The 10 Most Successful Potheads on the Planet… Cool Enough to Admit It

By Chuck - Boston University

An unemployed porno addict, sitting in his parents' basement, playing video games, eating Lucky Charms out of the box with one hand while he lazily scratches his balls with the other. A dread-lock having, patchouli oil smelling, tie-die wearing, Phish listening, hula-hoop twirling space cadet. A burger flipping, acne having, socially inept, friendless loser… These are the common stereotypes associated with the term 'pothead'. In a recent piece we published on pot farms, a debate erupted in the comments section, with some arguing that if you smoke pot, you'll be poor, gay, and "washing dishes until you're dead."

 

Where these stereotypes originated remains a mystery to us. In reality, they couldn't be further from the truth. Not only have 42% of Americans admitted to trying pot, but pot smokers have gone on to become some of the most successful people in our society. We're not talking about Willie Nelson and Snoop. These guys are on the Forbes 500, they're leading the free world, and they prove that all existing pothead stereotypes are nothing more than myths.

Sir Richard Branson

While the 'Sir' in front of this guy's name puts him in some very elite company, it doesn't automatically get him on this list. What does earn him a spot is the fact that he's the 236th richest person in the world, founder of the Virgin empire, which encompasses everything from airlines to record stores to cell phones, and made his entire multi-billion dollar fortune from absolutely nothing. Not only does this man smoke weed, he gets high with his 21-year-old son. He has publicly stated that there's nothing wrong with smoking pot, has petitioned for the legalization of pot, and even said that if it were legal, he'd sell it.

Rick Steves

Your name doesn't become synonymous with 'European Travel' by accident. You can't just take a bong hit, lay back in your bean bag and toss off a few 'graphs on how awesome the Louvre is. And yet here's Rick Steves, author of 27 top selling European travel guides, host of his own TV show and radio show, and a very outspoken pothead. He's a member of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and credits pot for turning him into a better travel writer by opening his mind to new things.

Aaron Sorkin

In fairness to tokers around the world, Sorkin is a bit more of a 'drug addict' than he is 'pothead'. He started dabbling with weed and coke back in the late '80s, has been in and out of rehab numerous times, and was arrested for possession of marijuana, mushrooms and crack in 2001. So yeah, he loves to smoke weed… but he also loves to freebase. Not cool, Aaron! However, the man's drug problems have done little to hinder his success in Hollywood. His work on The West Wing, both as writer and producer, earned him multiple Emmy Awards, and countless nominations for other awards.

Michael Phelps

Mr. "Has More Olympic Gold Medals Than Anyone In History" made headlines this week when photos of him and a bong surfaced. Since the scandal, Phelps has given a few interviews decrying his "bad judgment," promising it was a dumb mistake that never happened before and won't happen again… but we know that's bullsh*t. Phelps was hitting that bong like a pro, not daintily toking some little amateur joint. With this in mind, we're going to go ahead and assume this wasn't Phelps's first time. It might be his last, but it definitely wasn't his first. This means that you can become the most world class athlete of all time and be a pot smoker at the same time. Stereotype shattered.

Barack Obama

Almost every American President before Barry, from Washington to Clinton to Bush, has had a pot addled past. Clinton purportedly tried and failed to smoke a joint, Bush was a boozer, but messed with coke and pot from time to time, Washington even grew marijuana on his farm. But as far as we know, none have admitted to smoking as much pot as Obama. He wrote extensively about his stoner past in his book Dreams of My Father, and in a 2007 interview stated "When I was a kid I inhaled frequently. That was the point." Anyone who wonders what kind of future a pothead can have should take a hard look at Barack Obama. Not only can you grow up to be ridiculously smart, you can grow up to be President.

http://coedmagazine.com/2009/02/06/the-10-most-successful-potheads-on-the-planet-cool-enough-to-admit-it/

Hey, that's not bipartisanship!

Duelling Townhall Meetings

If her name had been Joe, her wife wouldn't have died alone

As a Lacey, Wash., woman found out when she was barred from seeing her dying partner in a Miami hospital, this is an increasingly anti-gay nation, to judge from all the mean-spirited amendments and legislation that have made scapegoats and boogie men of them in recent years.

By Leonard Pitts Jr

Your wife is dying.

One moment everything was fine. You were in your stateroom on the cruise ship — it was to be an anniversary cruise — unpacking your things. The kids were in the adjoining stateroom playing with your wife. Suddenly, they banged on the door crying that mom was hurt.

So now you're in the hospital — Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami — waiting for word, and it's not coming. They tell you, Joe (we'll call you Joe) you can't be with her. You plead with them, to no avail. No, Joe, sorry, Joe, we can't tell you anything.

One hour turns to two, two to four, four to six. Your wife is dying and no one she loves is there.

Finally, in the eighth hour, you reach her bedside. You are just in time to stand beside the priest as he administers last rites.

Your wife is dead. Her name was Lisa Marie Pond. She was 39.

It happened, Feb. 18-19, 2007, except that Pond's spouse was not a man named Joe, but a woman named Janice. And there's one other detail. Janice Langbehn who, as it happens, is an emergency room social worker from Lacey, Wash., says the first hospital employee she spoke with was an emergency room social worker. She thought, given their professional connection, they might speak a common language.

Instead, she says, he told her, "I need you to know you are in an anti-gay city and state and you won't get to know about Lisa's condition or see her" — then turned and walked away.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008742219_opina15pitts.html

In pictures: The World Press photography awards

The photograph that won Anthony Suau World Press Photo of the Year 2008

AMERICAN photographer Anthony Suau has won the top prize in the World Press Photo competition with an image of a police officer searching a debris-strewn home to ensure the evicted residents have left after a mortgage foreclosure.

 

The winning photo for Time magazine shows the officer, gun drawn, peering into an open doorway inside the house, which is filled with overturned furniture and boxes.

It illustrates the economic crisis that began with the US housing market but has spread around the globe.

 

http://news.scotsman.com/world/In-pictures-The-World-Press.4980927.jp

TOGETHER WE CAN STOP LADWP GREEN PATH NORTH

New billboard delivers message to Mayor Villaraigosa in a big way.

Located on the eastbound I-10 Fwy. by Cabazon, CA

 

A dinosaur has reared its ugly head in the California Desert. This giant is neither jolly nor green, and the outdated paradigm it represents needs to disappear into the fossil record as it has no place in the 21st Century.

Yes, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) is at it again, this time trying to destroy another rural region and unique ecosystem--the California Desert.

To what could be this century's most compelling problem, climate change, the archaic Los Angeles utility has brought its 19th Century solution--build more transmission lines. It has also brought its greed, wanting to own and control these transmission lines rather than share existing transmission routes and transmission capacity planning.

Green Path North is a 500-kilovolt transmission line project and new energy corridor that LADWP wants to establish on protected lands and across scenic vistas of the California Desert, as well as through rural desert communities.

