Apparently I have been told I’m one of those evil well poisoning devils. Fascinating. The logic is sound. Misdirected and misunderstood but basically sound. Let me explain why in the form of a story.

* * * * *

Little Billy was a farm boy who lived in a small town. He was responsible for watching the fields in case anything came out of the nearby forest and tried to disrupt the livestock. In such an event the village had a strategy. When they heard Billy cry out that there was a Wolf or other predator, they would bring the livestock in bar all the doors and wait until the next morning hence protecting themselves from the predators.

Apparently for the last year, there had been an epidemic of wolves. Every couple of weeks or so just before night fell, Billy would cry out “Wolf! Wolf!” and come running out of the woods. The village would scramble to bring the livestock in and protect themselves from the dangerous creatures.

One day, investigative reporter Bob comes to town and stays amongst the villagers for a month. Twice while he was there he witnessed the odd Wolf Cry experience. On the second time he started to have his doubts.

You see, Bob had been to other villages surrounding the same forest and hadn’t heart anything about a Wolf Epidemic in the forest. In fact he’d talked to rangers who patrolled the forests who said that they wolf population was very small and easily managed. While there WAS a real chance a wolf might attack a village’s livestock, it was a slim one according to them.

After doing some more research into the village he discovered other things. There was a candy store in the village that had been experiencing an inordinate amount of theft lately. It seems their candy supplies would randomly decline and the owner had no idea what the cause was. He watched his store very carefully and the only time he ever had to leave was when he had to go out and help bring the livestock in during the wolf attacks.

Now Bob, being a good reporter decided he needed to learn more about Billy. So he looked through the village histories.

He soon discovered that Billy had been involved in two suspicious incidents. The first apparently three years ago when he had been visiting his grandmother. According to the accounts a burglar broke into his grandmother’s house. The story goes Billy courageously grabbed a shotgun and fired two bullets into the air which scared the burglar off. The only thing the burglar was able to grab before being scared off was a can of cookies Billy’s grandmother had baked the previous night.  Of course this was all Billy’s account. Nobody else had seen the burglar though the gun shots were reported.

The second incident was just a year and a half ago. A fire broke out at Billy’s house in the kitchen. It was theorized that a spark accidentally struck some flammable material accidentally left in the kitchen.  Billy caught the fire and informed authorities before the fire spread too far thankfully. That some of the candy and sweets Billy’s parents kept in the kitchen were consumed by the fire was considered a small price to pay since thankfully nobody was hurt all thanks to Billy’s quick judgment.

There were other vaguer rumours too. Amongst the kids of the village mostly. Rumours that Billy had claimed to have seen aliens. That he had claimed to have seen dark strangers roaming the village. That he had claimed to be able to shoot four cans with a single beeby from a beeby gun. And claims that he had a ritual that could cause it to rain. But of course none of these claims had ever been verified by eye witness.

Now Bob was really suspicious. So he started talking to people. He asked if anyone had seen any wolves. Nobody had except Billy. Billy was the most trusted villager who knew the forest better than anyone. Nobody else saw any need to risk themselves by going out in the forest.

So Bob tried to convince them to go out with Billy and watch for wolves, to look for evidence of these wolves. He tried also to convince the candy store owner to get somebody to watch over his store when the next wolf attack occurs.   But nobody seemed to like Bob’s ideas.

Next thing you know, Bob was brought before the village council. Billy and much of the village was there. The head counselor spoke.

“It has come to my attention that you Bob, a visitor in our town have started to claim that the Wolf Attacks are not real. So we have gathered this council together to decide for once and for all the truth of that proposition.”

Not at all perturbed, Bob laid out his evidence and explained his suspicions to the council who listened intently. He told them everything he had discovered and in closing said.

“So from this I have concluded that you have little reason to trust the word of your citizen Billy. Certainly it is costly to do so. The Ranger service is imminently more trustworthy and they see no risk to your city. Therefore I argue that you should not take Billy’s word for it that there are wolves attacking the livestock.”

Next the high Council asked Billy to speak in his defense.

