If Nancy Grace covered Nancy Grace’s civil trial.
Bill Watterson gives first interview in 20 years. Unfortunately the link to the actual interview doesn’t seem to be working.
You soon may need a prescription to get cold medication.
Why are late night talk show hosts’ desks always to the right?
Obama promises “federal belt-tightening” in State of the Union, unleashes budget with record deficit less than a week later. Yes, the promise is that the deficit will start to shrink in 2013. Want to make a bet on whether that actually happens?
Happy palindrome day! To celebrate, here’s a 224-line palindrome poem from the great Demetri Martin.
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on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 10:37 am by Radley Balko
and is filed under General Criminal Justice, General Drug War.
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TheAgitator.com
For Palindrome Day, here’s Weird Al Yankovic’s Bob:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nej4xJe4Tdg
Not murder, not rape, not armed robbery, not child abuse, meth labs are “more important” than all those minor irritants.
Dumbass.
I loved Calvin and Hobbes. I think his dad was one of the better characters besides the boy and tiger themselves. And who didn’t want to be Space Man Spiff.
Man, Radley, that made me miss Calvin and Hobbes. I can remember, back in college, the new C+H cartoon being the highlight of the day, especially in the last years when Watterson threw off all restraint and was just dazzling.
I have not read sunday comics since Calvin stopped.
And, when the prescriptions don’t work at slowing down meth, what then?
The goal is to eliminate meth labs — often in homes or hotel rooms — that use a mixture of toxic chemicals that can explode or catch fire, putting bystanders at risk and requiring costly cleanups.
Yeah, because innocent people can be injured when meth labs explode and, as everyone knows, the injuring of innocent people is the job of the police, not meth producers.
How is it that holocaust deniers and alien abductees are considered fringe group radical nut jobs, but people who think the drug war is working are considered sober mainstream moderates? Am I the only one who gets so pissed off about shit like this that I sometimes feel like jamming an icepick up my nose into the center of my cranial cavity?
And, when the prescriptions don’t work at slowing down meth, what then?
We’ll outlaw carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen.
For the kids.
So, of the $3.8T budget, $1.6T is money we don’t have. That’s 42%.
No politician thinks beyond the next election. The U.S. economy has survived so much abuse from the government, that Congress is actually starting to think it’s indestructible.
The legislative cycle goes like this:
1. A new law is passed to solve problems.
2. After a few years, that law is recognized to be causing problems.
3. Go back to 1.
How is it that holocaust deniers and alien abductees are considered fringe group radical nut jobs, but people who think the drug war is working are considered sober mainstream moderates? Am I the only one who gets so pissed off about shit like this that I sometimes feel like jamming an icepick up my nose into the center of my cranial cavity?
It’s a combination of the indoctrination with drug war propaganda in elementary school (true or not, the things we learn as kids tend to stay in our heads forever); Our selective use of personal experience (for some reason, knowing one addict confirms the propaganda more than hundred occasional or one-time users disprove it), parents freaking out over any claimed danger to their children, and a general deference to authority on such things.
On the plus side, at least you don’t need a prescription for meth.
Don’t miss the link to early Watterson editorial cartoons. It’s at the bottom of the page that Radley’s link leads to. And the interview link works now too.
I’ve been looking at the deficit history and how the debt is heading toward a point at which it will be equal to our GDP.
Fiscally, WWII is the worst thing that ever happened to us because it gives everyone an example to point at and say, “See! Big deficits and a huge national debt are no problem. We’ve been there before and survived just fine.”
And nevermind the fact that forcing a prescription for decongestants will drive healthcare costs up even more. But then, we won’t hear the real reason. We’ll only hear that the drug companies are greedy.
You know, I wish a few of the drug warriors would encounter Spaceman Spiff and his transmogrifier.
That Nancy Grace article is spectacular. That woman surpasses Joe Apraio on my hate-o-meter.
On CNN this morning, they were talking about the budget, and included a nugget about the deficit…. and then, after talking about the “Jobs bill”, they talked about the budget freezes and how Obama was being a fiscal conservative. With a $1.5 trillion deficit. I think my brain melted.
Obama is a wizard in that he is getting credit for his restraint while still putting up crazy crazy deficit numbers. When he is running for reelection, you can bet that he will tout his deficit shrinking plan for 2013, which just so happens to be after the election.
I voted for Obama with the belief that he would take seriously some of the promises he made during his campaign (on Iraq, transparency, lobbyists, the drug war, and on and on). He has somehow been able to claim credit for many of them while wholly ignoring or contradicting them in fact.
