I’ve got a group of extremely talented friends (and former students) who have been involved in a massive film/real life/social media project called “I Made America.” Check out their entire video series – it’s wonderful. The idea is that six founding fathers are kidnapped and brought back through time to the present to be used for nefarious political purposes. They rebel and go off on their own, adapting to modern society (Jefferson becomes a singer-songwriter). Not only are they making a video series, but they show up in public in character at various events (at Bulls games, parties, ice skating, opening bank accounts, etc.). I highly suggest you follow them and watch some or all of their videos (both the actual series, and the extra ones).
Here, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson discuss 420 while listening to Newt Gingrich.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4j2TPZGpBC0
Very funny – nice work!
Great skit! Nice to get a humorous slant on an otherwise negative situation. WWJD…. What would Jefferson Do? Now I know.
Adding the grinch is a nice punch considering his background as a 70’s history professor.
I once asked a girl wearing a WWJD bracelet if it meant “What Would Jefferson Do?” She was not amused. Good times.
Here’s my (hopefully humorous) humble contribution. Corrections and improvements are most welcome:
We shall smoke to the end, we shall smoke in our homes, we shall smoke on the seas and oceans, we shall smoke with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend God’s gift, whatever the cost may be, we shall smoke on the beaches, we shall smoke on collage grounds, we shall smoke in the fields and in the streets, we shall smoke in the hills; we shall never surrender our stash, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, we were to remain subjugated and persecuted by these evil fascist corporations, then our enlightened friends beyond the seas would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the Old World, with all its re-discovered hemp based power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the New. – Winstoned Hemphill
Thanks to DC for ‘Hemphill’
Oops, sorry; excellent videos Pete, thanks!
add “If you will build more prisons,,we will come. LOL
I would bet that, if our Founding Fathers were somehow transported through time to the present day, they would start another revolutionary war – with one slight difference.
This time against the tyrants in America’s government, not England.
Great stuff. They actually looked like they were ready to barf when Newt vocalized his utter ignorance of the reality of the Founding Fathers.
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Tonight I’m waxing philosophical over what people were thinking the day before the Kent State massacre in 1970. I’ve got no recollection of that day but I was only 9 years old at the time. Did they call the National Guard in that day, or did the soldiers get their orders with some advance notice? Could it have been predicted? Could it have been prevented? Is an event like that possible in this day and age in a State like Colorado?
I’m on pins and needles waiting for the District Court’s decision, which should have been entered by now goddammit.
http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_20432828/denver-attorney-requests-injunction-stop-cu-boulder-from?source=most_viewed
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Oh well, the 1st Amendment lost in District Court. Not altogether remarkable though. The lower the Judge on the Judicial pecking order the higher the probability that he’ll issue unconstitutional findings.
I hope the plaintiffs will appeal this ruling.
Think that’ll stop them?
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Stopping who from doing what? Stop CU from repeating this behavior next year? Nothing is stop them from doing it today. In my experience civil rights controversies over 1st Amendment issues are almost [if not] always ruled in favor of free speech, freedom to peaceably assemble, religionism and petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. The latter two not so much but they still qualify for super majority status. azis
Please remember that I believe that the SCOTUS ruling in Citizens United v FEC was the correct decision based on a constructionist reading of the Constitution. I hate the decision but hating the decision doesn’t go hand in hand with me thinking it the wrong decision.
I must say this conversation was remarkably timed because it appears that Rep. Jim McGovern (D.-Mass.) has just started the process required to get an Amendment to the Constitution adopted. It’s called The People’s Rights Amendment and would allow the government to pass laws limiting speech.
http://peoplesamendment.org/
I’m inclined to reject expansion of power for the government but this is the only right way to accomplish the goal of shutting down organizations like Citizen’s United and NORML. Just a reminder that freedom is a two way street. You can’t shut down the speech of those with whom you disagree without shutting down those which sit on your side of the table. Well at least without modifying the 14th Amendment you can’t.