Billy was a great speaker for a kid. He was dynamic, he had all the rhetorical techniques down pact. He even cried when necessary taking advantage of the fact that he was young to provide empathy in the crowd. And he spoke not at all in answer to the claims that he had lied in the past.

Instead he presented his “evidence” for the wolf attacks. He said the forest was littered with paw prints. He described how several sheep had disappeared before Billy could round them up. He said he’d found the remains of some with wolf fur on the ground near it. He spoke of his expertise in exploring the woods. How he’d been in the woods often since a little kid and knew them better than anyone.

He then argued that the Ranger service was a bunch of outsiders. He said they had no knowledge of the village like he did and that they probably were out to get the village. He said most of them were from other competing villages so of course they would have every incentive to trick the village into being unprepared for a wolf attack. He told the council that although he wasn’t accusing anyone, for all the knew Bob could be a spy from another village too.

Bob couldn’t believe his ears. He thought Billy was being utterly absurd, but playing along he decided to challenge Billy anyway.

“Has anyone besides you even SEEN one of these paw prints? Or this fur?”

But that was a mistake. Billy brought forward witnesses who testified that they had seen it and that the prints and fur looked real to them.

“But none of you ever saw a wolf right?”

“No” They all responded.

Billy chimed in:  “But you can’t deny that they saw EVIDENCE of a Wolf!”

“But how do you know Billy didn’t fabricate that evidence. It’s not hard to fake paw prints and maybe he got a hold of some fur that looked like wolf’s fur?”

Billy then sneered at Bob and put as much disgust in his voice as he could.

“Listen to this guy! He’s willing to stop at NOTHING to convice us that the Wolf attacks aren’t real! He doesn’t trust your word. He’s calling you all liars just like he’s been calling ME a liar all day! How dare he! An outsider! And notice he provides NO evidence that the Wolf attacks aren’t real. All he can do is attack the character of our good town. I emplore you high council, let’s get rid of this dangerous fanatic before he destroys our town!”

Bob was flaberghasted and speechless.

“But… but… but…”

The High Councilor was known as a wise man. He banged his gavel stopping the exchange. Bob was still confident that in spite of the disapproving looks he was getting from the crown the logical High Council would see logic and reason.  Little did poor Bob know, it was so-called logic that would be his undoing.

After some deliberation The High Councilor finally spoke:

“We have analyzed your arguments Mr. Bob and we have decided that you have provided very limited evidence in support of the claim that it is impossible for Wolves to be regularly attacking our village. Rather you have commited a fallacy called ‘Poisoning the Well’.  That means insteadd of disproving citizen Billy’s claim of Wolf Attacks all you have done is tried to prejudice this Village against one of its own citizens so we don’t believe anything he says. That’s an ad hominem attack and has no logical value. Therefore you have failed to make your case and the village will continue on as it has been protecting our livestock whenever we get advanced warning of wolf attacks from Billy.”

Bob was livid.

“But your honors! Can’t you see? He’s lied to you in the past! He has ulterior motives! I’m not saying the wolf attacks aren’t happening, I’m saying you have to have some fucking evidence of that! Billy is an untrustworthy source. So send some reliable people out there to watch for wolves with him! Have some people watch teh candy store for Christ sake!”

But the High Council was stern and would have none of it.

“You will be silent! Billy has produced evidence. You have produced none. You continue to attack the credability of a good citizen while failing to answer the claimss put forth! If you will not shut up I fear we will have no choice but to exile you from the village.”

“No way! Aren’t you listening to me? He’s untrustworthy I tell you! You have to listen to me! Examine his record. Look at what he’s done!”

“That’s it! We’ll hear no more of your logical fallacies! Take him away!”

* * * * * * * *

And so ends my little story.  What happened next you wonder? Who knows. But my guess is that within ten years little Billy will have declared himself king of that small deluded little city and be uncontested military dictator unless someone is lucky enough to stumble upon conclusive evidence of his deceptive practices. Which given Bob’s failure seems highly unlikely.

Can you tell what went wrong? Why was the council convinced? SHOULD they have been convinced? Was Bob really committing a poisoning the well fallacy?

