– Iran’s religious establishment is dissenting from Khamenei.
– Soldiers in Colombia are killing innocent civilians and dressing them up as members of FARC in order to collect reward money (which comes out of our aid packages to their government).
– Norm Stamper excoriates Democrats for not using their power to roll back the drug war:
And the cause of this “drug war dementia”? I’m guessing it has something to do with a brilliant 2004 poll on the topic of medical marijuana. The poll asked two questions, the first confirming what had already been shown over and over again: that about 70 percent of people support the idea of legalizing marijuana, at least for medical purposes.
But then, pollsters asked something interesting:
“Regardless of your own opinion, do you think the majority of people support making marijuana medically available, or do you think the majority opposes making marijuana medically available?”
The result? In Rhode Island, where the poll was conducted, only 26.5 percent thought that most people support medical marijuana.
The lesson here? While many of our elected representatives privately support serious changes to our failed drug laws, they believe they are alone. They think if they stick their necks out they’ll be handed their heads come election time.
I’d argue that another aspect of this are the special interests within law enforcement and the pharmaceutical lobby who don’t want Americans to have greater freedom of choice when it comes to the substances they put in their bodies. But having politicians recognize that the public would be overwhelmingly on their side should they choose to move forward with drug law reform is a necessary first step.
dis is it, lee:
“We did it in Saddam’s palace and I can think of nothing better,” Biden said of the naturalization ceremony, held at Al-Faw Palace near Baghdad airport.
“That SOB is rolling over in his grave right now,” he said of executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Interesting news from Iran, which continues its tradition of being not about us.
Cracks in the unanimity of theological opinion at high levels in that country will undermine Khameini’s credibility and authority, which bodes “better” for reformers.
It’s interesting to me that the banner ads for this post are about “Marijuana Rehab–End Addiction Now”. Are there really people looking to go into rehab for pot?
Why would Republicans care that Colombian soldiers are killing innocent civilians and dressing them up as members of FARC in order to collect reward money that comes out of U.S. aid to their government? This has been going on for years, so surely the Bush regime knew about it, but did nothing. Republicans only care about the lives of the unborn. They want everyone else dead so they can have this planet to themselves.
@4 I wonder if Pooper is gonna sue me for alleged libel against pro-death Republicans?
Another Great Democrat Obama pal hits the news!
AP
Sunday, July 05, 2009
@6
I think you’re alone in considering Barry a “great Democrat”. And I’d love to see your proof that he’s an “Obama pal.” Unless you just assume that all black people in the world are friends with each other.
@3
It’s interesting to me that the banner ads for this post are about “Marijuana Rehab–End Addiction Now”. Are there really people looking to go into rehab for pot?
I’ve met hundreds of pot smokers in my life from college through now and I don’t know a single person who went into rehab for pot (I know people who went in for other drugs who also happened to smoke pot, but no one who went in for pot alone). And I know of several people who used pot to beat their alcoholism and get their lives back on track.
Sound Transit Gives Finger To Noise Complaints
Today’s fishwrapper has a story about Tukwila residents complaining about noise from light rail trains running near their homes:
“Sharon Nakata … can’t take the screeching, tearing, grating sound now grinding past the Tukwila neighborhood where she’s lived for more than 60 years.
“Trains go by about every five minutes, 20 hours a day most days, … and the noise sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard or a broken wheel on a grocery cart — but much louder — say some residents of the 90 homes located between East Marginal Way and Duwamish Park. …
“Sound Transit officials say … they’re not sure how they’ll fix it — or if they’ll fix it at all. … [S]pokesman Bruce Gray says it might be bothering residents because they aren’t used to it yet.”
(Quoted under fair use.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Oh, they’re going to fix it, all right. If they can’t make the noise go away, they’ll buy the homes and pay the residents’ moving expenses. They may not think so right now, but the residents’ lawyers will make them, just as the airport had to buy houses under flight paths.
While I have never understood wy DC residents returned Marion Barry to local government after he was caught in a sting smoking crack with a hooker and responded with “Bitch set me up,” local residents must feel that they have a strong and effective advocate in his person, and that his strengths make it reasonable to overlook his peccadilloes.
Hoo-weee, those must be some kind of strengths!
“DC residents” didn’t return him to power….only those in his particular ward did.
He represents the poorest ward and the one that is most out of power. They don’t give a shit that he did crack. They don’t give a shit that the powers that be busted him. Most of these voters have kids who smoked crack OR who know someone who smoked crack OR know someone set up by the police OR know lots of people busted by the police.
They kind of like it that he said fuck you and ran again.
Btw, he used to be mayor, and now he’s not, I’d assume the DC residents as a whole rejected him for mayor again and that has something to do with his being just a councilmember.
That’s a demotion, btw, if that’s any consolation to you.
11 GK
No skin off me. I haven’t lived in or near DC and I am sure if I did I would know what the situation is and why he was in. But I had wondered, and thanks for the information.
I looked in Wikipedia, and he was busted in 1990, did six months in the federal pen, and was elected mayor again in 1994. I think that was when I first started wondering about DC.
Deep Thought
Does Ward Churchill have freedom of speech?