I wonder at citizens united, it requires the wrongly interpreted Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Rail decision to remain operative. That was a clerical error in the first instance, and subsequent law has relied on this misreading as precedent.
http://www.ratical.org/corporations/SCvSPR1886.html
As for the “Citizen’s rights amendment”, that has a pretty substantial uphill climb, doncha think?
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…as does any proposed Constitutional Amendment. That was part of the plan.
You just don’t grasp that the 1st Amendment isn’t qualified to persons only, do you? Apparently neither do the writers of the proposed Amendment. After further reflection I doubt that the proposed Amendment will touch the decision in Citizens United v FEC. Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad 118 US 394 (1886) is an irrelevant red herring in this discussion. It’s not used as precedent in the Citizens United decision and wasn’t even a 1st Amendment controversy.
The distinction is corporate PERSONHOOD in civil litigation, as in limiting liability of flesh and blood persons, vs. extension of the full range of Civil RIGHTS. Something never envisioned by the framers, I might add. To allow these corporations to accept liability helps shield flesh and blood persons, it wasn’t to establish the Corporattions WERE flesh and blood persons.
I was a sophomore at Ohio State University when Kent State went down. Our school was in the thralls of massive anti-war protests (with most of the protesters pretty clueless), and closed after a few days of National Guard “protection.” It was strange times, indeed.
Almost twenty years later my company was building the cellular phone network in Athens, Ohio, and taking a bunch of heat from citizens, demanding we not build towers in their “backyard.” I was hung in effigy (literally), vilified in several op-eds and hosted two town hall meetings. (We prevailed.) But our most vocal and nasty opponent was an Athens councilman in a wheelchair – one of the surviving students shot at Kent State.
After the dust settled, I approached the man, hoping to reconcile through our shared history. He told me to go fuck myself. Bet he has an iPhone today…
Bitterness is a horrible fate, Daniel. It makes me doubly sad to know that was the fate of one of those so horribly wounded students.
So, did they have cupcakes?
(REASON) The first thing you should know about President Barack Obama’s 2012 Drug Control Strategy report is that it begins and ends with the declaration that the war on drugs is working and will continue apace.
Obama administration policies have “yielded significant results,†according to the President’s introductory letter, which concludes by saying, “While difficult budget decisions must be made at all levels of government, we must ensure continued support for policies and programs that reduce drug use and its enormous costs to American society.â€
The report ends with a familiar refrain: “Legalization of drugs will not be considered in this approach. Making drugs more available and more accessible will not reduce drug use and its adverse consequences for public health and safety. We will continue to educate young
people and all Americans about the science on the harmful health effects of marijuana use.â€
The pages in between those two statements contain a broad outline for increased drug enforcement, mandatory rehabilitation programs for people who don’t need or want them, and the return of melodramatic Reefer Madness-style agitprop aimed at teenagers.
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just watched the documentary Independent Interventions about the way corporate media and the military distorted public perceptions about the iraq war. the media focus always avoided the cost in human terms of waging war by focusing on an entertainment model like a sports event. the reality of dropping bombs on civilians, maimed children for example never got shown and the american public was deliberately kept in ignorance.
i kept finding myself thinking this is exactly the same model used by the corporate media and drug warriors to maintain support and to keep the public ignorant of the reality of drug war victims (the colateral damage of swat raids, the millions who have rotted in jail, the young people whose lives are permanently damaged by the stigma of a felony conviction, those who have lost their children and homes the list could go on and on). the deliberately created public ignorance is a major weapon in the arsenal of the drug war. instead the media feeds us an entertainment diet of drug war porn focussing on sanitised raids, equipment, stock pictures of drugs seized and guns captured from the bad guys etc. like iraq the real victims never get shown.
