Using implied pot humor to court votes with one hand while locking people up on the other hand. But then again, the law doesn’t apply to everyone.
- DrugWarRant.com, the longest running single-issue blog devoted to drug policy
Join us on Pete's couch.
Send comments, tips,
and suggestions to: Recent Comments
on Catholic bishops fear marijuana and freethinking: “An ancient Egyptian mug was found by a USF professor to have once contained hallucinogens: 15-Nov-2024–A University of South Florida…” Nov 17, 20:11
on Catholic bishops fear marijuana and freethinking: “Let us not forget that Joe Biden, the Landrieu Family, the late Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Connick, Sr.*, Leon…” Nov 17, 18:01
on Marijuana potencies and transitioning to Schedule III: ““smoke rope instead of dope,” Is this a hemp revival?” Nov 15, 05:13
on Catholic bishops fear marijuana and freethinking: ““Falsehoods are dangerous. People who believe absurdities can go on to commit atrocities. Catholicism and other sects and cults that…” Nov 15, 05:00
on Marijuana potencies and transitioning to Schedule III: “https://www.cornbreadhemp.com/pages/how-are-thc-gummies-legal sire behoove a go-to owing me, offering a within easy reach, tasty manner to charge out of CBD’s benefits.…” Nov 13, 13:44
on Marijuana potencies and transitioning to Schedule III: “Worrisome same day cannabis delivery has been somewhat the journey. As someone fervent on spontaneous remedies, delving into the in…” Nov 11, 14:58
Desperate stuff…he knows he’s lost that demographic which turned out in droves to vote for him in ’08. As the ad suggests, they’ll stay sitting on the couch on November 6th. He doesn’t need the Republicans to create a “fictional me”
http://tinyurl.com/8aobxpb
he’s outdone them with Kool Barack
The thing is, has he lost them to a galvanized counter response and support for alternative candidates or lost them to apathy and not voting (again) this time around? I suspect it’s the latter.
Is Obama really counting on voters that smoke pot to vote for him to return him to the Presidency?
That really is humorous.
The President proposes the congress disposes. I suggest turning out to support pro-reform candidates for local office, state and federal.
.
.
Wow, I thought that everyone that frequents this blog would know that the President has the authority under the CSA to re-schedule or even delete substances from the naughty lists. Even if he didn’t want to go that far he certainly has the power to prioritize Justice Department resources. He might be able to get away with it if prosecutors and special agents twiddling their thumbs were the result. But we’ve got plenty of criminals for them to arrest and prosecute without bothering even a single Cannabinoidian.
The only reason Bernie Madoff got busted was because his scheme collapsed under its own weight. But his financial shenanigans had been reported to the Feds more than 1/2 a decade before that happened. Instead of investigating Mr. Madoff the Justice Department was chasing after potheads. How many real criminals were allowed to get away with it because the Justice Department was spending its finite resources chasing after us? Mr. Madoff wasn’t special except for the size and scope of his scam.
I recommend voting for pro reform local candidates, too. But as has been rehashed here endlessly, the President could end the drug war with a stroke of his pen, no congress needed.
Wouldn’t Gil K. be required to try & stop him? (as in)
http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/drug-czar-required/
Seriously, I’ve read through that whole section of the 1988 version (and the 1998 re-authorization and a couple others) and it says (I’m paraphrasing cause I’, not gonna hunt for the exact wording right now) that the Drug Czar is the spokesperson for the President on all such matters…
So he would be tasked to “stop the president” from doing, say, etc. = presumably any &/or everything he might try to do like rescheduling cannabis.
Yes, I know AG Eric Holder was semi-recently quoted as saying the President could simply reschedule it if he wanted to – but I think that was a big fat lie! AG Holder seems to be out of the loop on a few things lately and even if he wasn’t He would totally LIE about it (like Ollie North did for Reagan in the iran-contra thing) and Holder was also a Lawyer/(and maybe Lobbyist?) for (representing) Purdue (Pharma) not that long ago = IIRC.
B. The Drug Czar’s office was created by executive order. As was the DEA likewise created completely out of Presidential ink. Nixon’s pen wrote those two orders, but Nixon’s dead, and Obama holds that pen. Ink is a marvelous thing, if you make an error, you can scratch it out and start again.
I’m going to throw this out there and see how y’all respond.
If Obama wins a second term, how likely do you think he is to shift on issues such as prohibition and the drug war? What I mean by that is, since he will not have anything to lose for 4 years, do you think he would swing toward a compassionate or even decriminalization stance? He wouldn’t be the first president to shift into drive in his second term in order to “get things done.”
Frankly, I tend to be quite cynical about the above but I know that some on our end are hoping this is what he has up his sleeve.
Not likely at all. He most certainly DOES have a lot to lose. He’s going to want to fund his Presidential Library, and land all of those fat no-work honorary Board Membership positions, and the speaking gigs. Jimmy Carter showed how hard it could be for a former president who didn’t behave himself. And he didn’t really piss anybody off, at least not compared to the blowback Barak’ll get from legalizing.
I’m thinking he would catch less grief for supporting Marijuana Legalization than he will for supporting Marriage Equality = and the commercial goes to show that he KNOWS damn well that he’s ticked-off many of us…
Who do you think is gonna help support his legacy, library, etc ? Surely, he’d want the support of the Dem/Left Pro-Legalization “Base” = Que No?
Oh, and Carter had a problem with a Quaalude scandal among his administration – somewhere IDK off-hand, I was only a few years old at the time & read about it a few years back…
The base doesn’t build libraries, or fund endowments. Carter left in disfavor for his economic policies, not his drug policies. Although his drug policies were derailed by a cocaine scandal. He, if you recall, never got any farther than suggesting nationwide decrim.