LADWP's preferred route would run for miles though sensitive areas in the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), the Pioneertown Mountains Preserve, and undeveloped natural areas on public lands.

It would pass through communities from Desert Hot Springs to Hesperia and would impact 30 miles of privately owned property that could be taken from its rural owners through eminent domain proceedings.

Initially, gigantic metal power poles and transmission lines would march across the desert along this 85-mile-long route. But that would be only the beginning.

Approval of the project would entail amending the California Desert Conservation Area Plan, which has protected these lands since 1980. This amendment would designate a new 2- to
5-mile-wide energy corridor on federal lands in which all future oil, water, gas, and additional transmission line projects would be built.

LADWP does not need to destroy the desert to protect the planet. Renewable energy is a big part of the solution to the global climate change problem, but as other nations have discovered, the technology is now available to generate this energy locally, using true innovation like roof-top solar panels, thin film photovoltaic, and other renewable generation technologies applied within Los Angeles' own borders. Existing transmission corridors can be used, in this case the I-10 corridor, using new high-conductivity lines, and sharing with California's other energy producers rather than pursuing LADWP's proprietary agenda using phantom congestion scares.

We cannot allow archaic thinking, selfish promotion of proprietary interests, and unfair exploitation of rural communities  to dominate the renewable energy discussion and compromise California's desert bioregion and its communities.

 

http://www.cadesertco.org/

Should you keep taking that multivitamin?

Booster Shots

Oddities, musings and some news from the world of health.

 

by Karen Kaplan

The news about vitamins keeps getting worse.

A spate of high-profile studies published in the last few years showed that a variety of popular supplements -– including calcium, selenium and vitamins A, C and E –- didn't do anything to reduce the risk of developing heart disease, stroke or a variety of cancers. (A roundup on the studies can be found here.)

But what about multivitamins? These combination pills, which contain 10 to 30 vitamins and minerals, are the most popular dietary supplements sold in America. A report published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggests they shouldn't be.

The study tracked 161,808 participants in the Women's Health Initiative, a long-term effort to identify risk factors for cancer, heart disease and bone health among postmenopausal women. Subjects hailed from all over the country and included white, black, Latina, Asian and Native American women. They were followed for an average of nearly eight years.

Overall, 41.5% of study participants took some version of a multivitamin. Those women were more likely to be white and college-educated, live in the West, exercise and have a lower body mass index.

However, they weren't any more likely to ward off a diagnosis of breast, ovarian, lung, stomach, bladder, kidney, colorectal or endometrial cancer compared with women who didn't take multivitamins. Nor were the pills helpful in preventing heart attacks, strokes, blood clots or the risk of death from any cause during the study period.

The research team, led by scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, did find one modest benefit: The 3,741 women who took stress multivitamins –- formulations with higher doses of several B vitamins along with an extra jolt of vitamin C -– were 25% less likely to have a heart attack. No other correlations between vitamins and health outcomes were statistically significant.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/02/should-you-keep.html

7 Items You Won't Believe Are Actually Legal

By Robert Evans

Drugs, artillery emplacements, napalm, prostitution - sometimes it seems like the best things in life are illegal. For some reason, the fascists who control this country don't believe in your God given right to smoke meth and man a 155-millimeter Howitzer.

Luckily for us, there are a lot of awesome things out there that Uncle Sam amazingly hasn't taken away from us yet. Read this article, and then go and pick up one of everything while you still can!

#7.

Flamethrowers

Holy Shit, Really?

Yes. There are currently no federal laws governing or restricting the ownership of flame-throwing devices. Some states have laws restricting possession of flamethrowers, with violations only considered to be misdemeanors, but 40 states have absolutely no laws whatsoever concerning flamethrowers. Only in America would a device capable of launching rivers of fire at people be less regulated than marijuana.

Careful with that pot, it looks dangerous.

Where Can I Get One?

You can sometimes find professionally made flamethrowers being sold by private buyers online, some for as little as $300. Also, if you're unsure on how to use your new device, but you want the source of your advice to be batshit insane, you could pick up Ragnar Benson's delightful read, Breath Of The Dragon: Homebuilt Flamethrowers, which we can only hope comes with a cellphone with the numbers 9 and 1 already dialed.

What Should I Do With it?

Actually using your flamethrower is somewhat more difficult than acquiring it. It seems that lawmen these days have rules about when and where you're allowed to shoot gallons of flaming fuel. We recommend making friends with someone who owns a few acres of land out in the country and then going hog wild. If you accidentally start a wildfire, don't fret: Flamethrowers are just as good at stopping fires as they are at starting them. Just burn everything around the fire to cinders, and it won't have anywhere to spread!

Holy Balls, Why is it Legal?

Cracked cannot overstate the importance of destroying the horrifying bee menace. As a potent combination of "deadly" and "too small to shoot," the Africanized Honey Bee is quite possibly mankind's most dangerous enemy. Enter the flamethrower: your first, last, and only line of defense against the black and yellow hordes. In 1968, Brazilian firefighters armed with flamethrowers defended a group of children from the onslaught of buzzing death. This is apparently not an uncommon happening in nations fighting off the advancing bee legions.

http://www.cracked.com/article_17016_7-items-you-wont-believe-are-actually-legal.html

Eight arrested in Michael Phelps case

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - New details have emerged about a party where Olympic champion Michael Phelps was spotted.

On Feb. 2, a British tabloid published a picture of the 14-time Olympic gold medalist using a water pipe to smoke marijuana. The picture was taken at a party in Columbia back in November when Phelps was here for a visit.

The Richland County Sheriff's Department has been taking a lot of heat from people in this country and all over the world.

They want to know why Sheriff Leon Lott is going after Michael Phelps.

Many are saying the sheriff should concentrate on more serious crimes, or at the very least, not focus solely on the Olympic champion when there were others at the party who were also breaking the law.

Now it appears the case has expanded beyond Phelps' activities.

The party took place in November at a house on Blossom Street near Five Points.

It was at that house where someone snapped the photo of Phelps taking a hit on a marijuana pipe called a bong.

Lott says the picture indicated a law was being broken in his jurisdiction. He said he couldn't ignore the violation just because Phelps is rich and famous.

We've now learned that since investigators began trying to build a case, they've made eight arrests: seven for drug possession and one for distribution. These are arrests that resulted as the sheriff's department served search warrants.

We've also learned that the department has located and confiscated that bong.

Sources say the owner of the bong was trying to sell it on eBay for as much as $100,000.

The owner, who wasn't even at the party, is one of the eight now charged.

http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9814127

A 'fraud' bigger than Madoff

Senior US soldiers investigated over missing Iraq reconstruction billions

By Patrick Cockburn in Sulaimaniyah, Northern Iraq

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme.

"I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad," said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003.

In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in "pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills" to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money. He is among the few US officials who were in Iraq to be convicted of fraud and money-laundering.

