Pot IPOed
Friday, May 18th, 2012
Category: Bullshit, Double Standard, Politics
One headline yesterday that just screamed bullshit was atop stories of THC found in Trayvon Martin’s bloodstream — a medical examiner’s report also revealed traces of cannabinoids in his urine.
All the MSM news stories carried that in its lede — and the problem?
Instead of having an actual impact on what happened the night Martin was murdered, the result just creates immediate flak for marijuana as a negative force in society.
What bullshit!
If George Zimmerman had done a bowl instead of fondling his 9-millimeter, most-likely Trayvon might be alive today.
(Illustration found here).
Mostly overlooked yesterday was this particular story from New York state and an most-unlikely voice in legalizing pot.
Via Reuters:
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach, who is being treated for pancreatic cancer, wrote in a New York Times article on Thursday that he had been using marijuana provided by friends at “great personal risk” to help him cope with the nausea, sleeplessness and loss of appetite from chemotherapy treatments.
“This is not a law-and-order issue; it is a medical and a human rights issue,” wrote Reichbach, 65, who has spent 21 years on the bench in Kings County Supreme Court, and continues to hear cases even as he receives cancer treatment.
…
“It’s brave and wonderful, but it’s heart-wrenching,” said Ellen Yaroshefsky, a law professor at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law.
“There are key moments in history where a judge makes a bold stand.
This is one of the moments, and we should be proud of it.”
But where does it lead?
Apparently, nowhere:
Support for medical-marijuana legislation is gaining support among New Yorkers.
A poll from Siena Research Institute released on Wednesday found 57 percent of New Yorkers supported establishing a legal framework for allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana for cancer, chronic pain and other illnesses.
On Tuesday, a New York Assembly committee approved medical-marijuana legislation, and the Democratic-controlled Assembly appears poised to pass it for the third time in five years.
A spokesman for the state Senate Republican majority said that chamber was unlikely to act on the measure this year.
My underline, but alas and hence, more stupid.
In a poll released Wednesday by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research found that 74 percent of respondents wants President Obama to lay off raids on medical marijuana dispensaries — sixteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of medical marijuana, including us out here on the Left Coast: “The results of this survey demonstrate that there is virtually no support in the country for the Obama administration’s crackdown on state medical marijuana laws,” said Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project.
And also this: An unrelated New Hampshire poll whose results were released Thursday, coincidentally, reported that “65 percent of voters support legalizing medical marijuana to 24 percent opposed. That includes more than 70 percent of Democrats and independents and even a plurality of GOP voters (46/43).”
This comes on the heels of a Gallup poll last fall that found 50 percent of US peoples say it’s time to legalize marijuana: When Gallup first asked about legalizing marijuana, in 1969, 12 percent of Americans favored it, while 84 percent were opposed. Support remained in the mid-20s in Gallup measures from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, but has crept up since, passing 30 percent in 2000 and 40 percent in 2009 before reaching the 50 percent level in this year’s Oct. 6-9 annual Crime survey.
Time has way passed.
This recent federal crackdown on these dispensaries has opened the door to a chance to bolster the horror-hole of state budgets — like the $16 billion deficit here in California.
Similar to other products, legalize and tax the shit out of it.
Ethan Nadelmann, the Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance:
“When the gangsters are making billions of dollars off of providing a commodity that tens of millions of Americans want, you make it legal and you tax it and control it and regulate it,” Nadelmann said.
California State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano is sponsoring a bill that would do just that.
A long-time proponent of medical marijuana, Ammiano now wants to tax the $14-$15 billion dollar illegal marijuana trade in California.
“We estimated that if marijuana were legalized, it may result in maybe two billion bucks more … in California’s budget,” the Democratic assemblyman representing San Francisco said.
Legal marijuana sounds more than reasonable.
The near-40-year war on drugs is a nasty, horrible joke — look at Mexico where a war more vile and horrendous than anything found in Iraq or Afghanistan is tearing that poor country apart, literally.
Last September, the FBI released its crime report, and amongst the findings: 853,838 people were arrested for marijuana-related offenses, or 97.5 people per hour, the highest ever reported. 52 percent of all drug arrests in the US are marijuana-related, 46 percent of those are for possession.
Insane.
Cold Thursday
Thursday, May 17th, 2012
Category: Bullshit, Everything
Up earlier this morning than normal, but even much surfing through online news nothing seems to strike an emotional chord — most of the shit is so depressing, each click seems just like the last one.
Apparently, the whole world is going to shit in a wire basket.
And it’s getting frustrating because I have to leave for work soon — must still shit, shower and shave before I go and no newsworthy item has popped and it’s starting to crunch on the early-morning crunch time.
(Illustration found here).
This the only pop-up, and just as nuts, and a break in intelligence, but it’s in Wisconsin:
Wisth has a beef with the all-you-can-eat fish fry at Chuck’s Place.
He was there Friday when the restaurant cut him off after he ate a dozen pieces.
“Well, we asked for more fish and they refused to give us any more fish,” recalled Wisth.
The restaurant says it was running out of fish and patience; arguing Bill has been a problem customer before.
They sent him on his way with another eight pieces, but that still wasn’t enough.
