Thursday, April 18, 2013
White Pitcher: “Obama Gonna Take Our Guns Away, Man”
(www.politico.com)
“Today’s day and age has gotten so crazy. Shoot man, Obama wants to take our guns from us and everything. You got all this stuff going on; it’s just a little bit insane for me, man. I’m not sure how to take it.”
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I understand that. BAC laws aren't going away. But it would be a damned shame if the absence of any equivalent BAC test for other drugs made that the sticking point for eliminating the pointless and costly war on drugs.
Eh. The Christians survived angel dust.
Auto manufacturers such as Audi AG NSU.XE +1.19% and Toyota Motor Co. 7203.TO +2.26% are beginning to roll out advanced prototypes of vehicles that can drive themselves, adopting new technologies like self-parking, lane-departure correction and collision avoidance.
The idea of driverless cars has been around for decades. What's changed is that the advanced computers and sensors needed to make this technology work is cheaper and more accessible.
this is gonna be great
Oh, I'm fairly confident the invisible hand of the market will come up with an equivalent test for pot, within about 5 minutes of legalization.
If it's like the BAC breath machines, it'll be
- small
- portable
- often wildly inaccurate
- built with proprietary software no defense attorney will be allowed to examine
- impressively science-y displays (percentages! digital readouts!)
The relevant statutes governing blood THC level will make no attempt to distinguish among individual body chemistries, and the "legal limit" will have no scientific basis.
EDIT: and the "driverless car" will have no effect on DUI laws whatsoever. Too much state money tied up in those E-Z convictions. So you'll still have to be in the driver's seat, sober, even if you're literally never required to touch the wheel in a typical trip.
I know. Just like speeding laws. "Let's change the limit here from 45 to 35 for no goddamned reason, and rack up the $250 tickets as fast as the officers can write them."
Not a chance.
I don't see how this matters. for one thing, this current status is not going to be permanent, just like the Dem isn't going to hold the Presidency forever , the whole point of the concept of making individual region legislate (and actually have a framework in place so that it can work) is to let each region address their need locally and also be less controversial to change in the future.
There are going to be places in the US where guns make total sense. meanwhile, when politics is brought out back into the local level, partisanship often revert back to you know... actual local interest. case in point of the recent Repulican in the NE slamming their party on the whole Sandy thing, when the interest actually directly effect their local more than anything else, then party doctrine on the national level is thrown out the window, this holds true on the other end as well, case in point Montana.
Attempts:
FDR
Ford
Reagan
Bush I (or does that fall under foreign agents?)
who else?
Edit: Coke to T.F.B.
Yeah, I know about that but since he wasn't prez it doesn't count. Jackson was a duel, no?
edit: And FWIW, Bush I was out of office, and FDR wasn't in office yet.
Assassinations, attempts, and plots
Wow, that was silly. I don't know where that number even came from. Let's pretend that "over eighty times" is really "a little more than 2%."
Having laws that exist but are ignored definitely undermines respect for the authority of law. If something isn't bad enough to bother enforcing, why bother to make it illegal at all?
But, then, I don’t see drugs as “good”. And they should not be promoted as such. But how do you stop that? Go back through history and review ads for booze and cigarettes. And I know that many people who the drugs made feel good came to regret their foray into that realm of delightful experimentation. You’re not as strong and as masterful as you think you are in dealing with something like drugs. No one is.
First of all, lots of people are. I know doctors and lawyers and teachers, all highly effective professionals, who use drugs recreationally. Plenty of people are capable of handling their vices.
Also, I do see drugs as good. Euphoria is its own reward, and a legitimate desire to indulge so long as it is done responsibly. Who are you to tell someone else how to manage their own downtime when they're not affecting you at all? Because some people are grossly irresponsible, the rest of us can't enjoy something that is perfectly safe for us?
Drugs don't need to be promoted as anything. They're mood-enhancers and pleasure-inducers. Just leave people alone until they do something worth bothering them for.
I recall (reading about) the incident where people were shot while Truman was at the Blair House (during WH renovation) in an apparent attempt stopped short, plus wasn't he mailed some sort of explosives which were countered at the WH mailroom?
Francisco Duran did shoot at the Oval Office windows from the street (Clinton was in the WH at the time) I guess this was a full court attempt but nevertheless an attempt. Robert Pickett tried the same thing when W. was in office.
President Elect.
Haven't you heard? Drugs are bad, mmmkay?
But what's the difference between RJ Reynolds, Inbev, and say Tyson or Hormel? Every consumable product is dominated by a few big corps.
