side note: I do think that California will pass this come November. In case anyone is not aware, the state will be voting to basically treat Marijuana like tobacco or alcohol. tax it and regulate it. if this happens, not only will be see other states follow, but something that never gets discussed, is all of the other ways we can use Hemp. whether it’s for making paper, clothing, fuel, or food (just to name a few, there are literally thousands of uses), this will provide jobs and opportunities for so many others, including people who choose not to smoke. it’s all good, all the way around

By , California Watch
http://www.alternet.org

A flourishing and unregulated industry of pot delivery services is circumventing bans on storefront dispensaries and bringing medical marijuana directly to people’s homes, offices and more unconventional locations across the state, records and interviews show.

The unfettered delivery of marijuana through hundreds of these services highlights how quickly California’s fabled pot industry is moving from the shadows and into uncharted legal territory. These new couriers include enterprising farmers, business entrepreneurs and even a former Los Angeles pot dealer methodically switching her former clients to legal patients.

In newspapers and on the Internet, hundreds of “mobile dispensaries” advertise a wide range of strains and other products, such as brownies and cookies laced with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. One service delivers organic vegetables along with medical marijuana, as part of a “farm-direct” service.

Some operate in multiple counties, including jurisdictions where storefront dispensaries are banned, or make local deliveries to drop-off points, such as Starbucks parking lots and gas stations. At least three ship to clients around the state using private prescription-drug couriers.

Although delivery of medical marijuana is not a new phenomenon, advocates say the growth of these services could be a game-changer in the state’s pot war, which pits law enforcement, elected officials and community groups in some localities against dispensary owners and patients.

And these businesses could increase in popularity if voters approve an initiative on the November ballot that would legalize pot possession.

“They’re delivering the product better, cheaper, more discretely and probably at a higher profit rate than dispensaries,” said Allen St. Pierre, director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which advocates legalization. “These delivery services are starting to grab more and more market share.” (more…)

side note: about 6 months ago I watched a show on the Discovery network about our planet and what we are doing to it. For the first time I looked at the environment in a different way. Most believe that we’re ruining the planet with our waste, whether it be the water, the land or the air. We cut down forests, pour toxic chemicals into our water systems and we pump smoke into the atmosphere.

But the show’s point was that the earth has been through much worse then anything we can do to it. if we don’t clean up the mess, the planet will be unlivable for us. because if we cut down a forest, it will just take a few thousand years to grow back. the air will eventually be cleaned, and the water too. the animals, earth will produce new ones. But if we keep on this track, we’re the ones that are going to be in trouble, not earth.

by William Rivers Pitt
Truthout.org

“I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I’d never have,” wrote Chuck Palahniuk in his novel,”‘Fight Club.” “Burn the Amazon rain forest. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open the dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells. I wanted to kill all the fish I couldn’t afford to eat, and smother the French beaches. I wanted the whole world to hit bottom … I wanted to breathe smoke. I wanted to burn the Louvre. I’d do the Elgin Marbles with a sledgehammer and wipe my ass with the Mona Lisa. This is my world, now.”

This is our world now, indeed. All those terrible things Palahniuk’s protagonist wanted to do, well, most of them are happening or have already happened. The Louvre is still there, for now, and neither the Marbles nor the “Mona Lisa” have been violated, but as for the rest of that rant … yeah, they’re pretty much fact. (more…)

By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY TIMES

“Obama’s Katrina”: that was the line from some pundits and news sources, as they tried to blame the current administration for the gulf oil spill. It was nonsense, of course. An Associated Press review of the Obama administration’s actions and statements as the disaster unfolded found “little resemblance” to the shambolic response to Katrina — and there has been nothing like those awful days when everyone in the world except the Bush inner circle seemed aware of the human catastrophe in New Orleans.

Yet there is a common thread running through Katrina and the gulf spill — namely, the collapse in government competence and effectiveness that took place during the Bush years.

The full story of the Deepwater Horizon blowout is still emerging. But it’s already obvious both that BP failed to take adequate precautions, and that federal regulators made no effort to ensure that such precautions were taken. (more…)

side note: For the past 2 years, we have been buying our pork from a local farmer, who is related to a good friend, this farmer raises only a small number of cows and pigs, but does it on small scale and really focuses on the conditions of his animals. Let me just say that I’ve never eaten pork so tasty….I know it sound hard to believe, but I can now tell the difference between quality and the shit that factory farms produce. This year, we decided that we’d buy beef from that farmer as well……we’ve just started consuming it, but god damn, it’s tasty as well!!!! With the obesity problems in this country…we need to start educating people on where their food comes from. Once again, the corporate culture of factory farms have invaded DC, and our politicians care more about their relection chests then their constituents!