Despite the vast sums expended on rebuilding by the US since 2003, there have been no cranes visible on the Baghdad skyline except those at work building a new US embassy and others rusting beside a half-built giant mosque that Saddam was constructing when he was overthrown. One of the few visible signs of government work on Baghdad's infrastructure is a tireless attention to planting palm trees and flowers in the centre strip between main roads. Those are then dug up and replanted a few months later.

Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-fraud-bigger-than-madoff-1622987.html

700 comments tell the FTC "No DRM!"

The Federal Trade Commission's DRM conference coming up in March has already attracted 700 user comments... nearly all of them negative. Gamers currently appear to be the single most vocal group on the topic.

 

By Nate Anderson

The Federal Trade Commission wants to know about DRM, and it's hosting a March conference on the topic. The agency looks set to get an earful—today is the final day to file public comments, and more than 700 individuals have already done so. Surprisingly, the main concerns in the comments don't appear to be about DVDs or protected music files but about video games. If FTC staff didn't know much about SecuRom, Spore, install limits, and activation codes before the conference, they will soon be experts on the topics.

The big players in these sorts of public hearings follow a predictable plan: they hold their filings until the final day for submissions, apparently out of a desire not to tip their hand to opponents and give them a chance to directly address their arguments. The strategy appears to be in play in the DRM proceeding, with only a fistful of corporate or think thank names appearing among the 700 current submissions.

The upside of this behavior is that it makes it simple to browse the comments and get a sense of what those without political clout think of the issue. And, when it comes to DRM, they don't have much good to say—our troll through 30 or 40 comments turned up only a couple that supported DRM. (Including this pithy submission: "The FTC has no place in a matter between private enterprise and public consumption. You are a blight on free speech and a waste of taxpayer dollars.")

While some comments were brief to the point of unhelpfulness ("NO DRM!") and some were filed by a 17-year old Dutch gamer and other non-US residents, most comments stand out for being relatively informed on the issues.

User comments are generally short and lack the polish of the "professional commenters," but they have a "man on the street" authenticity to them. Most make cases against DRM that we've all heard before: it limits buyers but not pirates, it turns content into something "licensed" and controlled rather than sold outright, it has been responsible for root kits, it doesn't work, etc. But such complaints gain their power from the sea of specific examples provided in the comments, brief stories of real people negatively impacted by DRM while attempting to perform legal activities.

My father... received a digital media player for his birthday, so he went and downloaded a track from the largest music sites—iTunes. However, his music player only supported WMA, so his money was wasted.

One commenter writes, for instance, about his father's attempt to buy music online. "The compatibility problems DRM can introduce have been readily apparent in the digital music market," he says. "People have been buying digital music players they call 'MP3 players' because the MP3 format popularized digital music. However, when they went to download digital music, they were almost invariably restricted to one of two formats: WMA and iTunes. No one device supported both formats, so some users who hadn't followed the market bought music they couldn't play. My father was one such consumer. He received a digital media player for his birthday, so he went and downloaded a track from the largest music sites—iTunes. However, his music player only supported WMA, so his money was wasted."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/02/700-comments-tell-the-ftc-no-drm.ars

How your looks betray your personality

 

THE history of science could have been so different. When Charles Darwin applied to be the "energetic young man" that Robert Fitzroy, the Beagle's captain, sought as his gentleman companion, he was almost let down by a woeful shortcoming that was as plain as the nose on his face. Fitzroy believed in physiognomy - the idea that you can tell a person's character from their appearance. As Darwin's daughter Henrietta later recalled, Fitzroy had "made up his mind that no man with such a nose could have energy". Fortunately, the rest of Darwin's visage compensated for his sluggardly proboscis: "His brow saved him."

The idea that a person's character can be glimpsed in their face dates back to the ancient Greeks. It was most famously popularised in the late 18th century by the Swiss poet Johann Lavater, whose ideas became a talking point in intellectual circles. In Darwin's day, they were more or less taken as given. It was only after the subject became associated with phrenology, which fell into disrepute in the late 19th century, that physiognomy was written off as pseudoscience.

Now the field is undergoing something of a revival. Researchers around the world are re-evaluating what we see in a face, investigating whether it can give us a glimpse of someone's personality or even help to shape their destiny. What is emerging is a "new physiognomy" which is more subtle but no less fascinating than its old incarnation.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126957.300-how-your-looks-betray-your-personality.html

Reality and Hallucination: Towards a Talmudic Ontology of Consensus (by way of demons)

 by Aharon 

In his 1978 essay, "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later", Philip K. Dick wrote, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." This ontology is challenged by a syndrome recently brought to my attention in a recent post on boingboing.net, "Hallucinations brought on by eye disease," wherein David Pescovitz writes,

In recent days, both the Daily Mail and Wired.com looked at Charles Bonnet Syndrome [CBS], a disease characterized by bizarre and vivid visual hallucinations. Interestingly, people who suffer from CBS aren't mentally ill but have visual impairments such as macular degeneration. Even weirder is that the hallucinations often involve characters or things that are much smaller in size than reality.

Read the whole post and follow the link to this article at the Daily Mail on Charles Bonnet Syndrome, and this interview at Wired with neurologist Oliver Sachs. Together, they provide an insight for understanding a particularly fascinating method given in the Talmud for seeing Mazikin (lit. harmful spirits, ie. demons). Mazikin are a class of sheydim (animistic spirits) that pervaded the natural world in the Rabbinic Jewish worldview of late antiquity. From תלמוד בבלי ברכות ו א (Talmud Bavli Tractate Berakhot, 6a):

תניא אבא בנימין אומר אלמלי נתנה רשות לעין לראות אין כל בריה יכולה לעמוד מפני המזיקין אמר אביי אינהו נפישי מינן וקיימי עלן כי כסלא לאוגיא אמר רב הונא כל חד וחד מינן אלפא משמאליה ורבבתא מימיניה אמר רבא האי דוחקא דהוי בכלה מנייהו הוי הני ברכי דשלהי מנייהו הני מאני דרבנן דבלו מחופיא דידהו הני כרעי דמנקפן מנייהו האי מאן דבעי למידע להו לייתי קיטמא נהילא ונהדר אפורייה ובצפרא חזי כי כרעי דתרנגולא האי מאן דבעי למחזינהו ליתי שלייתא דשונרתא אוכמתא בת אוכמתא בוכרתא בת בוכרתא ולקליה בנורא ולשחקיה ולימלי עיניה מניה וחזי להו ולשדייה בגובתא דפרזלא ולחתמי' בגושפנקא דפרזלא דילמא גנבי מניה ולחתום פומיה כי היכי דלא ליתזק רב ביבי בר אביי עבד הכי חזא ואתזק בעו רבנן רחמי עליה ואתסי

It has been taught:

Abba Benjamin says, If the eye had the power to see them, no creature could endure the Mazikin.

