I’m on the road again. Hosting our annual community New York Theatre trip. This time, I have a record-breaking 95 people on this trip, seeing 6 shows as a group, and I’ll be conducting walking tours of the city as usual.
Needless to say, this is likely to keep me pretty busy, and I may not have time for much blogging, but be sure to check out the excellent discussions and links in the comments, and I’ll add a new Open Thread every now and then.
We’ll be seeing “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” with David Hyde Pierce and Sigourney Weaver, “Matilda” – the musical based on the Roald Dahl book, the revival of the musical “Pippin,” a new play directed by David Cromer at Lincoln Center: “Nikolai and the Others,” “Kinky Boots” – the musical with music by Cindy Lauper and Harvey Fierstein, and “The Assembled Parties” with Judith Light and Jessica Hecht. I’m’ also going to see “Annie” so I can say Hi to one of our former students, Jane Lynch.
Should be a great week, and I do plan on taking advantage of the restaurants as usual.
The Walmartian’s Smell the Money…
Barron’s Cover SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 2013
Copyright ©2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Should Pot Be Legal?
By Thomas G. Donlan
Legalizing marijuana will hurt drug lords, help cash-strapped states, and ease burdens on police and prisons. Yet D.C. dithers.
Sounds like a good time. Have fun and safe travels.
Sounds like a blast. Have a great time!
We’ll keep the couch warm, and the munchies stocked.
hey Pete… if you could bring either Sigourney or Cindi back I’d be forever in your debt. And both would be super! But if just one, either would make my day… and tell Jane she otter stop by and sign your blog.
Awesome, Theater packed trip. Don’t get into any trouble. Have fun. Your couch will be pretty much like it always is when you get back…a mess. If you run into C.J., Give him a few bucks, and a hug, and I’ll reimburse for both.
AlterNet. http://www.alternet.org/crazy-unfair-ways-people-are-being-screwed-using-legal-pot
the sore-loser prohibs are “mining the harbor” …a perfect metaphor for the mean vindictiveness of these people… …have they no sense of decency…?
Oh!
Oh!
Nnnyutt!
OMG
:Claps:
Oh!
:jumps:
Oh!
:Both:
Ahem. sry
Thankfully your theater group is unlikely to be subjected to stop-and-frisk…
Enjoy the trip, and watch out for the lions at the library!
A new black market in tobacco products is emerging within the American Gulag system, and is displacing other drugs as the contraband du jour, thanks to the economics of prohibition:
If you can’t even keep big tobacco out of the prisons, how are you going to keep it out of the hands of the children? Maybe with legalization and regulation?
GW Pharma CEO Justin Gover:
Well Allan that is depressing. GW gloating about their profits like spoiled narcissists while we put up with the threat of swat pig raids and asset grabs.
I thought it pretty much a stand alone statement… I’d bet the IRS lets GW pay their taxes… all bow to the great, good and benevolent dog Pharma
Here is a thought. with GW sativex up for approval, well it would be impossible without a change in schedule. I’d say that the powers that be are getting squeezed from all sides. Then Bloomberg pops out from one of the cracks and makes an obvious ass out of himself.
I say we keep removing bricks from that wall. It doesn’t look too solid anymore.
…and the market yawns.
.
Ummm, didn’t you guys know that publicly traded corporations are required by the SEC and all of the major exchanges to “gloat about their profits like spoiled narcissists” on a quarterly basis?
It isn’t likely that GWPH owes any income tax to the United States since they don’t yet have any FDA approved products to sell in the US.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand why the posters here have such a hard on for GWPH. It’s approaching 3 years since I first heard that the FDA and the DEA had allegedly fast tracked for re-scheduling of organic dronabinol for the benefit of GWPH and Sativex . I think I must have a different definition of the phrase “fast tracked” than the rest of the regulars here.
Colombia’s controversial cure for coke addicts: Give them marijuana
Hemp History Week Begins! June 3-9, 2013
ahhh… here’s one from the because-we’re-pricks file:
Prosecutors fight sentences of pot providers
Which goes hand-in-hand with this rare bit of insight on the part of the Medford (OR) Mail Tribune:
Above and beyond the call
eh, we all that followed the case as it unfolded knew that something was amiss and we suspected it was all timed to send us a message. Somehow the editors at the Mail Trib figgered it out too:
It’s a rare thing for me to say but props to the MT for getting this one right.
What all of this continues to illustrate so vividly to me, is that in ALL of the cases I know of people being busted for pot, especially growing, is that had a couple of police officers knocked on these people’s doors and shown the warrant they would have been let in. But flash-bang grenades, gangs of SWAT, spit hoods and armored personnel carriers is so out of line it boggles my mind. Big bad armored men in black shooting little boys’ little dogs…
It’s not just wrong, it is a disease, this Prohibition thing. It scars our social landscape, mocks the real world change we have undergone in the last 1/2 century in peoples’ hearts and minds over race.
