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Cash crop: Cannabis crushes grapes, wine, in California economy
10.20.2010
02:46 pm
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Photo by Kevork Djansezian from The Big Picture

According to several polls, the presence of marijuana reform initiatives on the ballet in states in the west, will probably bring many younger Democrats to the voter’s booth who might have decided to sit this mid-term election out, otherwise. I’m definitely looking forward to casting an affirmative vote for Prop 19 and I hope all of my fellow Californians reading this will chose to do the same.

Unofficial state estimates indicate that California’s cannabis crop is worth more—far more!—than the state’s wine industry. I’m confident that Prop 19 is going to pass. To leave tax money on the table isn’t something the state can afford to do right now. Besides that, legalization, according to a RAND Corp. study, could cause pot prices to drop considerably, something that will be seen as additional welcome economic relief to millions of the state’s unemployed tokers…

The most persuasive argument for legalizing pot might just be a dollar sign.

California’s pot crop is worth $14 billion, according to a state report. The Press Democrat points out that crushes the wine crop which comes in at $2 billion.

Legalization would be a huge shot in the arm for plenty of ancillary industries, such as banking and construction.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that the federal government would crack down. That risk might make investors too skittish to get involved. Earlier this month, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the government would continue its dangerous raids.

Some regions, such as Mendocino County, have leaned on pot agriculture as other industries dried up. It’s estimated that at least half of that county’s economy depends on cultivation of the plant. [Half? Try three-quarters!—RM]

The only sure thing is that there’s no sure thing. Marijuana legalization is uncharted territory. Or at least, it’s uncharted in this country. Other countries have managed to figure it out, but here in The Land of the Free, we’ve clung to prohibition.

Earlier, the state estimated that it could rake in $1.4 billion in taxes if Prop 19 passes, but they’ve since backed off that estimate, claiming that there are too many unknown variables. Prop 19 would allow each individual municipality to set its own pot regulations, which some detractors have said will create an unwieldy patchwork of laws. Coincidentally, most of those who oppose legalization are those who make money from prohibition: law enforcement agencies and the alcohol industry.

Marijuana Crushes Grapes as Cash Crop (NBC Bay Area)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.20.2010
02:46 pm
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Republican front group tells Latino voters: ‘Don’t Vote’
10.19.2010
10:02 am
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A Republican front group calling itself “Latinos for Reform” claims it will be running the above ad nationally before the election.

Just when you thought the skullduggery couldn’t possibly get any lower than it already has in this vilest of the vile election season, the GOP will always be there to prove you wrong.

Via Little Green Footballs

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.19.2010
10:02 am
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Unemployed Workers.org: Sign the petition to extend jobless benefits
10.18.2010
01:26 pm
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Unless Congress extends “Tier V” unemployment benefits in the 4 days between the time they return from the election and before their Thanksgiving recess, nearly 2 million American families face immediate poverty and homelessness. Over the summer—thanks to the Republicans, natch—it took 50 days to get the last extension. The matter of these extensions needs to be removed from the political process and pronto. The extensions should be automatic, as per the Stabenow bill proposed by Michigan Senator Debbie Sabenow (D) (and blocked by a single Republican), at least in states with unemployment above 8% (which of course means double that in the REAL WORLD) and exempt from “pay as you go” rules.

It’s infuriating and just… nauseating to watch rich, sanctimonious, and supposedly Christian politicians wage class war against the poor in this country. Please sign this petition, and encourage your friends and family to do the same. Post this on your Facebook page, on your Twiiter feed, everywhere you can.

Extended unemployment insurance benefits expire at Thanksgiving—a very cold turkey for millions of Americans already facing the devastation of long term joblessness.

Unemployedworkers.org is launching a campaign to SAVE THE LIFELINE—we need to push Congress to renew the benefit extensions.

The unemployed desperately want to work. They would much rather have a job than benefits, but the jobs lost in the crisis just haven’t come back yet. Until we create jobs, we can’t just throw millions into homelessness and onto public assistance

There are dozens and perhaps hundreds of people for every job opening. Clearly, the odds are firmly stacked against unemployed Americans.

As one astute YouTube commentator wrote:

“Just vote Republican if you want to see maximum unemployment, ever-widening wealth imbalance, and an American 3rd world country. This isn’t rocket science folks. Without job creation funded through taxation, America is doomed. By 2012, teabaggers will be begging for Socialism.”

Hear, hear!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.18.2010
01:26 pm
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Rand Paul was the best they could come up with?
10.17.2010
08:47 pm
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Seriously, Kentucky, what the fuck? Even for a Republican, he’s an idiot!

If I was Jack Conway, I’d approve this ad, too!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.17.2010
08:47 pm
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Straight talk on gay marriage: The FCKH8 campaign
10.16.2010
11:15 am
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Strangely, despite the spectacle of under-18s cursing on camera, this lovely spot and campaign by political activist and nonprofit marketing consultant Luke “Sissyfag” Montgomery hasn’t made the outrage rounds on Fox after being posted 11 days ago.

