilderness area that said, "Save Humboldt County—Keep Pot Illegal." That attitude is based on simple, rational economic reasoning: Experts predict that if weed were to be legalized in California (which is very likely to happen by 2016 at the latest), the price of Humboldt weed would plummet, taking down local businesses with it.

The plants have become so entwined with the local economy that economists estimate a quarter of all the money made in Humboldt comes from marijuana cultivation. And because many of the growers don't pay taxes (or even use banks; they bury their money underground in plastic tubes and glass bottles), local services are maintained by marijuana money, which has been used to buy fire engines and set up a local radio station, two community centers, and small schools.

...

Of course, there are problems with basing an entire economy around an illegal activity. Police raids, although less frequent than they were in the 1980s, can sweep up a family’s entire harvest, and there's plenty of opportunities for gun-toting thieves who prey on grow operations. In one recent raid, a couple in their 60s were relieved of seven pounds of processed marijuana—along with several guns and thousands of dollars in cash—when gunmen turned up at their home. Of the 38 murders that occurred in Humboldt between 2004 and 2012, 23 were drug-related.

Read the whole thing, highly recommended.

After reading that, it will be obvious to you why the former hipster governor is suddenly wary of weed. Alertness, as we see, has little to do with it.

Re-election does.

Monday linkage, with Joe Pye weed

Some random linkage, starting (of course!) with my own radio show: Thursday, Friday and today.

We were a bit off our game today, since Gregg and I had to soldier on without Double A. Next week, I am going to Texas, and they will have to soldier on without ME... so I am not complaining.

I just get nervous when we change anything.

~*~

Just back from Atlanta, where I caught a very personal story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (unfortunately, behind a pesky paywall, or I would link it) about the former Miss Georgia, beautiful Leighton Jordan. In the AJC account, Jordan's eating disorder is presented in stark, primary colors. It was harrowing; the unending treadmill of ballet, pageants and thinness seemed less like the life of a princess (the fairy tale we all hear about) and more like being caught in a trap.

In her work as Miss Georgia, Jordan describes a personal appearance wherein she spies a 13-year-old girl, very thin and obviously "jittery" as she is confronted with a table full of food. Jordan takes the girl aside and tells her that she needs to hear her story.

It was an amazing moment of sisterhood, self-sacrifice and love.

I promise never again to be mean to the pageant-participants. Jordan has redeemed you all.

Namaste.

~*~

At left: Joe Pye weed, from Linky Stone park. Ain't it just so purty?!?

I used this photo as the background for my new Tumblr, which you should all check out.


~*~





Other stuff--

6th big cat dies at Texas animal sanctuary (USA Today) -- I did not know that big cats caught feline distemper, as domestic cats do. :(

~*~

Also covered on our show today, CNN doctor-on-call Sanjay Gupta reversed himself on the weed. And yes, we are now waiting on the rest of you 'experts' who have said stupid things in the past; you too may be regarded as respectable once again! SAVE YOUR REPUTATIONS NOW! FREE THE WEED!

~*~

[Attorney General Eric] Holder seeks to avert mandatory minimum sentences for some low-level drug offenders (Washington Post) Better late than never.

~*~

Speaking of marijuana (doing radio has taught me the importance of a good segue!), Erin Tatum's feminist review of "We're the Millers" at Bitch Flicks accurately articulates my concerns about the movie, which I haven't yet seen (but I have been subjected to oodles of trailers):

Really, you are lying to yourself if you thought the powers that be would waste any opportunity to showcase Jennifer Aniston's legs. The ensuing montage is pure wet, slow-motion fan service. The dance ends with Rose releasing a steam valve, disorienting their captors enough to let their "family" escape. I'm torn about this scene because although it's trying almost too hard to show that strippers can be smart and intuitive, Rose’s most valuable asset is still her body and her ability to be objectified. I take issue not so much the objectification itself so much as the fact that the definitive aspect of Rose’s character seems to be “LOL WHAT 40+ and still hot?!?”. Certainly Aniston's boldness and athleticism are praiseworthy, but given the amount that the actors talk about it in interviews, you would think the strip routine was her sole appearance.

~*~

I am greatly looking forward to Elysium, a new film containing one of my very favorite scifi plots ever: Earth evacuated by the rich as a festering shithole, while only the poor, sick and unlucky are left behind. This was a favorite theme of my beloved Philip K Dick, as in his great masterpiece Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which became the film Blade Runner. (It is also the scenario in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, a novel of obsessive importance to your humble narrator.) Elysium was directed by Neill Blomkamp, the director of DISTRICT 9.

Unfortunately, Elysium is getting rather mixed reviews, even though it easily won the weekend box office. I still intend to see it, so stay tuned.

The Conjuring got on my nerves, because I really wanted to like it.

~*~

And for you musically oriented folks: I finally "cleaned up" my infamous three-year-old instrumentals post... I profusely apologize to the people who Googled "instrumentals" (which are notoriously VERY HARD to find, since there are no lyrics to look up) and came upon my post with so many songs missing. I blame YouTube! (Again, time to plug the invaluable YouTomb, a fascinating website that chronicles the whys and wherefores of various videos getting the plug pulled.)

I especially got a chock full of searches after MAD MEN used "Love is Blue" over their closing credits in one of this past year's shows.

And so, here it is.

Love is blue (L'amour est bleu) - Paul Mauriat (1968)

The History Project, part 2

My original intention was to put the lady-stuff here on International Women's Day... and I guess you see how that turned out. Hey, better late than never!

And so, I am finally getting around to posting Part Two of the History Project. Intro to the DEAD AIR History Project (and first installment) is here. (You can click all photos to enlarge.)

~*~

Anarcha-Feminist Notes, September 1977, which I believe was published in Madison, Wisconsin.



