HorsesAss.Org

The Republicans are sure waging a shit-load of wars against Americans.

Consider just last week. First the House Republicans:

…approved two resolutions that would amend the FY 2011 spending bill to block funding designated for Planned Parenthood and last year’s healthcare law. But House passage is largely symbolic, as the Senate did not pass either of the bills.

After that, House Republicans passed Rep. Ryan’s budget bill that privatizes Medicare, radically cuts the federal contribution to Medicaid, creates even more tax cuts for the rich and some corporations, and repeals health care reforms. The bill is DOA in the Senate, not to mention the Oval Office. And it should be DOA to most Americans.

One half the population ought to be outraged at the Republican’s War on Women. And add to that a lot non-women folk who like to fuck without making babies. Many of these non-women appreciate that Planned Parenthood provides help with that. In other words, a big chunk of young voting-age (or almost voting-age) Americans should be repulsed by these senseless political attacks on Planned Parenthood.

It is hard to imagine that senior citizens can be big fans of higher out-of-pocket insurance costs proposed in Ryan’s Medicare privatization bill to fund tax cuts for the rich. Some Seniors must find Rep. Dave Reichert’s War on AARP a little unsettling.

The poor, the disabled? I cannot believe they enjoyed being screwed by the Republicans.

All this comes on top of prior alienation. African Americans? Pretty much lost to the G.O.P. already. Hispanics? There was a small blip in increased support in 2010, but still down about 22% on average. And union members? Yeah…like they’re going to forgive and forget the War on Workers playing out in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Florida, Maine, Michigan, etc. The LGBT communities? Not really big supporters.

Republicans have lost the old, the young, the poor and disadvantaged, women, workers, and the nation’s largest minority groups. So who’s left?

Rich White Guys. That’s who.

Oh…yeah. Corporations, too.

But Republicans are not going to be voted out of office en masse. Even if a huge majority of Americans would be financially hurt by G.O.P. legislation, and even if they are morally opposed to the extremist agenda of the current crop of batshit crazy Republicans, Americans will still vote against their economic self-interest and moral principles. The Republicans will offer to rape them; they will assent.

Why? Some people are not paying attention. And other people are easily swayed. There is almost no harm that can be proposed or undertaken by Republicans that cannot be undone with enough money in the weeks leading up to an election.

Apparently Republicans have done this calculation, and they have concluded that the money infused by Rich White Guys and Wealthy Corporations over the next few elections will overcome the losses incurred by their all-out assault on most Americans.

Have they erred in their calculations?

I want to apologize for the truly excessive number of marijuana posts recently. This has been quite a week and month for drug law reform, and as I’ve found myself with lots more free time than I’m used to having, I’ve been ramping up my volunteer time with some local organizations. As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m leading the monthly Cannabis Defense Coalition public meetings (next one is Monday, May 2 at 7pm). I’ve also recently agreed to play a bigger role with Sensible Washington, helping them out with both media relations and tech stuff. Between that and the Gregoire veto threat, for the first time in about two months, I have no idea what the hell is happening in Libya right now (although I’m having lunch with my Libyan friend tomorrow).

I’m hoping things get back to normal here soon, but I also wanted to throw in my two cents on Carl’s post from yesterday. First and foremost, I’d like to see more writers here. I’ve privately recommended adding some new front-pagers. I’ve done that in part because I realize that I’m easily the biggest culprit in the lack of topic diversity. And as awesome as Darryl and Carl are, we’re all greatly limited in the amount of time we can devote to posting. The best way to overcome that is to have more people posting here. And I think we have a couple of people in our online community who would be amazing additions to the blog.

In the meantime, there are a number of stories that I’m hoping to catch up on this week. There’s the DOJ attack on online poker, the inexcusable treatment of Bradley Manning, the uprising in Syria, the tension between Israel and the new leadership in Egypt, and perhaps scariest of all, the fact that Donald Trump is both insane and leading the 2012 GOP field. What else has been happening while I’ve been knee-deep in pot news?

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa, who made it four in a row. It was Bodie’s Corner in Baltimore, one the many filming locations in that city for The Wire, but one of the few that hasn’t been torn down.

Here’s this week’s contest, a random location somewhere in Washington. Good luck!