Give it time, I guess. Meanwhile, Luke’s tactical approach here has come under a bit of discussion in some of the comments. But I’d think it’s immaterial since at this point it seems the play now is NOT to convert California voters since the issue of gay marriage is going to the Supreme Court, right?
 

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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10.16.2010
11:15 am
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Best negative political attack ad of all time?
10.15.2010
03:46 pm
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The back story here is that Winnipeg mayor Sam Katz kicked a kid in the face at a charity soccer game over the summer. This line of attack wouldn’t work for just anyone.

Via Political Wire

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.15.2010
03:46 pm
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Folk music for commie haters
10.15.2010
12:58 am
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Janet Greene was the Joan Baez of the 1960’s anti-commie movement. The music director of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, Greene released one album on the Chantico label in 1966, a collection of red-baiting ditties with titles like ‘Fascist Threat’, ‘Poor Left Winger’ and ‘Commie Lies’.

“Be careful of the Commie lies, swallow them and freedom dies: The USA must realize that she’s the biggest prize.”

There’s a nifty article on Greene at Conelrad.com here.

And now for your listening pleasure, music to have a tea party to, Janet Greene…
 

 
Another pinko-bashing toetapper after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.15.2010
12:58 am
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Remember the women & children of Iraq: Fouad Hady’s heartwrenching reports
10.14.2010
06:19 pm
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Fouad Hady contemplates a 15-year sentence in a Saddam-era women’s prison cell
 
Whether under Saddam Hussein’s abysmal regime or in this post-“liberation” era, we tend to think of Iraq in terms of power and its players—mostly leaders and soldiers and mostly men.

Nine years after he fled Baghdad for Australia, Melbourne-based reporter Fouad Hady has helped change that by travelling back to his home country to file long-form reports from the ground for the Dateline program on Australia’s public SBS One channel.

In 2009’s “City of Widows,” Hady first surveys the miserable poverty of Baghdad’s outlying Al-Rashad district before being told of the Saddam-era womens’ prison, some of the cells of which are now occupied by refugees from other areas. Downtown in the city—which is home to 80,000 of Iraq’s 750,000 widows—he finds a burgeoning movement of women in loss.

“Deadly Legacy”—filed last month—finds Hady reporting from Fallujah, which was the site of massive anti-insurgent operations during which American troopes used munitions made with depleted uranium. Hady’s reporting on the city’s astronomical rates of cancer, infant mortality and leukemia speaks for itself.

These two reports are staggering in their eye-level view of some of Iraq’s afflictions before and after Saddam. No matter your position on that war, these should also prove instructive to those clamoring for action against a far more formidable foe like Iran. War against that country would make this look like a game of croquet. 
 
Click to see City of Widows on YouTube
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After the jump: see Deadly Legacy on YouTube…
 

READ ON
Posted by Ron Nachmann
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10.14.2010
06:19 pm
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Hate Machine: What does Sharron Angle’s candidacy say about the mental health of America?
10.14.2010
05:42 pm
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Republishing an entire article here from the Las Vegas Sun because it’s an eloquent discussion of how things got to where they are in Nevada, i.e. how a hateful harpie—a joke of a human being—like batshit Sharron Angle can be in a statistical dead heat with the Senate Majority Leader! Anyone who is reading this blog who lives in Nevada, PLEASE vote (and vote often!) to keep this woman from gumming up the work that needs to be done in Washington. She’s an unsophisticated, bigoted, MEAN AS HELL church lady who intends to inflict her twisted view of the world on the rest of us. That I’m not so worried about (I live in California, everyone would just laugh at her ideas, here) it’s the idea that someone like this, given a forum (such as the Senate, FOX News, et al) will probably be able to stir up enough shit to derail every progressive thing that would get proposed for the next six years. Sharron Angle is a moron, but she’s dumb enough to be dangerous. Her $14 million dollar campaign haul in the 3rd quarter proves it. Jon Ralston writes:

“Sharron Angle produced one of the most successful single quarters of fundraising in the nation’s history for a U.S. Senate campaign. This is a testament to the hatred of Harry Reid, the nation’s disapproval of President Obama, and the unprecedented grass-roots support for Sharron Angle. Harry Reid is losing this race, he knows it, and he is just going to get more desperate over the final three weeks.”

— Angle spokesman Jarrod Agen after reporting GOP Senate nominee had raised $14 million in the third quarter

•••

What’s hate got to do with it?

Everything. Or just enough.

Even though it has been the leitmotif of the Nevada Senate race, even though it is the undercurrent that has electrified the GOP, even though it is the reason Republicans still have hope here after nominating a verbally flawed candidate, it was still jarring to see the word used in a news release.

I’ve read plenty of such missives over the years that have vicious language and stinging adjectives. Indeed, the Reid campaign has called Angle “crazy” and said she has “lost her mind.” But “hatred” is such an awful word — a word I forbid my daughter to use — and yet it sums up exactly why the Senate majority leader may lose to a woman who just last week talked of Sharia law existing in cities in Michigan and Texas.