San Francisco Women's Building Newsletter, March 1981.



From Berkeley 1981, movie poster for "El Salvador: The People Will Win".



Ancient black-and-white photos of my hometown (Columbus, OH) Take Back the Night march, one of those antiquated Second Wave feminist things almost completely lost to posterity. (1983)



Bookmark from Fan the Flames feminist bookstore in Columbus, OH. Since they began in 1974 and this bookmark is celebrating 10 years, it must be from 1984. From Outlook Columbus:

Began in 1974 by six women who each contributed $100 to a book collective, the shop evolved and moved many times over the next 22-and-some years. Fan the Flames grew from the United Christian Center, to the Women’s Action Collective, to the YWCA, and finally to their own space in Clintonville [and the store was then renamed Women's Words]. It may have been the final move that killed them. Moving away from their diverse audience downtown, and adding on to that the burden of renting their own space, proved too much and the advisory board decided to close shop.

The Women's Action Collective was in its own building for awhile, something I can't even imagine now.



Purty Pittsburgh Smoke-In poster, which I framed for my spare room. (1977)



"Freeze It! A citizen's guide to reversing the nuclear arms race"--San Jose, 1983.




Stay tuned for the next installment, sports fans! And I promise it won't be another half-year this time.

Shutting the door on it

I am fascinated by what people will and will not allow on their Facebook Timelines.

The much-ballyhooed "Timeline" is an online biography. It is therefore especially interesting to note what people allow there, and what they won't.

Today, on the radio, I fussed that our history is being forgotten, and ordered everybody to post their radical history online ... or (quite honestly) ANY history.

I have long been amazed that certain events have seemingly been completely forgotten, dropped down the proverbial memory hole, and cannot be found even after extensive online searching. They have evaporated into the ether, or they have been totally buried in dusty academic archives. My antidote was: tell your stories, share your histories. And then I decided I should probably practice what I preach.

I opened my long-forgotten cedar chest and created a photo album aptly named Daisy opens her magical cedar chest. I unearthed a bunch of old leaflets and posters of radical events, benefits, rock bands and even now-defunct businesses (such as the old Trotskyist-themed bookstore in the photo above, Red Rose Books), and hoped people would pass them on. And some of them did.

If you know how Facebook works, you know what it means when I say I "tagged" various people in photos or notified them if they were at various events. This means these events had to be vetted before they would be permitted to appear on these folks' Facebook feeds or timelines. And yes, I get that. I don't want Republicans posting political propaganda on my timeline (and I know plenty of em), so I am grateful for the feature. But that's what I mean when I say: I was fascinated by what was allowed to be shown and what was not.

Certainly, I understand when pro-marijuana activism is not posted on one's timeline, even if it WAS from 30 years ago and easily explained away as youthful indiscretion. If I used my legal name on Facebook, which I don't, I would be reticent about that, too.

But what about something you should be proud of, like helping to organize the American Rock Against Racism tour? I would be proud of that, even if I used my legal name. I have always been proud of my involvement in that cause.

Other people aren't.

I am wondering: Is anti-racism as a cause UNCOOL now? Is it possible that people are afraid anti-racism from white people is somehow too weird or too radical? Are they concerned it might get them fired? What would be some possible reasons for not wanting to own up to it?

If you have done an about-face in your political alliances, I can understand not wanting to own up to your past radicalism. But the few people I know who HAVE done such an about-face, do not seem to be the ones worried about that.

The worried people seem to be the ones who have moved up, who now have the good jobs.

Aha, thought Daisy, is THIS why the history is disappearing? Have people been just plain BOUGHT OFF?

The baby-boomers often like to brag about having done all kinds of great political stuff (I include myself), and yet, it seems plenty of these same baby-boomers are not proud of actually OWNING their political stuff and putting a name and date to it. Their one-time radicalism is a warm and fuzzy memory, but nothing they want to seriously contemplate now. Perhaps because (as one of my friends suggested) they are no longer doing anything political, and feel the reproach of their past-selves?

Whatever the reasons, it bothers me.

After all, those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

And so, as I listen to a diehard Republican statistician on C-Span assure me that Mitt Romney WILL win the presidency (and gives us the electoral-vote numbers, backing up his assertion), I wonder if that will be what it takes? Or do the masses of baby-boomers now only worry about obtaining ample medicine and antidepressants? Have they (we) conceded the fight?

I have (wholly unwelcome) visions of turning into Mother Jones, an old lady rabble-rouser, leading a bunch of young kids (probably immigrants) into the fray, raising hell all the way up to the house of Mitt Romney (as Mother Jones once organized a children's march to the home of Teddy Roosevelt). I find this an unnerving vision, as I ask myself: Where were her contemporaries? Why was she the only one left? Why were there so few others?

I am starting to get it. I don't WANT to get it, but I am getting it nonetheless. I don't think I will be all alone out here, but I don't think there will be very many of us. And I once thought there would be droves. In fact, I worried I could not keep up.

One of the "promises" of Alcoholics Anonymous is: We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. Which of course, is a pretty tall order.

But you know, it was not an ORDER, it was a PROMISE. I was startled when I discovered that this promise has come true for me. And like so much else, I wish I could share this reality with other people, who did not have the benefit of needing recovery... and as a result, they have had to muddle through their lives without making friends of their pasts.

Thus, they never learned how.

Wednesday Linkage

At left: Artisphere mural, more photos here.


Once again, the celebrity golfers have invaded the neighborhood, as they do every year. I have complained about this before (notably here and here) and so I will spare you any extended howling.

But damn, I wish they'd set up their Golf Network tents somewheres else.