Following up on Friday’s post on the medical marijuana bill, there are a few additional items I wanted to comment on:

– In this AP report from Gene Johnson, I completely agree with Governor Gregoire’s comment at the end:

“She’s making a mistake,” said Morgan Fox, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project. “The letter from the U.S. attorneys says that they can prosecute, not that they will prosecute. In Maine, in Rhode Island, in New Jersey, those states all went ahead and set up dispensary system. They haven’t received any threats or reaction from federal law enforcement.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, which has promoted the state’s legislation, echoed that.

Gregoire said it didn’t matter: “I don’t care what any other state does.”

This is unquestionably true, because if the Governor actually cared about what’s happened in other states, she would know that she’s about to make the same crucial mistake that allowed California’s system to become such a mess. Because it’s a large state with a lot of patients, California was the first state to have an underground dispensary system supplying patients and striving to do it in a legal way. At the time, the Bush Administration was absolutely clear about the issue. They would go after anyone trying to produce or sell medical marijuana. As a result, the state of California balked at establishing state-wide measures, and a bill was passed that allowed cities and counties to regulate it.

Many of those cities struggled to make regulations and they ended up with situations like Los Angeles – where they couldn’t establish regulations and ended up with over a thousand dispensaries throughout the city that they later tried to shut down – and like Morro Bay, where an honest dispensary operator who had the blessing of its community was railroaded by the feds. Even today, California’s system has problems and cities are still struggling to come up with appropriate regulations. One of the reasons that the Obama Administration changed their policy to take a more hands-off approach towards the state medical marijuana laws was so that this situation could be avoided and states could be free to regulate this better. They don’t like coming right out and saying that, so when they’re asked directly about their policy, they couch their response in language that explains that they “could” go after it without making it clear that Obama has specified that they won’t. And Governor Gregoire could easily figure this out for herself simply by looking at the other states that are regulating medical marijuana at the state level using state employees (like New Mexico, Colorado, New Jersey, and Rhode Island). But as she’s clearly stated, she “doesn’t care what any other state does”. And it will be us who pays for the Governor’s willful ignorance.

– Ironically, members of the Cannabis Defense Coalition also continue to support a veto of the bill. A big part of their opposition is from late amendments that strip away some protections from being searched and arrested and from greater emphasis on having people sign up in a patient registry, which is extremely unpopular among the organization’s members. No formal vote has been taken by the group, but I’d be surprised if even 25% of CDC members want this bill to pass. With that said, I want to explain my rationale for continuing to support the bill despite these amendments.

These amendments aren’t great (and I don’t like the registry), but they’re more illogical than dangerous. In the past, law enforcement have generally gone after patients for one of three reasons: 1. Because the patient is growing for himself or herself and law enforcement is convinced that they’re growing too much for it to be for one person. 2. Because law enforcement will see a patient as an soft target to roll over on a provider. 3. Because law enforcement simply doesn’t care about medical marijuana and sees all use as illegal.

Even though the late amendment from Rep. Christopher Hurst gives law enforcement greater ability to search and arrest people, the other parts of the bill cut off much of the rationale for law enforcement to go after patients for the first two reasons above. For instance, in the Snoqualmie case, a patient like Jeff Roetter (who died of an epileptic seizure as Snoqualmie police were squeezing him to testify against his provider) doesn’t have to be at risk of being used like a pawn in order to get to a bigger fish if he’s getting marijuana at state-licensed dispensary. And for people who live in areas where growing is still very risky (like the Olsons in Kitsap county), they no longer have to take that risk.

Even if this bill were to pass, though, I’d still expect a very small number of law enforcement officials in the state to go after patients for the third reason – purely out of a belief that medical marijuana is invalid and that patients are criminals. The initial bill had fines for law enforcement officials who did this, but those were stripped out right away. This is a problem that isn’t going to go away with any bill, at least not one that could pass the legislature. There are other potential problems with the bill (and they’re listed out here), but I still think the best approach is to pass this bill and fix those problems after we get a lay of the land rather than scrap this bill and try to start from scratch again.

– Finally, the Tacoma News Tribune’s latest comedic output is here. I could write a rather lengthy post pointing out all the factual inaccuracies and flaws in their logic, but I’ve done that before and don’t need to do that again.

I just want to cut to the heart of the matter, since the major difference between the “responsible medical marijuana bill” they touted on March 10 and the “Legislature’s plans to expand medical marijuana far beyond the voters’ original mandate” they referred to it as on April 17 is that dispensaries can now be for-profit. The only other major difference that I’m aware of is the supremacy of the state regulations, something that the city of Tacoma supports and which is vital to keep Washington’s system from looking more like California’s. So the question is, why is it such a problem for a marijuana dispensary to operate for profit? And why does this expand it beyond the voters’ original mandate? I realize that the Tacoma News Tribune probably isn’t interested in serious debate on this topic, but I know there are a lot of residents down there who are, and they’re not being served by a paper that hasn’t been willing to be serious on this topic for as long as I’ve been following it.