HuffingtonPost.com
Nicolette Hahn Niman
Livestock Rancher, Lawyer, and Author, Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms

Most people share at least the following traits: they want to be healthy; they like animals; and they value clean air and water. Yet relatively few Americans connect those concerns with their food. As more people start making the link (especially if they’ve seen graphic video footage of industrial animal operations), many decide it’s time to stop eating foods from factory farms. This is a guide for doing just that.

I’ve been a vegetarian for more than twenty years. Unlike the fits and starts described in Jonathan Safran Foer’s autobiographical book Eating Animals, the day I decided to quit eating meat was the last time I ever did. I remember that dinner well. It was my mother’s tuna fish casserole, and actually quite tasty. But while I chose to stop eating meat, I never adopted the view that it was morally wrong, and, consequently, didn’t become one of those vegetarians who spends her spare time plumbing the depths of meat industry literature looking for bits of information to shock my friends and family into giving up meat.

Nine years ago, I had just started working as an environmental lawyer for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. when he approached me about leading a national campaign to reform the livestock and poultry sector. He said that industrialized animal production had become one of the nation’s worst polluters of water and air, and he wanted to aggressively attack the problem.

Initially, realizing that Bobby was asking me to work full-time on poop, I hesitated. It was not the glamorous job I’d envisioned when moving to New York to work for him. But then I visited towns in Missouri and North Carolina that had been overrun by factory-style production of hogs, chickens and turkeys. I witnessed biblical-scale plagues of pollution and stench; I spoke with people whose lives had been ruined when an industrial hog or poultry operation was erected next door; and I heard the details of how the animals were raised. My reticence vanished and I jumped at the chance to work on cleansing the earth of the animal factory menace.

I loved the job and threw myself into it, body and soul. But there was one problem: I could no longer deny the shady past of my own food. Every day, I was putting stuff into my mouth that undeniably came from factory farms. I was a vegetarian, yes, but consumed plenty of eggs, milk, yogurt, butter and cheese. And much of the factory farm data and stories I was gathering from all over the country was about egg and dairy operations. My unease grew with each passing day.

To avoid the products of factory farms, I became something of a food detective. My groceries were the subjects of my investigations. Where were they coming from and how they were produced? I roamed grocery store aisles carefully reading product labels, but there was little to no information about the conditions in which the animals were raised. I wrote letters to food companies with questions about what they fed their animals, but the letters went unanswered. The food system’s lack of transparency was frustrating. Eventually, I mostly gave up on supermarkets and began exploring new ways to get at the good food I was seeking. Although the task was daunting, my goal was simple: I wanted all my food to come from places I would enjoy visiting. (more…)

Pat Gaines actually felt sorry for the red-tailed hawks at Bonny Lake State Park this summer.

Despite their aggressive reputation, loud screams and fierce, piercing looks, the red-tailed hawks at the park north of Burlington, just west of the Colorado-Kansas border, were being bullied when Gaines saw them.

“I’ve never seen red-tails harassed so much. They all seemed hoarse. I felt kind of sorry for them,” said Gaines of the sight of dozens of little birds dive-bombing the hawks.

The hawks were minding their own business, Gaines recalled.

But the western kingbirds at the park were upset.
(more…)

side note: I think the problem is not that people don’t believe in Global Warming, well, there actually are some nutjobs that believe that…….but I think most people don’t want to actually make the daily changes in their lives that would be necessary to make the real changes. This is why obesity is such an issue in our country….most people know that eating a diet of mcdonalds and big gulps isn’t healthy….but they still do it!

By PAUL KRUGMAN
The New York Times

So, have you enjoyed the debate over health care reform? Have you been impressed by the civility of the discussion and the intellectual honesty of reform opponents?

If so, you’ll love the next big debate: the fight over climate change.

The House has already passed a fairly strong cap-and-trade climate bill, the Waxman-Markey act, which if it becomes law would eventually lead to sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But on climate change, as on health care, the sticking point will be the Senate. And the usual suspects are doing their best to prevent action.

Some of them still claim that there’s no such thing as global warming, or at least that the evidence isn’t yet conclusive. But that argument is wearing thin — as thin as the Arctic pack ice, which has now diminished to the point that shipping companies are opening up new routes through the formerly impassable seas north of Siberia.

Even corporations are losing patience with the deniers: earlier this week Pacific Gas and Electric canceled its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest over the chamber’s “disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality” of climate change.

So the main argument against climate action probably won’t be the claim that global warming is a myth. It will, instead, be the argument that doing anything to limit global warming would destroy the economy. As the blog Climate Progress puts it, opponents of climate change legislation “keep raising their estimated cost of the clean energy and global warming pollution reduction programs like some out of control auctioneer.”

