CAN I Be your BUD?: Decriminalization examined
Alright here’s your meat, then you get your pudding.
After watching someone dance to Trash80’s ‘At teh disko’ one of two things can come to a person’s mind. The first is, “I don’t get it. It’s just a chick dancing in her dorm room.” The other is “Hey that beat isn’t too shabby, …no, wait a second that beat is pretty snappy actually and is it just me or is that a certain Ms. Welch from Florence and the Machine? Certainly looks a tad…whoa?! What was that? Did Florence just pop a move? What’s this? This gal is gettin’ it to that crazy Nintendo beat. I can’t believe it, all she is really doing is the same thing I always catch myself doing when I’m alone listening to music and cleaning the house, or in the car; a bunch of awkward jerks and yanks the beat naturally draws out of me, only I quit doing it when I realize I am doing it in case the shades aren’t drawn or in case somebody drives by and sees me bopping my head, yet this chick isn’t holding back one lick. No she seems to be embracing the beat by letting the rhythm move her bones and take each and every one of those awkward yanks and jerks and tie them seamlessly together into one continuous, watery, synchronistic, flowing movement. And will you look at that smile? That smile is just beaming from behind her flopping hair with every twist and turn like some kind of lighthouse or something. She seems so happy doing what I often shy away from and isn’t happiness the tetragramaton we are all looking for? That’s it! This is a metaphor. This is a lesson. This young lady has touched the source and is a conduit and what I am seeing now is a lesson from the cosmos and that lesson is that life has a beat that hits some high notes, hits some low notes, speeds up, slows down and sometimes we get in tune with that beat and rather than put a halt on the awkward jerks and yanks we instead allow them all to connect together if people are watching or not then we will find ourselves right in the middle of a dance that is nothing short of a gust of the divine mixed in with the frailty of the flesh into an expression which simply put means true happiness is found by no longer being concerned by the thoughts and opinions of those outside of us rather us simply being true to ourselves. Marvelous. Thank you rdhotcalipepr!”
It’s simply a matter of perspective but if you lean to the latter we all know you’re stoned. It is April 20th after all which we all know is super secret code for cannabis consumer friendly so I thought it worthy a topic to hover over for a moment so everyone just take a deep breath and now we begin.
Is It Over?
A post from Doug Wead:
“The good news for the Ron Paul people is that if no one else believes in the success of their campaign, the Romney Hawks obviously do and they are willing to cheat, lie and deceive to stop them. Said one of the staff at Ron Paul Headquarters today, “If Mitt Romney had this thing won, he would be telling his state chairs to make it easy for new people to come into the party.” The fact that they are shutting us out is revealing.”
As the numbers start to come in from states Ron Paul IS gaining the delegate count to be a serious contenter at the RNC. His strategy has always been to focus on getting delegates and it’s paying off. Several states: Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, Washington, Alaska, Maine, and several other others do not bind their delegates to the popular vote.
This has been reported throughout this campaign season but people have not really paid attention to it. Now that states are actually starting to seat delegates through district and state conventions people are realizing that Ron Pau’ls strategy is actually a legit move. He is getting delegates. Will it be enough to win? That is to be determined.
One thing we know is that people are realizing that he has started a movement of people who are engaging in the process. They are educating themselves. They are not 
going away. His message is resonating. His movement is growing! To the left is an example:
It is still early in the campaign season and they can’t count Ron Paul out just yet.
HEY RICKY!!: A SWANSONG FOR SANTORUM
I’m sticking my neck out on this one and hope not to make a pig’s ear so I’m just going to trust that you’ll follow this next step because if you don’t, well then the rest of this thing is simply in vain. Are you with me? Good man! Now, and believe me I know this is going to hurt but I need you to take a look at Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” and try your best to sit through as much as you can. Go ahead, I’ll be waiting until you get back…and just remember, I’m right behind the tab if you need me.
If you couldn’t make it through the whole thing I understand so long as you got a good, healthy serving of awkward discomfort. Because there was awkward discomfort, wasn’t there? I know that for me, a heterosexual American male, even admitting that I know who Lady Gaga is can be a rather cheek reddening confession. In a society where people like this are shoved down your throat one way or another though, I know that the embarrassment I feel is shared by all.
So clearly my having drawn attention to her video or “work”, as it were, is hardly from the realm of appreciation or artistic admiration. It’s just that when I decided to write about Rick Santorum I wanted to get in just the right mood, that mood being awkward and agitated. That’s when “Bad Romance” popped in my head. However, when I sat in front of my magic internet machine and pulled up the video I found that there was yet another startling connection between the two and beg you to entertain me the stroll around the pond. Yes this is about Rick Santorum dropping out, and yes it will get to that, but if there is anything I firmly believe it’s that satisfaction is the death of desire and in life it should always be about the journey and rarely about the destination.