Got links! Lots of interesting and timely reading around the intertubes:


[] The main reason capital punishment is wrong is human error. We now know that Texas executed the wrong man, Carlos DeLuna in 1989. Whoops! Sorry about that, DeLuna family!

Carlos, my heart bleeds for you.

[] Special needs teenager in NC, placed in box for punishment.

This made me think of the movie Papillon, in which Steve McQueen is placed in a box... but that film was set in a penal colony in French Guiana in the 30s. Not North Carolina in 2012. (cries)

[] Anti-environmental activist Cal Beisner Warns the 'Depraved' Environmental Movement Models itself after Satan. Trying to save the earth is evil, doncha know, but destroying the atmosphere is Godly. Just for the record.

[] Free the Weed Department: Pro-marijuana policy bloc swings Oregon attorney general primary election: Ellen Rosenblum (champion of marijuana policy reform) is now Democratic nominee for attorney general of the State of Oregon.

Since there is no Republican challenger, Rosenblum’s victory means she will be Oregon's next AG.

[] Special link for those who claim there is no GOP War on Women. Really? How about this: Debbie Wasserman Schultz Depicted In Dog Collar On GOP Candidate's Website.

And the hits just keep on comin, kids.

[] For fans of Bravo network's Inside the Actors Studio, here is James Lipton on Mitt Romney. The piece is tellingly titled: How to Act Human, which I think is a pretty tall order for Mitt.

Money quote:

Perhaps it starts with his laugh, a device he employs at odd moments and in a most peculiar way. (The public thinks that crying is the acid test of the actor, but in fact “laughing” is much harder — and Mr. Romney hasn’t mastered it.)

Listen to his laugh. It resembles the flat “Ha! Ha! Ha!” that appears in comic-strip dialogue balloons. But worse – far worse – it is mirthless. Mr. Romney expects us to be amused, although he himself is not amused. Freeze the frame, cover the bottom of his face with your hand, and study his eyes. There’s no pleasure there, no amusement.

[] Dubya kinda sorta endorses Mitt, as elevator closes. Funny!

[] And again speaking of Mitt, it is time to face the music on Bain: Is Mitt Romney ready for Bain battle?

As the Obama campaign this week began a concerted attack on the presumptive GOP nominee for his tenure at the private equity firm he managed, strategists in both parties say the Republican has yet to give a confident, detailed explanation of his Bain Capital tenure that silences questions about his biography as a businessman.

You don't mean he FIBBED, do you? I am shocked, shocked I tell you!

And I hope your Wednesday is good.

Peter Bergman 1939-2012

I really wanted to title this obituary, "Waiting for Peter Bergman, or someone like him," which I think he would have appreciated.




Instead, decided to be properly respectful and just reprint the New York Times obit:

Peter Bergman, Satirist With the Firesign Theater, Dies at 72
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: March 9, 2012

Peter Bergman, a founding member of the surrealist comedy troupe Firesign Theater, whose albums became cult favorites among college students in the late 1960s and ’70s for a brand of sly, multilayered satire so dense it seemed riddled with non sequiturs until the second, third or 30th listening, died on Friday in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 72.

The cause was complications of leukemia, said Jeff Abraham, a spokesman for the group.

Mr. Bergman hosted an all-night radio call-in show on KPFK in Los Angeles beginning in 1966, “Radio Free Oz,” which served as the testing ground for the high-spirited Firesign sensibility. Phil Austin and David Ossman, two other founders of the four-man group, were the producer and director of the show; the fourth founder, Phil Proctor, was a frequent guest.

“We started out as four friends, up all night, taking calls from people on bad acid trips and having the time of our lives,” Mr. Austin said in a phone interview Friday. “And that’s what we always were: four friends talking.”

Mr. Bergman and his friends recorded their first album, “Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him,” in 1968, followed the next year by “How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All?”

By 1970, their mordant humor and their mastery of stereophonic recording techniques had made them to their generation of 20-somethings what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are to today’s (if Mr. Colbert and Mr. Stewart had a weakness for literary wordplay, psychedelic references and jokes about the Counter-Reformation).

Their records employed sound effects in ways considered pioneering in audio comedy at the time. More generally, they were considered important forerunners of comedy shows like “Saturday Night Live.”

Ed Ward, writing in The New York Times in 1972, described the third Firesign album, “Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers,” as “a mind-boggling sound drama” and a “work of almost Joycean complexity.”

“It’s almost impossible to summarize any Firesign album,” Mr. Ward wrote, because most of their albums were so filled with “intricate wordplay, stunning engineering and use of sound effects, breakneck pacing and, of course, a terribly complex story line.”

When the Library of Congress placed “Don’t Crush That Dwarf” in its National Recording Registry in 2005, The Los Angeles Times described Firesign Theater as “the Beatles of comedy.”

Mr. Bergman told people the ensemble’s albums, unlike most comedy records, were never made to be listened to just once or twice. “He said our records were made to be heard about 80 times,” Mr. Austin said.

While the ensemble continued making albums for three decades, Mr. Bergman also wrote and produced several one-man shows, including “Help Me Out of This Head,” a 1986 monologue-memoir that drew on his childhood in Cleveland. He also wrote interactive games, including a CD-ROM parody of the popular adventure video game Myst.

Mr. Bergman was born on Nov. 29, 1939, in Cleveland, one of two children of Oscar and Rita Bergman. His parents hosted a radio show in Cleveland when he was growing up, “Breakfast With the Bergmans.” His father also worked as a reporter for The Plain Dealer.

Mr. Bergman graduated from Yale and taught economics there as a Carnegie Fellow. He later attended the Yale School of Drama as a Eugene O’Neill playwriting fellow. He moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to pursue a writing career.

He is survived by a daughter, Lily Oscar Bergman, and his sister, Wendy Kleckner.