Abaye says: They are more numerous than we are and they surround us like the ridge round a field.

R. Huna says: Every one among us has a thousand on his left hand and ten thousand on his right. [Psalm 91:7]

Raba says: The crushing in the Kallah lectures comes from them.  Fatigue in the knees comes from them. The wearing out of the clothes of the scholars is due to their rubbing against them. The bruising of the feet comes from them. If one wants to discover them,  let him take sifted ashes and sprinkle around his bed, and in the morning he will see something like the footprints of a rooster. If one wishes to see them, let him take the placenta of a black she-cat [that is] the offspring of a black she-cat [that is] the first-born of a first-born, let him roast it [the placenta] in fire and grind it to powder, and then let him put some into his eye, and he will see them. Let him also pour it into an iron tube and seal it with an iron signet that they [the demons] should not steal it from him. Let him also close his mouth, lest he come to harm.

R. Bibi b. Abaye did so,  saw them and came to harm. The scholars, however, prayed for him and he recovered.

Could Raba's magic recipe for perceiving demons by placing ash in one's eye create a condition like Charles Bonnet Syndrome?

http://aharon.varady.net/omphalos/2009/02/reality-and-hallucination-a-talmudic-ontology-of-consensus

Women, Know Your Limits

Iraq concedes election fraud

 

BAGHDAD: Iraqi officials nullified election results in more than 30 polling stations due to fraud in last month's provincial balloting, but the cases were not significant enough to require a new vote in any province, the election chief said yesterday.

Poll results will be announced on Wednesday.

Violence continued unabated. A civilian, an Iraqi and an American soldier were shot down in front of their homes in three separate attacks in the northern city of Mosul, while a bomb blast near a market in Baghdad's Shi'ite slum district of Sadr City killed a man and wounded 19 other people.

The army uncovered 10 bodies in a shallow mass grave in Al Taji, near Baghdad, believed to date back about two years to a period when Al Qaeda terrorised the area.

And in an act of defiance against sucide attacks, tens of thousands of pilgrims crowded the Imam Hussein mosque in Karbala yesterday to mark Arbain, one of the most important events in the Shi'ite calendar.

l Iraq is employing too many people in government jobs and a fall in oil prices makes the situation untenable, a UN report warned yesterday.

A dominant public sector, which offers secure and relatively highly-paid jobs, is stifling efforts to create viable businesses offering alternative employment, it said.

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=243195&Sn=WORL&IssueID=31333

Homeland Security TV: Be Very Afraid

By Ken Silverstein

This is new to me: the Homeland Security Television Channel, "the world's first online, on-demand television network dedicated to homeland security and global development." The channel is also "dedicated to facilitating rapid awareness of new technologies and services, and assisting in the transfer of those technology solutions to the government and critical infrastructure marketplace."

Which explains why the editorial board includes Tom Ridge, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security and CEO of Ridge Global of (one of the channel's sponsors); Rear Admiral David Stone, the former assistant secretary of Homeland Security for the Transportation Security Administration and CEO of the Alacrity Homeland Group; and the savior of New Orleans, former FEMA chief Michael Brown. According to the channel's investment guide, the channel's mission is "Helping New & Emerging Companies Achieve Market Leadership and Unrivaled Brand Awareness."

Make sure to check out the channel's new series: "The Threat Matrix."

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004380

The Post-Bush Era

Historical articles, photos will highlight gay struggle

by Nicole C. Brambila

Steven Finger is not a gay historian.

He didn't even know what "Stonewall" was until he Googled it after voters approved Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban.

Most historians trace the beginning of the modern gay civil rights movement to a police raid in Greenwich Village that led to rioting at the Stonewall Inn in 1969.

But that year can't be right, he thought.

When he bought the Los Angeles Free Press a couple of years back, he flipped through the archives looking for "hippy news" but instead stumbled across story after story about gays in Southern California protesting and pressing for civil rights. Those stories were about two years before Stonewall.

Documented in black and white are the first gay church, gay marriages, a gay-in and gay protests against signs at Barney's Beanery that told gays to "stay out."

"Straights will say it's all about sex, not civil rights," said Finger, publisher and owner of the online alternative publication.

"But, a ... "stay out' sign is really like a 'whites only' sign. There really is no difference. It's as blatant a prejudice as can be.

"What we're talking about is more than history. There was a bona fide civil rights movement that's not looked at that way because there's even less tolerance for gays than for blacks.

"No one has the full history because no one had the full archives."

Finger will exclusively display several historical articles and photos from the late 1960s documenting the gay struggle for civil rights at 7 p.m. today at the Desert Pride Community Center in Palm Springs. The event is free to the public.

Same-sex marriage is an issue that resonates in the Palm Springs area, which boasts one of the largest gay communities per capita in the U.S.

More than 1,200 same-sex couples married in the valley between June 17, the first day gays could legally marry, and Nov. 4, when voters approved a gay marriage ban.

Jack Newby, Desert Pride Community Center executive director, said the articles are particularly poignant in light of the struggle for marriage equality.

"It allows us to view the setbacks with Proposition 8 in light of how far we've come," Newby said. "It shows us how far we've come in 40 years and how far we need to go."

Proposition 8

Proposition 8 was the voter initiative in November that overturned a state Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. The high court will consider whether to nullify the marriage ban next month.

Proposition 8 passed with 52 percent of the vote statewide and 64 percent in Riverside County. Palm Springs was the only valley city to oppose the measure.

Since the ballot box defeat, gay community leaders have spoken critically of the No on Prop. 8 campaign, saying it didn't do enough to frame the vote as a civil rights issue for black and Latino voters, who largely supported the measure, according to exit polls.

"This is going to come up for a vote again and unless the public understands that this is a civil rights issue, they're going to vote it down," Finger said.

Established in 1964 and now headquartered in Palm Desert, the Free Press is often credited as being the nation's first underground newspaper.

http://www.mydesert.com/article/20090212/NEWS01/902120309

Protesters Renew Fight For Gay Marriage

Same-Sex Couples Rally At Marriage Offices Across Nation In Annual Push For Equality

Same-sex couples seeking to wed showed up at marriage license counters nationwide Thursday to highlight a right they don't have in 48 states, part of an annual protest that took on renewed urgency given recent election setbacks.

In San Francisco, where same-sex marriage was legal for nearly five months last year before California voters approved a ban, many couples who came to City Hall had already tied the knot but wanted to express their gratitude and to show they're still part of the fight.

"All of our marriages are under the cloud of Proposition 8," said Stuart Gaffney, 45, referring to California's ballot initiative banning gay marriage. "Equality is an unfinished business in California."

In Las Vegas, couples gathered outside the downtown marriage bureau with signs that read "Don't hate my love" and "No laws on love." In New York, activists wore signs that said "Just Not Married." They were turned away empty-handed in both places when they asked for marriage licenses.