Have fun thinking about it.

edit: Added a video about current attitudes regarding Global Warming courtesy bryangoodrich

There have been a lot of people posting a lot of anti-global warming stuff online lately and there’s so much there that is misleading, misconstrued, and just plain wrong that it would take days to weeks to refute it all and I admit that I’m not anywhere near enough an expert in the field to refute it all.

But it’s more useful I think to understand why you should be skeptical of *any* Global Warming Skeptic’s argument.  It’s not because we liberals smugly know that we’re always right. Nor is it because somehow we think the fact that there is an overwhelming consensus *makes* something true. None of the Scientists who contributed to the Science that made it into the IPCC reports believes that. Rather they are expressing their best judgments based on all of the data available.

No, the reason why you should be far more skeptical about what Global Warming skeptics have to say than the other side is simple. The organizational structures that produce and promote Global Warming skepticism are inherently biased and extremely flawed. The people involved are ideologically bound and have been demonstrated to time and again have little interest in the truth and every interest in advancing a very specific political ideology.

That’s why as some have noted there is a strong correlation between the people who disbelieve Global Warming and those who decry Evolution.  Because it’s the same types of arguments being used for both. In fact, very often it’s the very same people who are most outspoken in their attempts to argue for both. And people working for the same institutions, very often funded by the same companies. And they use the same disinformation tactics each and every time all the while carefully avoiding any kind of forum where they’d be forced to prove their positions on fair grounds such as in the Scientific peer review process. You can just as easily substitute Creationism with any number of other issues. Like the health risks of smoking tobacco. Or the environmental impact of strip mining.  Or even the current nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

It’s not a fait accompli that these people are always wrong of course. Heck they could be right about Global Warming. But if Global Warming isn’t really happening or isn’t really anthropogenic there’s every reason to trust the Scientific Community to find that out through its usual methods. And given the enormous record of success of Science in the modern era there’s enormous good reason to trust them.  In contrast the Skeptics, and remember these tend to be a very small group of closely related individuals with similar motives, have been shown to be wrong time and time again. And their tactics and strategies have been shown to be outrageously deceptive and overwhelmingly disingenuous.

My point is simply that they are untrustworthy. And the more you learn about them the more clear this becomes.

You have to understand the history of this kind of meddling in our political system in order to even have a hope of figuring out or understanding the truth about the world.  It’s not your fault if you’ve been deceived. We’ve all deceived about something at some point in our lives. But once you start to look at the history with an open mind any rational individual has to acknowledge that certain sources of information are biased and untrustworthy. And once you get there, you’re welcome to still have your doubts about things like Global Warming and Evolution but don’t you dare pretend that your doubts are supported by facts or sound Science lest you show yourself to be an ideologue completely disconnected from the world of facts and truth.

So for history, I give you this video by a Historian, namely Naomi Oreskes whose examination of the history of the evolution of the Global Warming is beyond par. So if you’re still a skeptic, still think these skeptical works you’ve been watching sound oh so convincing, watch this video. And then watch it again. And again if need be. Until it is drilled into your brain that there is NO conspiracy to convince the world that Global Warming is real. It’s what current Science tells us. Period.

This is another video that describes real data about the current attitudes about Global Warming with a little discussion about what is driving them. It is definitely also work thinking about especially if you are still skeptical. Many thanks to http://bryangoodrich.xanga.com/ for bringing it to my attention.

My Dad’s cousin once gave me this book called A Purpose Driven Life. Apparently it’s really popular. I tried to read it. I really did. Much of it made sense. But much of it well struck me as BS sensationalism and useless cliches. A lot of people really love this book though so I don’t want to say it is without value.

In my random perusing of the internet I found a talk describing this book that pretty closely meshes with my own opinion so I thought I’d share it here. It’s from a talk by Daniel Dennett at TED.

But actually more interesting to me in this talk than the critique of Rick Warren is the part at the beginning where he calls for teaching about ALL Religions to everyone. I think that’s just a brilliant proposal that we really ought to start doing today. I was wondering though what do you think of it? And while you’re at it, what do you think of A Purpose Driven Life?