Mr. Bergman got a taste of radio work when he was in high school, according to a biography on Firesign Theater’s official Web site. But he lost his job as an announcer on the school radio system, it said, “after his unauthorized announcement that the Chinese Communists had taken over the school and that a ‘mandatory voluntary assembly was to take place immediately.’ Russell Rupp, the school principal, promptly relieved Peter of his announcing gig. Rupp was the inspiration for the Principal Poop character on ‘Don’t Crush That Dwarf.’ ”

For good or ill, I hold Bergman and Company responsible for much of my rather bizarre sense of humor.

My consigliere posted the following quote from Bergman on Facebook (originally posted on the Firesign website), and I certainly can't improve on it... could any of us improve on Peter Bergman?:

Take heart, dear friends. We are passing through the darkening of the light. We're gonna make it and we're going to make it together. Don't get ground down by cynicism. Don't let depression darken the glass through which you look. This is a garden we live in. A garden seeded with unconditional love. And the tears of the oppressed, and the tears of the frustrated, and the tears of the good will spring those seeds. The flag has been waived. It says occupy. Occupy Wall Street. Occupy the banks. Occupy the nursing homes. Occupy Congress. Occupy the big law offices. Occupy the lobbyists. Occupy...yourself. Because that's where it all comes together. I pledge to you, from this moment on, whatever it means, I'm going to occupy myself.

I love you. See ya tomorrow.

Ah, he's no fun. He fell right over!

Goodbye old friend. We shall not see your like again.

Take me back to the place where I first saw the light

Since the dreaded Super Bowl is over, its time to get your political seriousness back on!

For the record, I have never seen so many Tweets over somebody giving the middle-finger on live TV; there were probably more Tweets about that than about the entire war in Afghanistan.

~*~

I once told the story on this blog (or touched on it briefly), of the time I was shaken very hard by a bigshot leftist.

If you are up-to-date on your true-crime scandals, you have likely heard of the death of Yeardley Love, University of Virginia lacrosse player, who was shaken so hard by her ex-boyfriend/defendant, that her head hit the wall. (First-degree murder?) The trial of the accused, George Huguely, starts today.

As the young feminists say, this story has triggered and upset me, as I consider the fact that the only unpleasant repercussions I had from my shaking episode was a terrible headache, neck and shoulder pain. It could have been far worse, I realize now.

And what were the repercussions for the important lefty honcho who shook me in front of 5 witnesses? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. I now realize I could have had him arrested for assault, but who thought of such things in those days? Cops were widely regarded as "the enemy". It would never have occurred to me, and so it didn't.

The fact that men "shake" women, as you would discipline a naughty child, is something that has greatly bothered me ever since. It's one of those things that simply doesn't happen in reverse: women do not "shake some sense" into grown men, or at least, I never heard of anyone doing that, never read about it, never seen it in movies or on television. As I increase my participation on various blogs that deal with men's gender issues, I am highly skeptical when they tell us men are raped and harmed by women, just as often as women are raped and harmed by men (some even claim MORE often). Although I am sympathetic to the male dilemma (as I have tagged it), we just don't hear about male lacrosse players shaken so hard by their girlfriends, that their heads hit the wall and they die. (Such a story almost sounds laughable, doesn't it?)

And how exactly would one prove that a male was raped by a female, unless some object was used? Vaginal bruising and tearing are one form of evidence for rape of women, but is there an equivalent for males?

I am open-minded enough to listen, but I remain skeptical that gender-violence goes both ways as often as the Men's Rights contingent insists that it does.

Where are the dead male lacrosse players?

Further, I think many women could tell a story similar to mine--random violence (or threats of violence) from men (not necessarily domestic violence).

Can most men tell similar stories about women?

I don't know any who can.

~*~

Chris Hedges, whom I usually respect, has written a rather hysterical piece titled, THE CANCER OF OCCUPY. (Cancer? Really? Somebody has not read Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag, and has not learned of the inappropriateness of the term.) Hedges' piece reads exactly the way so many alarmist anti-war movement screeds once did, back in the day--particularly concerning the Yippies: THE ANARCHISTS ARE INVADING, AIYEEEEE!

First, like the poor, the anarchists we always have with us. Deal.

Second, the Malcolm X/Martin Luther King dichotomy stands. The radicals make the liberals look reasonable. You're welcome, Chris! Take the position of the reasonable liberal and SHUT UP. The radicals are helping us. Only scared liberals afraid of not staying in charge, could fail to see it this way. Hedges announces:

Because Black Bloc anarchists do not believe in organization, indeed oppose all organized movements, they ensure their own powerlessness.

Is 'Anonymous' powerless? Like, when they brought down PayPal? Bullshit. They have power that can't be quantified, can't be controlled, and that is what the Hedges-types (whom I usually respect, as I said) do not understand.

Occupy is about the 99% and unfortunately, the 99% (includes even Republicans) are not going to agree on What Is To Be Done. Further, everybody in the 99% seems to have an opinion, even people who haven't actually spent lots of time Occupying. Although Hedges distinguished himself by getting arrested in front of Goldman Sachs, Occupier John Penley comments on Facebook:

I am tired of these intellectuals getting more fame and money writing about and attempting to direct the movement. By the way Chris... The Zapatistas wear masks and carry guns. I have spent a lot of time in Chiapas and much of the material aid and physical support for the Zapatistas came from black bloc types and I am sure they would not be happy about Hedges speaking for them like I am not sure why he feels he can speak from his high profile position so much about what the Occupy movement should or is doing.