Ward Churchill is a steamy pile of self-centered schmidt.
14 HJ
Ah, so colorful and vitriolic, so non-responsive, so typically Republican.
But I’m totally fillin’ you…you’re saying that the US has free speech, but NOT for those whom you regard as “a steamy pile of self-centered schmidt” or whose views offend you.
You’re a pillar of good old-fashioned American values, my man.
So you should be fired if you say anything that offends anyone, right? And yes, I mean you personally.
Sometimes I think to myself, “It’s so weird that Republicans keep accusing Democrats of irrational hate. It’s as though the voices in their heads drown out the words they actually say.”
@16 An awful lot of mirroring goes on with those guys.
You can tell a Republican that they are projecting, but you can’t mke them understand the simplest and most basic Freudian principles, can you now?
Because they are stupid, simple-minded, scientifically-illiterate idiots.
I’m talking to you, anyone-who-is-Republican.
I admire me. I am proud of me.
I am a hero.
That is the funniest comment today cummin from one who can be as vile as Pelletizer when he chooses.
19 T
I’ll bet you do. I’ll bet you are.
You’re pretty certainly not.
Although you do seem squarely in the Palin denialist segment of the Party. I think that’s the only remaining part of the Party.
@19 Yes, you’re stupid enough to not only admire yourself, but also to think you’re right.
@20 Interesting that you should call me “vile,” puddinghead, in that I merely mimic you guys.
You do realize you just condemned yourself and your fellow Republicans, don’t you?! Don’t you?
@12 DL hey thanks for correcting my incorrect assumption. That wiki article adds a fuller picture: Barry was in the civil rights movement and was first chair of SNCC. Barry left two doctoral programs due to overt discrimination, then moved to DC in 1965 and was a leader for home rule (that is, giving DC residents a right to have, and to vote for, a mayor and city council) which succeeded in 1974, when Barry was elected to an at large council position.
He was shot by radical Muslim terrorists, then was elected DC’s second mayor in 1978.
He won two more terms and then was busted for drugs. Then he “continued as mayor and even ran as an independent for an at-large seat on the council …Barry was sentenced to six months in prison shortly before the November election,[12] which he lost, despite doing well among the voters of Ward 8.[13]” After release he won back his council member slot for Ward 8 then ran again for mayor in 1994 and won. He had so many financial problems he was succeeded by Anthony A. Williams, the city’s former Chief Financial Officer. In 2004 “he was elected again in Ward 8 and got 95% in the general election.”
I think Ward 8 voters think this guy is a lifelong hero — they had no voting rights at all before 1964 then only for president … not even mayor or city council….he helped end their being under the direct rule of Congress’ “DC Affairs” committee (often run by ultra vile Southerners).
In their eyes he’s helped free them from political bondage, they don’t give a shit about much else, thank you very much white america.
Hey NutsTooTight, Puddy sees this doesn’t fit the planned agenda of the whitey house.
Oh wait? Are these guys and gals members of the IPCC “scientist” community?
re 25: Isn’t saying “planned agenda” redundant? Are you a simpleton or a Republican?
Look who’s being redundant now.
Nope fool@26, cuz that’s the words used by the EPA guy’s libtardo boss who rejected his report because he was an economist. Puddy is using it like he did. If you read the post you’d remember, butt being a libtardo moron (Puddy being redundant on purpose) you missed it. Kinda like NutsTooTight claiming he didn’t post from Always Talking But Worthless Points and Memoranda when Puddy displayed to everyone where it was, not from where he claimed it was. Kinda like checksays (ain’t that you too headless, another of your multitudinous names) who looked up the wrong Mike Rogers.
25 Pud
There you go again, proving that you STILL don’t know the difference between weather and climate.
Diddled Luvr, you mean how you couldn’t figger out M. Thomas Eisenstadt was a fake on the Palin Africa story? That was Too Damn Funny in the other thread.
No Diddled Luvr, Puddy checks lots of stuff for instance:
“The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.” – US Weather Bureau in 1922.
Butt as always, if the person isn’t a card carrying member of the IPCC NutsTooTight tastes his Cowpers Gland secretions. Get it?
Diddled Luvr, remember the HA libtardos using the NT Slimes blogs to present this…Then the uproar over the fact James Hansen Al Gorebasm’s high priest for global warming pulchritude working for NASA made up the data because he used September values for his presentation instead of October values? It was actually cooler than what Hansen presented!
Hansen announced in November 2008 was the hottest October on record. But Ol’ Froggy used the wrong data in his charts. Yet that same October 2008 China said Tibet had had its “worst snowstorm ever”. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for the dense HA libtardos) recorded 63 new snowfall records and 115 new low temperatures records for October 2008. NOAA ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years. Yet Hansen was glorified by the HA libtardo MSM.
Then when caught over these real facts GISS had to revise the data, admit their mistake and then fudge the reason. Puddy placed all this on HA Libtardos but being a progressive, you have 24 hr memory disease.
So Diddled Luvr, did GISS “weather” the storm of climate disagreements?
Great post up at infrastructurist about how tearing down freeways can improve both cities and traffic congestion.
http://www.infrastructurist.co.....ve-a-city/