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/02/13/national/main4799198.shtml

Wowwee’s Top 10 Love-Starved Androids (and yeah, the toys are on sale)

by Jason Perlow

I get a lot of stupid pitches from PR folks for Tech Broiler. Most of them I ignore and go directly into the bit bucket. But as tomorrow is Valentine's day, this one particular well-thought distraction from the guys over at Wowwee, makers of those neato robotic toys (which are fun for girls and boys) gets a free pass:

If man and mannequin can find true love (see 1987 Kim Cattrall classic Mannequin), whoever said robots can't love and cherish for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health?

After all, Ally Sheedy did aid and abet one and Lindsay Wagner played one…what's not to love?

It's been a long, sometimes rocky, road bringing robots from the fringe to mainstream, so on February 14th take a moment to reflect on those forgotten heroes. Here's our Top 10 Robots in Need of Some Lovin':

1. Robby the Robot (Forbidden Planet)

2. Dot Matrix (Space Balls)

3. Johnny 5 (Short Circuit)

4. Vicki (Small Wonder)

5. Robot B9 (Lost in Space)

6. Jaime Sommers (The Bionic Woman)

7. Hal (2001: Space Odyssey)

8. Bishop (Aliens)

9. ED-209 (Robocop)

10. Bender Bending Rodriguez (Futurama)

And, oh yeah, their cool robot toys are on sale. I particularly like the Tri-bot thing, and his girlfriend Femisapien is half price (oh, what a deal!). My nephews got one for Christmas last year from us, and they love it.

Now, being a bit of a Sci-Fi dork, and having an opinion on the matter, I have to take exception to Wowwee's list. Not that I have issues with the particular order, but some of these robots just don't belong there.

First of all Robby The Robot has to be one of the most loved and most famous robots in all of classic golden age 1950s and 1960's Sci-Fi. He's been in more movies and TV episodes than any other robot you can possibly imagine, pretty much guaranteeing he's had more interaction with back stage assistants giving him tons of lube jobs and polishing his various rotator joints than any other robot in show biz, short of C3PO and R2D2.  I'm also pretty sure I've seen him grasping some screaming blonde or red-headed bink in a tight fitting space suit a couple of times on film, so I think it's safe to say he's gotten some.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/perlow/?p=9482&tag=nl.e539

Rachel Maddow's Amazing Rise from Geek to Big-Time Cable News Host

By Louise France

 

Maddow is a clever, idealistic and skeptical geek, and her growing audience can't get enough.

America's latest media darling -- not counting the one in the White House -- is kneeling on the floor like a big kid, scribbling notes on a scrap of paper. In eight hours' time 35-year-old Rachel Maddow will be sitting alone, in front of a teleprompter, about to present the highbrow political television program which bears her name.

For the moment she's brainstorming ideas with her production team. What should they focus on? President Obama's proposed closure of Guantanamo? The 45,000 jobs lost before nine o'clock this morning? The banking meltdown? More troops in Afghanistan? There's a level of intense and nerdy discussion in the room which makes John Humphrys and James Naughtie look like Ant and Dec. This isn't the kind of cheery material for which American television is generally known. But these are changing times, and The Rachel Maddow Show has become an unlikely hit.

Rachel Maddow -- in her own words a mannish lesbian policy wonk who doesn't own a television set -- is not your average anchorwoman in America, or indeed on this side of the Atlantic. Later today when she goes live on air she must swap her Red Sox T-shirt and baggy Levi's jeans for what she calls "lady clothes" -- a bland slate-grey trouser suit. (She won't say who it's by for fear of insulting the designer.) Her chunky Eric Morecambe glasses will be exchanged for contact lenses (which she's still getting used to). Reluctantly, there will be the merest smear of lipstick and blusher. She will, however, cling on to her trainers, safely out of sight under the desk. (The stylists at American Vogue recently offered her an array of extravagantly high-heeled Louboutin shoes for a photo shoot. She insisted on a pair of Converse boots.)

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/125923/rachel_maddow%27s_amazing_rise_from_geek_to_big-time_cable_news_host/

DONATE FOR PEACE, NOT HATE IN ISRAEL

Radical extremist Avigdor Lieberman has become the kingmaker in forming the next Israeli government. The agenda: bombing Iran, crushing Hamas in Gaza, stopping negotiations and cracking down on Israeli Arabs -- even denying citizenship to those who speak their minds. But many progressives in Israel share our feelings, Jews and Arabs too -- and they desperately need our help today. $50,000 could support up to ten young activists to mobilise tens of thousands of other Israelis over the coming year - just $5000 would buy billboards in Jerusalem to launch their first campaign with a splash. If 10,000 of us can give $10 (€8) each we'll be able to fund a major effort reaching all of Israel's constituencies -- let's give whatever we can afford right now to beat the extremists and help a new generation in Israel organise for peace, justice and change.

 

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/change_in_israel/?cl=184981993&v=2859

If global warming were caused by aliens

Court Awards Votes to Franken in Coleman's U.S. Senate Election Contest in MN

by Brad Friedman

 

Even as the Republican argues to include ballots of voters who forged signatures and ballots they previously rejected

While Norm Coleman may believe that "God wants [him] to serve," the voters of MN, and a ruling yesterday from the 3-judge panel presiding over his U.S. Senate election contest, still seem to indicate otherwise.

Yes, at it turns out, something actually happened during Coleman's ongoing trial yesterday, and it resulted in still more votes for Al Franken.

That, and other late developments follow...

Franken Gets 24 More

A ruling from the court [PDF], found that some 24 Franken voters who'd filed to have their rejected absentee ballots counted, could, in fact, now have them counted. Eric Kleefeld of TPM does the heavy lifting for us on this one...

The Minnesota election court has now taken some kind of meaningful action, handing down a ruling [PDF] on a summary judgment motion that will now allow the counting of some --- but not all --- of a group of Franken-voters who filed a motion to have their rejected ballots counted. The ruling gives us some hints as to where things will go from here --- and it's not good news for Norm Coleman.

Out of over 60 voters who filed this motion, the court is ordering just 24 ballots to be counted at this time. The opinion lays out a pretty stringent standard for letting previously-rejected ballots in: It has to be demonstrated that the voter either fully complied with the relevant laws and procedures, and thus the rejection was wholly a clerical error, or that any actual non-compliance was credibly the fault of the election official.

An example of this second category would be if a voter pro-actively asked whether they were registered to vote, were told yes and provided an absentee ballot for a registered voter, but it turned out they really needed to re-register. This is a tough standard to meet, and will mean that the number of people who qualify for it will be a fairly limited number.
...
So how does this relate to Norm Coleman's chances? He's currently fishing in a pool of nearly 4,800 rejected ballots, trying to get a bunch of them in. But this ruling seems to indicate he's not going to get very many of them in --- indeed, these 60 were some of Franken's best cases, and he's only scored on just over a third of them. Norm is casting a much wider net, so the success rate will probably be far lower.

