Last week’s contest was still unsolved as of Wednesday night. It was in Boone County, WV, at the location where this photo of a milky-white Pond Fork River was taken.
This week’s contest is a random location somewhere on earth, good luck! And Go Seahawks!!
Darryl forgot to add this one to the Extravaganza below, here’s courtroom footage of the Amanda Knox trial in Italy.
As the scandals around Chris Christie continue to pile up, it made me revisit the story of how Christie handled – well, mishandled – the implementation of New Jersey’s medical marijuana program. I didn’t pay too much attention to it at the time, but it was certainly a reason that drug law reformers were some of Christie’s loudest detractors in the 2013 campaign for governor.
The aspirations of New Jersey’s first medical marijuana businesses range from modest to potentially massive, but marijuana advocates say the state’s startup dispensaries have stronger ties to traditional medicine than most — and an unusual number of politically connected people involved in them.
Christie inherited the law from his predecessor, Jon Corzine, but has done just about everything possible to keep it from being implemented in a way that might actually help people – well, not counting well-connected people hoping to make money.
Fast forward to this month:
A state appeals court today ruled the state Health Department must produce a report within 45 days that explains how New Jersey’s medical marijuana program has been implemented, the status of dispensaries that have not yet opened, and whether there are enough growers to meet patient demand.
The decision, however, is only a partial win for the patients and physician who sued the Christie administration in 2012 for intentionally delaying the program. The plaintiffs wanted the court to nullify the health department’s choice of three nonprofits that have yet to have their plans for dispensaries approved nearly three years later.
Yesterday, Jay R. Lassiter in PolitickerNJ also called out Christie for this horrible track record:
Now that the entire universe knows about Chris Christie’s insatiable appetite for recriminations, it’s a good time to reexamine the scandal-plagued Governor’s role in destroying NJ’s medical marijuana law. Why? Because the five-year-old program — signed into law shortly before Christie took office — has been a case study in big-government incompetence.
Yes, worth taking a much longer look.
Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky, who remains undefeated in 2014. The correct answer was Middletown, CT.
This week’s contest is related to something in the news from January, good luck!
Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was Las Vegas.
This week’s is somewhere in the state of Connecticut, good luck! And go Seahawks!
Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was Painesville, OH.
This week’s is a random location using the Google Maps 45 degree views, good luck!
Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa, who got 4 out of the 6 locations. Sorry that the sadness of the topic turned off a few folks, so I’m not sure I’ll do something quite like that again. But here were the correct answers:
A – Akron, OH – news story
B – Michigan City, IN – news story
C – Bullard, TX – news story
D – Memphis, TN – news story
E – Liberty Township, MI – news story
F – Yuma, AZ – news story
This week’s is a random location somewhere on earth, good luck!
Today was “Green Wednesday” in Colorado, the first day of legal marijuana sales to all adults. Another great milestone in the dismantling of one of America’s most tragic and destructive policies. There’s not an exact date for when Washington’s stores will open, but it should be around May or June.
This is the Open Thread for the Bird’s Eye View Contest below. Please don’t leave any non-contest comments in that post. They WILL be deleted.
Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was the store in San Jose where one of the winning Mega Millions tickets was sold.
This week is the 5th week in December and last weekend of the year. As followers of this contest know, when I do the monthly news events, I try not to select news events that are particularly depressing. Sometimes I can’t avoid it because that’s what a lot of the news is, but for the most part, I’ve avoided selecting one of the many deadly shootings that occur in this country every damn day. So last year at this time, in order to highlight just how common these occur, I did a roundup of views that were related to mass shootings.
This year, I’m highlighting another horrible aspect of our nation’s ridiculous obsession with guns. All six locations below are related to a shooting where a child under the age of 5 was accidentally killed by a gun in 2013. As someone who has two kids under the age of 5, I can’t even fathom how stupid you have to be to allow something like this to happen to your own child, but it happens almost weekly. So again, forgive the morbidity of this week’s contest, but this is something that shouldn’t be so damn common.
Notes:
1 – All views are default orientation (up is north)
2 – The “no political comments” rule will be strictly enforced in this thread, there will be an Open Thread posted at 12:01pm that you may weigh in on the larger subject of gun control (or whatever else you want)
A
B
C
D
E
F
Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Telluride, CO.
This week’s is related to a news story from December, good luck!
If you were online at all today, you probably saw a headline like this one from Reuters:
U.S. teens smoke more marijuana, but back off other drugs: survey
The article starts out with fingers pointed exactly where we’d expect them to be pointed:
U.S. teenagers are smoking more marijuana, but backing away from other harmful drugs and doing less binge drinking, according to a report from federal health researchers released Wednesday.
Easier access to marijuana provided by new state laws allowing the drug for medical treatment may be a factor, according to the report from the National Institutes of Health.
…
More teens are smoking marijuana in part because they see less risk from regular use, according to the “Monitoring the Future” survey.
There’s only one small problem. The data in the Monitoring the Future survey doesn’t really back this up at all. If you click to the survey here, they have excellent charts showing just how weak this claim is. Here’s the chart for those in 8th, 10th, and 12th grade who’ve reported using marijuana in the past year:
The percentage of teens reporting marijuana use has been relatively steady since the mid 1990s and still much lower than the late 1970s. The chart of those reporting daily use is a little closer to showing some kind of increase, but still well below use levels in the 1970s.
The purpose of all of this isn’t a mystery. Anti-drug groups are desperate to find ways to show how drug law reform is backfiring. They like to point to surveys that show that people perceive marijuana as being safer than they used to. Well, yeah, they probably should. Americans in general are learning more and more that marijuana is safer than we’ve been told. But that hasn’t translated into any big spikes in use among teens. Why? Probably because of this chart, which shows what percentage of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders say that marijuana is “fairly easy” or “very easy” to get:
That’s the real story here, that the gradual regulation of marijuana markets has the opposite effect on teen availability than what we’ve long been led to believe. But this chart and what it shows isn’t what makes the headlines. Instead, imaginary claims from government officials are uncritically passed along as news, and the important story is buried.
Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was right here in Seattle, in South Lake Union.
This week’s is a random location somewhere in Colorado, good luck!
Last week’s contest was won by Geoduck. It was Newcastle-under-Lyme, England.
This week’s is a view from Google Maps, good luck!
Last week’s contest was won by waguy. It was Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s “crack house” in Etobicoke, Ontario.
This week’s contest is a random location somewhere on earth, good luck!
Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!