Uhm, I’m pretty sure that was a Quaalude scandal – one of his people/staff was caught writing a semi-bogus prescription for them for another staffer.
*Wait… googling* Okay – It was Peter Bourne & Ellen Metsky
http://www.druglibrary.org/special/anderson/highinamerica17.htm
But I know there’s more… Ah-hah, (PBS to the rescue!) = There were rumors of Coke use at a NORML party.
(Peter) “Bourne was in charge of the nation’s drug problem under President Jimmy Carter. His official title was Special Assistant to the President for Health Issues. Bourne resigned in 1978 after being caught writing a fraudulent prescription for a staff member and after rumors spread that he used cocaine at a NORML Christmas party he had attended.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/interviews/bourne.html
So, yeah that was some poor judgement & some seriously horrible timing – screwed the lot of us = more than most people know!
I remember reading about this (in much less detail) many years ago – between the two articles, it seems to match up AND, it was a bit of both = an unnecessarily forged Quaalude prescription (to protect someone’s privacy & then stupidity/bad luck by some woman trying to have it filled pseudo-anonymously.
And, and untold number of people doing Cocaine (and lord only knows what else) at some big “Office Christmas Party” in 1978.
Which resulted in a mass of Political BS that would make Carter effectively unable to make a decriminalization push = Thus fucking over Cannabis & those that would smoke it, out back for roughly 35 years!
Sounds about “par for the course” to me – *sigh*
.
.
Classic battered spouse thinking. I certainly don’t recall any second term Presidents deviating much in their second terms. Let’s see, I’ve been alive for the second term of Dick Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Presidents weren’t second term lame ducks until 1951 and the only other President that fit that description was Dwight Eisenhower. I’m sorry, which one is it that you think shifted “into drive in his second term in order to “get things doneâ€? linky
Battered spouse. That’s an apt analogy.
The above commercial taps the vote of people who think a) it’s not so bad now and b) even if it is bad it will be better “if only you trust me again baby.”
It’s really a bit messed up and beyond cynical. It’s like someone in the 1940’s putting actors in black-face alongside Dizzy Gillespie and having them all perform. Then you get to say to all your well connected buddies, “Hey look, we are so hip. We think black people are so swell that we got some right here! Aren’t they just fantastic?”
Except when the show is over the actors got to wash off and dine with the producers and Dizzy got to eat in the kitchen.
BTW I didn’t say recent presidents. 😉 Also, what i mean by get things done isn’t necessarily getting things done for the country but I guess they do have a history of being freer to steer for their own personal agendas. They can be but that doesn’t mean they are.
As I said, I personally am cynical and feel that he would be business as usual but there is a large number of people who still hear the ghostly bird song echoing out to them, calling “change. change. change.”
Obama has said no to legalization publicly, so has Biden. That sounds like commitment to me.
More likely to see the forced treatment scenario played out to pacify the prohibs and Corporate buddies, and anyone else foolish enough to fall for the pony show.
Will you STOP with the ponies??? Somebody PLEASE fill T.C. in on WHY it is a bad idea to mention Ponies around me or Duncan!
Sorry you guys. I don’t have a clue. Must have slipped past me or its before my time.
…we had a little exchange with a troll involving presidential ponies and Jesus and President Obama’s backstabbing ways. It would take too long to recount, and you don’t REALLY wanna know. Trust me.
P.S., Somebody’s got a November appointment at a glue factory.
I’m being misreprimanded!
I roll a stoney!
multiple agencies and 200 Marines on the ground in Guatemala is a fair indicator of this administration’s direction in the WO(s)D…
Yeah. That’s definitely one of the more concrete examples to point to when arguing with people’s “hope” for a different 2nd. Blood and body parts are hard to whitewash but they sure are trying.
Maria, I am going to throw this out there……You are living in a fantasy world !
Er. Sorry what? Did you even read what I wrote or just skim the first line? It was only 2 rather short paragraphs long. I know we are all stereotyped as having such terribly short attention spans but gimme a break.
What part is fantasy exactly? My cynicism about anything changing if he wins a 2nd or the fact that there really are people who hope he will “do something different” his 2nd term.
I agree the hope is fantasy but i don’t think that’s what you meant.
The fakery and utter disrespect for the rubes (that would be us) by this Obama guy is breathtaking. Does he think we are that dumb?
“The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.â€
~ Harlan Ellison
YES !!!
It doesn’t mean we have to given in to Cynical Defeatism – we know he can’t possibly say, “Weed smoking will ruin your life, just look at what it did to mine… Oh, wait – DAMMIT!”
And BTW, Pete did you see this yet?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-morgan/obamas-embarrassing-silence_b_1853141.html
There’s also three other related articles/stories there from 09/04 as well!
A riposte has been posted on YouTube.
Not much acting, but makes its’ points.
Just about to post that but then I did a search for any mention of kalpenn on twitter. Lots of fawning over some sexyface hashtag… but buried in there is this article. Chris Moody actually calls out the BS.
And here Penn kindly reminds us all that he’s just a fucking actor and smoking pot is as much role play as cannibalism. Oh and that he’s “not a marijuana expert” so please stop talking to him about that sort of stuff. “Go Obama!”
It’s nice to know that Hollywood fantasy, delusion, and elitism is what’s steering our political ship and our real lives.
Yeah. Kal claims it’s his character and he doesn’t use pot in real life. And there’s no reason not to believe him. But what’s the diff? The appeal was clearly to the “stoner” voter.