He was so fired up, he called the police.
“I think that people have to stand up for consumers,” said Wisth.
And he wasn’t done.
He came back two days later with a picket sign.
Elizabeth Roeming is a waitress there and says they’ve tried to work with Bill over the years — like letting him have a tab he still hasn’t paid off.
…
Bill isn’t backing down, saying his fish fry fight isn’t over.
But in the end, even he had something nice to say.
“They do have like some of the best pizza in town if you like deep dish pizza,” said Wisth.
Bill Wisth says he will picket every Sunday until the restaurant rethinks what happened.
This from Emily Dickinson is a major reason for this:
The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —
Time is pure speed snorted through a straw of history.
Criminal Intent
Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
Category: Bullshit, Crime, War & Politics
After years of the worse president in US history has mostly been under cover.
Few know the guy’s even still alive, much less still walking around, acting like a dumb-ass — George Jr. maintains a low profile.
Even in throwing a quick, by-the-way-endorsement of the latest GOP noodle:
“I’m for Mitt Romney,” Bush told ABC News this morning as the doors of an elevator closed on him, after he gave a speech on human rights a block from his old home — the White House.
The boy crept into DC, gave a speech that no one seems to find near-crazed ironic — human freedom — and then creeped out again with the tagline, “See ya later.”
(Illustration found here).
The current resident of the White House responded with welcome relief:
“President Bush has endorsed Governor Romney, and Governor Romney has endorsed a return to Bush-era economic policies: massive tax cuts for the wealthiest and no accountability for Wall Street, which led to huge deficits and tepid growth,” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign.
George Jr. is toxic as a Hospice happy hour — or maybe picking up stray cats.
And just as the war crimes trial of Ratko Mladic, accused of 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 1992-95 war in Yugoslavia, started today in The Hague, Netherlands.
From CNN:
Mladic’s trial begins after a landmark war crimes ruling last month, when another international tribunal found former Liberian President Charles Taylor guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone’s notoriously brutal civil war.
“Both trials are evidence of the growing international trend to hold perpetrators of atrocities to account, no matter how senior their position,” Human Rights Watch said.
…
Bosnia peace negotiator Richard Holbrooke once described Mladic as “one of those lethal combinations that history thrusts up occasionally — a charismatic murderer.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the earth, a tribunal in Malaysia has found George Jr., The Dick and a load of their cronies guilty of war crimes — the boys were tried in their absence and convicted on Saturday.
Tribunal president judge Tan Sri Lamin Mohd Yunus said the eight accused were also individually and jointly liable for crimes of torture in accordance with Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter.
“The U.S. is subject to customary international law and to the principles of the Nuremberg Charter and exceptional circumstances such as war, instability and public emergency cannot excuse torture.”
Although transcripts of the five-day trial will be sent to the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, the United Nations and the Security Council, one shouldn’t hold one’s breath awaiting trial for these war criminals to end up via Mladic in the block at The Hague.
The hypocrisy of the US is way-bigger than the imagination can imagine.
Coming Soon to a Planet Near You
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
Category: Cloud gazing, Environment, Health, Madness
Quiet and kind of warm here this early Tuesday morning on California’s northern coast, a disarming false front to the hushed riot building all over the world.
As US peoples go ga-ga over gay rights — who gives a fat-rat’s-ass who the couple is next door when the neighborhood is on the brink of a firestorm.
Strong, relatable words from the film ‘Titanic:’ Yes. In an hour or so…all this…will be at the bottom of the Atlantic.
(Illustration found here).
One route to reducing the obesity problem in the US — no more stuff to eat.
From Businessweek/Bloomberg this morning:
“We are living as if we have an extra planet at our disposal,” WWF International Director General Jim Leape said in the report.
“We are using 50 percent more resources than the Earth can provide, and unless we change course that number will grow very fast.
By 2030, even two planets will not be enough.”
…
“Similar to overdrawing a bank account, eventually the resources will be depleted,” the study’s authors wrote. “At current consumption rates some ecosystems will collapse even before the resource is completely gone.”
The results from the World Wildlife Forum in its biennial Living Planet report and this a boost to the all-growth concept of Western civilization, which it appears as a type of suicide.
And in more simple terms as explained by the director of conservation sciences at the WWF, Colby Loucks, who compared mankind to bad houseguests: “We’re emptying the fridge, we’re not really taking care of the lawn, we’re not weeding the flower beds and we’re certainly not taking out the garbage,” Loucks said.
The problem, of course, is such death-throes bullshit such as this on the oil shale supposedly underneath Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, and why should we worry:
But with current U.S. daily oil consumption running at about 19.5 million barrels, the staggering amount of Green River reserves would by itself supply domestic oil consumption for more than 200 years!
…
Even if development is 15-20 years away, the vast untapped energy resources of Green River, the largest oil shale deposit in the world, provide additional support for the idea that “peak oil” is “peak idiocy.”
Climate change is the biggest nut humanity will ever crack — if we can, but the odds are appearing less and less in the good range with most people only way-dimly aware of the horror coming.
In this the more-neglected peoples are responding, such as the trials and tribulations of Bangladesh, due to the fact climate change has become an every-day reality to them, not just a far-away theory.