When the history books of the United States are written people will look back at the early 2000′s and realize that even as everything was falling apart it was of all our branches of government, the Judicial branch that got the closest to remaining true to its initial purpose.

For it doesn’t take a genius to look upon government the way it is now and see that the Judicial branch is the most functional of all our dysfunctional branches of government.

And that’s… decidedly… odd really when you think about it. I mean the judicial branch is probably the most totalitarian branch of all structurally. It’s top down from the highest branches to the lowest. Supreme Court Appointees are appointed for life and are virtually accountable to no one. Both legislative and executive branches are bound by their decisions and no one can gainsay them. That’s hardly democratic at all.

And yet, thanks in part to tradition and history and in part due to just the long time frames during which Justices serve, the supreme court has been remarkably resilient to political machinations and corruption. Justices do, for the most part rule on the basis of the specifics of the case at hand and virtually all demonstrate a serious commitment to and belief in the law itself. Most of our Justices and Justice nominees are legal scholars, academics with experience primarily in legal related fields. In other words, virtually without exception they are people who have an interest in wherever possible remaining true to what is actually true about what the law states and not just doing what is expedient for their own ends.

It isn’t perfect. Justices ARE appointed and very often they are appointed by parties that have a decided ideological political perspective on one side or another. And in a certain sense the Justices do end up serving out the agenda of those who appoint them.

But it’s nothing compared to the ways in which our other branches of government are overtly corrupted by ideological and class based bias. Our legislative and our executive branch have become so ridiculously wrapped up in moneyed interests of various businesses at times it’s virtually impossible to see where the nation’s corporations end and its government begins. Conflicts of interest abound. And in the eyes of many it certainly seems that our elected officials act as if they are basically bought and paid for by the companies that fund their elections. And in the meantime the executive branch blatantly grasps more and more direct power to itself becoming a virtual monarchy even as the Congress gets so bogged down by partisan wrangling and fearful election-based politics  that it becomes nearly incapable of doing anything let alone tackling the great issues of our day.

Yeah in comparison to that our slow, flawed, inefficient, partially biased Judicial system is the great Jewel of our Government.

Because for the most part people in the Judicial System are not overtly biased and they are not beholden to secondary interests. So Justices are and do make decisions that go against the will of the people who appointed them. Sometimes they follow their honest opinion of the law even IF it would be unpopular. 

We see this on a smaller level in California. There the same supreme court at one point votes to uphold Gay Marriage and at another votes to uphold a proposition banning gay marriage.

When the first happened I heard them criticized as being “activist judges” imposing their “liberal agenda” on the country. When the second happened just the other day I heard one incensed liberal lawyer berate the court for being “cowardly” and taking the easy road out.

Cowardly? Really? Activists? Truly?  I think they were being neither. They were interpreting the law pretty consistently given their principles and beliefs about how the law should be interpreted. The outcomes may not have been in line with the desires of some of the people watching for them. But that is to be expected. I definitely don’t think it was cowardice. I mean what are they cowering from? Certainly not the strong criticism they’ve obviously been receiving for making these decisions. It seems a long shot to claim either. Rather the more likely explanation is that they were doing their jobs.

And that’s the way Justice is done in courts all over the country from the Supreme Court on down. Justices doing their best to be true to the law to the best of their ability. We don’t always like their decisions but we rarely find them to be so unreasonable and un-argued that we have grounds to proclaim that the Justices are only making these decisions because of personal bias and in no way related to the facts of the case at hand. That’s because for now the judicial system still kinda actually works.  As well as it ever did anyway.

But this is by no means a guaranteed state of affairs. We can already see things starting to change. We rarely see these unanimous or near unanimous Justice confirmations that we saw in the past. And it’s regularly starting to be well understood by lobbyists and policy makers that to get their real agenda to succeed in a bullet proof manner they need to have influence in the courts. That means more and more money is pouring into the attack and defense of Judicial nominees than ever before. And it’s only going to get worse. In addition more and more pressure is going to be point on the President in who he nominates and on the Senators who do the confirmation. Pressure to put the Justice through an “ideological litmus test” is growing even as we give lipservice to the idea that there should be no such thing.