This is what I call The Great Disconnect; the glowing, strident ivory tower rhetoric does not match the blood and bone on the pavement that rhetoric is used to justify. And since the public’s face is rarely rubbed in that gore, and only hears the rhetoric of people like smooth-talkin’ ol’ Kev, thanks to a complicit, compliant, supine, panting-with-tongue-lolling Pomeranian lap-dog of a Lamestream Media, there is no change in policy…so the DrugWar meal ticket is safe.
But, with the rise of the Internet, the LSM cannot act as the ‘gatekeepers of reality’ anymore. Especially when with a click of a mouse you can send raw video of DrugWarriors violating people’s rights to YouTube. The public is having that facial encounter with the messy aspects of the DrugWar that just don’t jibe with the rhetoric. And they don’t like what they’re seeing. And having an economy on the skids helps, if only to remind the taxpayers of the waste that Uncle Sam still habitually, almost subconsciously engages in…like the DrugWar.
And since that doesn’t match what the LSM is selling, people are starting to wise up to what Uncle’s been doing, as in a process requiring ‘wool’ and ‘eyes’. And when you add the fact that foreign leaders are finally getting ‘uppity’ when it comes to that same Disconnect (when they are the ones with the most blood on the pavement), it’s kinda hard to miss.
The DrugWarriors have reached Lincoln’s Limit; they have ‘fooled (nearly) all of the people all of the time’ for a long time, but can no longer. The truth always hurts someone. The DrugWarriors have a long-overdue date with the ‘hurt locker’ for their lies.
Hempy 4/20 everyone!
“Dear ……: Thanks! Love it. I’ll take hateful insults from drug-pushers as a compliment and honor any day of the week. These guys are bullies and fanatics, and this is their way of of intimidating anyone who disputes the virtues of a perpetually stoned America. A fake word in the Urban Dictionary. Oooooh.”
Jack
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jackmarshallize
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Remarkably, I’m sure that’s actually how he feels. People like Jack have to have defective brains to think up their bullshit in the first place and Jack has one of the most defective brains in the defective brain club.
“I’d bump into cleverer people at a lodge meeting of the Guild of Village Idiots.“
Bullies? Really? I guess if facts and reason can be called blunt objects… Jack got pummeled but a verbal bludgeoning is a far cry from bullying. Jack’s just wrestling w/ his conscience because his teen son agrees with us.
I mean really. Bullies shoot Welsh Corgies and Black Labradors, little kids, mothers, vets, grandmothers, grandfathers… and “oops” just doesn’t cut it anymore.
And an ethicist my ass. Ethicyst more like it. Ethics is basic, nothing difficult about understanding it. Drug policy reformers don’t shoot mothers with their babies out of the sky. DPRers don’t spray foreign farmers w/ toxic herbicides.
There is nothing “ethical” about supporting a policy w/ a racial corruption that dwarfs So Africa’s dread Aparheid.
Jack is a faux intellectual, arrogant (unjustifiably so), non-player and deserves at mimimum the oh-so-very-modest mocking of his own entry in the urban dictionary.
Frankly, I wish he didn’t even have that. To a man like him, it’s an ego boost. Evidence that he means something and his words have relevancy. A mud colored badge of honor.
Some people should just drown in their own obscurity wailing against the changing tides. Their warped words masked in white noise.
allan, you’re forgetting that those people use an alternative dictionary which define many words more to their liking.
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Hempy hempy joy joy!
I think we need to get the calendar scheduling people to put a little more thought into their job. It seems that today is also Marijuana Prevention Day and that’s just ludicrous.
I agree. Ironic too that this is Child Abuse Awareness month also. Think of the children.
and some 4/20 worthy news:
Jury Statute Not Violated by Protester, Judge Rules
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Willie Nelson has a new gospel music song called Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die.
The “official” site where he and Snoop Dogg are in the “official” video, but there’s a traffic jam today:
http://rollmeup.willienelson.com/
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“The Weed Blog” has an article today called Sign A Marijuana Reform Petition On 4/20 with convenient links to all to make it easier. That list of States which still have active petitions circulating is simply stunning. Did we miss any? Any as in any that offer ballot initiatives. Colorado isn’t on the list because A-64 is already certified. OK I see that South Dakota and D.C aren’t on the list.