It’s important, then, to understand that claims of immense economic damage from climate legislation are as bogus, in their own way, as climate-change denial. Saving the planet won’t come free (although the early stages of conservation actually might). But it won’t cost all that much either.

How do we know this? First, the evidence suggests that we’re wasting a lot of energy right now. That is, we’re burning large amounts of coal, oil and gas in ways that don’t actually enhance our standard of living — a phenomenon known in the research literature as the “energy-efficiency gap.” The existence of this gap suggests that policies promoting energy conservation could, up to a point, actually make consumers richer. (more…)

side note: I do my best to know what type of food I’m eating…….it really makes a huge difference if you can actually make that shift in your life. Just like anything else….once you add it to your routine, it just becomes another thing, like brushing your teeth, taking a shower, working out….etc

Andrew O’Hehir
Salon.com
Michael Pollan and director Robert Kenner talk about “Food, Inc.,” the movie agribusiness doesn’t want you to see.

Two warring conceptions of the American food and agriculture business collide in the gripping agitprop documentary “Food, Inc.,” the result of a collaboration between filmmaker Robert Kenner and writers Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan. I’m using “agitprop” as a descriptor, not a pejorative, since I personally agree with nearly all the arguments made in the film. Furthermore, if “Food Inc.” comes off as a one-sided project, it’s easy to know where to point the finger, since the biggest meat-processing companies and agribusiness firms profiled in the film — Smithfield, Tyson, Perdue, Monsanto — universally declined to provide any access or on-camera interviews.

On one hand, we’ve got the fact that, as Pollan puts it, the production of food has changed more in the last 50 years than it did in the previous 10,000. With the massive application of fertilizers, pesticides and economies of scale after World War II, raising crops and animals for food ceased to be a rural lifestyle based on many small farmers and ranchers, and rapidly became a heavily mechanized (and lightly regulated) industry dominated by a handful of big companies who run on low-wage labor. “Food, Inc.” attempts to lift the veil of secrecy from this process. In one remarkable example Pollan provides, the meat in a single fast-food burger might have come from 400 different cows.

This change has had obvious benefits for consumers, a point that leftists, foodies and environmentalists sometimes overlook but that Kenner’s film takes pains to notice. While chronic food shortages threaten the poor of Africa and South Asia with starvation, food in America is plentiful, various and exceptionally cheap. (Expressed as a proportion of the average family’s budget, food prices have fallen by half in 30 years.) In the movie, Kenner spends some time with a working-class Latino family who say they simply don’t spend enough time at home together to shop or cook. While dropping the kids at school and then driving themselves to work, Mom and Dad can feed the whole family at Burger King — for about $11. (more…)

side note: Well…it should be interesting to see if the US can convince China to do anything in the near future in regards to its emissions. It’s hard to blame their reaction when the big player, us, had a monkey in the White House thinking God was having a campfire, and that was causing the rise in the Earth’s temperature.

By PAUL KRUGMAN
TAIPEI, Taiwan
New York Times

I have seen the future, and it won’t work.

These should be hopeful times for environmentalists. Junk science no longer rules in Washington. President Obama has spoken forcefully about the need to take action on climate change; the people I talk to are increasingly optimistic that Congress will soon establish a cap-and-trade system that limits emissions of greenhouse gases, with the limits growing steadily tighter over time. And once America acts, we can expect much of the world to follow our lead.

But that still leaves the problem of China, where I have been for most of the last week.

Like every visitor to China, I was awed by the scale of the country’s development. Even the annoying aspects — much of my time was spent viewing the Great Wall of Traffic — are byproducts of the nation’s economic success.

But China cannot continue along its current path because the planet can’t handle the strain.

The scientific consensus on prospects for global warming has become much more pessimistic over the last few years. Indeed, the latest projections from reputable climate scientists border on the apocalyptic. Why? Because the rate at which greenhouse gas emissions are rising is matching or exceeding the worst-case scenarios.

And the growth of emissions from China — already the world’s largest producer of carbon dioxide — is one main reason for this new pessimism. (more…)

side note: I’m glad this is getting more headlines…..we need to know where are food came from, and if it’s an animal product, how that animal was raised, what it was fed…etc. Especially after all the food scares recently…..spinach, peanuts, and I heard this morning on NPR that we should be eating pistachios right now.

by Bill Niman and Nicolette Hahn Niman
The Atlantic

Certain buzzwords catch on for a while in food industry marketing, many soon fading from use. Yesterday, it all seemed to be about lycopenes, today it’s trans fats. The word “natural” has had more longevity, but does it have any real meaning when it appears on food labels?