The so-called "split" in Occupy, between pacifists and direct-actions protesters, mirrors every other political group I have ever been involved in. This is an old split, it is PRIMAL. Some people always want to chant and pray and sit, and some people always want to throw rocks. There are always ill-mannered punks who invade the porn store and trash it (I helped do this once, after solemnly promising I would not join the breakaway-faction that ran in to trash the mafia-owned business that specialized in violent "beaver loops") ... and some want to inflict even more damage and/or openly confront (and fight with) police.

What they do, you do not have to do.

What they do, is NOT ABOUT you, unless you choose (as I did, during the aforementioned 'Take Back the Night' march/demonstration) to jump ship and join the anarchists. The nice N.O.W. ladies did not approve of us young ruffians running in there and ripping up rape-pin-ups, and that is exactly why we didn't tell them what we were planning to do. They had a march-permit and were terribly well-behaved--and could therefore honestly claim to law enforcement that they had no clue a bunch of punk-rock-witches would suddenly break away and run inside the porn store, shrieking like Furies (that's what we were going for, anyway). As a result, we protected the march from possible arrests, AND we managed to inflict the damage.

But you know, you should not PLAY at rabble-rousing. If you give a bang-up speech saying 'women take back the night!'--do not be surprised when someone actually does.

When you say "We are the 99%--hoo ha!"--do not be surprised when the actual 99% shows up. Like, ALL of them; bikers, ex-cons, angry veterans, etc... and they may not have your peacenik, lets-get-in-a-circle-and-chant-OM values. Are you ready for that?

If not, Occupy is not for you. Because it really is about the 99%, that isn't just empty propaganda. Be prepared when the 99% really does show up... and they are, like the rest of us, extremely pissed off.

They may not show their anger in the nicey-nice way that you have come to expect.

~*~

If you missed my non-interview of Noam Chomsky, it is here.

Also recommended: 29 days on Drugs – Day 2: The President’s Pot Problem. The best analysis I have read, of why Obama seems so terrified to discuss freeing the weed.

Mentioned in the post is The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, a book about the drug war (and its focus on minorities), which I will certainly be reading and discussing on my radio show.

~*~

Caution: bluegrass ahead! This lovely, traditional old song is apparently now in the public domain; author unknown. The first line of the song is today's blog post title. (What would I do without WPCI?)

Take me back to the Sweet Sunny South - Jerry Garcia and David Grisman

Ben Masel 1954-2011

Lots of other people have memorialized Ben Masel, most of them far better writers than I am. But I was unsatisfied. There is a word missing in these obituaries, from Daily Kos, to NORML, to TalkLeft and everyone in between.

That word is YIPPIE.

Ben was a YIPPIE.

Why are the lefty honchos avoiding the word in the obits? Because the "serious" leftists never liked us, that's why. But they loved Ben, who was extremely lovable. So, they avoid the word. It's their way of being polite.

Ben would say, hey, you gonna mention that I was a Yippie?

I can hear him now. And my reply to him, is to write this.

He sure was. He was THE Yippie.

~*~

At times like this, I wish I had a scanner, and I wish I was more organized. Somewhere in all the detritus, I have several photos of Ben, including one of us together on a skanky old couch, looking particularly wide-eyed and paranoid. This photo has someone's thumb in the corner of it, and I remember: peyote and lots of it. We are looking at the camera, but not really. I was wearing a Jeff Beck t-shirt, and Ben is holding a cigarette. (Now that we know his cause of death was lung cancer, I dearly wish he wasn't holding it.)

Ben looked exactly like Cat Stevens when he was young, and I had a ferocious crush on him. He was witty as the dickens, and I loved provoking him to see what kinds of funny things he would say.

I have a couple of Ben-stories to add to the collection.

The first one involves an endless journey, and I am not quite sure where it began and ended, but it took us through most of the Midwest, Madison and on into the Dakotas, to the Black Hills Alliance Survival Gathering in 1979. I do remember a van breaking down in the dead of night, leaving us stranded in what seemed like a vacant moonscape, as we had just left the Badlands. We walked or hitchhiked (a little of both?) to the rest area, which was designed as a giant cement teepee, appearing quite formidable from a distance.

After using the restroom, I come out of the giant cement teepee, and some clean-cut fellow approaches me out of nowhere. "Hey!" says this strange person good-naturedly, "Ben is already in the van!" The van? Which van? And so I follow the stranger to a gleaming new van with Missouri plates, where Ben is already sitting in the passenger seat, holding forth, talking to the other passengers about the Black Hills Alliance.

Okay, what!? Who are these people?

So, I go ahead and get in (glad they weren't serial killers or anything), and it comes together: these are friends of Ben's. Well, of course they are. But... damn, in the middle of South Dakota? He has friends at a rest stop in the middle of South Dakota????!!!

Yes, he did. Ben had friends everywhere, all over the place. When I told other Yippies this story, they just shrugged: "Ben knows everybody." And I think of all the other people I've known who supposedly "knew everybody"--and it usually meant they only knew a lot of people. I can't imagine them getting picked up by strangers at a rest stop in God-knows-where.

But Ben knew everybody. I mean, he really did.

~*~

Unfortunately, my next story is somewhat garbled, since the two principals are no longer with us.

I can't remember who was in jail, Steve Conliff or Ben. This was during the Republican National Convention in Kansas City in 1976, and one of the two (often known as the Glimmer Twins in Yippie parlance) was in jail for some silly traffic violation (and probable possession of marijuana) in Raytown, Missouri. If memory serves, it was Ben who was in jail, while Conliff took to local talk radio to threaten to bring a thousand Yippies to Raytown, to spring Ben. (Of course, there were never "a thousand Yippies"--which was the inside joke.)

"We aren't gonna let a punk town like Raytown get away with this!" Conliff bellowed over the airwaves.