And it can get even worse than that. I heard a commentary on Marketplace on the radio wherein a commentator lamented the fact that the Supreme Court doesn’t have enough justices with “real life business experience”. He spoke of the need to understand what it’s like being in the nitty gritty of writing contract law and even suggested that it’d be a good idea to have someone who has “empathy” for businessman. He even called the business class something like “the people who make America run” as if to suggest that they are of greater significance or importance than other poor regular human beings.

I can’t tell you how much that prospect scares me. The idea of a Supreme Court populated primarily by legal representatives more beholden and sympathetic to the perspectives of businesses and corporations than they are to people and communities is horrifying! Can you imagine Justices who decide cases based on how much economic advantage their decision can make the companies they used to work for and their friends and buddies still work for and run?  It’d be as bad as the corruption in the Legislative and Executive Branches. Worse in some ways because there’d be almost no way to oust them.

The Justice System has never been anywhere near perfect but for now it has miraculously avoided a lot of the corrupting influences that mark the recent deterioration of our nation’s other branches of government and institutions. This is somethign we really need to keep an eye on carefully though. For if the Judicial System starts to fall into corruption completely then I think we’re really in for a load of trouble.

It was sort of interesting to see yesterday both the Right and Left become galvanized over two separate issues that broke that day.

The Right began to mobilize over the question of President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

The overt criticisms of of Sotomayor are pretty much the usual critiques against Democratic appointee Justices from the Right. She’s too much of judicial activist. She doesn’t use a strict reading of the Constitution etc. But they also have a darker tone. Some critiques judge her as being Racist because of one line taken out of context. Others simply bluntly suggst that she is too stupid to serve.

Most of this is just nonsensical bloviating. There’s a chance Sotomayor’s nomination might be stopped but by all accounts it’s a very long shot. She’s possessed of at least as much if not more legal and Judicial experience than anyone currently serving on the Supreme Court. Her record is said to very similar to Justice Alito. She’s described as liberal but not in any way extremist. And she’s been confirmed by the Senate twice before. Once when nominated by George H. W. Bush and once under Clinton and many of the same Senators are still around including Republicans who voted for her. In addition obviously the Senate is very strongly controlled by Democrats. They don’t need a single Republican vote to confirm her.

That doesn’t mean it’s a sure thing, by no means. Her record will be examined thoroughly and if there’s anything to find it will likely be found. But whatever it is, if it exists, it most certainly has NOT surfaced yet.

Given this we can see that the extreme criticism we hear from the Right has little to do with actually defeating Sotomayor’s nomination. Rather this is all about raising money. Getting the base worked up about what has been and probably will be for a long time one of the Right’s biggest rallying points, namely the abortion debate allows Right interest groups to earn a great deal of money in donations that they can later use in other fights. And make no mistake as with nearly all recent Supreme Court Justice fights the underlying battle is about abortion. It’s the fear of seeing Roe v. Wade struck down by some versus the strong desire to see it abolished by others.

At the same time the Left has been mobilized in almost exactly the same way with almost the same degree of ferver over another Judicial issue. On the same day Obama made his nomination to the Supreme Court known, the California Supreme Court decided on the question of whether Proposition 8 was Constitutional. And they decided that it was in fact constitutional. So although existing marriages between homosexual couples in California will be accepted and not annulled, going forward “marriage” will be reserved to a term referring to a relationship between a man and a woman.

Just as blocking Sotomayor’s nomination is unlikely for the Right, winning this case in the California Supreme Court was at least equally unlikely for the Left. In spite of California’s perception in the main stream media as extremely “left”, it’s actually a fairly middle of the road state with a large cross section of the population. And as it stands the California Supreme Court is fairly conservative by any reasonable metric and on similar decisions in the past they’ve fallen on the line of preserving constitutional amendments.