Prohibition makes up, down, and wrong, right. Power is Prohibition’s essential fruit, not justice, not science or even common f’ing sense… but the accruement of power is justification enough, for them of any ‘collateral’ damage. Statistical manipulations substitute for answering direct challenges about institutional policy failures and organizational head bureaucrats operate on a concerted schedule guaranteed to prevent confrontation or direct questioning.
That the obvious inherent meanness of certain LE agencies about pot and pot heads in their jurisdictions getting highlighted is a good thing.
dog, I hate the drug war…
Allan, the first thing I thought of when I read your post was that beast arrested in Cleveland for the caged women. I watched the arrest video and it looks like the police knocked, did not have battle gear on, no grenades etc. I guess there are no federal grants for arresting lunatics.
NY Assemblyman Steve Katz reverses medicinal marijuana position
http://tinyurl.com/mwkacck
How heartwarming!
New Study Shows Cannabinoids Improve Efficiency Of Mitochondria And Remove Damaged Brain Cells ~
http://tinyurl.com/kxnrk9t
Eat your heart out Bloomberg!
He knows, or should know.
Bloomberg Is One Of the Greatest Hoaxes Of All Time
Using Pot To Save Brains!
Marijuana May Live Up To Be The Elixir of Life
Source: Earthtimes.org October 15, 2005
A study by University of Saskatchewan researchers suggests beneficial aspects of smoking marijuana at least among rats, who appear to have sprouted new brain cells and besides benefiting from reduced depression and anxiety. The study’s results appearing in the ‘Journal of Clinical Investigation’ have actually given a fillip to the traditional and mythological view that associates the addictive weed in some ways with immortality.
Study Turns Pot Wisdom on Head
Source: Globe and Mail October 14, 2005
Most “drugs of abuse” such as alcohol, heroin, cocaine and nicotine suppress growth of new brain cells. However, researchers found that cannabinoids promoted generation of new neurons in rats’ hippocampuses.
Scientists Re-Re-Re-Discover
Cannabis Stops Metastasis In Aggressive Cancers!
Cannabis Shrinks Tumors: Government Knew in 74
The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor research…
Gen.3 [22] And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.
It would be nice if they used real cannabis instead of
HU210 as that might be more convincing to skeptics. Of course any significant event or even minor events create new neurological pathways in our mind as that’s what brains do. I cut a dead branch from one of my apple trees today and even menial task like this creates a memory of how it was done.
So vaping a bowl of powerful kush and hiking a beautiful and unfamiliar stretch of shoreline on a remote lake would create powerful memories and a few million new brain cells would be necessary for that.
Tripper, a few million new Dendrites and synaptic connections are needed for that (also helped along by cannabis, I’d add), not new neurons. Neurogenesis is far far slower than that. It’s so slow, that until only about ten or twenty years ago, the brain was thought to make no new neurons at all. even at it’s fastest, neurogenesis in the brain is slower than growth in any other tissue. But under the proper circumstances, your brain can bang out thousands of interconnections an hour. The manufacture of dendrites and synaptic interconnections can physically exhaust you. Think of how tired you get after reading a long research study, or after studying.
War on drugs ‘driving hepatitis C pandemic’
Erowid Center â€@erowid 3h
The global war on drugs is fuelling a hepatitis C pandemic causing millions of needless infections
Making Sure Drugs Kill
“You Can’t Stop AIDS Ending the Drug War”
“At DEA, our mission is to fight drug trafficking in order to make drug abuse the most expensive, unpleasant, risky, and disreputable form of recreation a person could have.”
– Donnie Marshall, Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
It could have only happened in Texas, that is, IF it really happened…I couldn’t find the source story. But it is one of the most tragic and cruel of all the drug war victim’s stories:
http://tribuneherald.net/2013/05/15/mans-life-saved-by-glass-pipe-dies-in-custody-after-arrest-for-paraphernalia/
It is a hoax. The “Tribune Herald” is a poor mans Onion.
Thanks, Gonzo….I’m back and forth between a ten month old and my compu-thingie, and I don’t have time to chase a lot of links…
The fastest man alive stays a step ahead of pot controversy
The fastest men to ever don sneakers or a Speedo, both enjoying marijuana in the prime of their record-breaking athletic careers – how are parents supposed to scare the shit out of their kids now?
Ultimate Fighting Championship
raises allowable marijuana testing threshold for fighters
Michael Phelps, Hypocrisy, & American Drug Policy
NFL’s Buzzkill
American High Society