23 States as in almost 1/2 of the goddamn Country. That’s worthy of celebration. I think I’ll brew some coffee and enjoy some cannabis.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1r_QIePM3Y
I LOVE that tune!
On this holiday, while we celebrate, let’s pause for a moment at sunset to remember all those whose 4/20 was spent as a prisoner of the drug war:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pardZJyJaXg
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Who the heck do these guys think they are, Rosa Parks?
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The winner of the most hypocritical 4/20 action by a prohibitionist is Colorado University-Boulder whose authorities use extra stinky fish fertilizer to keep the potheads from having their rally because they think pot is stinky. Mm-mmm-mmm, I love the smell of fish heads in the morning.
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The winner of the most arcane explanation for how the number 420 got attached to cannabis in a Main Stream Media story about 4/20 is CNN.
Colorado public pot-smoking event snuffed out
“Another theory holds that 420 is a nod to Bob Dylan and his 1966 song “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” which contains the lyric, “Everybody must get stoned.” Multiply 12 by 35 and you get 420.”
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The winner of the most absurd assertion in a Main Stream Media story about 4/20 is Fox News. I think the writer might have been channeling Yogi Berra.
Others trace it to a group of California teenagers who would meet at 4:20 p.m. to search for weed (a theory as elusive as the outdoor cannabis crop they were seeking). Yet the code stuck for obvious reasons: Authorities and nosy parents didn’t know what it meant.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/20/marijuana-rally-in-trouble-at-colorado-university-313328973/?test=latestnews#ixzz1sdaQO2vq
Shhh, it’s a secret.
That is funny as hell. They don’t like the smell of pot, so they spray fish fertilizer. The campus newspaper made a huge deal out of two professors who said they couldn’t stand the smell of the POT! Now which do YOU think will get more smell complaints?
After using it in a greenhouse for a few months it don’t smell so bad,,especially the results.
Look at yer bottle, Clay, I’ll bet you five dollars right now it says “deoderized” or “de-scented”.
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I really am hoping those 3 guys that got themselves arrested did it as part of a plan to establish standing in front of the Courts. Their actions appear to be consistent with that objective. Remember how I recently talked about the DC Metro NORML action where we tried to get the cops to arrest one of us? It’s really hard to establish standing without having the gov’t put the petitioner in jeopardy.
“Even “organic” fish emulsion fertilizers may be problematic. They may contain mercury. When Wisconsin tested 29 fertilizers, only two failed interim safety standards. One of them was a fish emulsion fertilizer that exceeded the limit for mercury.”
“Some fish fertilizers contain heavy metals like mercury, which are found in fish living at the top of food chains. Concentrating solutions when making emulsions also concentrates these toxins.”
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=mercury+in+fish+fertilizer
4/20 has been officially certified as a global holiday by the Duncan20903 official certification committee.
Now that’s a pretty beach.
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DWR’s tokin’ conservative said, “The winner of the most hypocritical 4/20 action by a prohibitionist is Colorado University-Boulder whose authorities use extra stinky fish fertilizer to keep the potheads from having their rally because they think pot is stinky. Mm-mmm-mmm, I love the smell of fish heads in the morning.”
I was mistaken that the tactic mentioned above was “the most hypocritical 4/20 action by a prohibitionist.” I was correct that the award should go to C.U.-Boulder. However the action that makes the above event seem trivial. Aside from the smell there were complaints from University authorities about $50,000 in ancillary cost for crowd control, cleanup after, et cetera. In order to distract students from smoking pot on campus on 4/20 they hired someone named Wyclef Jean and spent $150,000 on a concert meant to help combat 4/20.
Let’s not forget to mention that the concert was held at Coors Events Center which is located on the campus of CU-Boulder. Aren’t there tons of college students that have not reached the age of 21? There can’t be when we consider the prohibitionists’ deep seated respect for the well being of children so it’s hardly likely that they promote the use of drinking alcohol by minors.