After watching the beatdown in Baltimore I cannot figure out if Obama made asses of the Republicans or if the Republicans just made asses of themselves.
I have decided it was a little bit of both.
I greatly miss Calvin. I have all of the book collections of Calvin and Hobbes. Bill Watterson has a lot of integrity and I definitely understand his decision to stop the comic in its prime. All he has to do is look at the garbage that has become of other such once iconic creations like the Simpsons to validate his decision.
Why are late night talk show hosts’ desks always to the right?
Because it allows them to remain seated at the desk and extend their right hand to shake that of guests without turning their back on the TV cameras. That’s all.
I’d mock you severely for that if I wasn’t in the same boat.
I’d mock you severely for that if I wasn’t in the same boat.
Please allow me to mock you both. Mock mock mock.
I did have a discussion with my mother once where she accused Obama of being a socialist. My argument went something like this:
“Obama is a socialist. McCain is a socialist! They are all socialists. They are both big government socialists. The only difference between the two is McCain wants to keep us at war forever.”
Obviously I was wrong on that last point; there is no difference.
You noticed that too, huh?
I’m really gonna stop running junk. Seriously. Right after I get through this crisis, no more opiates for me. Nope. I’ll be clean as a whistle. You can trust me, because I’m not really an addict. Yessiree, just a couple more years and I’ll kick the habit for good.
Vote for me in 2012. I promise to quit using heroin after I get re-elected.
Forget pseudoephedrine, ammonia, the real culprit
is dihydrogen oxide. HOH. Known in some drug circles as
“water” or “agua.”
This nasty solvent is used in the synthesis of LSD, GHB, methamphetamine, MDMA and countless other illegal substances.
if my bill passes purchasing this noxious substance will require
a prescription as well as a DEA license.
01/02/2010 would be January second in my check book. But it’s a bit like the people who argued the millennium really ended on Dec 31 2000, that argument leaves you a year late for the party. So I’ll just celebrate palindrome day with everyone else.
Because there is no way to deny the holocaust or be an alien abductee “for the children”?
Whatever you enjoy doing, Dave, is none of my business.
But there’s probably a law against it in your state.
;P
I guess the next black market money-maker will be a process to take meth and break it back down to a decongestant that works and whatever else is in there.
“Mississippi seized 590 meth labs in 2009, he said, up from about 300 the previous year.”
Wow, that drug war sure is working!
“You soon may need a prescription to get cold medication.”
Well dammit. Now I have no freedom. Yesterday I was free as a bird in this great nation, now it’s a big open-air prison.
What? There was no freedom in Amerika yesterday? Really? I wasn’t aware.
Nappy time.
That would depend a lot on what happens to tax rates in the next 3 years, so… no bet.
http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/02/bill_watterson_creator_of_belo.html
That’s the working link.
There is a difference, though, which is that McCain would not have been running trillion dollar deficits. I honestly didn’t think they’d be different a year ago, now I know better.
That’s not exactly high praise for McCain – simply pointing out that he likely would have been the lesser of two evils. Cue CiC pointing out that the lesser of two evils is the best we can ever hope for…
The pseudoephedrine proposal looks almost like a standard government intervention to help large entrenched producers (of meth, in this case) by putting up barriers for smaller ones. It’s highly unlikely that Mexican meth factories (or large American ones) use pseudoephedrine; they can order their L-PAC from India, or use one of the other twenty-plus synthetic routes to methamphetamine. Pseudoephedrine is mainly useful to producers with extremely limited equipment, chemical availability, and expertise.
“Happy palindrome day! To celebrate, here’s a 224-line palindrome poem from the great Demetri Martin.”
It’s actually a 29-line poem which contains 224 words, not a 224-line poem.
I doubt it. Those getting the gravy might have been different, but the whole ’stimulus’ BS seems pretty bipartisan.
Also, McCain probably would have put forward some ‘health care reform’ that likely would have gone through.
Wow, I bet I have seen the name “Palin” about 20,000 times since I last saw “palindrome”. It felt weird the way the “palin” part jumped out at me before I could actually read the whole word.
Yikes. Imagine.
Palindrome.
Videodrome with a wink and a shotgun.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/
Yes, the parallels are ominous:
A sleazy cable-TV programmer begins to see his life and the future of media spin out of control in a very unusual fashion when he acquires a new kind of programming for his station…
“There is a difference, though, which is that McCain would not have been running trillion dollar deficits.”
There is simply no way to know this. And if there were a way to do a controlled experiment, my hypothesis would be no substantial difference between the two.
Because, actually, there was a controlled experiment done a few years ago called the Bush Administration which featured record deficits.
