There are so many angles that might be successfully pushed now that we’re over the 50% hump. Economic, medicinal, non-criminalization of responsible adults, moral (God made it!), 3-4 new industries, taking away one of the avenues of profit and $ laundering by druglords and shady banks, etc. Although I would strongly oppose it being only “sold in pharmacies” for a myriad of reasons, I would have no problem with medicinal patients purchasing theirs there.

I think our strongest argument has to be economic; regulated and taxed to adults over 21, retailers, growers, paraphernalia makers and stores, cafes/smoke clubs, etc. would provide Billions of dollars of income and tax revenue and jobs. And that’s before we even mention the real economic kicker; allowing the textile/clothing/paper industries to finally be allowed to grow and research hemp (another casualty by way of association) to make the USA the world leader of cutting edge use and development of hemp, the plant with the longest fibers.

Continuing to deconstruct the distortions and moralistic alarmism of the naysayers should be another top priority. We’ve had 60 years of lies and ‘sin’ and ‘gateway drug’ etc thrown at cannabis and hemp that will take a little longer to undo. When the moralists and faux constitutional conservatives are forced to recall what the actual constitution and warship rigging and Victory Gardens etc. consisted of, it’ll be a double bonus.

What really needs to happen is a class action lawsuit against the veracity of credit ratings agencies and scores, and legally ending the practice of prospective employers and landlords using your ‘illegitimate’ credit rating score to prevent you from simply renting an apartment or getting a job.

working on it; the biggest hurdle seems to be all the preservatives, chems, hormones, residual anxiety/stress, etc in the bloodstream. You just can’t make a good tasting wafer if there’s no integrity/wholesomeness in your starting ingredients.

yes, “return” is the right verb, as is “restore”. If we had a product that we sold for $2.50 for decades, then put on sale at .99c for ten years, when the price went back up to $2.50 it ISN’T a price increase, it’s a return/restore price. The upper bracket tax rate was 90% in the era you cite, then from 1964-1980 (here comes Ronnie!) it was 70%. We need to return/restore the rate to 50-70% and it will still be a ‘discount’ from when it was 90%. It’s not “raising” taxes and “punishing success” and hindering the ‘job creators’(job creators, my ass!), it’s restoring America’s ‘traditional’ modern era tax rate to the level it was.

-not that that will necessarily penetrate the minds of the regressives, but if enough people used those words and how it was a traditional and patriotic tax rate, you might woo some independents and dems enough where they begin to use the words restore/return instead of saying “raising taxes” in the print/tv media.

Hah! or The Day That Earth‘The Liberal’ Stood Still”, It’s a Wonderful Life Lie”, Twas the Night Before Austerity, etc. Could riff all day on that meme, Margaret. Enjoy your Yule, you!

Happy Holidays to all the pups and lakesters! Some great strides made by FDL this year.

My brother is in town from out west and I’ll be driving thru a thankfully quiet DC to visit the family out in Maryland.

Today’s tunes: the well-meant but hilarious (sorry Bob, but it is) Dylan Xmas cd from a year or two ago.
Today’s post-family-gathering to-do list: finish the new Palast book and keep working on new little music blogsite.

The Palast book, Vulture’s Picnic, is stunning in the same way his last one and N. Klein’s Shock Doctrine were. Though most of the book has been about the Big Oil cartels, Chapter 12 is mindblowing about the EU/WTO/vultures, especially focusing on Peter Sutherland, who is/has been: the pope’s stock broker, chairman of Goldman-Sachs Intnat’l, founding director of WTO until the just before the sh*t hit the fan, chairman of BP until just before the BP blowout, and has been dubbed “the father of globalization”. Truly a 1% of 1% of the 1% special a-hole. If you have cable, c-span book tv is airing one of Palast’s recent book tour talks through the next few days (audio capture appreciated; my mic went out when I caught his DC-area talk and I’d love to have the audio).

Have a nice holiday everyone, and special thanks to JH and crew and all the pups for making FDL’s best year (so far) happen. Don’t forget to catch a breather; 2012′s gonna be a doozy! Peace and suchness.

Thanks for a great topic, Margaret! Gotta go get ready for my web design tutor. Over and out for now…

“Wow, you were organized!”

Had to be. There weren’t cellphones, mobile computers, GPS, etc back then. Just you and the road. A legible index card was readable/doable while driving solo; squinting at a detailed map at night was not (had to pull over). And as a DFH, I sure wasn’t going to ask certain authority figures or rednecks for directions if lost in red states, ha ha! (“no officer, there’s nothing in my trunk”). Gas station attendants and truckers were usually cool, though, for the few times my maps didn’t have the answers.