Spread Em’ Takes On a New Meaning
You better pay your parking tickets or you’ll be subjected to a strip search. Thanks to the “Conservative” justices on the Supreme Court. What happened to “Conservatives” being for less intrusive government? What happened to “Conservatives” wanting to protect the Constitution? The same “Conservative” judges that we are depending on to look at Obamacare and call it Unconstitutional looked at strip searches on a nun and say it doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. We live in a state where the police can do whatever they please in the name of common good and security. I for one feel less secure!
I can’t believe I am going to say this but Anthony Kennedy is 100% correct in this case!
Washington Times: Only Ron Paul Can Beat Obama
The Republican Party has energized its base around the idea that Barack Obama must be defeated to save America from “socialism.” They won a majority in the House in 2010 by focusing on Obamacare. They claim that this election is a turning point. Obama must be defeated or America will be “fundamentally changed.”
There is only one problem. All of the candidates they are running will lose to Obama, with the exception of Ron Paul.
In order to win the general election, the Republicans need independents and Democrats. They also need a media narrative that shows a clear contrast between their candidate and Obama. They get all of this with Paul and none of it with Romney, Santorum, or Gingrich.
During the 2010 elections, Republicans pulled off a rhetorical coup. They successfully labeled Obamacare as “socialism” while at the same time mobilizing millions of senior citizens against the program because it would hurt Medicare. Hats off to their spin doctors. It won’t be that easy this year. If they want to attack Obama on Obamacare, they can’t run a candidate who signed the same program into law in Massachusetts (Romney), who supported its individual mandate for twenty years (Gingrich), or who voted for the Medicare prescription drug benefit (Santorum).
My son will be older than I am now when…
Last week the House of Representatives voted 228-191 and approved the Paul Ryan budget plan.
The Ryan budget plan, also known as “The Path to Prosperity” does not project to balance the budget until the year 2040. Even that is a stretch using funny math. In fact, “The Path to Prosperity” still sees massive deficit spending in the year 2021. The year 2021 happens to be the last year that the Ryan budget plan makes projections.
How to assemble a Paul Bot: Step 5
Up until now you had only halfway paid attention to politics or the news but as fate would have it you and I all received one hell of a wakeup call didn’t we? Planes. Towers. Smoke. Due to the, surely at this point, highly anticipated fictitious conclusion I’m building towards I will say no more on September the 11th at this juncture because this ship would steer way off course for quite some time. Oh, but it’s coming. Now I know you knew this was coming and I know you’ve been dreading it because this is when you really messed up. This is when you let the emotion of anger and desire for retribution bubble up and overshadow your inquisitive nature. This was no time for asking questions, not when three towers were still smoldering due to falling into their own footprint…at free fall speed…because of Muslim extremists. Some who heard the call rushed in with the assumption that a tragedy like this was sure to make our government stop playing around and act like grownups, and signed a dotted line that ensured they could get their pound of flesh. Because we all wanted our pound of flesh didn’t we? Don’t worry, you shouldn’t beat yourself up too bad for it, no one could’ve seen those attacks coming, no one was prepared. Except for NORAD who happened to running drills the morning of September 11th which involved commercial airline jets being hijacked and used as missiles to be flown into the world trade center and the pentagon but who the hell are they, right?
How to assemble a Paul Bot: Step 4
While waiting for the inevitable ejection from public school by way of forced graduation or viscous expulsion, you had other things to do. Better things, like get back to figuring out what your tuning fork to the heart of the universe was. What phrase is this, you ask? Well earlier in your life you were weighing the options of what it was that would make you complete, what is it that you can do that no one else can do quite like you? Then, your possible answers were diverse and nowhere near firm, but now with a little more experience and new revelation you had figured it out. You had done a complete internal check of all your spiritual compartments and determined what it was that would follow your name and a semi colon. For some of us it was Sally: Artist, some Bobby: Musician, others Sherry: Teacher, and on and on. At this point in your life you had opened up the Christmas present of the soul and realized what role it was in this world you were intended to play, you discovered what your tuning fork was that would allow you to exist in perfect pitch with the vibrating tone of the universe in harmony. With this tuning fork to the heart of the universe clear in your mind you were sure that with it you would change the world forever and forever set a legacy which for generations would be examined and studied in awestruck amazement. Your course was set in this life and the sails need but come down so your journey may begin, but first…it’s time to party. Yes what better way to spend your latter teenage years than in a complete and total raging blur where you and your buds competed for who could make not only the dumbest life decisions possible, but make them in a consecutive, rapid fire successions? Within that span of fuzzy years you got your first DUI, found out the D.A.R.E. instructor hadn’t been entirely honest about a great many things, got your first crap job (you know, the one where no matter how hard you tried you still went home with pizza sauce all over your khakis), met back up with that bully and this time you beat the insecurity out of him, and somewhere in there managed to get everything wrong about the opposite sex. It’s okay if you just said out loud that you still do.
