Month: November 2011

  • Why We Must Not End Prohibition

    Eric has been repeating the Hillary Clinton bit about why we can’t end the Drug War. “because there’s just too much money in it.“ Which brings to mind and old post of mine from February of 2005 that hasn’t seen the light of day here. So here it is. ===== This came out about 16…

  • Death to Meebo!

    There is a new form of malware going around which has installed a very annoying popup at the bottom of web browsers. It is called the “Meebo Bar,” and it is very difficult to remove. Here’s what it looks like (shown sideways to display it thoroughly without messing up the formatting): And if you click…

  • “The Addictive Power Does Not Reside In The Drugs”

    ‘Dismissing addictions as “bad habits” or “self-destructive behaviour” comfortably hides their functionality in the life of the addict.’ Vincent Felitti , MD Physician and Researcher I have been saying this for years. Nice to see a professional who has come to a similar conclusion. H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas

  • Vote for change!

    Those who believe that states should have the right to set their own policies on things like medical marijuana might want to compare and contrast the leading Republican contender and the Democrat incumbent on the issue. Here’s Newt Gingrich: Three Republican presidential candidates have shown an openness to handing over control of drugs and medical marijuana…

  • Muscular development

    Some developments are just too rich for me to ignore: The 2012 campaign just keeps getting weirder and weirder. When this year began, I never imagined that covering a presidential campaign would compel me, as a professional journalist, to publish a photo of this bizarrely muscular woman who probably inspires perverse lust in your depraved hearts. So go ahead and…

  • Solid State Radio

    My latest article on the revival of crystal radios can be read at Solid State Radio. It is a treasure trove of links and nostalgia for those interested in crystal radios. Cross Posted at Power and Control

  • If only Barney Frank were more of a role model!

    While I am as delighted as anyone to the right of left to see that Barney Frank is retiring, I find myself surprised by what he obviously thinks is a  rhetorical question: “Did you think I would serve till I was 106?” Come on! To answer that question, I need look no further than my own…

  • “we ought to be much more aggressive about drug policy”

    For quite some time, I have been vehemently opposed to the candidacy of Newt Gingrich, to the point where I sometimes thought I was being paranoid, even allowing that I suffered from Gingrichphobia. Well, I now feel vindicated, and if anything I don’t think I was being paranoid enough. In his latest interview, Gingrich has…

  • The war between useless and useful

    The Democrats have finally officially decided to dump the white working class. For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class. All pretense of trying to…

  • PIIGS And Troughs

    In the wake of the bund auction failure, there is woe. The problem is, no one believes the PIIGS will keep their promises.   They’ve broken too many already.  The new “stability pact” is a joke — oh, they’re suddenly going to start abiding by debt/deficit rules because… ? Meanwhile, the Krug-eynesians keep insisting the PIIGS…

  • 404ed

    I was looking around for some electronics information and got this amusing 404 notice. Cross Posted at Power and Control

  • 10th Amendment Sunday nostalgia

    Forgive my frivolity, but the 10th Amendment has become so meaningless these days that there is little point in resorting to serious arguments that it should still mean something. There is a broad, bipartisan consensus that it does not. So all I can do is wax nostalgically, like some libertarian kook who lacks the sense…

  • Sharing the wealth

    Your tax dollars at work!  Driven By Drug War Incentives, Cops Target Pot Smokers, Brush Off Victims Of Violent Crime As Radley Balko explains, the reason for this is simple. Federal incentives. Arresting people for assaults, beatings and robberies doesn’t bring money back to police departments, but drug cases do in a couple of ways.…

  • Can we just bail out instead of bailing them out?

    I watched the GOP debate the other night, and it became quite clear that even among the supposedly warmongering Republicans, there is a strong undercurrent of war fatigue. While Ron Paul is the only member of the pack to reject the Iraq War out of hand, there is a feeling that the era of the…

  • Thai Thanksgiving

    My friend Karridine has some news from Thailand ====================================== Friends, Don’t misunderstand, the Thais as a nation do NOT celebrate Thanksgiving Day, but as individuals they certainly are thankful and are showing gratitude for the several-hundred dollars in donations that came through this week. (BkkFloodHelp(at)Gmail.com) Keep it up, just a week or two more, and…

  • Control Yourself!

    This is not about publishing, though the trigger for it was that I echoed my piece on breaking into writing in PJM lifestyle and I got a comment that puzzled me.  I didn’t know what the commenter meant or what he thought he was saying.  Now, this is not unusual, of course, except that this…

  • Happy Thanksgiving!

    Just got back from walking Coco and the streets are almost completely deserted. Bad day to be a turkey, I guess. Unless you’re lucky enough to be Cousin Reginald’s turkey, that is!   Enjoy!

  • If you think Israel is more advanced than its neighbors, you’re a pinkwashed homonationalist!

    The New York Times features a remarkable Op-Ed by an author named Sarah Schulman. Schulman, an outspokenly anti-Israel gay activist, is known for her claim that the famous Broadway production “Rent” plagiarized her material. She never sued, probably because ideas and stock characters — such as bohemians with AIDS struggling to pay their rent — cannot be successfully copyrighted.…

  • Perspective, Filtering, And Consensus Reality

    This RCP video of Janeane Garofalo perfectly illustrates a bothersome point about our national political conversation: “Or ‘I’m not armed this time,’ they had signs that would say that,” Garofalo said while recalling news reports she saw on the Tea Party. “So, how is linking arms on a college campus an act of aggression, but…

  • Well At Least We Don’t Put Them On Trains

    Commenter Frank alerted me to this story about a man being tased by police for riding his bicycle on a public road but giving insufficient deference to authority. There may have been a reason for that. “A 61-year-old Halifax County [North Carolina, U.S.] man died Tuesday, a day after police shocked him with a stun…