I voted early, as I’m heading up to Chicago to do a show. But it was a pretty dull affair, as I live in Central Illinois and there’s not much to vote for, other than making a symbolic statement.
However, in some parts of the country, your vote matters. And not just the race everyone’s talking about, but judges, and council members, and initiatives. So do your research.
Some really big marijuana initiatives this year – this could be a huge year for moving forward with legalization. Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Maine, and Nevada will vote on legalization, and Arkansas, Florida, Montana, and North Dakota have medical marijuana votes.
The LA Times has generally been quite anti-marijuana over the years, and yet they endorse marijuana legalization on the ballot in California.
Meanwhile, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has spent millions this year opposing legalization. Here’s Christopher Ingraham’s article following the money.
So, with nine states involved in this voting cycle, what do you think the score will be?
It will be a miracle if Arkansas’ passes. Prayers. But Bible Belt states would be larger victories than California, since that is the ultimate symbolic gesture. That’s the home of Goliath. California is just a large brick in the wall, completing the West Coast and its drive towards the east.
Seeing as the sun rises in the east, it is notable that in contrast, enlightened thinking seems to rise in the west and travel toward the east. To find increasing light, it is necessary to travel west, not east.
My town has a measure (17-73) which would ban all marijuana dispensaries, including medical, within city limits. And marijuana’s already banned within city limits. That’s what happens when your city council fears the wrath of the Nursing Home Vote.
Ironically enough, I can’t think of a more therapeutic and beneficial substance for the Nursing Home folks than the cannabis plant, in all of its varietals, and the cannabinoid compounds.
A Watershed Moment for Marijuana Legalization
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread28959.shtml
http://tinyurl.com/zbev3kq
“House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Friday that she plans to vote in favor of legalizing recreational marijuana in California.”
“I will vote for it, but I have not made a public statement about it until right this very second,” Pelosi, who represents the district that serves San Francisco, told the editorial board and reporters at the Los Angeles Times.”
Bout time. Hope this nudges her buddy Grassley.
See a massive, inflatable effigy of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio campaign for re-election wearing prison stripes and a pair of handcuffs:
https://thinkprogress.org/the-downfall-of-joe-arpaio-e3d63b1741e5#.tlg979atw
Holy crap look at the comments for that article. I thought Thinkprogress was a liberal blog! (sniff)
Joe Arpaio’s authoritarian followers are inspired and driven by their iconic ruler to the ends of the internet to preserve a Utopian dream of white Christian supremacy. How truly sad. In an update, they’ll follow der fuhrer into his federal jail and throw pink underwear parties.
A shit storm of hate-speak trolling. Presumably they’re being directed to Think Progress by some far right Facebook page. This is Trump’s base and we’ll see a lot more of this if he wins. Preventing these people from gaining power is the chief reason to hold one’s nose and vote for Clinton, I’m sorry to say.
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jean, you’re not familiar with how the Electoral College works? In most States your vote for either will make little if any difference. Here in Maryland if Mr. Trump were to win I’ll be heading to the closest non-denominational born again christian church and start to prepare for the rapture.
http://www.270towin.com/2016-polls-clinton-trump/maryland/
When it appeared that it might actually be close nationwide I entertained the idea that I’d vote for Ms. Clinton to “send a message” that the citizenry was done with the type of politics employed by Mr. Trump. Unfortunately it appears that was just wishful thinking on my part. With Ms. Clinton ahead in the Maryland election with the margin in the neighborhood of 2-1 I have the luxury of using my vote as a message. This year’s message is that green is my favorite color.
Why, just yesterday they had Rumpy ahead!
Why do I laugh now that Joe will feel the pain
Why am I glad that his ass will be in jail
Soon comes the day when he’ll be dressed up in pink
I hear some forceful voices calling “Suck that Joe”
Today
National Public Radio
Diane Rehm Show 11-AM Nov.7
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2016-11-07/marijuana-on-the-ballot
PARENTAL ADVISORY
Sabet’s on the program.
In the past Diane Rehm has always naively swallowed the DEA line on drug policy and her erstwhile liberal views get inverted for the drug war. The fact that she has Sabet on is no surprise. I hope she confronts him on the human rights abuses of prohibition but I won’t hold my breath.
Hudak used leeches as an example of outmoded medicine while making (trying to make) the point that herbal cannabis has little future in the US pharmacopoeia.
Leeches are not outmoded.
Voters favoring legalizing marijuana take inspiration from the “egg guyâ€:
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Holy ivory towers Batman, it’s The Professor!
We’re Legalizing Weed Wrong
So yeah, I know that it’s an appeal to authority fallacy to worry about what The Professor thinks, but he certainly is an expert in doing cannabis law reform wrong so I guess he must know what he’s talking about.
Be that as it may, The Professor certainly does bring new meaning to the practice of bloviation. But I see that all of his hard work toward getting in touch with his inner narcissist has finally paid off.
Same ol’ same ol’ from Nark Anslinger’s Rectum k’Lieman:
(Hey look – I finally figured out what the A.R. stands for!)
1. Prohibition is broken beyond repair so legalization should look as much like it as possible.
2. Commercialization will make reefer madness come true. For real this time. I swear.
3. Cannabis Use Disorder is a Real and Growing PROBLEM. Not near as widespread by the same measure, nor ever likely to be, as Caffeine Use Disorder, but still…
4. Juveniles aren’t always the safest drivers. Pot fails to mitigate that. Unless they’re stoned on the couch watching porn and getting Cheeto stains all over their underwear instead of driving around looking for weed.
5. The price is falling! The price is falling! That’s bad because DFH’s.
6. Legalization makes the price fall more! We’ve spent decades and trillions to make sure the DFH’s pay through the nose. We’re in too deep to stop now. Better double-down.