Malachi 2:2-3
If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name,” says the LORD Almighty, “I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not resolved to honor me.

“Because of you I will rebuke your descendants; I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it.

Discuss.

It’s been a couple months without Goldy, and I’m curious what you guys who’ve stuck around are interested in. I’m curious about what were your expectations of the blog when he left, and have those of us who post on the front page lived up to them? Do you want a stricter comment policy? More posts? Longer posts? Shorter posts? More writers? If so, who? I don’t pretend that we’ll necessarily be responsive to anything here (it’s not a full time gig for any of us, and I’m going to write about bikes, Lee is going to write about the drug war, and Darryl is going to write about airplanes no matter how much whining there is in the comments), but I am curious about what people come here expecting.

I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but my goal is to keep the place lively and worthwhile to come back to. I try to make sure that there are 2 posts every weekday. So if Darryl and Lee are on fire, I’ll put something in my pocket until the next day, but if nobody else is writing, I’ll try to post something. I try to make sure we’re somewhat regularly supplied with open threads and that the rest of the content I write about is at least things I find interesting. I don’t have the time to write that Goldy did but I think it’s important that politics not be incredibly dry, so I do try to write fun things and on topics I find interesting. I also often write on my commute and hit the Publish button pretty soon before I get to work, so I may not read the comments until lunch. So there’s only so much policing I can do, and as bus time becomes bike time in the spring and summer, there may be less writing from me.

I’ve been doing open threads with links, but could just as easily do videos, etc. There was a time when local political blogging was more of a community affair, and I’m hoping that using this platform to link to interesting writers (and I try to make at least one of the links in the open threads local) will help keep what community we have and perhaps expand it.

But again, I’m curious what you think should happen here. Where should HA go?

Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.

Cenk: G.O.P. panic over Obama’s budget speech.

This Ain’t No Foolin’ Around:

• Charlie Crist apologizes to David Byrne for copyright infringement.
• Sam Seder: Charlie and the kitten bowl.

Cenk: Meet potential G.O.P. candidate Michelle Bachmann.

Ann Telnaes: The G.O.P.’s anti-abortion, anti-EPA riders.

Thom: TEA Final.

Mark Fiore: Little Suzie Newsykins on how to negotiate like a pro.

Sam Seder: What was in the budget bill?

Delaware House of Representatives vote in favor of same-sex civil unions.

Thom: Proof the Chamber has plans to sabotage liberals.

The Republican War on Workers:

• Maddow: Union killing.
• Scott Walker admits stripping collective bargaining rights doesn’t save any state money (via DailyKos).
• Ed: Gov. Walker’s (R-WI) dirty railroad deal:

Young Turks: New poll spells a world of trouble for Republicans.

White House: West Wing Week.

Newsy: Kids have the right to heart boobies.

Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.

ONN Radio News: FBI Chief wishes he had Alien thing to investigate.

Republican War on Women:

• Maddow: The G.O.P. lies on Planned Parenthood.
• Cenk: Republican flip flop on Planned Parenthood.
• Ann Telnaes: Budget sacrifice—the D.C. abortion rider.
• On Colbert’s “not a factual statement” takedown.

Young Turks: Conservative rips GOP on abortion, homophobia & hypocrisy.

Red State Update: Shutdown…oh, nevermind.

Thom: Election mishap in Wisconsin.

TYT Now: Jobs killing G.O.P. budget cuts.

Best House Floor “Speech” EVER?

Tweety: Santorum defends his anti-gay comments .

Birfer Trump Card:

• Jon: Investigating in Hawaii (via TalkingPointsMemo).
• Obama’s sister responds to Trump.
• Obama responds.
• Young Turks: Republican Trump poll.
• Newsy: The Donald has a great relationship with The Blacks.
• Young Turks: Bill Cosby (one of “The Blacks”) hammers The Donald.
• The Donald’s very odd interview.
• The Donald discovers he is Christian, pro-life, against gay marriage & pro death penalty

Cenk: G.O.P. flipflops over the debt.

Nutcase Governor Chris Christie urges reporters to take a bat to a 76 year old (via Crooks and Liars).

Maddow: Standing up for Medicare.

ONN Week in Review: Congress votes to cut off step son’s funding.

