Isn’t that the Pot Calling the Ketamine Crack?
Zano

I don’t understand that headline either, but don’t let that stop you. Let’s not end the War on Drugs today, let’s build a time machine and go back 20-years and end it then. Besides, a republican time machine could bring a whole new meaning to the word TARDIS. Think of the money we could save, not to mention the cost in human misery—or, as Schwarzenegger put it, come with me if you want to spliff!

“It (the British government) declared that its drug policy would be based on scientific evidence yet in 2009 it sacked Professor David Nutt, Chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, for stating the simple statistical fact that cannabis is less dangerous (in terms of measured “harms”) than tobacco and alcohol and that ecstasy is less dangerous than horse-riding.”

—Graham (horse riding stoned) Hancock

Same shit, different side of the pond. I have always maintained that if we drew the line at alcohol, pot is on the safer side of that line on every measure known to man. For one faction of our society, however, the equation will forever remain pot = bad. Anything else will not compute. And republicans seem to process new information slower than Obama’s healthcare website on a ‘lude/malware cocktail. I tried that once and never again!

If you recall, because of republican interference we went with this quasi half-step called medical marijuana (hint: don’t let republicans ever impact policy).

I admit full legalization is not a horribly popular notion, unless you look at something called poll numbers, but try having this conversation with a republican some time. Kidding. Don’t…unless your BAC is at or around .16. It’s hard to find a topic wherein conservative types are open to changing their minds…on anything. Remaining stubborn on all issues is an interesting choice when they can’t seem to actually get anything right. Thus their current Value Jet in a cloudburst freefall into political obscurity (VJIACBFIPO)—an occurrence I both predicted and now welcome. The rise and fall of The Turd Reich? No? Okay, how about Flight of the Sickarus? I’ll work on that one. I’ll admit it looks bleak for the Dems at the moment, but the collective future for the GOP is on par with a certain Toronto mayor’s.

In the ‘90s Ronald Reagan ramped up enforcement, funding and incarcerations for the War on Drugs, and by the end of his administration 8x as many people went to jail for non-violent crimes. When Nancy Reagan had her famous Just Say No moment, I remember thinking, wow, a buzz sounds really good about now, grandma. Okay, what I really thought was:

Dear Nancy,

Please try to understand the basic philosophy behind addiction and human behavior before you speak.

Sincerely,

Reality

P.S. I loved you in Donovan’s Brain.

Here’s the actual score:

The # of people who stopped using drugs after Nancy Reagan’s advice:

Zero

The # of people who started drugs after her speech and then went to jail:

Rose from 50,000 to 350,000 during her husband’s presidency.

Having the world’s highest drug related incarceration rates in the world after a trillion dollar enforcement initiative:

Priceles…wait, what? It’s not priceless, it’s a trillion dollars!!

And they call us dopes. Now a message from our blogger:

“For the record, I am not a pot smoker, nor will I become one should it become legalized. I only intend to use the proceeds from selling marijuana to fund my Thai sex slave operation.”

—Mick Zano

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of pot. My argument is solely based on facts and common sense, which will likely forever banish it from the GOP’s tent (see: the Christie Phenomenon). The often infantile views on the right need not stay the laws of the land. I have worked in the field of behavioral health for a couple of decades, but the right is simply not interested in anyone’s opinion, professional or otherwise. There’s just no way to combat the GOP’s coordinated War on Facts (see: any issue in the 21^st century).

When I say:

End the war on drugs NOW!

They think:

Charlie Manson hanging at Amsterdam’s red light district on meth.

It’s because they only have these two extreme switches in their heads. It’s why they’re becoming increasingly irrelevant.

“I am not suggesting we change any of the consequences for driving impaired or breaking the law. We have those rules in place and they will remain in place. Next to no one is suggesting otherwise.”

—Senator Chong

Meanwhile, folks like Graham Hancock are calling the War on Drugs the greatest threat to consciousness and personal freedom of our time. Admittedly, this is not an angle many will understand or support. Republicans refuse to evolve on any given issue, let alone one involving spiritual growth or the potential improvement of one’s own consciousness. Graham is ahead of the curve…too far I’m afraid.

