Pot IPOed
Filed Under Bullshit, Double Standard, Politics | Leave a Comment
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
Filed Under Bullshit, Everything | Leave a Comment
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
Filed Under Bullshit, Crime, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
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.
Afghan Apocalypse — ‘Guardian Angels’
Filed Under Bullshit, Madness, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
(Illustration found here).
In the neurotic groundswell last week of the absorption of gay people and the bullies that define the genre, the wars overseas have lost a lot of its news flavor with American audiences, despite the fact young GIs are still killing and dying over there — now they’re being made dead by their Afghan comrade-at-arms.
On Friday, an Afghan solider shot and killed a US soldier and wounded two others, which brought the number to 20 NATO troops killed so far this year (35 for all of 2011) in most-friendly fire circumstances — the so-called “green-on-blue” shootings, which shockingly account for 14 percent of all troop deaths.
The situation has gotten so far out of hand, desperate measures have been taken.
From USAToday in March:
U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan have assigned “guardian angels” — troops that watch over their comrades even as they sleep — and have ordered a series of other increased security measures to protect troops against possible attacks by rogue Afghans.
…
In several Afghan ministries, Americans are now allowed to carry weapons.
And they have been instructed to rearrange their office desks there to face the door, so they can see who is coming in, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the internal directive.
Leaving Afghanistan will be in a real-nasty whimper — the US has lost 1,968 troops since this nonsense started in 2001, more than 1,300 of those in the last three years alone.
Meanwhile this morning, in another screw loose, Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban official who reconciled with the government and was a top member of the Afghan peace council, was assassinated at a Kabul street light.
From Mohammad Zahir, head of the city police’s criminal investigation division: “Only one shot was fired,” Zahir said. “Our initial reports are that it was a pistol with a silencer. Rahmani died on the way to the hospital.”
And oddly enough, the Taliban denied responsibility for the killing.
Odd also is the professionalism of the hit — silencer on a weapon in a land where IED’s kill in a loud, bang all day long and explosive-laden vests are the tactical style of choice?
If the military can’t do Afghanistan. politics sure won’t accomplish the mission.
Despite Dianne Feinstein’s attempt at US bravado on Fox News this morning: “Militarily, I think the Taliban are not going to beat us,” said Ms. Feinstein, a Democrat from California. But the Taliban “have a safe harbor in Pakistan, and the Pakistanis are doing nothing to abate that safe haven.”
And Pakistan is the asshole card in all this shit.
Right now, Pakistan still has the main supply routes into Afghanistan sealed because of the major f*uck-up last November when a US airstrike killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at an outpost at the boundary of the two countries.
Pakistan turned the matter over to its parliament, which wants an unconditional apology from the US for the Mohmand attack and ending drone attacks.
No apology has come the US and the drones strikes continue — supposedly nine suspected militants were killed by drone nine days ago along the northern Pakistani border.
And right now today, U.S. General John Allen, the current head of the whole shebang in Afghanistan, is meeting with his Pakistani and Afghan counterparts in Islamabad to see if they can’t iron out the difficulties to end this terrible war.
These guys are the Afghanistan-Pakistan-ISAF Tripartite Commission, this the first meeting of the bunch in more than a year, and comes on the near-eve of Pakistan itself holding parliamentary talks Tuesday on ending the supply-route blockade.
A good overview of the reality of Pakistan’s role in the Afghan war can be found in an interview with investigative reporter Gareth Porter at Press TV — the people of Pakistan pretty-much hates the US because of the drone strikes.
Porter concludes: This is a fundamental disconnect between the interests of these two countries and I think it is now basically too late for the United States to put pressure effectively on Pakistan to get them to change their policy.
All this as NATO will hold a big summit in Chicago the end of this month and just Pakistan maybe won’t be invited, but will be coming anyway.
Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen: “But as you also know, our transit routes through Pakistan are currently blocked. So we have to continue our dialogue with Pakistan, with a view to finding a solution to that because that’s really a matter of concern,” he added, without clearly mentioning if Pakistan had been invited to the summit or not.
And so it goes.
Beyond the horror of the bloodletting, economics booms in the face of failure.
From ABC News:
The war in Afghanistan has cost the United States $443 billion from 2001 through 2011, according to the Congressional Research Office.
According to a Pew Trusts report, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed more to growth in U.S. debt than any other policy since 2001 except the Bush tax cuts and in the increased interest from legislative changes.
That’s one for Mitt Romney to stutter about, but President Obama hasn’t done anything to compensate for it.
The Afghan predicament is one of failure — according to an AP-GfK poll in late April, 66 percent of US respondents opposed the war, with 40 percent saying they were “strongly” opposed: Among those opposed to the war, 49 percent say U.S. troops are hurting more than helping.
Journalist and analyst on Middle East and UN issues Phyllis Bennis in a commentary from the Institute for Policy Studies writes that despite the absolute-only real Afghan solution is for the US to get-out-now — like yesterday — the war will instead continue on down memory lane.
The sticking point in an election year:
For President Obama, the challenge may be even greater.
This is his war now, it has been since January 20, 2009.
But support for the war in his party (a slightly embarrassingly low 30 percent last year) has dropped to a humiliating 19 percent today.
Does he really think he can re-energize his base with the claim that “I’m ending the war” when the reality of his plan is so well known?
His plan for two more years of full-scale war in Afghanistan, followed by at least ten years of continued occupation by thousands (16,000? 20,000?) of special forces and “training” troops?
Too many people know that’s the reality of the agreement Obama signed with the U.S.-backed Afghan President Karzai last week.
It’s not an end to the war, it’s simply changing the size and nature of the occupation.
And horrible irony is not lost on anybody.
Reality on the ground is way actual than bullshit words.