Friskin’ the Kiddies:

• Young Turks: TSA patting down terror children.
• Thom: The terror-babies have arrived.

Ed: why the rich get richer and poor get poorer.

Kent, WA Woman sends fake anthrax letter to Obama.

Run, Mitt, run…away from you Health Care for Everyone Law.

Reuters: Biden sleeping? (Hey…it’s not like he was working the tower at Boeing Field.)

Newsy: FAUX connects GWU student suicide to Obama’s visit.

Premature Pawlenty:

• The accidental declaration.
• Tweety: Pawlenty’s false start.
• Stephen: Tim Pawlenty lost his virginity (via DailyKos).

Ed: The Wingnuts fire back at Obama.

Young Turks: Republicans BUSTED on 72 hour rule.

Former Gov. Alan Simpson (R-WY): GOP Is anti-gay, anti-women, and pushes moral values while diddling their secretary:

Cenk: Myth of the fiscal conservative busted.

Thom with The Good, the Bad, and the Very Very Ugly.

Newsy: Fall-out from sleeping controllers.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

– This piece has a cute premise (if not wholly original) that was very well executed. Mostly, I’m linking to it because, what a wonderful opening sentence: “Those sensitive, shrinking violets on the right took a day off from their racist dog whistles and comparing Barack Obama to murderous tyrants to whine about their hurt fee-fees.”

– These pictures are pretty amazing.

– I guess Rick Santorum is also a fan of Langston Hughes. If I ever run for president, I’m blatantly ripping off Freedom Train.

– Goldy is right, Rob McKenna is a dick.

There’s been some big news regarding the medical marijuana bill that appeared ready to be signed into law this week:

The top federal prosecutors in Washington sent a stern warning to Washington State that a medical-marijuana law passed by the legislature this week, which would license dispensaries and growers, could result in a wave of criminal charges against cannabis providers and even state employees. At the same time, in a mixed message, they telegraphed that the Obama Administration’s policy of tacitly permitting states with medical marijuana laws would proceed.

“The Washington legislative proposals will create a licensing scheme that permits large-scale marijuana cultivation and distributions,” wrote US Attorneys Jenny Durkan and Michael Ormsby, respectively representing the Western and Eastern districts of Washington State, in a letter sent today to Governor Chris Gregoire. “This would authorize conduct contrary to federal law and thus, would undermine the federal government’s efforts to regulate the possession, manufacturing, and trafficking of controlled substances. Accordingly, the Department could consider civil and criminal legal remedies regarding those who set up marijuana growing facilities and dispensaries as they will be doing so in violation of federal law. … In addition, state employees who conducted activities mandated by the Washington legislative proposals would not be immune from liability…” including “criminal prosecution.”

The letter was sent in response to an inquiry from Governor Gregoire to Attorney General Eric Holder (The federal prosecutors’ letter is here and Gregoire’s letter is here).

Dominic’s take is that Gregoire sent this letter and received the predictable reply because she intends to veto the bill. There’s a good chance he’s right. Eli Sanders speculates even further:

Someone who works in Democratic politics floated this theory my way last night, and it makes sense: Gregoire is looking at the medical marijuana bill with an eye toward future confirmation hearings—her possible future confirmation hearings.

Think about it. No one expects Gregoire to run for governor again. Everyone knows she’s been brought up as a possible Team Obama member in the past. And, obviously, having signed a medical pot bill that can be seen as flouting federal law would be a liability during any upcoming D.C. confirmation process.

So it’s worth asking: In Gregoire’s political calculus, is it the Washington State medical marijuana bill vs. her future in Washington, D.C.?

The answer here is probably no, and here’s why. Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico championed and signed a medical marijuana bill in 2007 that was groundbreaking in that it was the first to try to involve state agencies in the implementation. And this was at a time when the Bush Administration was still aggressively going after state medical marijuana laws. Here’s what Governor Richardson said:

“So what if it’s risky? It’s the right thing to do,” said Richardson, one of the candidates in the crowded 2008 field. “What we’re talking about is 160 people in deep pain. It only affects them.”

The legislation would create a program under which some patients – with a doctor’s recommendation – could use marijuana provided by the state health department. Lawmakers approved the bill Wednesday. The governor is expected to sign it in the next few weeks.

Despite this very bold flouting of federal law, Richardson was still chosen by Obama to be his Secretary of Commerce (although he later withdrew for reasons completely unrelated to the medical marijuana law). It may be hard for a lot of Democrats in this state to admit, but if Gregoire vetoes this bill because of an imagined conflict with federal law, it’s because she’s a shitty Governor. This bill is not much different from what Colorado already allows and what other states are already planning to implement.