And so, magically, the authorities let Ben go. That afternoon. And they specifically told him to tell his friend on the radio: "This is not a PUNK town!"

Ben assured them he would pass the word along. He then repeated the charge later that night to a reporter for the Kansas City Star: "I got busted last night in some punk town called RAYTOWN!" he pointedly said.

They quoted him, too.

~*~

A young photo of Ben; I told you he looked just like Cat Stevens!



And finally, THIS colorful and insane event, the Republican National Convention in 1980 in Detroit, wherein Ben was busted and Conliff miraculously avoided detection by shaving his head.

In the Detroit courtroom where about a dozen Yippies were arraigned, one Yippie was given 10 days for contempt of court. Ben spoke up: "Your honor, you have to give me 20 days, because I have twice as much contempt for your court as she has!"

They obliged.

Ben went to jail a lot, and sued them all later for arresting him. He won, too, frequently joking that it was a good living if you could wait forever to get paid.

~*~

This is the obit that gets quoted here on DEAD AIR, since it dares to use the dreaded word YIPPIE:

"Ben knew the laws better than the police did," explained his longtime friend Amy Gros-Louis, echoing a sentiment shared by judges, lawyers and the many police officers who came to regard Masel with a mix of frustration, awe and, eventually, respect.

So it was with Masel, whose death Saturday at age 56 robbed Madison, Wisconsin and the United States of one of the truest champions of the Constitution, the rule of law, and the founding faith that the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights are not just ideals; they are practical tools to be used on a daily basis to challenge the powerful, to offend the elites, to tip the balance toward some rough equivalent of justice.

These commitments made Masel a supreme annoyance to prickly policemen, prying prosecutors and pretenders to the presidency. Before he reached the age of 18, Masel made it onto the list of Nixon White House enemies, and he would later earn national headlines for mocking segregationist George Wallace and spitting at conservative Democrat Henry "Scoop" Jackson, who earned the wrath of Masel and his Yippie compatriots for his steady service to the military-industrial complex.

In later years, the exuberant agitator would express a measure of remorse for some of the more extreme acts of his youth. But he never apologized for exercising every right afforded a citizen.

No one pushed harder against the limits on dissent in what was supposed to be a free society. That pushing earned him dozens of court dates. But Bennett Masel, the New Jersey native who came to Madison as a UW undergrad and remained to become a local icon, was never merely a provocateur. He was, for all the theatrics, a serious believer in a left-libertarian analysis of the individual liberty that lawyers and judges came to understand as a credible extension of the thinking of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, the longest-serving justice on the high court and a hero to 1970s radicals such as Masel.

Goodbye Ben, and thank you for teaching me to be a Yippie. It was the major lesson in civil disobedience that I never forgot.

~*~

More:

Ben Masel, an activist's activist

Activists and Visionarys

Ben Masel - Professional Activist

A devastating blow to our antiquated systems

The recent election may seem strange, you say. What can possibly be happening to human beings? Well, Jack Nicholson had the answer DECADES AGO, and explained it all... but were we listening? No.

I say, we all listen AGAIN, because it all makes (as that antique-store proprietor on the old Friday The 13th TV series was always saying) A Terrible Sense.

Apparently, they made a lot of this dialogue up on the spot. Dennis Hopper "directed" Easy Rider, so to speak, and the "script" was officially credited to Peter Fonda, Hopper and Terry Southern. I credit Fonda for bringing "Wow!" into the adult lexicon; before this time, "Wow!" was mostly reserved for children and comic books. Fonda's famous stoned "Wow!"s made the quiet utterance of "Wow!" cool--and we haven't shed this verbal habit since.

We now know that in real life, the situation (in the movie) was likely reversed, and it was Jack that probably showed Peter Fonda how to smoke weed.

Proposition 19, Rest in Peace.

~*~

"If they're so smart, why don't they just reveal themselves and get it over with?"

"Why don't they reveal themselves to us? Because if they did reveal themselves it would cause a general panic."

I'd say they revealed themselves, at long last, yesterday.

~*~

Jack Nicholson explains things - excerpt from Easy Rider (1969)

Stubborn old goats

No matter what I did, they resolutely refused to look at the camera.




My post on women going shirtless got major hits from Reddit, StumbleUpon and other link-sites. I think I hit a nerve, particularly in this kind of heat.

This also means, if I may borrow a line from Rancid: And out come the wolves. Trolls, trolls, everywhere. As I've said before, I used to be jealous of the Big Bloggers, until I fully understood what-all they have to put up with. Yech.

Highly amusing was watching the anti-feminist trolls try to figure out what they should be fussing about. Ordinarily, men are lusting for women to be naked, so....what exactly is the issue? Unfortunately, the thread's Head Troll has deleted all of his convoluted comments in a huff, or you could chortle at the logic: We shouldn't be showing our breasts because.... men like breasts. In other words, they might see some breasts they don't like! Another fascinating argument was all about hard-ons: Men have involuntary reactions to breasts! And of course, this means women should live their lives to make men's penises more comfortable at all times. When they want hard-ons, we should be stripping. When they don't, we shouldn't.

That seems easy enough to figure out, huh?

Meanwhile, let's hope some hearty gals out there start organizing some shirtless-days for women... as several posters noted on Reddit, they can't arrest everyone. This is the same way women started wearing pants: en masse. The only way.

It was the 8th grade. The note was passed: JEANS ON FRIDAY. That was all it said. We all knew, yes. Jeans on Friday. Only a couple of goodie-goodies primly preferred to continue "dressing as ladies"--although I noticed that a few years later, they were wearing jeans with the rest of us.

And so, we wore the jeans on Friday. Fat, thin, middle-class and poor. Rich jeans, poor jeans. And I remember that day very well, because all the girls grinned at each other: haha, look at us!