How to assemble a Paul Bot: Step 3
Like a good little obedient child you return to the meat grinder from Pink Floyd’s rock-opera extravaganza and robotically write down the answers you were expected to memorize that week on blank lines or scribble in little ovals with your selection of either (A),(B),(C),(D) and don’t even think about rubbing that aluminum gum wrapper up and down on the scantron! Alas your heart was not in it and while the dreaded, unappealing hours of this forced indoctrination camp was endured you oft found yourself gazing out the blinds waiting for when the real world would begin. Waiting for that final bell of the day that, for a time, meant you really were free. You were the kid that felt like O.J. Simpson getting acquitted every time the last day of school for summer vacation was over. The next three months would be the lavish overindulgence of Saturday morning cartoons, chasing squirrels through snake infested woods with a slingshot and a bone handled knife and of course sleeping over with the only friend you still had. Frankie the turtle necked albino. Which was nowhere as bad as it sounds because not only did Frankie’s parents bestow upon him the ability to play with power by way of the Nintendo entertainment system, they allowed him to keep it in his bedroom. And Frankie’s parents were alcoholics so whenever you came to spend the night they pretty much passed out after David Lettermen was done with the top ten list and wouldn’t bug you guys about playing “Duck Hunt” or “Metroid” until the sun came up. This type of thing pretty much repeated for the next few years only somewhere in there Frankie, in an obvious effort to deflect, starting delving into the world of video games way too much; remember? This guy was reading Nintendo Power all the time and marking it up like a holy text, he was wearing the power glove to school, he knew the release dates for all the upcoming 8 bit cartridges and who produced them. I mean come on? Why would any normal prepubescent know that type of thing? Frankie did though because he had become obsessed. His family had blurred into an 8-bit reality so all he could do was choose an 8-bit reality that was a little bit better. You hung in there as long as you could but when he started talking that crazy talk about “One day in the future Mario will eat koopas and defecate them like eggs while flying through the level with nothing but a leaf.”, you knew it was time to stop having sleepovers at Frankie’s place.
Then the day came when that chemical reaction we talked about earlier kicked in and your world was about to change forever. Honestly I don’t understand why puberty is considered taboo amongst so many people, or a topic not to be discussed in polite or mixed company. That’s foolishness. Puberty is a wondrous, beautiful thing that is life’s version of an abstract painting because in a world with structure we would declare little people going through life’s change temporarily insane and have them committed to a padded room for the duration of their little caterpillar into a butterfly routine, but instead we let the rascals run around free.
How to Assemble a Paul Bot: Step 2
You’ll never be able to wash away the memory of the first time your mom dropped you off to school. You can still see her getting smaller and smaller as she walked away from you and towards those giant, iron, double doors at the end of a checkered board tile linoleum floor. She disappears in a blinding light as the sun pours in when the door is cracked. You can barely make her out turning to wave good bye before she’s gone, gone, gone. Your throat gets thick and you try to swallow it down. Turning back into the classroom you can see the traumatized looks on all the other kids faces as well. Some of them aren’t going to make it. They’re the ones already sniffling. Nuff said on that first day. Brings back the darkness in me.
It wasn’t all bad though once that boot camp phase was over and done with. Once you’d been acclimated to get up every day at five a.m., sleepily shove toast or pop tarts into your mouth, say ‘here’ or ‘present’ or for the rebel ‘president’ when your name was called on the role, raise your hand to speak, ask permission to perform bodily functions, sit in an assigned seat, walk everywhere in an ant drone manner, place your hand over your heart and swear a pledge to nationalism when you have no capacity to understand what you’re saying, and respond to bells like Pavlov’s dogs. When the conditioning is done and all of this seems normal you are able to jump through the hoops with little thought. In the short time you are allowed recess you begin to see something new happening on the playground; the other kids have managed to break themselves up into smaller groups and drift from the whole. You find this curious and must investigate. After drifting in and out of each group you come to the conclusion that the reasons for separation are for the most arbitrary of reasons. Some have decided that only those with high top sneakers can be in their kid tribe while others have chosen the home team model only cling to those who happen to live in the same neighborhood as they do. The kids who unfortunately drew the short stick in the department of having decent human beings as parents found logic in forming groups based of the pigmentation of their skin and the common culture such pigmentation implied. None of their logic on why a bunch of kids all thrown into the same situation against their control would want to make this dread of a time worse by forming little warring parties, you decide it best to stay out of this type of behavior which curiously never occurred before entering the public school system….hhmmm.