“If we as adults are not free to make sovereign decisions – right or wrong – about our own consciousness, that most intimate, that most sapient, that most personal part of ourselves, then in what useful sense can we be said to be free at all?”

—Graham Hancock

He’s coming at the problem from the shamanic—hallucinogens can expand and improve consciousness—religious freedom model (still working on the acronym). I happen to agree with him on this point, having thoroughly read Hancock’s work on the subject. I recommend Supernatural.

I realize this argument is quite meaningless to a Foxeteer. They remain oblivious to most of the important issues of our time. They will continue to put everything neatly into their good bin or their bad bin, and since liberals will forever be designated to their bad bin, we might as well mess with them and vote in Hillary/Garofalo 2016 and then Oprah/Moore in 2024.

Seriously, why do you want to throw away ANOTHER trillion dollars on this bullshit? Oh, that’s right, because you’re all actually about as fiscally conservative as Silvio Berlusconi at a strip club. The GOP always insists on their meaningless and mind-numbingly expensive witch hunts, not to mention all those expensive and meaningless policies. They do this in the name of saving money (see: history of U.S. deficits).

As for the War on Drugs:

“The punitive prohibitionist approach to global drug control has proven remarkably costly, ineffective and counterproductive.”

—Ethan Nadelmann, director of the U.S.-based Drug Policy Alliance

That sentiment has become common wisdom, so how about we shift some of the money to education and treatment? It will be money better spent. Oh, and winning hearts and minds does not include eight rectal searches. Did you hear about that one…er, eight?

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Zano. That’s just the painful insertion of freedom!”

—John Q. Republican

Usually the GOP will counter with something like, well I would never smuggle anything like that in my ass. Umm, as it turns out neither was he. Let’s hope he can still turn the other cheek.

Ultimately we’ll provide people with more information and then let the individual make the decision about their drug use. Whether this happens sooner or later depends on the next election cycle.

Dear Republicans,

The War on Drugs is over. You lost.

Sincerely,

Reality

P.S. Ask your doctor if copping a clue is right for you.

Yes, it’s that time again. It’s the post wonderful time of the year! I keep covering the GOP’s view of climate change because, if it didn’t mean the probable end of mankind, it would be downright hilarious—Discord’s latest video hilarious. You have to hand it to these folks, they aren’t going to fall for any scientific argument. It’s a gutsy move, like cross-dressing at a Tea Party rally. Never again!

If you recall, the last Koch Brother’s funded study backfired in 2011. Even their own hired research minions couldn’t deny the truth any longer. And they never did find the bodies of those researchers. So the small minority still doggedly trying to disprove any change—you know, the folks throwing around more money than Silvio Berlusconi at a bunga bunga party—failed, miserably, and yet that didn’t seem to have any effect on the debate. What can?

BSFN: Bull Shit Fox News We Don’t Just Make the Bullshit, We Ignore Any Real Facts Too

That’s because it takes decades for republicans to digest any given topic or event, which is way too long when we’re talking about the important issues of our time, like ninja porn.

Keep looking until the naked ninja appears

It’s another normalcy bias moment, or, as the Beatles put it, “Nothing’s going to change their world. Nothing’s going to change their world.”

The recent Live Science headline: Arctic Warmest in at Least 44,000 Years is immediately translated by the Foxeteers as, “My tomatoes got frost last night. Where was the warming when my tomatoes needed it?” The oceans are more acidic than in known Earth history is translated as, “Acid? I thought those hippy libs liked dropping acid?”

They attack the findings of any study that doesn’t jive with their deep-seeded denial and, when that fails, they attack science itself.

The Drudge Report links to every global warming article or study that mentions a pause in the warming. Then, if you actually read the article, you find, “Yeah climate change is still happening, it’s caused by man, and we’re still all screwed, but there’s this pause.” The GOP reads the same article and takes away only one nugget, PAUSE.

Mind the Gap

Science has now identified our deep oceans as temporarily absorbing the extra heat. Full story here. Or maybe reducing emissions and banning those chemicals most harmful to our ozone has had a positive impact. But in the Fox lands…

Pause  =  Not Happening

More accurately:

GOP  =  Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs

As my next witness, I call to the floor Captain Mass Extinction and Count Climate Changeula. Speaking of Captains, the GOP makes Captain Ahab seem downright aloof. Call me Darrell Issamael? No? How about, from hell’s heart I blog at thee? I’ll work on that one.