From Climate Central and the problem in a nutshell:
“I am quite amazed at how people are grappling with climate change and are adapting,” said Saleemul Huq, a Bangladeshi scientist who is head of the climate change group at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London and an adviser to the Bangladesh government on how to adapt to climate change.
“It’s by far the most aware society on climate change in the world,” Huq said.
“It has seen the enemy and is arming itself to deal with it.
The country is now on a war footing against climate change.
They are grappling with solutions.
They don’t have them all yet but they will.
I see Bangladesh as a pioneer.
But Foreign Minister Dipu Moni notes the rub:
“The people being affected are not the big banks but the poor.
Our plight goes quite unnoticed.
It does not make the rich countries produce trillions of dollars overnight.
It’s a shame, but we keep trying.”
Yes, a dying shame, and not a good sign at all.
Pump Up The Climate
Monday, May 14th, 2012
Category: Cloud gazing, Economy, Energy, Environment
Monday comes way-too fast!
And with that ugly shit out of the way, there’s some good news/bad news on the energy front — fuel costs at the pump may not be as bad as predicted earlier this year, but less cash means more driving, which means more pollutants into our struggling environment.
Seasonal forecasts are thumbs up even though appearing out on a limb: The EIA says that gasoline prices should average $3.71 per gallon for all of 2012, down 10 cents from April’s estimate. The EIA’s forecast for next year is $3.67 per gallon.
Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: “It’s almost like a tax cut.”
(Illustration found here).
Yeah, a cut about neck high.
After the massive bullshit in February and March, these reports indicates that no one really knows what the shit is going on fuel wise, and maybe otherwise.
Yesterday, after my weekly visit to the laundromat, I put another $20 in the old Jeep with the pump price remaining still at $4.49 a gallon for regular — stuck at that level for weeks.
We’re still higher than the rest of California, but the state itself will be higher than the rest of the country even still because four of our refineries are partially shut down, and another in Washington state is struggling to restart.
California’s average price for a gallon of regular has jumped 9 cents since the end of April: It reached $4.25 on Friday, according to the AAA automotive club, which tracks gasoline prices daily. Average prices in San Francisco and San Jose jumped 4 cents overnight to hit $4.34 and $4.27, respectively.
All this as oil prices fell on the horror stories in the Eurozone: Crude for June delivery fell as much as $2.48 to $93.65 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest front-month intraday price since Dec. 19.
Brent for June settlement tumbled $1.78, or 1.6 percent, to $110.48 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange.
In the midst of the decline, the International Monetary Fund reports oil prices could double in the next decade, but the results are based on money and not geology.
From the UK’s Guardian:
“This is uncharted territory for the world economy, which has never experienced such prices for more than a few months,” the report warns.
…
Undertaken amid mounting concerns about “peak oil”, the IMF study does not presume that there is a constraint on how much oil can be taken out of the ground.
It prefers to believe that extraction rates will depend on the price that will be able to be charged for the final product.
“While our model is not as pessimistic as the pure geological view that typically holds that binding resource constraints will lead world oil production on to an inexorable downward trend in the very near future, our prediction of small further increases in world oil production comes at the expense of a near doubling, permanently, of real oil prices over the coming decade,” argues the report, entitled The Future of Oil: Geology v Technology.
…
It says that its oil market “models” have been significantly more accurate than others in a world where predictability has been historically low.
But it adds: “Our empirical results also indicate that if the model’s predictions continue to be accurate as they have been over the last decade… the future will not be easy.”
No shit, sherlock.
No only do we have the horror of climate change itself, but the assholes who deny it.
In the US, all that’s coming from GOPers is shit:
Rick Santorum described belief in climate change as a “pseudo-religion,” while Ron Paul called it a “hoax.”
Mitt Romney, the apparent Republican nominee, has said, “I can tell you the right course for America with regard to energy policy is to focus on job creation and not global warming.”
In an interview SpiegelOnline, Kumi Naidoo, head of Greenpeace, says time might have already run its course.
A few snips of the interview:
For millions of people, especially in Africa, it is already too late.
They are already feeling the impact of climate change, which is not to say that through adaptation and mitigation they, and the rest of the world, cannot avert the worst consequences or relieve the suffering.
But we need to act now and start doing all we can to protect the climate.
We are definitely not powerless, but we need support.
Other interests — such as the oil lobby — have access to vastly more financial resources than us, and this is what we’re up against.
…
We are addicted to dirty energy, it is true.
And it is an addiction, which, like all addictions, can be cured.
But it’s not easy.
Maybe what will wake us up is the fact that we’re talking about a dramatic increase in catastrophic weather events: about the country of Kiribati, which is slowly sinking into the ocean due to rising sea levels; about water shortages and the collapse of agricultural systems in some countries; about millions of climate refugees from Africa that will be heading for Europe; about devastating economic, social and ecological damage that can be prevented.
Our leaders are big losers.
Whereas they should be looking after the interests of their citizens, instead they are making deals with big business — and thereby accepting catastrophe with their eyes wide open …
Pumping fuel into the old Jeep don’t help.
keep looking »