It also kinda just makes intuitive sense to most people. How can a constitutional amendment be unconstitutional? Of course there are ways but the argument used was a slim one based on the idea that the change made was “too big” to be decided as an amendment rather than a “revision” which would require 2/3rds of the legislature. The idea was that it took away basic human rights guaranteed by the constitution and so constituted a revision. It’s an interesting argument and it’s possible it might have swayed some Justices, but it was always a longshot. The opposition argument won out, mainly that proposition 8 only defines a narrow edge case of the meaning of the term “marriage” that by itself doesn’t deny anyone any rights on the basis of sexual orientation. Further more I’m fairly sure the courts didn’t want to be the deciding factor in this issue and be seen as taking away the rights of the people to decide their own laws.

Now personally I don’t agree with the court’s argument but I am not at all surprised by it. Further I think it’s probably a good thing overall to see this issue going back to ballot box. The end result of course is still uncertain. But with 79% of Californians currently accept equal rights for homosexuality in some way shape or form I’d say the prospects are good. It breaks down as 45% pro-marriage and 34% pro Civil Unions with only 19% against legal recognition of homosexual marriage in any form.

And this has grown from 36%/33%/27% in just 2006. And I have little doubt that amongst the young the pro-gay marriage percentages will be higher. How much further will it have shifted by 2010 or 2012? How about by 2016?

Nobody can say for certain how any particular election will turn out. Too much of it has to do with who shows up and what money was spent.  But I hope and expect that it’s only a matter of time when a completely unambiguous election will confirm gay marriage in some form or another.

Regardless, the reaction to the actual decision by the CA Supreme Court though was somewhat melodramatic. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth that I really couldn’t get behind this time given the numerous articles I’d read saying how unlikely it was. But I suppose, in spite of the fact that this was the more likely outcome according to most legal scholars, presumably people got themselves worked up hoping and expecting the Court to overturn Prop 8 anyway. 

So then it’s no surprise that there is a resurgent flurry of organizing and activism on the Left against Prop. 8 in response.  And at the heart of this? Money of course. Activist groups are using the resurgence of outrage to raise money quite unabashedly. And they need this money of course if they are going to compete against Prop 8 proponents and anti-gay marriage groups like the Mormon Church in the next election cycle.

Now I’m not calling any individual on the Right or Left hypocritical in this (though some perhaps are). And I think neither the Prop 8 challenge nor the Sotomayor challenges currently underway are or were not worth doing for people who believe strongly about the issues at hand.  I just think that organizations are using feelings in the masses as a means of raising money. And THAT’S the most important thing nowadays for the people trying to get their disparate agendas enacted.

Because let’s be honest, politics has become a money game first and foremost.

Fred Gardner has a series of articles detailing the story of one Sgt. Northcutt which I think reveals some interesting elements of the Medical Marijuana struggle California and the rest of the US.  The articles are published on counterpunch.org, a website that I frequently peruse and which posts articles from a wide variety of perspectives. Many of its articles are extremely critical of both Democrats and Republicans (and sometimes it seems just about everybody else too) but they post a lot of articles that don’t get a lot of press in any other major news outlet.

Here are the relevant articles detailing Sgt Northcutt’s case:

Sgt. Northcutt’s Homecoming

“War on Pot” Overrides “Support Our Troops”

The Vindication of Sgt. Northcutt

The second article contains the bulk of the story.

Sgt. Northcutt came home from the war riddled with numerous issues. He was experiencing extreme back pains due to his L-4 and L-5 disks bulging and pinching his sciatic nerve.  He was also experiencing PTSD insomnia, nightmares and severe anxiety.  He would experience waking nightmares and would sleep with a gun under his pillow. In his words:

 ”A lot of people haven’t been exposed to severe stress and don’t understand that severe stress makes your brain do weird shit. I knew something was wrong with my head but I couldn’t get help.”

He did try to get help, receiving antidepressants and numerous other kinds of medications. He was on a regiment of ten pills that would often leave him virtually knocked out in bed most days. “The help I needed was not pills but fucking counseling.” Unfortunately at the time the help was not available for PTSD that exists today. “Nobody there knew. We were like the first bunch of guys to really come back from heavy combat in Iraq.”