The additional 24 votes (actually, just 23 for the moment, since a question still remains about one of them), will not be added to the official total immediately, as the Franken camp has declined to do so until after the trial has run its full course. So the official tally still remains Franken +225 over Coleman, for the moment.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6909

Ben and Jerry's Bush Memorial Flavors

by greendem

Ben & Jerry's ice cream created "Yes Pecan!" ice cream flavor for Obama.

This got a lot of people thinking.

What other flavors might have political resonance?

They then asked people to come up with a George W. Bush memorial flavor.

Some of the best responses:

- Grape Depression - Abu Grape - Cluster Fudge - Nut'n Accomplished - Iraqi Road - Chock 'n Awe - WireTapioca - Impeach Cobbler - Guantanmallow - imPeachmint - Good Riddance You Lousy Motherfucker... Swirl - Heck of a Job, Brownie! - Neocon Politan - RockyRoad to Fascism - The Reese's-cession - Cookie D'oh! - The Housing Crunch - Nougalar Proliferation - Death by Chocolate... and Torture - Freedom Vanilla Ice Cream - Chocolate Chip On My Shoulder - You're Shitting In My Mouth And Calling It A Sundae - Credit Crunch - Mission Pecanplished - Country Pumpkin - Chunky Monkey in Chief - George Bush Doesn't Care About Dark Chocolate - WMDelicious - Chocolate Chimp - Bloody Sundae - Caramel Preemptive Stripe - I broke the law and am responsible for the deaths of thousands...with
nuts

 

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/2/6/133525/4588/556/694073

This is your body on pot

Let's give Michael Phelps a pass

by DAN K. THOMASSON

Does anyone remember Eleanor Holm?

If you don't, it is understandable. But with half the world seemingly concerned about Michael Phelps, it seems appropriate to recall the stunning, blonde 100-meter backstroke champion of the 1932 Olympics whose consumption of a few glasses of champagne and late night dice playing with sportswriters in 1936 cost her a repeat of her earlier gold medal triumph.

On the boat over to the Berlin games, Holm ran afoul of Avery Brundage, the strait-laced, sanctimonious U.S. Olympic czar whose unrealistic defense of amateur standing probably cost U. S. athletes more victories over the years than any other single thing. He saw Holm as a threat to his ideals of how an athlete should act in or out of competition and kicked her off the team, sacrificing her to his own ideals about personal behavior.

There have been arguments over the years as to how much champagne the beauteous swimming star, who was later to become the wife of legendary showman Billy Rose and a movie and aquacade celebrity, actually consumed. A doctor on the boat charged she was suffering from acute alcohol poisoning. Holm vigorously disputed that, saying she had drunk only a couple of glasses during a toast to the team. Nevertheless, she sat helplessly in the stands as a Dutch swimmer won the event she was an odds-on favorite to capture a second time.

While the circumstances of her infamy are quite different than Phelps' or those who have violated strict anti-doping rules, Holm felt the pain of public scorn up until her death at age 91 in 2004.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/399828_thomassononline13.html

LiteratEye: George Washington Lied About Taxes

by W.J. Elvin III

Prepare to be shocked and appalled

Few believe, surely, that George Washington never told a lie, or even that he confessed to chopping down one of his father's cherry trees, as his early biographer Parson Mason Locke Weems suggested. Weems saw nothing wrong with a bit of fabrication when it served his purposes. Neither, for that matter, did Washington.

Well, if that's so, what lie did George Washington tell? Name one. No doubt revisionist historians could provide a few dozen, but up until recently I certainly couldn't have done it. I ran across this little nugget while researching other matters in old newspapers, the sort of thing I do in putting together Fiona, a magazine about literary fraud and folly.

I ran my discovery past Rick Shenkman, editor of History News Network, and he replied that there is no mention of it in the papers of George Washington. I don't know if that means "and therefore it's a crock," or perhaps "good for you, you've rescued a valuable anecdote from the dustbin of history." Possibly neither.

http://pranks.com/2009/02/13/literateye-george-washington-lied-about-taxes/

The Amazing, Incredible, Shrinking, Colossal, Bikini-Crazed CREATURE FROM THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

 

Film Hound's E. Mitchell has a new film/humor book out entitled "The Amazing, Incredible, Shrinking, Colossal, Bikini-Crazed CREATURE FROM THE PUBLIC DOMAIN."

*Soon to be a bestseller! (as soon as 50,000 people buy it).

*Oprah loved it! (my neighbor's dog "Oprah" chewed the cover enthusiastically).

So find out what the excitement is all about (and then read my book): Creature info

Legal Guide for Bloggers

Whether you're a newly minted blogger or a relative old-timer, you've been seeing more and more stories pop up every day about bloggers getting in trouble for what they post.

Like all journalists and publishers, bloggers sometimes publish information that other people don't want published. You might, for example, publish something that someone considers defamatory, republish an AP news story that's under copyright, or write a lengthy piece detailing the alleged crimes of a candidate for public office.

The difference between you and the reporter at your local newspaper is that in many cases, you may not have the benefit of training or resources to help you determine whether what you're doing is legal. And on top of that, sometimes knowing the law doesn't help - in many cases it was written for traditional journalists, and the courts haven't yet decided how it applies to bloggers.

But here's the important part: None of this should stop you from blogging. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Internet bullies shouldn't use the law to stifle legitimate free expression. That's why EFF created this guide, compiling a number of FAQs designed to help you understand your rights and, if necessary, defend your freedom.

To be clear, this guide isn't a substitute for, nor does it constitute, legal advice. Only an attorney who knows the details of your particular situation can provide the kind of advice you need if you're being threatened with a lawsuit. The goal here is to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger, to let you know you have rights, and to encourage you to blog freely with the knowledge that your legitimate speech is protected.

Please note that this guide applies to people living in the US. We don't have the expertise or resources to speak to other countries' legal traditions, but we'd like to work with those who do. If you know of a similar guide for your own jurisdiction or feel inspired to research and write one, please let us know. We can link to it here.

• Why Join The Fight?
• Legal Liability Issues
• Bloggers As Journalists
• Other Legal Issues
• Index Of All Questions
• Additional Resources

http://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal

Press body urges Obama to back journalists' rights

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A journalism watchdog called on President Barack Obama on Tuesday to halt open-ended detentions of journalists by the U.S. military, saying they encouraged similar action by repressive governments.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists also called for fuller investigations of the deaths of journalists killed by U.S. forces.

The group's chairman, Paul Steiger, told a news conference that U.S. support for journalists' right to do their work without being shot at or imprisoned had slipped in recent years under the administration of former President George W. Bush.

"America has always stood as a beacon for freedom of the press, and I think it would be a great time for a new administration coming in to reaffirm those principles," he said.

The Obama administration, which took office last month, should pledge to "take care to investigate the deaths of journalists from fire by American troops and to make sure that this is indeed accidental and to end the practice of long-term incarceration of journalists without charge, such as has regrettably gone on in Iraq in recent years," Steiger added.