Wyclef Jean is most certainly one of us.
I’d like to dedicate this Warren Zevon cover of “Poor, poor pitiful me” to the authorities at CU-Boulder.
Poor C.U. Boulder…..just discovering now what we’ve been complaining about here for years. Trying to get potheads to do something you want them to do is like herding cats. Note to C.U. Boulder: trying to get potheads to agree on music is a lot easier than getting them to agree on something like an initiative…if that is evidence of the best you can do, you have a real problem.
Don’t know bout now, but back when I was sprout E2 in the USAF I went to Lowry AFB in Denver for school twice in the early ’70s (no, not because I didn’t get it the first time…) and you could consume 3.2 beer at 18. The taverns next to the base did real well selling that diluted swill Coors calls beer to 18-20 year old GIs.
Not that it’s relevant (nope, just allan telling another druggie anecdote…) but I saw a midnight showing of The Exorcist down near Larimer Square while on lsd. It was spooky walking back to the apt at 2 a.m. w/ snow on the ground, every step crunching in the eery dark and quiet…
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Just a heads up because the existence of the police tactic used in the article linked below had completely slipped my mind:
TIFFIN, Iowa – A drug decoy checkpoint conducted by the Iowa City Police Department caught several travelers along Interstate 80 on Friday, April 20,2012.
/snip/
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Remember, the police don’t give fair warning if they’re setting up an enforcement roadblock. That would rather defeat the purpose, now wouldn’t it? If you see a sign that says “drug checkpoint ahead” or similar don’t get off at the convenient exit or rest stop 1/4 of a mile past that sign if you’re not ready to have a “drug” dog sniff your vehicle.
I must say though if I were aware of this as a regular habit of a local police force I’d be sorely tempted to have some good, clean fun while keeping them occupied searching rental cars rigged to make their dogs signal.
Yeah, your best bet is to roll right up and say “good to see you officers out here! Makes me feel safe!” And of COURSE the next exit will have all the cops. Yep, those two guys at the “checkpoint”, they’re just there to smile and wave.
That is, the next exit after the “Checkpoint Ahead”…
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Well I could see myself falling for it because this particular stupid cop trick had somehow been lost from my mind. Perhaps that’s because it isn’t a local occurrence. It seems to be a favorite of the Iowa jack boots. Perhaps because the media isn’t detailing the trick anymore. I didn’t see a single article about that “checkpoint” that used more than the word “decoy” to identify it as a police ruse rather than an actual check point. Several articles didn’t even go that far. As a matter of fact the first article which I happened to click (linked in post above) had the headline “Drug Checkpoint Nets 11 Arrests at I-80 Rest Stop.” That shocked me because police aren’t supposed to be able to walk their dogs around in parking lots and rest areas on a “fishing expedition.” That’s the true purpose of the sign. Yes it makes people that have contraband pull in to try to avoid the checkpoint but they could probably do as well without the sign, just arresting people with contraband that had to take a leak or needed a nap. The sign gives them ‘articulable suspicion’ (or whatever the legalese term is) even though it still hassles totally uninvolved motorists and catches people with minimal amounts who don’t worry about driving through checkpoints, but need those rest area facilities. People like me for example. Remember, you can always find a handy berm a little further up the road on which to leak if truly needed.
Is Rev Dr. Robertson a bully too?
dont know but jackmarshall certainly is. projection?
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Jack might qualify as a wannabe bully but real bullies don’t find their intended victims pointing and laughing at them and slapping each other on the back at such a good joke. Can you dispute that Jack Marshall is a laughable object of derision?
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It seems that the police are attempting to give up using their sniffer dogs. Pilot project in Chesapeake, VA. Why waste all that dog food when the cop can just as honestly say that he smelled it with his own nose? (Poll at article; people reading this might want to participate)