When the pills weren’t helping, Sgt. Northcutt tried to self medicate himself in other ways.  He would spend days on the road, racking up speeding tickets, went to Vegas, Drank heavily, and using hydrocordone to suppress his back pain in the process.

What got him out of this self destructive course was the discovery of Marijuana. The Sgt. got a recommendation from a Doctor Eidelman who told him to quit drinking and smoking cigarettes and warned him against some of the side effects of the other drugs he was taking. Northcutt found pot to be more effective at helping him sleep than any other drug he’d been prescribed as well as dealing with his other issues.

“I started realizing, “Of all the crap they’re giving me, I feel the best when I’m smoking herb. Hmmm… That’s weird. When I just smoke herb I feel kind of relaxed, I don’t feel so stressed out, I don’t feel the depression, I don’t feel the guilt…” Eventually I realized: “this is real medicine.””

So Sgt. Northcutt together with 4-5 other patients began growing marijuana in a warehouse he had from when he had previously been in the screen printing business. The grew the weed as a co-op using it to supply weed to 10-12 other medical marijuana patients.

The story from there gets sordid. From what Northcutt describes, it appears he was setup and arrested in a rather sickeningly display of police bias and then charged with multiple crimes several of which were later dropped.  Then due to a number of other sordid affairs he ended up spending a year in prison and giving up all of his military benefits. During his trial his Jury was not informed that it was in fact legal under California Law for Sgt. Northcutt to produce the amount of marijuana he was producing since he was producing it under a collective.

Only now over a year later is California’s Second Appellate Court overturning Sgt. Northcutt’s unjust conviction.

It’s an interesting story largely because it shows how extreme the anti-marijuana bias remains in this country and how extremely dangerous it remains to grow it or use it even if a state where it is nominally legal. If an Iraq veteran who has more of a legitimate reason to use it than most can still get into such extreme trouble even in California it seems we are clearly a long ways away from real legalization.

But Sgt. Northcutt’s story should I think serve as one of many that illustrate quite clearly the utility of marijuana as a very effective medical aid that can often exceed in effectiveness other conventional treatments available.

In President Obama’s online town hall meeting, legalization of marijuana was the first question, highest rated amongst all the internet contributors. He laughed it off and scoffingly seemed to suggest that the internet is filled with a bunch of Stoners even while promising to do little or nothing in that direction.  But marijuana legalization is no laughing matter. Especially not to people suffering under severe physical and mental conditions who could be greatly helped by its legalization. It’s decidedly odd that the President who wants the people to support him and wants to use the internet as a galvanizing platform to that end should so readily snub the very people he is trying to organize.

Since marijuana is virtually non-addictive and has no known substantive negative long term side effects, (certainly less than cigarettes and alcohol) why isn’t it legal everywhere at the very least for medical use? And why even if in the places where it IS legal should growers risk arrest and long term imprisonment? Even if Sgt. Northcutt HAD just barely gone over some wholly arbitrary amount limit, surely this is a victimless crime if there ever was one?  He was doing what he did to help people. Himself and others. No kids were exposed to pot because of his actions. No community was harmed by the existence of his pot growing co-op. If anything it only brought people together and made them happier. In the words of Sgt. Northcutt:

“I became a gardener for the first time in my life. I was developing a love of plants and an appreciation of nature. And I was developing a relationship with God. Instead of killing and maiming I was making things grow. “

I, personally have never used marijuana. I’ve never even seen pot with my own eyes. And I have no idea what the experience is like. So this is not an article I am writing out of some ulterior motive to feed my own habit.

But I feel that the very idea that marijuana is illegal is a travesty of Justice of the highest order. How can we lock up citizens for what our last three Presidents have admitted to having done? How can we say that 42.4% of our adult population could have been charged with a crime but for a small bit of luck keeping them from having been caught? How many people are in jail now or have had their lives and employment prospects damaged because they weren’t amongst the lucky ones?

How can we deny people a substance that seems to actually help people at least as well as most available alternatives?

I should think that this is something that people should have the freedom to choose if they want. We certainly seem to have no problem with people making all kinds of other far worse decisions with their lives without government interference, like racking up credit card debts or taking out sub prime mortgages.