The committee made public a letter Steiger sent to Obama on January 12 saying the U.S. military had detained 14 journalists for long periods without due process in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Of these, all were eventually released without charge except for Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed, an Iraqi freelance photographer working for Reuters, who was detained in Iraq last September.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090210/media_nm/us_usa_journalists;_ylt=Al203Ou3ZXdf36HLQG5H_vtxFb8C

Definition of congressional insanity!

Toxic waste

Obama is a two-faced liar. Aw-RIGHT!

by Greg Palast

For SuicideGirls.com

Republicans are right. President Barack Obama treated them like dirt, didn't give a damn what they thought about his stimulus package, loaded it with a bunch of programs that will last for years and will never leave the budget, is giving away money disguised as "tax refunds," and is sneaking in huge changes in policy, from schools to health care, using the pretext of an economic emergency.

Way to go, Mr. O! Mr. Down-and-Dirty Chicago pol. Street-fightin' man. Covering over his break-you-face power play with a "we're all post-partisan friends" BS.

And it's about time.

Frankly, I was worried about this guy. Obama's appointing Clinton-droids to the Cabinet, bloated incompetents like Larry Summers as "Economics Czar," made me fear for my country, that we'd gotten another Democrat who wished he were a Republican.

Then came Obama's money bomb. The House bill included $125 billion for schools (TRIPLING federal spending on education - yes!), expanding insurance coverage to the unemployed, making the most progressive change in the tax code in four decades by creating a $500 credit against social security payroll deductions, and so on.

It's as if Obama dug up Ronald Reagan's carcass and put a stake through The Gipper's anti-government heart. Aw-RIGHT!

About the only concession Obama threw to the right-wing trogs was to remove the subsidy for condoms, leaving hooker-happy GOP Senators, like David Vitter, to pay for their own protection. S'OK with me.

And here's the proof that Bam is The Man: Not one single Republican congressman voted for the bill. And that means that Obama didn't compromise, the way Clinton and Carter would have, to win the love of these condom-less jerks.

And we didn't need'm. Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!

Now I understand Obama's weird moves: dinner with those creepy conservative columnists, earnest meetings at the White House with the Republican leaders, a dramatic begging foray into Senate offices. Just as the Republicans say, it was all a fraud. Obama was pure Chicago, Boss Daley in a slim skin, putting his arms around his enemies, pretending to listen and care and compromise, then slowly, quietly, slipping in the knife. All while the media praises Obama's "post-partisanship." Heh heh heh.

Love it. Now we know why Obama picked that vindictive little viper Rahm Emanuel to run the White House schedule: everyone visiting the Oval Office will be greeted by the Windy City hit man who would hack up your grandma if you mess with the Godfather-in-Chief.

I don't know about you, but THIS is the change I've been waiting for.

http://www.gregpalast.com/obama-is-a-two-faced-liar-aw-right/

Bill seeks 18.5% porn tax

A Federal Way lawmaker's push to tax pornographic materials to help counter a $6 billion state budget shortfall would likely draw constitutional challenges from the highly litigious adult-entertainment industry.

By Jennifer Sullivan

OLYMPIA — A Federal Way lawmaker's push to tax pornographic materials to help counter a $6 billion state budget shortfall would likely draw constitutional challenges from the highly litigious adult-entertainment industry.

Democratic Rep. Mark Miloscia said an 18 ½ percent sales tax should be levied against Playboy and other adult magazines, as well as pornographic photographs, movies, videos, cable-television services, telephone services, audiotapes, computer programs and paraphernalia. With everyone in the Legislature struggling to find ways to solve the budget crisis, he said, he's surprised nobody else has made a similar proposal.

"For me, it is a no-brainer," Miloscia said, adding that he hopes the tax money generated would go toward saving the General Assistance-Unemployable (GAU), a program that provides a temporary safety net for people unable to work because of mental or physical disabilities.

Gov. Chris Gregoire has proposed axing the GAU to save money.

"People are concerned about jobs leaving the state, but if you look at this industry, this is the last industry people are worried about keeping in the state," Miloscia said.

Miloscia points to a proposal in California last year to levy a 25 percent tax on that state's several-billion-dollar sex industry. The measure died in committee.

Attorneys representing strip-club chain Déjà Vu and the Seattle strip-club Rick's call the measure, House Bill 2103, unconstitutional.

"It's not targeting speech but targeting a particular kind of speech," said Jack Burns, the attorney for Déjà Vu. "It's pretty disingenuous."

Burns said state government can wage heavy fees against alcohol and cigarettes because those vices aren't protected by the First Amendment.

Gil Levy, who has long represented Rick's and other adult clubs, said he will advise his clients to fight the tax proposal.

"You can't impose an arbitrary tax on a newspaper industry; you can't impose an arbitrary tax on the adult-entertainment industry," Levy said.

The adult-entertainment industry has a history of fighting government regulations in court.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008731079_porntax11m0.html

In The Jester's Court

Paul Krassner On The Virtues Of Irreverence, Indecency, And Illegal Drugs

 

by David Kupfer

Paul Krassner has been spreading his witty, sometimes snide, and often political brand of humor since the late 1950s. His publication the Realist was the underground journal of the counterculture during the sixties and seventies, breaking political stories and covering topics that were taboo for the mainstream press. Krassner became known for interweaving current events, social criticism, and satire in a manner not previously seen in print. 

Born and raised in New York City, Krassner was a violin prodigy, and in 1939, at the age of six, he became the youngest person ever to perform at Carnegie Hall. In the 1950s he worked as a writer for comedian Steve Allen and for Mad magazine, and he became friends with stand-up comic Lenny Bruce. Krassner edited Bruce's autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, and at Bruce's encouragement began performing stand-up comedy himself at the Village Gate nightclub in New York City.

As editor of the Realist, Krassner approached journalism not as an objective observer but as a participant in many of the stories he covered. After he interviewed a doctor who performed illegal abortions, Krassner ran an underground abortion referral service. He wrote about the antiwar movement while he was an active member of it. And in addition to publishing articles on the psychedelic revolution, he took lsd with the revolution's unofficial leader, Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary, and the spiritual teacher Ram Dass, a former associate of Leary's at Harvard. Later Krassner joined novelist Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, who traveled the country spreading the gospel of psychedelics. 

In 1967 Krassner cofounded (with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin) the Yippies, a countercultural political party that led theatrical demonstrations outside the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. At the height of the Vietnam War, Krassner was on an fbi list of radicals to be rounded up in the event of a national emergency. His friends John Lennon and Yoko Ono financed a 1972 issue of the Realist that exposed the Watergate break-in before journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein did so in the mainstream press. In 1978 publisher Larry Flynt hired Krassner to take over the pornographic men's magazine Hustler. The job lasted only six months, during which time Krassner appeared as a centerfold in the magazine. 