There's no difference at all, which is fine if you want to see pot promoted and sold like hot dogs or chicken. Personally I'm not so fine with that. I'd much prefer just getting rid of criminal sanctions for personal use.
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But with full legalization you're going to see branding, marketing and wholesale distribution,
This is most certainly not the case in The Netherlands, and I don't know why it would be here. There are no commercial trade names allowed or advertising. There isn't even retail packaging.
I think you have a lot more faith in our ability to keep commercial trade names or advertising out than I do, given the Supreme Court's slavish devotion to commercial "free speech".
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But you have to distinguish between decriminalization and full legalization. With the former, the ones who are using now won't be risking a jail sentence due to some arbitrary enforcement of a largely ignored law, and it's hard to see anything wrong with that.
Having laws that exist but are ignored definitely undermines respect for the authority of law. If something isn't bad enough to bother enforcing, why bother to make it illegal at all?
You can remove all criminal penalties for usage while retaining the laws against distribution, and treat small scale distribution as a misdemeanor equivalent to a traffic violation. My two bottom lines are removing the arbitrary criminal prosecutions of individual users, while at the same time making sure that we don't start seeing competing brands of pot fighting for market share, with the inevitable effect of increasing the overall market for it.
Other than that I have nothing to add to the discussion.
I don't see why you're worried about that second thing. Marijuana is not tobacco. It's not really addictive and it's not really very dangerous. Even if there's a crazy explosion in consumption, is it really that terrible?
Why? Did Christie finally condemn Obama for the illegal drone campaign that's killed hundreds of innocent children, including two Americans? Or was he just trying to score some political capital in an effort to appease "moderates" who approve of the murder of children as long as it's sanctioned by team-blue thugs?
Shaming Obama is an American pastime that we should all encourage, regardless of whether it originat the ACLU or the NRA.
No, but as the NY Times did, I'm sure you won't give THEM a hard time any more.
Shaming Obama is an American pastime that we should all encourage, regardless of whether it comes from the ACLU or the NRA.
ODS. Faith is powerful.
I think my facial hair's better, but there's probably an era adjustment that needs to be taken into account.
I look at pot as pretty much equivalent to gambling. It's something that's too widespread and (on a certain level) harmless to waste any resources fighting, especially with draconian criminal laws, but it's also not something I'd particularly want the government to lend positive encouragement to in any way. All that's been accomplished with state-sponsored and state-licensed gambling is to create a whole new class of problem gamblers who would never have been there without that encouragement, and I can see exactly the same thing happening with pot. There are few corporate entities any sleazier than casinos and tobacco companies, and I can't see any reason whatever to present the latter with the same sort of cash cow we've already given to the former.
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My two bottom lines are removing the arbitrary criminal prosecutions of individual users, while at the same time making sure that we don't start seeing competing brands of pot fighting for market share, with the inevitable effect of increasing the overall market for it.
I don't see why you're worried about that second thing. Marijuana is not tobacco. It's not really addictive and it's not really very dangerous. Even if there's a crazy explosion in consumption, is it really that terrible?
Why encourage it? Who benefits---and what's the benefit---in going beyond simple decriminalization?
In unrelated news I have no idea what formerly_dp has said on this page, but next page I promise to stop ignoring them.
And I had no idea that being president was more dangerous than landing at Omaha beach during D-Day. Makes sense, but I never thought of it that way. Reason #5326 that I never want (nor will I attain) the presidency.
Legalization means the profits go to legal workers, companies, etc. Decriminalization means the profits still go to organized crime. (Plus, tax money, but the former is my main concern).
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/01/16/egyptian-court-sentences-entire-family-to-15-years-for-converting-to/
Did you know that not all nations have laws identical to the United States? In most of eastern Europe you can't deny the Holocaust happened, even if you complain about "free speech." In Israel, they don't even let Palestinians vote. It's almost like you're holding one subset of "less than what we would expect in America" countries to a different standard...
All I'm pointing out is that Egyptian Christians now have substantially less freedom and safety than they did under the allegedly despotic Mubarek. Democracy is not a good thing if the people elect totalitarian thugs.
And are you seriously comparing not being able to vote to being sent to prison for 15 years for practicing a religion? I mean, under that comparison, American women in 1915 were just as repressed as the zeks in the Gulag.
Lance Armstrong admitted to using steroids (in addition to EPO etc)
Testosterone doesn't surprise me. He mentioned in his playboy interview that his cancer treatments had left him with a low testosterone level and that brittle bones were a concern.
Legalization means the profits go to legal workers, companies, etc. Decriminalization means the profits still go to organized crime. (Plus, tax money, but the former is my main concern).