At the very least these should be issues worth thinking about.

This is interesting testimony at Congress on Memorial Day about the Iraq war.  http://www.democracynow.org/shows/2009/5/25

I’m an optimist.  But before you jump to all the obvious conclusions about that realize this simple distinction.

There are two kinds of optimists.

1. People who think things are just find right now except for a few minor issues that we can deal with.

2. People who think things are pretty damn fucked up right now but at least they’re better in some ways than things have been in the past and that gives them hope that things can and will get better in the future.

I’m definitely the second type of optimist. And the first type I think are either complete idiots or horribly sadly blind. They’re lost in their own little perfect world while the universe is hanging by a thread on the verge of collapse.

Pessimists however I just don’t understand at all

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read bloggers rant about this or that making claims that could be easily and completely refuted by even taking a second to look up the facts and think about them. The truth about these things is often spelled out quite clearly in the relevant wikipedia article on the subject with numerous links to resources from which you can find more detailed and considered more “credible” sources. It’s one thing to have two vastly different interpretations of the same data, but when the data you reference is fundamentally wrong and based on blatant lies how can we even begin to have a coherent or meaningful conversation?

Now ideally we’d all be  working from a good non-biased basic knowledge of history taught to us in school. Ha. Yeah right. To the extent that any of us paid attention in history or civics class, much of what we learned was biased,  one sided, incomplete, and superficial. And let’s be honest. You forgot most of it the second after you took the test anyway. It’s not like they even let you keep the text books before College anyways (and most of us can’t afford to keep them when you’re IN College either for that matter)

Nevertheless the information IS out there. And it can be researched and learned. And more and more of it finds its way on the internet and that information coagulates onto Wikipedia.

Now plenty of people are going to bash Wikipedia and talk about how terrible it is. Dumbasses. Wikipedia is amazing. It is by no means perfect, mind you, but it’s the largest most Democratic information base on the *planet*.  It should never be the end of your exploration of any subject of your curiosity, but as a place to start you can certainly do a whole HECK of a lot worse than Wikipedia. And in so far as it doesnt’ meat your expectations or desires due to a lack of information you feel is necessary, feel free to fucking change it! It’s YOUR encyclopedia. It’s a place to spread knowledge and facts to everyone.

I hate Wikipedia bashing. It’s surreal to me that anyone should find something wrong with a resource that is so insanely robust, comprehensive, and fair? There is no moneyed interest that controls the breadth and depth of wikipedia. No government institution that decides what can and can’t be shown on its pages. Rather everyone can edit it. Everyone can make it better.

It isn’t the only democratic knowledge source worth relying on, but it’s certainly one of the largest and most well known. And as such of course it is under attack by virtually everyone. That means plenty of people are out there from governments, to organizations, to individuals trying to corrupt the information found within its pages. But in spite of that concerted attack, Wikipedia remains a profoundly effective source of basic information. The kinds of information forty years ago only the few who had access to university libraries had any hope of obtaining.

So if you’re going to talk like you know anything at all in any online forum, at the very least, please PLEASE read the relevant Wikipedia articles before you sprout your nonsense. And preferably read the source material as well to verify the truth of what you read.

And while your at it at, please also do at least a BASIC perusal of the major fact check and accuracy sites online:
FAIR, FactCheck.org, MediaMatters, Politifact, OpenSecrets, Snopes.com, truthorfiction, and the Washington Post Factchecker just to name a few.

If you trust your own political party (not wise) or the opposing party (equally unwise), both the Democratic and Republican party also have fact checking pages on their websites.

You might also consider trying the amazingly new tool called a “google search”. I’ve heard it can be pretty effective.

If you don’t want to do at LEAST that much for fear that you might learn something that God forbid threatens your precious world view, then just shut the fuck up and go away.  Leave the intelligent discussion for the people mature enough to care about what the actual truth is.

<<< *not in a particularly good mood right now*

This is quite possibly the coolest thing I’ve seen in my entire life. For a video game fanatic like me, it’s like heaven. ^_^.