In 2004 Krassner received an American Civil Liberties Union Upton Sinclair Award for his dedication to freedom of expression, and at the fourteenth annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, Krassner was inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame by the publication High Times. His articles have been published in Rolling Stone, Playboy, Penthouse, Mother Jones, the Nation, the New York Press, National Lampoon, the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, and Funny Times. The Realist printed its last issue in 2001, but Krassner is still active as a writer, contributing a monthly column to High Times and a bimonthly column to Adult Video News Online. He is a regular columnist for the Huffington Post website and has been actively involved in movements to end the Iraq War and to legalize marijuana. ("Cigarettes are legal, and smoking them causes the death of twelve hundred people a day," he says. "Marijuana is illegal, and the worst side effect is maybe you'll raid your neighbor's refrigerator.") 

Krassner has released six comedy albums and authored numerous books, including his autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counter-Culture (Touchstone) — which he is currently updating and expanding for a possible new edition — and One Hand Jerking: Reports from an Investigative Satirist (Seven Stories Press). His most recent collection, Who's to Say What's Obscene? Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today, will be published by City Lights Books in July of this year.

Krassner lives in southern California's Desert Hot Springs with his wife, Nancy Cain, whom he married on April Fool's Day twenty years ago. When I arrived at their home, just prior to last year's presidential election, he answered the door wearing jeans and a black t-shirt that said, "Stop Bitching — Start a Revolution." He walks with a cane because of a beating he suffered at the hands of two San Francisco cops during the riot following the voluntary-manslaughter verdict in the trial of Dan White, who had assassinated Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk. Krassner's dark, curly hair and youthful demeanor make him appear younger than seventy-six.  

On the walls of Krassner's home office hang a portrait of Albert Einstein with the maxim "Imagination is more important than knowledge," a photo of the Great Pyramid of Giza (from when Krassner traveled to Egypt for the Grateful Dead concerts there in 1978), and a trickster icon from a healers-and-shamans expedition in Ecuador. Outside the window, in a part of the yard he calls "Birdland," doves, finches, and starlings were bathing, and hummingbirds hovered by huge blossoms. We were serenaded by a mockingbird Krassner had nicknamed "Plagiarist." True to form, halfway through our conversation, Krassner lit up a fat joint.

Kupfer: Who are your influences?

Krassner: I come out of a tradition of American humorists that includes Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, and Will Rogers. My first modern influence was Lyle Stuart, who published the Independent, where I did my apprenticeship in journalism and wrote a column titled "Freedom of Wit." Another of my mentors was Jean Shepherd, the radio humorist. In the middle of the night he'd talk about how you might explain an amusement park to a Venusian, or about a man who could taste an ice cube and tell you the make and model of the refrigerator it came from. Comedian Lenny Bruce was my role model as a stand-up performer, and novelist Joseph Heller was my biggest influence as a satirical writer. Heller explained to me how, in his book Catch-22, he used exaggeration so gradually that unreality became more credible than reality. 

Kupfer: You have done stand-up comedy for nearly fifty years. How have your audiences changed?

Krassner: I think they're more aware now of the contradictions in society: the phony piety, the hypocrisy. And I've evolved right along with them. Performing, for me, is a two-way street. English is my second language. Laughter is my first.

Kupfer: Do you aspire to foster social change with your satire, or do you just want to see how far you can push the limits? 

Krassner: In the wishful-thinking corner of my mind, pushing the limits and fostering social change are inextricably connected, but I don't have any delusions that I've inspired an epidemic of epiphanies. People don't like to be lectured to, but if you can make them laugh, their defenses come down, and for the time being they've accepted whatever truth is embedded in your humor. When a large audience of people are all laughing together, no matter how disparate their backgrounds are, it's a unifying moment. But who's to say how long that moment of truth or unity lasts and whether it leads to any action? It's one more positive input, but rarely a tipping point.

Kupfer: What pushed you into the role of provocateur?

Krassner: I couldn't help but notice the difference between what I experienced in the streets and the way it was reported in the mainstream media, which acted as cheerleaders for the suppression of dissent.

- way more -

Bush Jacketless In Oval Office: Photo Uncovered After Bush Chief Of Staff Slams Obama's Informal Appearance

by Anya Strzemien

One day after President Bush's former Chief of Staff Andrew Card blasted President Obama for breaking the Bush dress code, which reportedly required that a jacket be worn by anyone entering the Oval Office, we've unearthed a photo of, well, a jacketless President Bush in the Oval Office.

On Wednesday night, Card told "Inside Edition" that "there should be a dress code of respect....I wish that [Obama] would wear a suit coat and tie." Much has been made of Obama's informal appearance in a photograph taken on January 21st, the day after his inauguration.

The photo of Bush was taken on January 22nd, 2001--two days after his own inauguration.

Card also told "Inside Edition":

"The Oval Office symbolizes...the Constitution, the hopes and dreams, and I'm going to say democracy. And when you have a dress code in the Supreme Court and a dress code on the floor of the Senate, floor of the House, I think it's appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the President."

Ironically, the photo shows Bush signing papers with staff secretary Harriet Miers, whom he went on to nominate for the Supreme Court in 2005. (She later withdrew her nomination.)

It turns out that going casual in the Oval Office is a long, time-honored tradition that pre-dates the Bush administration: JFK did it. Gerald Ford did it. Ronald Reagan did it. Jimmy Carter did it. Clinton did it (a lot). See photographic evidence below.

In response to the Andrew Card controversy, Reuters' Jon Decker told MSNBC on Thursday morning that Bush "always wore a suit and tie in the Oval Office. There was never a picture of him that was seen by the public in which he wasn't wearing a suit and tie." Until now.

Will Andrew Card issue an apology? Only time will tell.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/05/bush-jacketless-in-oval-o_n_164513.html

The Juice Outsources, Scores Food Reviewer from New Delhi

by Eric Barton

 

New Delhi newsrooms don't feature Woodward or Bernstein.

The Juice has itself an Indian correspondent, an outsourced journalist, reporting live from New Delhi on the South Florida restaurant scene.

It began with a January 12 email from a freelance writer in India. We're making fun of journalism outsourcing here and not our correspondent, so we'll call her only by her first name, Shalini. Truth is, that's more identification than most of the outsourced media industry workers, who toil in obscurity, doing copy editing for the Miami Herald or taking subscription calls for the Sun-Sentinel.

Shalini's cover letter began: "I take this opportunity of submitting my resume to your esteemed organization, perchance there is an opening for a suitable position that your good self would deem suitable for the benefit of the establishment." Her resume promised "excellent written and oral communication skills" and said she had been a freelance writer for unnamed publications since October 2007.

So what the hell. We offered her a job.

 

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2009/01/the_juice_joins_trend_of_outsourcing_journalists_and_finds_food_reviewer_from_new_delhi.php