Good use of the sleeping bags, for sure. However, not so sure about donating the topos to them: “this just in… the #’s of OWS in NY and DC were halved today, and the media is asking if the movement has peaked. Organizers were adamant that that support for the movement has not waned. One went on record as saying: “Someone donated these bitching topographical maps of the Catskills and some NPs. When I turned around, everyone had gone camping!” ; )

I used to LOVE maps. Recently during a move, I finally tossed the old AAA/RMcN US one I had (just like the one in today’s post pic, but even older!) from my major hitchhiking days 30 years ago. Campfire burns, dog-eared shreds, tiny (now) indecipherable pen markings of places/houses/tent-sites visited, etc. Don’t worry; still have my 20 y.o. one from my cross country car-driving days, some topographical ones for Shenandoah NP, and a good dozen from mom’s glovebox of the old paper foldout individual state maps from most of the Atlantic states.

Even today when going on a trip, I follow the same protocol I did in the 1980′s: directions written on an index card (from a map, cross-checked w/ online maps for modernity of roads) on my dash, Rand McN map/atlas under driver’s seat w/ pen and flashlight. No GPS, no printed out 3pp from google/mapquest, no cellphone-mapped backup route. Maps! And yes, I agree with you on the privacy issues, but it is very fun to google street-level ‘visit’ places I know I won’t be able to visit any time soon (or ever).

Why in the hell didn’t they protect the phrase “under God” in The Pledge of Allegiance while they were at it?!? When Sharia Law is imposed, they’ll regret that oversight. Thankfully the House is finally taking care of important things again, though, huhn?

Brilliant info, jes!! Please remember to bring up these points in other (applicable) threads in the near future. Do you have a link/suggestion of resources to get more of these #’s? “25 out of 75 billion”, almost none of “the 30 billion allotted for the SBLF”, “29 million” of the “250 Million for expansion of CHC”. Absolutely effin’ brilliant finds! Thanks for sharing.

I’ll be there (well, here since I live in DC) on Thursday for sure. I almost wonder whether Freedom Plaza is big enough with the expected influx Thurs-Sun from many OWS! folks in NYC. Although Freedom Plaza is also within spitting distance of the infamous anti-99%ers Chamber of horrors Commerce.

If you’re coming from outside the area, the autumn temps have arrived and Thurs/Fri should be sunny in the high 60′s. Which is good; lotsa rain the last month. I’m bringing my vidcam, some H20, a smile, some participatory spirit and some brains. (BRAINS! Hey, you gotta eat, y’know!)

Good post, peterr. I had similar thoughts visiting the new MLK memorial 2 weeks ago and going to see the Dalai Lama’s Buddhist training teachings here in DC in July, and your post reminded me of Kucinich’s call to establish a Dept. of Peace. To get to the MLK memorial, you have to pass all the war memorials en route to see the quotes/statue of someone assassinated who was pushing us to transcend war/national divisions. Two of the quotes at the memorial:

“It is not enough to say, ‘We must not wage war.’ It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace.”

“True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”

Thanks so much for the work on this transcript, and hats off and best wishes to Dan and his legal team!

To other fellow legalese neophytes (c’mon lurkers, I can’t be the only one! -er, can I?), a motion in limine is: “a written or oral motion made by attorneys in civil or criminal lawsuit to preclude prejudicial or objectionable evidence before it is seen or heard by a jury. The primary advantage of the in limine motion is to avoid the futile attempt of trying to undo harm done where jurors have been exposed to damaging evidence, even where later stricken by the court.
The motion in limine is one of the most powerful yet underutilized or misused tools in a litigator’s war chest.”

I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

Yeah, seems likely. They mentioned that they were arresting the women first, and had just arrested Jessica sitting in front of Jane.

The live stream was awesome; viewers went from 40 to a peak of around 172 in a short time. Having the ‘jane-cam’ inside the protesters’ line (within, looking out) was a much more powerful viewing experience that the usual filmed-from-outside POV. Way to go, Jane, Dan, Bill, etc.!!

Someone mentioned that the first arrest was a woman from Wasilla, Alaska.

Once again (going rogue/going rouge), move a letter to get the appropriate title:

Fundee-ated

And how was the durn movie, TBogg? Or did you head over to ‘Pottersville’ instead?

The new Secretary of Defense starts with a trip from DC to Afghanistan. “Kill 20 leaders, end the WOT.”

Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama, in first major appearance since giving up his political title, travels from near Afghanistan (well, Dharamsala, India) to DC. He’s speaking in front of the Capitol right now. Will his words be along the line of “Kill 20 ignorances, end the War on Peace”? Looks like a great big group of people are enjoying his public talk on World Peace downtown here today.