UPDATE: The interesting irony here is that some of the most recent changes to the bill have been causing some medical marijuana advocates to call for the bill to be scrapped as well. The concerns are definitely over different areas though. Gregoire’s main concern is over the licensing of production and distribution, while the CDC is concerned with the extra power that a late amendment from Rep. Christopher Hurst has given to law enforcement to continue to search and arrest authorized patients. I’m not convinced the CDC’s concerns are bad enough to scrap the bill (I think some law enforcement folks will screw over some patients regardless of what the law says), but Gregoire’s concerns over the bill are far less grounded in reality.

Even sadder (or perhaps funnier, depending on your predisposition), folks like Steve Sarich – who’s been fighting this bill since the beginning of the session – would be the big winner if this bill gets scrapped. Sarich, as you’re probably familiar with, is the entrepreneur who holds clinics where a doctor comes in for a fee and authorizes patients (occasionally those patients are 19-year-olds who later try to rob Sarich in the middle of the night) and then supplies them with their “medicine”. This bill pretty clearly shuts down operations like that. That’s just one more of the problems that this bill was meant to solve that reappears if Gregoire takes out the veto pen.

UPDATE 2: While I was writing up this post, Dominic posted a follow-up that makes it clearer that Gregoire intends to veto the bill. Please call her office if you have time: 360-902-4111

Until today, I didn’t realize that this was part of the budget deal.

A rider in the budget bill to keep the federal government in operation has triggered fury among some wildlife groups because it would remove certain wolves from the endangered species list.

I’m not sure what Obama’s side got for it, and I didn’t want the government shut down, so I won’t comment on if it’s good as part of the budget package. But on its own, it stinks. It’s a bad idea, and a worse precedent.

Instead of letting the best science prevail, or forcing the states with dwindling wolf populations to come up with a reasonable recovery plan, it just bypassed the whole process. Even if you agree with the bill’s proponents about the merits of wolf recovery in the Northern Rockies, and you accept that legislation singling out one species is a good idea, it’s only reversible through legislation, so if populations do decline, this law will still be on the books. And surely in the future, with this on the books, we’ll have more states demanding stupid exceptions.

In any event, what right wing Republican nut job thought this would be a good idea?

“Right now, Montana’s wolf population is out of balance and this provision will get us back on the responsible path with state management,” Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, said in a written statement. He said he wrote the language together with Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho.

Awesome. John Tester is so far out there, he has Ron Fucking Paul making sense.

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, said the inclusion of such a rider “doesn’t make any sense.”

“And it really shows how out of touch so many people are here in Washington and how unlikely it is that we will get to the bottom of our problems,” Paul said in an interview this week with CNN.

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This is an open thread…

State legislators are trying to pass liquor privatization. I’ll leave it to other people to point out that liquor privatization initiatives failed last year, as well as the pros and cons of this particular measure.

There is one thing I do find interesting about last year’s results: how poorly it did in Eastern Washington. Maybe there’s some moralizing and concern for the budget that compelled the rest of the state (myself included) to oppose liquor privatization. But there’s something else unique to rural Washington.

You see, in many rural parts of the country, capitalism doesn’t work very well. There aren’t enough people in the market for various goods and services, so they don’t get there. In some cases, that’s just how they want things. I think most people who chose to live 50 miles from the nearest stop sign wouldn’t trade with me, no matter how much I’m glad to have a few bakeries within walking distance, and the ability to go out on my bike anywhere I want. Still, rural people want some things that the market can’t provide. So we as a society have set up things like rural electrification, farm subsidies and public radio.

Surely, there are places in rural Washington where there would be less hard alcohol sold if we privatize the system. For a lot of people the selection and hours may not be all they want, but they know they would get less if the state stores went away.

Starting soon…

Here is the text. Discuss.

– Somehow, I doubt very much that my father will ever say, “Boy do you have smart commenters.”

– I’m not quite as pessimistic as Oliver about what would happen if there isn’t an extension of the debt ceiling but I imagine some terrible things.

– In part, I think this is the best strategy to deal with the debt ceiling. (h/t)

– Bikes for Books at the Lake City Library. Sounds like a great thing for 4th and 5th graders.

Please join us tonight for an evening of electoral politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00 pm, but feel free to join some of us for an earlier dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 222 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.