The subject matter of a NY Times At War blog post last week, of all things, was Afghan postcards, which featured five examples, including the one shown at left (image which can be found here) and each with a little descriptive note:
Postcard No. 3: This one is also from the German military store at Kandahar.
Hard to say if it is meant to be funny.
I sure hope it is.
Otherwise, the play off “Apocalypse Now” cuts a bit too close to the bone, no?
Maybe, twitch-funny like the smell of napalm in the morning, yes?
Dimwit Dollars
Filed Under Bullshit, Economy, Finance, Work | Leave a Comment
Chump change: A trivial sum of money, a trivial matter.
For example, Dave was sick of working for chump change, he wanted a decent salary, or, ‘Don’t put that on the agenda, it’s chump change.’
This expression uses chump in the sense of “a fool or sucker who should be ignored.”
[Slang; 1960s] Also see chicken feed.
(Illustration/artwork by Michael Katz — “impressions of the scene” at Zuccotti Park — found here).
One’s finances is one’s living.
A big chunk of regular customers using the liquor store I manage most-obviously aren’t living at any kind of high standard — in the last six months coin usage has way-accelerated; more people digging for money, paying not just for newspapers, candy and such with coins, but it’s fairly-normal now for a guy making a $10 transaction or more using nothing but quarters, dimes, nickels and piss-ant pennies.
Business is okay, but that’s a referenced ‘new normal‘ okay — we cratered three years ago, business quickly nose-dived to a certain point where we’ve stayed since — but still able to pay the bills, but not much else.
A lot of US peoples, though, can’t pay the bills, or maybe just barely.
Despite some economic signs some kind of recovery is in progress, the upswing is either way-too-slow for most people, or there ain’t one — even from a new system of analyzing financial information, “…data indicate that Americans continue to experience everyday financial stress despite better job prospects.”
Hence, all the penny rolls.
And from the looks of some of our customers — and the appearance of an average US person — this problem coupled with the knowledge of an enormous income/financial inequality in this country and the world increases poorer health for the poorer people — just a slight inequality rise and our liquor store patron’s cumulative risk of death increases 112 percent in the next 12 years.
So the popularity of Barton vodka — $2.13 out-the-door for a half-pint.
Root of all evil, reportedly, is money — but not really the actual money itself, but the bad shit is infected by either the bad-lack of it, or the desire for way-way-more of it.
And people who manage money — bankers — are on appearance and habit, a more-than-a-bit on the nefarious side.
These who deal in real chump change.
From CNN on JP Morgan’s $2 billion loss in less than six weeks off this “unique thing we did“ wrapped in vaporous financial fog:
The loss is bad enough that the bank felt compelled to hold an after-hours conference call Thursday with reporters and industry analysts.
CEO Jamie Dimon, who was extremely agitated on the call, said the losses were caused by “errors,” “sloppiness” and “bad judgment.”
But Dimon was quick to defend JPMorgan’s overall track record: “When you look at all the things we’ve done, we’ve been very careful.
And we’ve been quite successful.
This obviously wasn’t.”
Should the loss stay in the $2 billion range, JPMorgan will likely emerge relatively unscathed.
The chief investment office’s portfolio has registered gains of $1 billion in other areas, and Dimon said that even after the loss, the bank’s overall profit should be in the $4 billion range this quarter.
Such bullshit spattered with something like this today here in California: “We are now facing a $16 billion hole, not the $9 billion we thought in January,” Mr. Brown said. “This means we will have to go much further and make cuts far greater than I asked for at the beginning of the year.”
Mr. Brown’s first name is Jerry.
And he’s one boy who’s been around long enough to play the pitfalls like a well-heeled trouper.
Next month, California will vote on Proposition 29, hitched to a tobacco tax — we already pay $.87 tax on a pack of cigarettes and the 29 will pop it up to $1 — but the real downside: Two of the nation’s largest tobacco companies — Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. — and their affiliates have spent more than $30 million against the initiative thus far, dwarfing the $4 million raised by proponents.
Our store cigarette vendors hate 29 — prices for even generic smokes are sky high and $1 more is a $1 more, a cut into business.
Just like a lot of other things, the new tax increase will only make a shitload of our sad, coin-only customers switch to cheap-ass pipe tobacco to roll up as cigarettes.
The JP Morgan financial creep-out is another of those hard-to-grasp money deals where there’s not any real, actual money involved, not anything really at all, but computer paper.
Accordingly, JP Morgan made a real-bad bet on a very obscure corner of the derivatives market, a place I really don’t understand, and neither do a lot of other seemingly-knowledgeable folks, like this guy from Forbes: In my conversations Friday with reporters from Smart Money and the Boston Globe, I could not answer a basic question: What happened?
If you can’t who the f*ck can?
All this Wall Street horse-shit, however, has an affect/effect on all of us, down to the poor clown buying a High Gravity 40-ounser.
Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone in a piece on Wall Street non-regulations and how the reform-minded Dodd-Frank law was choked by bankers and politics, explains the negative trickle down of this vaporous trading in derivatives:
All of these derivatives issues are oppressively dull and technical, and it’s extremely difficult for most people to imagine how something like Jim Himes’ exemption for foreign affiliates can actually affect their daily lives.
But having an unregulated market instead of a regulated one might mean you’ll pay an extra 50 cents for every gallon of gas (or possibly more, even according to Goldman Sachs).
Or you might have to pay hundreds or thousands more in taxes every year because your town or county or country, if you happen to live in Greece, grossly overpaid an investment bank when it borrowed money.
An unregulated derivatives market essentially gives Wall Street a way to place hidden taxes on everything in the world.
And the only change a-coming is from the chump buying a bottle of cheap vodka.