It’s hatred that has brought this Senate race, with three days until voting begins, to a place where Angle can win. It is hatred that brought her that $14 million haul. And it is hatred that courses through the American electorate, bringing venomous and vitriolic assaults upon anyone who dares to suggest Obama-Reid-Pelosi is not a three-headed monster.

Angle has all but done what she promised to do when she advertised her campaign on conservative talk shows and Fox — “Harry Reid has said he will raise $25 million in this race. I need 1 million people to send $25.”

And you know what: She did it. Or essentially she did.

An incredible 161,358 people sent her checks of $200 or less. Her average donation is $90, Agen says.

This is real, unparalleled (except, perhaps, for Barack Obama in 2008) grass roots. And there is a wildfire blazing through the grass roots, with burning hatred for Reid animating Angle’s chances.

Of those small contributors, my guess is only a handful of the 161,358 people know much about Angle. They have no idea about her religious fervor, fail to separate her church (which apparently doesn’t like Mormons) from our state, or her multifarious positions on Social Security and Medicare, her sympathy for “Second Amendment remedies” or her latest incendiary comments about Dearborn, Mich., and nonexistent Frankford, Texas, implying “the Muslims are coming, the Muslims are coming.”

But they don’t need to know much about Sharron Angle. They know enough about Harry Reid — Obamacare, bailouts, stimulus, good old boy (emphasis on “old”) and part of a corrupt Congress that has bankrupted this country and led it down the inevitable path to socialism.

I think I got most of the message points. Set the kindling, pour on some gasoline, light the fire and poof: You have $14 million, half of it last month.

Almost every national reporter, as I have said before, wants to know why people “hate” Harry Reid. I always say the same thing: 40 years in politics, familiarity breeds contempt, terrible retail pol, bizarre statements, face of unpopular Democratic agenda. But there’s more to it, as I realized after the $14 million revelation. As a headline on New York magazine’s blog said: “Sharron Angle’s Cash Haul Says Something About America’s State of Mind.”

Team Reid has understood this mental state for a while, which is why it has adopted a scorched-earth policy of its own, determined that if their guy is all but in ashes they have to take the blowtorch to Angle. And have they ever, executing one of the most relentless, laserlike assaults in campaign history, turning Angle from the darling of the Tea Party on June 8 to the butt of national jokes as the election nears.

And so we go to the finish line, with the pair matching each other gaffe for gaffe — Reid answered a question recently about who he thought was the greatest living American by naming two dead senators, Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy.

But Reid’s serpentine rhetorical peregrinations seem addled; Angle’s seem dangerous. So do we want the dotty guy or the crazy woman?

Or, to use that word I don’t let my daughter say: Who do you hate least?

Via Little Green Footballs

Posted by Richard Metzger
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10.14.2010
05:42 pm
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The Beat Generation and the Tea Party
10.13.2010
02:22 am
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“I think I’m going to puke.”
 
Blowhard asshole Lee Siegel continues to thrash around in the low end of the journalistic cesspool with this utterly idiotic essay in the New York Times comparing the Beat Generation to the Tea Party movement.

The counterculture of the late 1950s and early 1960s appears to be everywhere these days. A major exhibition of Allen Ginsberg’s photography just closed at the National Gallery in Washington. A superb book, by the historian Sean Wilentz, about Ginsberg’s dear friend and sometime influence Bob Dylan recently made the best-seller list. “Howl,”  a film about Ginsberg and the Beats, opened last month. And everywhere around us, the streets and airwaves hum with attacks on government authority, celebrations of radical individualism, inflammatory rhetoric, political theatrics.
In other words, the spirit of Beat dissent is alive (though some might say not well) in the character of Tea Party protest. Like the Beats, the Tea Partiers are driven by that maddeningly contradictory principle, subject to countless interpretations, at the heart of all American protest movements: individual freedom. The shared DNA of American dissent might be one answer to the question of why the Tea Partiers, so extreme and even anachronistic in their opposition to any type of government, exert such an astounding appeal.

Comparing the sexy, druggy, life embracing, progressive culture of the beats to the fascistic, xenophobic, racist, fearful and life-negating Tea Party is absolutely absurd. It’s like comparing fucking to a case of serious blue balls.

The following comment by Siegel not only posits an idiotic argument, it’s morally disgusting:

the Tea Partiers’ unnerving habit of bringing guns to town-hall meetings would have repelled the Beats. But William S. Burroughs fetishized guns, accidentally killing his wife while trying to shoot a glass off her head. Violence, implicit or explicit, comes with the “beaten” state of mind. So does theatricality, since playing roles — and manipulating symbols — is often the first resort of people who do not feel acknowledged for being who they really are.

What the fuck does Burroughs’ wife’s death have to with “manipulating symbols” or some kind of identity crisis?

Read the entire steaming pile of bullshit here.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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10.13.2010
02:22 am
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