But nevermind. There are actually huge differences between Democrats and Republicans. I just can’t demonstrate any. It’s my fault. If I had better instruments I could do it.
I be mockin’ all y’all that still think voting within the two-party system is ever goinna produce results. “Scared of the other guy winning” ain’t no excuse, y’hear? They’s all the same!
I still say go vote. Just to say no to the bond issues. Any incumbent that has been in office long enough for you to remember their name has been there long enough so vote for the other candidate. Hopefully this will at least slow them down a little.
My wife’s uncle tried to tell me that by voting for a 3rd party (Barr) I was wasting my vote.
I told him that voting for the candidate that was not the most closely aligned with my political beliefs and who I genuinely felt was the best for the country was a waste of my vote.
He started his response with “This is why you’re wrong…”
People need to be broken of the Democrat or Republican rubber stamp process. They need to realize that in order to change the system, you must elect a candidate not of the system. A third party is not the final answer, but it’s a good start.
Why would anyone believe that Politician X will do what s/he says, unless they have a long track record of principaled statements and voting? There is far too much data to prove this is NEVER the case. It’s like a battered woman saying “maybe if I do this, he’ll love me and then the beatings will stop”. Politicians don’t work in a vacuum and have 0 dependencies. However, things are trending this way — it’s called a dictatorship.
License for internet?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/49176.html
I’m pretty certain that I could never vote for a candidate affiliated with any party that had corrupted itself enough to become competitive at the national level.
The Libertarian Party must choose between integrity or votes. The American voting public has shown in every election that it has only scorn for liberty.
#23| Forget pseudoephedrine, ammonia, the real culprit
is dihydrogen oxide. HOH. Known in some drug circles as
“water” or “agua.”
Dihydrogen monoxide should be banned. See Bullshit Season 1 Episode 13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bullshit!_episodes
#18 | I greatly miss Calvin. I have all of the book collections of Calvin and Hobbes.
I miss Space Moose, and own the book Triumph of the Whim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Moose
BEST COMIC EVER
If you liked Calvin and Hobbes, look up Frazz. It’s done in a very very very similar style. As in, you would almost think it was the same guy. Wink wink.
Frazz’s girlfriend bears a strong resemblence to Calvin’s babysitter Rosalyn. I second Phelps recommendation of the comic. It’s not a clone of Calvin, but the spirit is similar.
@ 41 “People need to be broken of the Democrat or Republican rubber stamp process”
I couldn’t agree more, and since even people who identify themselves as at least leaning either Rep or Dem claim to generally be dissatisfied with the government, you’d think it would be easier to get them to vote 3rd party.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just convice the majority of the voting populace, just for one election cycle, if you lean Left vote Green Party and if you lean Right vote Libertarian? It would sure be interesting to see the resulting political battles….
The resulting battles would show R and D being victorious. Why would a corrupt system allow itself to be dismantled? When people “vote”, how many people in the chain of custody do you implicitly trust to have no bias, no motive, no incentive to skew the results? How many elections and ballot measures do we truly know the results to be accurate? The answer is ZERO because there is no way to validate results. You can’t get all of the people who voted together in one room and count the votes. You can only try to do it bit by bit, and hope that all of the people who voted have their vote represented.
For all we know, we’re told numbers that “sound about right” and everyone believes the results without reservation.
The worst deficit in the Bush administration was 1/4 of Obama’s first. I wasn’t pleased back then, but this is a new level of bad.
It took 8 years of republican idiocy to get us into this mess, why are we suprised it takes more than a year to get us out. I would remind everyone that the last democrat who promised to reduce the deficit and balance the budget, Bill Clinton, did just as he promised. Of course what every politician learned from the 2000 election is that sound fiscal policy is not a politically winning one.
And people shriek about what a cynic I am when I tell them that a few states allowing medical marijuana doesn’t imply an end to the War On Drugs.
I fully expect drain cleaning products, tire cleaners, fertilizer, paint and thinners, and ether to require a photocopy be made of your driver’s license within the next ten years. Or at the very least I expect people to attempt to pass laws to that extent. For the children, of course.
http://www.articlesoffreedom.us/Home.aspx
Good to see holocaust deniers, and alien abductees getting some love.
You already need a script here in Oregon. I understand, but what a PITA
Calvin and Hobbes as “8th wonder of the world?” Well, it would mean displacing the Berlin Airlift…I’ll have to get back to you. ;)
Roger Ramjet, he’s our man
Hero of our nation…
Demetri Martin is awesome. Or as my brother would say:
Satan oscillate my metallic sonatas