Here’s what pause actually means:

1. A temporary stop or rest, especially in speech or action: For an antonym see Ted Cruz’s 23-hour imaginary filibuster.
2. A cessation of activity because of doubt or uncertainty; a momentary hesitation: Like when Shep Smith squints at the teleprompter, winces, and then thinks “Is anyone really going to buy this shit? Where the hell do we find these people?”
3. Any comparatively brief stop, delay, wait, etc.: for an antonym see the line at the DMV.

And even if it stays this hot we’re in big trouble. If the pause holds, it holds at the hottest 16-years on record. Forgot that part, huh? So we’ll continue to lose glaciers, coastal areas, Eskimos, drink specials, and the world may yet become as unbearable as The Weekly Standard. The pause is simply a convenient truth to keep the GOP blindly supporting our nation’s one percent agenda (which is entirely unfair to all those whole milk products).

I’m afraid this warming trend is likely to resume soon, but the GOP’s inability to process data is likely to go on until the bitter end. We need to err on the side of, er…air. Even if there were only a 10% chance that shit’s changing, why would we gamble with the future habitability of our planet? When you factor in that it’s only 10% it’s not happening, the GOP’s position is truly absurd.

“Earth, what’s the worst that could happen?”

—John Q. Republican

To this I say:

“They call us warmers….you know, birthers with brains.”

—Mick Zano

I have posted this before, but…

The summary of the above chart is essentially this:

If you graduated some high school science class or another, or even if you just watched Bill Nye the Science Guy once—from the kitchen while doing the dishes—umm, you’ve figured out climate change is happening.

Actually this gets translated by the right as: all scientists from all universities, all over the world, are under some Al Gore mind control drug (AGMCD). An Inconvenient truth serum?

More and more people believe the republicans are incapable of any ideological course correction. I am in this camp. In fact, I built this camp. I also built this city on rock-n-roll. I did this in my spare time, when I’m not making ninja porn jokes. But it’s troubling to see an entire faction of our society locked in their seats as their ideological starship spirals into the atmosphere. Of course, in this episode, they don’t think the planet is getting closer, they think it’s some liberal trick to get the GOP to stop mining and drilling on the planet Oilcoalian-IV.

I like Juan Cole’s take:

“Abandoning coal, oil and gas ASAP is the only hope to avert disaster. We could do it if the political will existed. Certainly, all coal plants could be closed down within 10 years, and that with relatively little economic pain. Coal is especially dirty and dangerous.”

—Juan Cole (coal?)

Essentially if climatologists predict a 10cm sea level rise by such and such and it only rises 8cm, the GOP goes, “Hah! Wrong, Mister went to school and stuff.” This is part of their famous all-or-none thinking. I never thought science would get this exactly right. We’re talking about ocean currents, continent-sized glaciers, global weather systems, Al Gore…

But you know who is never going to get it right? Republicans. Well, if history is any judge.

Obama is addressing climate change and finally starting a proper War on Coal. People need to remember which political party got every important issue of the 21st century wrong. The GOP still denies global warming and defends coal…in 2013…Earth. I do believe in clean coal, I do, I do! Meanwhile, every time a coal plant opens a fairy dies…usually at one of those nearby redneck bars.

That joke is my cue to wrap this shit up. Suffice to say,

“Hey, who needs the EPA during a time of mass extinctions and climate upheaval?”

—John Q. Republican

Aren’t they cute? And by cute I mean certifiable.

I am not all that concerned about Obamacare’s impact on other insurance companies—who suck, by the way—or of rampant socialism, or death panels, or Fox’s next paranoid-based theme of the week (FNPBTW). It’s those unintended consequences that concern me. Obama’s failure could well fan the flames of a dying political party. So to help, this site is now a portal for the ACA. Please click below to enroll at…Shit! We crashed!

The instant Obamacare started faltering, the GOP smelled blood in the water. Actually, they smelled blood in the water since January of 2008—their own, of course, because they remain factually impaired. Bull Sharks?