7. Legalization must enforce moderation to prevent an otherwise inevitable slide down the slippery slope to Idiocracy. In a decade we’ll all be sitting around in our Cheeto-stained underwear watching “Ow My Balls”. True fact.
8. Nobody knows how widespread use of cannabis will interact with usage of other drugs, since it’s never happened before.
9. Pleasure is sin. Tax it. The more pleasure, the higher the tax.
10. Voter Initiatives Are a Lousy Way to Legislate, but for Now the Alternative Is Inaction. So vote in more Libertarians or you’re stuck with the initiative nightmare.
Left a slightly modified version of this comment at Slate. I changed #4 to more closely reflect k’Lieman’s #4:
4. Juveniles would rather be stoned on the couch watching porn and getting Cheeto stains all over their underwear than amassing mountains of debt pursuing an academic career to learn the proper tone of sneering condescension with which to address DFH’s. We should make those DFH’s pay for that.
SMG as a play on cannabis re-legalization has got to be the strangest part of the entire ordeal. Haven’t those guys killed enough pot plants yet?
Plenty of dead, black, overfertilized.plants. but that was yesterday. Scotts has recently purchased Gen Hydro and Gavita. They have seen the writing on the wall. Notice, this is the avenue their parent corporation (monsanto) has chosen into the cannabis market. It is a hardware/software problem. Software has been fully developed (seeds), and in the public sector. No money for them in seeds that sell ten at a time. They gobbled up the hardware maufacturers.
Unfortunately, Scotts now owns the General Hydroponics and General Organics lines of fertilizers. I really don’t like supporting the company that makes MiracleGro and whose Turf Builder killed my lawn.
FBI Director James Comey was honored Monday night [Nov. 7, 2016] with a lifetime achievement award from the nonprofit Federal Drug Agents Foundation, a group whose board has several individuals with longstanding ties to Donald Trump. It was not clear whether Comey, who has been under fire for making announcements about a now-closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, was aware of the connections, which included David Pecker, the publisher of the National Enquirer, and a convicted felon who goes by the nickname “Joey No Socks.â€
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/11/07/comey-honored-by-group-with-trump-ties.html?via=desktop&source=copyurl
Reminds me of the Freemasons’ ceremony in “From Hell”. Is he getting something else we don’t know about?
OT. Walked in on a home burglary yesterday. I left my dad’s funeral service and instead of joining family at the after-funeral gathering, I headed home. I inherited the family home a few days ago.
I’ve been living in a nice garage apartment in what used to be my folks place and when I tried to use my key to my old room, it didn’t work. I’m thinking WTF? Right key, it’s turning the lock, but NOT opening.
Turns out the lock was fine because the next time I went out there my door was wide open. And, when I went inside I discovered a few piles of my stuff ready for the taking. Most of my valuables (musical equipment, weed, and cash) had been transferred into the house a few days earlier and were not taken.
He/she was kind enough to leave me the gloves and 8″ pry bar used to enter my room. A few days earlier I’d have been broke, out-of-weed and totally screwed in the guitar and amplifier department.
As far as I can tell, nothing at all is missing from my personal belongings which is pretty cool. Can’t help but believe this was a drug-motivated activity. Hope the fucker shit his/her pants holding onto my door’s dead bolt lever to keep me from entering.
On a plus note, I’m in a mood to celebrate CA’s faux legalization scheme tonight with some good IPA’s and a favorite flower or two.
I’m so glad you’re ok!
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Florida just said yo. 1 down 10 to go.
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Maine just said yo. 2 down 9 to go.
It will be interesting if Hillary loses and it’s because of Johnson. Perhaps if she embraced legalization she would have earned some of his votes. I suspect Bernie would have done better against Johnson.
Hillary would have won, if the Democrats had any strategic sense. All that would have been necessary in this election cycle was the prior passage of a provision for ranked-choice voting in Presidential elections.
The Democrats could certainly have put that through back in 2009-2010, before they squandered their near-supermajorities as a sacrifice to the Affordable Care Act. They might have even been able to get the bipartisan support to do it in 2012. But they’re hapless at the craft of politics- or, perhaps, chickenshit, and unable to take initiative even when they see it.
(Yes, Democrats, might as well take that first step, and admit that you have a problem.)
Both Gary Johnson and Jill Stein took enough votes away from Hillary Clinton in critical states to clear the way for a Trump win. The votes cast for either one of them would have made the difference, in close contests.
I don’t blame the people who voted for candidates that had no chance of winning. I mean that sincerely. The two-sided American system is structurally rigged in the absence of a ranked-choice balloting, and a lot of effort is required to understand the implications of that fact. I’d probably still be confused and frustrated about it myself, if I hadn’t become aware of the existence of ranked-choice ballot options.
But the third party voters are about to find out the actual, lasting practical significance of their votes, under the status quo.
American presidents may get elected with pluralities under 50%- especially in the last half-century- but they govern as if they were elected with majorities. And as a rule, the fact that a majority of voters actually voted against them is soon forgotten.
It wasn’t just Donald Trump who was elected. His entire slate of advisers was also elected: Mike Pence. Chris Christie. Rudy Giuliani. Newt Gingrich. Jeff Sessions. William Bennett. John Walters.
So instead of a pathway to Federal legalization, we may soon have a Singapore Solution on the table instead.
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You certainly are on the money old man. If things were different, they just wouldn’t be the same.
Ranked choice voting? You’re talking about a Country in which the citizenry still refuses to learn the metric system because it’s too hard to understand.
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I’m flabbergasted. Talk about a “well I’ve got some good news and some bad news which do you want to hear first?” cliche.
My bad above. Maine is still too close to call. 50.36%-49.64% now.