We just kept wearing them. We didn't stop.

About a month later, an official school announcement was read: Girls can wear pants now! We laughed our blue-jean-clad butts off; we were already wearing them! And then we learned something important (also applicable to laws like jay-walking and pot-smoking): Your "law" means shit if nobody follows it. [1]

We might do the same with the laws governing the exposure of women's chests. Can they arrest hundreds of women on a beach at the same time?

Actually, that might turn into quite a party!

~*~

Speaking of pot-smoking, the New York Times ran a big Reefer Madness pot addiction story last week. We were even warned that legal ganja would result in a rise in "fatalities"--and silly me, I wasn't aware there was ever ONE fatality from marijuana-overdose in the entire history of the known world.

For those of us who know from addiction, the NYT article was like the proverbial fun-house mirror, as they offered the example of someone who kept a residence, job and dog for 20 years as an "addict"... say what?

Can somebody say raise the bar?

One of the problems with AA turning everybody into an alcoholic in the late 80s (no, everyone isn't, even if you were barfing into the toilet a few more times than you intended), is this kind of nonsense. Addiction is something very specific, and there are signposts. When you are homeless (I was), can't keep a job (I couldn't), systematically drive away everyone who cares about you (I did), start getting sick all the time (oh dear God)--then you got trouble. [2]

Just being extremely bummed out? No. That is called depression, and self-medicating is a symptom.

I have no college degree and nevertheless, I understand this distinction. As they say, it isn't rocket science.

What it is: AA was colonized by the middle classes in the late 80s/early 90s. In these suburban enclaves, if someone dared to speak honestly about something like sleeping in their car for months at a time, or jacking mama's last 3 bucks, the middle-class, still-gainfully-employed types would shift uncomfortably in their seats. [3] If you wanted gritty reality, you had to go to the meetings with names like Darkness on the Edge of Town (apologies to The Boss). Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12-Steps became transformed into a lifestyle-thing, rather like eating organic.

For some reason, the 12-Steps seemed tailor-made for the narcissism of the affluent. They jumped into the process with aplomb, as if it was psychoanalysis. And in the meantime, you couldn't get a genuine addict or alcoholic to even read the 12-Steps out loud without pausing to argue with you about them.

And the 12-Steps changed, and AA changed... and someday, I will attempt to grapple with the whole subject, and my feelings about that. And why I stopped being an active member, as my beloved late sponsor also did (for religious reasons of her own).

I heartily recommend Elayne Rapping's book, The Culture of Recovery, Making Sense of the Self-Help Movement in Women's Lives, a feminist reading of this whole phenomenon. And I hope to revisit the topic at a future date.

~*~



[1] William F Buckley was (believe it or not) in favor of legalizing (and taxing) marijuana for that reason. He believed marijuana laws turned regular, law-abiding people into criminals. He said law served people, people do not serve law, and if a majority of people want pot, keeping it illegal eroded respect for authority and law. (Ya think?)

[2] Notice the very dramatic addiction-themed TV show Intervention doesn't bother with "marijuana addicts"--which as one of my friends said, would consist of an entire hour of potheads watching TV and eating bags of Cheetos. (The "intervention" would be someone's kids complaining that they had to change the kitty litter: Do you ever think of MY feelings?!?)

Not exactly cutting-edge reality TV. And the proof is in the pudding.

[3] An AA friend once told me about attending a "rich" AA meeting in Hollywood. One woman's idea of "hitting rock bottom" was the day she was forced to take the kids to McDonalds for supper. (People shook their heads, wow, that is terrible.)

Lord have mercy, can you believe anybody would FALL SO FAR?

Free the Weed!

Fox News called us all trolls for trying to free the weed.

We should take it as a compliment!

The story, from NORML:

On three separate occasions, the White House has asked the public to provide them with feedback on the top public policy questions facing the nation. And on three separate occasions, the leading question for the new administration — as chosen on and voted by the American public — pertained to the legalization of marijuana.

One might examine these results and conclude that marijuana law reform is an issue that is becoming increasingly popular with America’s voters. Of course if you’re Fox News, you interpret these results another way:

Obama's Effort at Online Transparency Stymied by Internet Trolls

“Three and a half million people participated in the event, but the ‘trolls’ had their way: Following a coordinated campaign by marijuana advocates to vote their topic to the top of the list, questions on the future of the U.S. dollar and the rising unemployment rate were superseded by questions about legalizing pot as an economic remedy.”

Got to hand it to the folks at Fox. (PS: For the record, Wired makes the same accusation!) National polls show that the public’s support for legalization has never been greater. Leading political and media pundits are now demanding that we end the criminal prohibition of pot. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, the old guard at Fox News cynically clings to the notion that nobody supports taxing and regulating marijuana aside from a handful of “Internet trolls.” We report, you decide, huh?

Of course, Fox News didn’t come up with this spin on their own. After all, it was White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs — yes, the same Robert Gibbs who couldn’t come up with one valid reason to oppose regulating pot besides “uh” — who initially tried to downplay the popularity of marijuana law reform, telling the New York Times that “advocates for legalizing marijuana, … includ[ing] NORML, had mounted a drive to rack up votes for the question.”

So let’s set the record straight shall we?

For the record, NORML did not engage in any deliberate campaign to "rack up votes" through the use of list-servs or their thousands of e-zine subscribers, nor did they even circulate information about the poll to the oodles of reefer-heads on their Facebook and Myspace websites.

No campaign, I repeat. THIS IS FROM THE PEOPLE; THIS IS REAL. As Paul Armentano of NORML writes:

The simple explanation for the White House poll results is this: Marijuana law reform is immensely popular with the public. That’s why we win initiatives — time and time again. And that’s why when the public is asked whether they support ending prohibition they say ‘yes’ — in overwhelming numbers!

