Saturday, March 13, 2010

Get Ready for a Marijuana Crackdown

So, Obama’s Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske, recently delivered a speech to the California Police Chiefs Association Conference (pdf of 15 pgs.).  According to a Christian Science Monitor piece titled Marijuana legalization? A White House rebuttal, finally, through Kerlikowske, the ,“Obama White House has finally laid out its most thorough, reasoned rebuttal to arguments for marijuana legalization.”

This does not surprise me in the least, and I intimated as much in a post titled Blowing Commercial Grade Smoke back in December 2008 when an Esquire article came out under the headline Why Obama Really Might Decriminalize Marijuana.

I’ve read through Kerlikowske’s speech, and reviewed some of the statistics he cites within his speech, looking at CDC stats, etc., which have of course been skewed to fit the get tough pose the Obama adminstration is evidently going to take in regards to marijuana.  I’ll allow other organizations, like NORML, provide line by line rebuttals/analysis of Kerlikowske’s talking points and statistical juggling.

Me, I’m going to have a beer and a smoke.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/13 at 03:30 PM
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Common Sense Political Aspirations Explained

After reading a Huffington Post piece written by Mickey Kaus, titled Why I Filed to Run for U.S. Senate, with a particular eye on the comment thread, Mike Soja, in a post titled Cannibal Circus, explains why Mickey Kaus’ political aspirations are just so under the Big Top.

Sorry, Kaus, common sense has long left the room where the big stew pot cooks with its ghastly mix of bits flayed from the bones of your compatriots, and while you may see through some of the delusions that are the accepted wisdoms of your party, you’ve still got the bone firmly planted in your nose.  Your agenda of Cannibal Lite is trussed up with the same corrupt premises that power the other cannibals, except that they’ve been at it a lot longer than you have, and they’re not about to let you peel so much as a pinky finger off the lip of the communal spittoon.  Don’t quit your day job.  At least it’s honest.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/13 at 01:33 PM
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Intellectual Elite Disconnect

If, societal norms pass into chaos with the possible collapse of the “system,” what will you do?  A large majority of individuals do not even desire to contemplate this possibility, or, if they do, they believe the “system” will somehow protect them, feed them, and maintain their naive everydayedness.  The intellectual elites, I think, are especially prone to this rosy eyed view, so it was interesting to read the following from a post at SurvivalBlog.com titled Letter Re: Confronting Kleptocracy—Identifying the Looter Mentality, which is taken from a letter written by a Dr. Dean to James Wesley, Rawles who owns SurvivalBlog.com.

Last fall during a lecture I asked a group of medical residents what they would do if society collapsed. I used the example of an EMP with complete failure of the electrical grid and ensuing chaos. Keep in mind, these are very well educated and intelligent people; they are physicians in training. These people are expected by the population to have the highest ethical standards and morals. Their answers astounded me. In the early aftermath as a group these people said they would go to the store and get what they needed. When I reminded them there was no way to pay with a credit card they seemed to think that it would be okay anyway. Many of the women said they would resort to begging if things became difficult, but most of the males in the group said they would leave for the rural areas due to the availability of cattle and other farm animals. When I asked what they would then do, most responded that they would take “one or two.” It wasn’t until I mentioned that stealing cattle is also called “rustling” and men used to be hung for such acts that it even began to register they were in fact stealing. The notion had not even occurred to them. One of my residents took the discussion further saying, “It wouldn’t necessarily be considered stealing because of the national emergency.” When I assured him the farmer or rancher would definitely consider it stealing and would likely defend his property with a rifle, he answered, “He wouldn’t shoot me. I’m a doctor. Besides murder would be a worse crime than my stealing.”

Troubling, isn’t it?  Go read the whole letter.

Linked via Jeffrey Quick who titled his post on this De Nile.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/13 at 10:51 AM
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Rolf Hochhuth’s “The Deputy”

A good friend in from Nashville dropped a book on me, actually a play, written by Rolf Hochhuth, titled The Deputy.  I had never heard of Hochhuth or The Deputy.  A small samplying of the play can be read here.

I am not typically fond of reading plays.  In fact I find reading Shakespeare’s plays, exalted though they are, rather a pedestrian undertaking.  Not so with Hochhuth’s The Deputy.  In fact, though I have just this morning finished reading The Deputy, I am immediately cracking it open from the beginning again today.  I think it is that powerful.

The play, which first hit the stage in 1963, and was published on the same day it was staged, delves into the interactions of Hitler’s ‘final solution,’ the Vatican, Pope Pius XII, and, as Albert Schweitzer states in the preface to The Deputy, the “naive inhumanity” of culture.

If you read through some of the reviews at Amazon.com (first link in this post), you will note that some reviewers feel Hochhuth’s play is just an unsupported attack on Pope Pius XII and the Catholic church.  A shortsighted failing, I think, due to the dogmatic spectacles through which these individuals view the reality which surrounds them.  The play is more deeply damning than their sight is able to comprehend, and these reviewers’ individual squirmings, I think, are projections of their discomfort with their own personal naive inhumanity.

Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy is such a powerful read that it will go into my list of top ten books.  I highly recommend it.

A quote by Bernard Shaw, which precedes Scene One of Hochhuth’s play, follows.

Beware of the man whose God is in Heaven.

Posted by John Venlet on 03/13 at 09:02 AM
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