If Obamacare is eventually victorious, it will be a huge blow to the GOP, to our shittier insurance companies and, for the most part, to those shittier employers among us. Its success or failure, however, is still in serious question. I am probably the only person in America growing more confident each glitchy stumbly second. Huh? Whaaa?

My reasons for going out on a limb (again):

1. The GOP thinks Obamacare is doomed, but their uncanny ability to always get things wrong should not be underestimated.

2. None of these larger social programs were ever rolled out smoothly, but they tend to get fixed, at least historically speaking.

3. Frankly, it has to work. There’s too much riding on it. I would not use the word frankly otherwise. Frankly, I hate that word.

A reader writes:

“Looks like you botched this one, Zano.”

I disagree. I didn’t think Obamcare would be easy to pull off in our current political environment and I said as much before the bill passed into law. Sure it’s working great in the only other 16 countries it’s been attempted, but ‘Murica is no longer horribly competent, under D or R. This was my quote from 2009:

“Universal healthcare is a nice goal for the future. Hint: this is not that time.”

—Mick Zano

I am a strong proponent of the ACA, but back in 2009 I was more concerned about a double dip recession. I still am. I also voiced concern about the rollout chances, here.

When Obama said people could keep their existing policies…umm, there’s no defense for that statement. He lied. I can’t defend the indefensible. That’s a Foxeteer’s job. I think this Obamacare rollout fail should land squarely on the Dems doorstep, however, it hasn’t helped having half our country rooting against it.

“The GOP’s strategy hasn’t just tried to win elections and repeal Obamacare. They’ve actively sought to sabotage the implementation of the law. They intimidated the people who were implementing the law. They made clear that problems would be exploited rather than fixed. A few weeks ago, they literally shut down the government because they refused to pass a funding bill that contained money for Obamacare.”

—Ezra Klein

On the other hand, here’s the Dems saving Bush’s Medicare D program back in 2006.

“I voted against it, but once it passed I certainly determined that I would try to do everything I could to make sure that New Yorkers understood it, could access it, and make the best of it.”

—Hillary Clinton

That’s why I still have an iota of respect for Democrats, because they still have an iota of humanity. Check out that entire article over on the DailyKos: How Democrats Helped Republicans Save BushCare. If the Dems are run out of office I am not sure they will be as magnanimous in the future. I fear we are now entrenched in our two camps—a situation I still predict will be our undoing.

Oh, and Eric Stern over at The Salon handed Sean Hannity his ass last week. It was glorious. But Fox doesn’t do retractions, so you probably never heard about it. I understand why they don’t do retractions. If someone asked Hercules to coordinate all the retractions for Fox News, he would probably say, “Umm, can I just wrestle that giant squid again?”

Essentially, Stern hunted down every guest on a particular Hannity episode (6) and re-interviewed each of them over the phone. He found that five of the six didn’t understand Obamacare and they all stood to save huge if they actually signed up at an exchange. The sixth guest, who allegedly laid people off because of Obamacare, couldn’t really explain what the layoffs had to do with his decision to cut jobs. It was an 0 for 6 moment for Sean…you know, the usual. The article is called Inside the Fox News Lie Machine.

Dear Sean,

There are tons of people who really are losing their policies to Obamacare, your inability to find any of them proves to me that you’re an incompetent lying boob.

Sincerely,

Reality

P.S. Kidding, I already knew that.

Now that Fox News has created an alternate political universe, they can simply wade through the damage and find endless Americans who believe their nonsense and then interview them accordingly. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: create a false political reality through propaganda (CFPRTP).

Step 2: eventually you can just interview your own viewers who will then, lo-and-behold, agree with everything you say. It’s like magic! WWII Joseph Goebbels like magic.

Step 3: rinse, lather, and repeat falsehoods.

It’s that easy! It’s all some sick self-fulfilling prophecy. Foxeteers are likely to be hurt by Obamacare, but only because they fear it so much. They won’t sign up and they won’t reap the benefits. So even with that pre-existing condition of theirs, they will likely die sooner. I want them to go away, but not like this. I predicted those more liberal states would eventually get Obamacare right. Unfortunately, I am predicting huge ongoing delays in certain square states, who simply refuse to take their socialized medicine.