Also, if a substance is completely legal, an employer is far less likely to require a negative test as a condition of employment. This is especially significant for pot, which potentially remains in the system for months after intoxication. A friend of mine was a regular smoker and failed a (home, fortunately) test sixty days after his last use. If we're truly treating pot like alcohol, then a Saturday night indulgence shouldn't have any effect on your employability on Monday. Or your fitness to fly a plane on Monday.
Pot is essentially decriminalized in California and New York, but a minor-league baseball player can still get a 50-day fine with a failed drug test. If it's legal, that policy could be much more effectively challenged.
(Or do you mean Israel doesn't let Palastinians vote the way America doesn't let Canadians vote? I suppose Canadians living in Britain do get to vote in British elections.)
Legalization means the profits go to legal workers, companies, etc. Decriminalization means the profits still go to organized crime. (Plus, tax money, but the former is my main concern).
If we decriminalize possession and prosecute large scale distribution, you remove the worst aspect of our current policy, which is making users into criminals, while at the same time keeping the overall user base at its current level. Anything beyond that simply enables the creation of a whole new market of users.
I suspect the real split here is between those who see that as a cause for concern and those who don't. There's absolutely nothing in decriminalization that hurts current users or stops any current non-user from smoking pot, but beyond that, who exactly are we trying to help?
Put it this way: Which do you think represents a better solution, our current "system", but with the threat of arrests or fines removed from smoking pot, or a mimicking of the system that's currently in place for cigarettes?
I get to vote in municipal elections, but not for an MP. Or so the registar dude who came to my door last year says.
Pot is essentially decriminalized in California and New York, but a minor-league baseball player can still get a 50-day fine with a failed drug test. If it's legal, that policy could be much more effectively challenged.
If a private company wants to require a drug test as a condition for employment, I can't see why that's any particular concern of the government. If such policies wind up costing employers valuable employees, the market will penalize the company.
Plus, I strongly suspect that with decriminalization, we're likely to see less indiscriminate drug testing, and more likely to see it focused on employees whose patterns of behavior indicate an actual drug problem that would affect their job performance. I find it hard to believe that there's no correlation between the state's attitude towards users and the attitudes of many employers.
That's not what the electoral commission claims. But I am not a barristor or solicitor.
Who doesn't like a story about a cross dressing priest who would have sex in the rectory and also sold meth?
I'd probably go by that. The guy I talked to didn't seem like he was especially well-informed (despite the fact that informing me of my voting rights/duties was essentially his job).
Luckily I'm of the "I wouldn't presume to advise Her Majesty on how to run her government" political persuasion, so I probably wouldn't have voted anyway.
Using one example out of context to suggest A is better/worse than B is a bit out there. I have no idea if Egypt is "more free" now than before, but it would take some definitions and an actual examination of criteria and not X happened therefor.
However, even if your assertion is completely and uncritically true I disagree with the premise. Slavery was a fact during much of the US history, but that does not mean that Democracy is bad or that our early leaders were "totalitarian thugs" and neither does the genocidal things the US did to Native Americans (spreading small pox on purpose, taking children away from their natural parents, and so on).
That does not mean I endorse how Egyptian Christians are being treated (according to your assertion - for myself I have no idea how they are treated) any more than I would have endorsed the US treatment of Blacks, Native Americans, or the Japanese during WWII, but none of that means what you seem to be claiming it does.
It does mean that people are flawed, freedom and justice wneed to be fought for, and worked for, in any government. It is not an indictment of either the Arab Spring or the US revolution though - that would be silly.
However, even if your assertion is completely and uncritically true I disagree with the premise. Slavery was a fact during much of the US history, but that does not mean that Democracy is bad or that our early leaders were "totalitarian thugs" and neither does the genocidal things the US did to Native Americans (spreading small pox on purpose, taking children away from their natural parents, and so on).
That does not mean I endorse how Egyptian Christians are being treated (according to your assertion - for myself I have no idea how they are treated) any more than I would have endorsed the US treatment of Blacks, Native Americans, or the Japanese during WWII, but none of that means what you seem to be claiming it does.
It does mean that people are flawed, freedom and justice wneed to be fought for, and worked for, in any government. It is not an indictment of either the Arab Spring or the US revolution though - that would be silly.
You miss the point.
Despite its flaws, early American Gov't was a movement towards more liberty. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than what came before.
The current ruling parties in Egypt explicitly favor less liberty. They support Sharia based law; which is quite frankly monsterous.
There is simply no comparison between a system that is actively attempting to advance liberty, even if it has serious flaws in that area, and one that is actively trying to surpress liberty.
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