As my colleague Scott Morgan writes at stopthedrugwar.org: “This is a movement, and it isn’t going away. Our issue is bigger than the organizations backing it.” He’s right.

Americans are demanding a serious and objective political debate regarding the merits of legalizing marijuana. They have come to this conclusion on their own — simply by witnessing the failure of the drug war all around them.

It seems that these politicians (even the ones with their fingers perpetually in the air, kissing voter ass and endlessly angling for re-election) don't understand how incredibly FED UP everyone is, tired of WASTING MONEY BUSTING POT SMOKERS.

The economy is in the shitter, and there is a cannabis cash cow beckoning. Why can't they see it? What is taking them so long?

There is money to be had, and time is wasting.

City of Tiny Lites

Greenville, facing southwest from Richardson Street.




It appears I will spend most of my day off haggling with stubborn insurance companies, so not much brilliance from me. President Obama, I tirelessly backed you, now if you would be so kind, please fix our dilapidated health care system? (At least I have WNCW's stellar radio broadcast, Frank on Friday, to keep me company... which of course is where today's blog post title is from.) My heart goes out to everyone else currently in Medical Insurance Hell, such as Renegade Evolution.

I haven't written about the AIG scandal, mostly because I don't really understand it very well. I am patently unable to rant and rave about things I don't fully get in the first place. I mostly end up scratching my poor little head. (I have a hard time even fathoming that kind of money.) However, I do see a similarity in the AIG bail-out fiasco and our health-care system dilemma: Nobody wants to reward AIG with millions of dollars for their mismanagement, and likewise, nobody wants to fund a health care system that has as many bloated items in their inventory as the Pentagon and its once-legendary hundred-dollar hammers. How can a single monthly prescription cost over $250? This is obscene. Who wants government to pay Big Pharm and support their continued robbery of the American people? Not me. I want the drug companies fleeced, not the government!

These are deep systemic problems, and they make my head hurt.

~*~

Some stuff to check out:

Sylvia Plath's son, Nicholas Hughes, has committed suicide:

The son of the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath has taken his own life, 46 years after his mother gassed herself while he slept.

Nicholas Hughes hanged himself at his home in Alaska after battling against depression for some time, his sister Frieda said yesterday.

He was 47, unmarried with no children of his own and had until recently been a professor of fisheries and ocean sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

What can you say?

~*~

Obama pissed me off yesterday, with his much-ballyhooed "online town meeting", as he impatiently and arrogantly waved away questions about marijuana legalization, which you know (duh!) might bail the economy out of this horrible mess. Obama seemed to find the question amusing, possibly flashing back to the days when he enjoyed a blunt or two himself.

By way of Salon's Drug War Rant, comes this perceptive observation from a commenter at Daily Kos:

But did he have to be so.... Amused with it? I'm sorry, I understand that it's marijuana, ha ha funny funny...but it was a serious question asked by a lot of people and I really think it deserved just as serious of an answer as the rest of them did [...] it was a JARRING difference from how he approached all the other questions. [...] I found the use of this particular question, and using it as a mechanism - an excuse to laugh off serious questions about the myriad of issues about pot - to be very disingenuous.

And from Andrew Sullivan, of all people:

Obama's Pathetic Pot Answer. The chuckle suggests a man of his generation. The dismissiveness toward the question of ending Prohibition as both a good in itself and a form of tax revenue is, however, depressing. His answer was a non-answer. I'm tired of having the Prohibition issue treated as if it's trivial or a joke. It is neither. It is about freedom and it's deadly serious. As for your online audience, Mr president, have you forgotten who got you elected?

Chris Selley in the NATIONAL POST writes:

In other words: get a job, ya bunch of hippies. He couldn’t really have sounded any more condescending unless he’d thanked contributors, complete with air quotes, for their “groovy” questions. I’m sure the audience would have lapped it up.

Now, admittedly, the President might well be right about what legalization would do for the economy. Imagine all the out-of-work drug enforcement workers, prison guards and support staff, the mass suicides from correctional industry lobbyists, and the tens of thousands of newly released inmates thrust into an already terrible job market. But that’s hardly the point he was trying to make. Rather, he was aiming for laughs.

Selley's piece is titled Obama on the War on Drugs—status quo we can believe in, which also made my head hurt. (As we've always heard, the truth hurts.)

Direct hit, Chris.

~*~

To the astute but anonymous reader who asks me via email, why do I link so many people who won't link me back? Hmm, good question. Mostly, it's so I can have the links handy when I switch computers around...I can't have my bookmarks everywhere, and this is the next best thing. My blogroll is composed of people I enjoy reading, whether they like me or not. And I think it might compromise some people's reputations (I'm lookin at you, lefty atheists!) to include me on their blogrolls.

And then again, as I closely examine some of the blogrolls in question, I also believe only women under 50 are permitted. Or at least, no women over 50 are represented. We don't exist and are invisible.

That's probably why.

~*~

Miss Jackie is writing about IRON over at The Vegan Diet... check out her recipes, you animal rights purists! Particularly her wonderful Iron Booster Fruit Smoothie... I am allergic to bananas but I've found strawberries and blueberries work well. Also, here is a great liquid iron supplement from Floradix, but 1) it tastes like cherry rust and 2) it's expensive (but certainly, not as expensive as red meat) and 3) it only keeps about a month after opening (refrigerated), so you have to use it up fairly quickly. But you can add it to smoothies and the rust taste isn't as noticeable.

A small price to pay for not eating animals.

~*~

I loves you guys, and hope to be back here before this evening, depending on the cooperation of the aforementioned insurance companies. (Ha!)