We’ve been particularly troubled by the abuse of the word in meat marketing. A few years back, I (Nicolette) was strolling down a sidewalk in Manhattan and paused to read a poster in a supermarket window advertising “natural pork” for a mere $1.49 per pound. Upon closer examination, I realized it was just industrially produced pork. Yet the government allows factory-farmed pork to be sold as “natural” because it requires only that “natural” meat be “minimally processed.” In other words, the conditions in which the animal is raised are deemed irrelevant. Amazingly, pigs raised in a crowded, windowless metal building with concrete floors and fed drug-laced feed can be (and are!) the source of pork labeled and sold as “natural.” (more…)

side note: I also have this feeling that most people on top either feel this couldn’t have been prevented, or don’t want to admit that, b/c some of them are at fault. Ya…Lawrence Summers, you’re one of the people we’re talking about. If we don’t fix what was broke…..we are doomed to repeat these very same events.

By: Ian Welsh
FireDogLake

I have become increasingly concerned that some in the Obama administration are treating this economic crisis as a “black swan” event. That is a very rare, random and unpredictable event. The key thing about black swans is that because they are random and unpredictable you can’t stop them from happening, you can only create your systems so that they can handle them if they occur. A pandemic flu that killed tens of millions might be a black swan, and it’s one that we’re completely unprepared for, as we don’t have the excess medical capacity to handle it.

The most recent event which made me think of this is the news that Mary Schapiro, new chair of the SEC, doesn’t plan on reforming ratings agencies. Now, ratings agencies were one of the key actors in this mess—they certified mortgage backed securities and other toxic derivatives as AAA quality. If they had not done so, almost no one would have bought them. The ratings agencies are paid by the companies whose securities they rate.

I trust you see the problem?

If you think that the crisis is just random, a once in a century (or at least once every few decades) disaster, then you won’t think making major changes is necessary. Get through the problem, go back to how you were doing things before, and everything will be fine.

But, of course, the economic and financial crisis unfolding right now was not random. It was predicted by multiple people, and it was predicted because of policy steps taken by government and widely known private actions. (more…)

side note: Ya….I like reading Frank Rich!

By FRANK RICH
The New York Times

AM I crazy, or wasn’t the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had “all but lost control of the agenda in Washington,” declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress. “Obama Losing Stimulus Message War” was the headline at Politico a day later. At the mostly liberal MSNBC, the morning host, Joe Scarborough, started preparing the final rites. Obama couldn’t possibly eke out a victory because the stimulus package was “a steaming pile of garbage.”

Less than a month into Obama’s term, we don’t (and can’t) know how he’ll fare as president. The compromised stimulus package, while hardly garbage, may well be inadequate. Timothy Geithner’s uninspiring and opaque stab at a bank rescue is at best a place holder and at worst a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the TARP-Titanic, where he served as Hank Paulson’s first mate.

But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.

On Wednesday, as a stimulus deal became a certainty on Capitol Hill, I asked David Axelrod for his take on this Groundhog Day relationship between Obama and the political culture.

“It’s why our campaign was not based in Washington but in Chicago,” he said. “We were somewhat insulated from the echo chamber. In the summer of ’07, the conventional wisdom was that Obama was a shooting star; his campaign was irretrievably lost; it was a ludicrous strategy to focus on Iowa; and we were falling further and further behind in the national polls.” But even after the Iowa victory, this same syndrome kept repeating itself. When Obama came out against the gas-tax holiday supported by both McCain and Clinton last spring, Axelrod recalled, “everyone in D.C. thought we were committing suicide.” (more…)

side note: I became more depressed as I read this……..this falls in line with the open letter to Bush by William Rivers Pitt that was post a few days back. We can’t forget what dubya did to this country…..we can’t let this happen again! I think people now see the damage that can be done by a bad President!

By Vincent Rossmeier and Gabriel Winant
Salon.com
President Bush inherited a peaceful, prosperous America. As he exits, Salon consults experts in seven fields to try to assess the devastation

After a couple of presidential terms, mismanagement in every area of policy — foreign, domestic, even extraterrestrial — starts to add up. When George W. Bush entered the White House in January 2001, he inherited peace and prosperity. The military, the Constitution and New Orleans were intact and the country had a budget surplus of $128 billion. Now he’s about to dash out the door, leaving a large, unpaid bill for his successors to pay.

To get a sense of what kind of balance is due, Salon spoke to experts in seven different fields. Wherever possible, we have tried to express the damage done in concrete terms — sometimes in lives lost, but most often just in money spent and dollars owed. What follows is an incomplete inventory of eight years of mis- and malfeasance, but then a fuller accounting would run, um, somewhat longer than three pages.

THE ECONOMY

Until not too long ago, President Bush’s supporters could be heard to argue that the economy was the unheralded success story of his administration. In 2006, Larry Kudlow called it “The Greatest Story Never Told.” While praising Bush, Ramesh Ponnuru decried the unfairness of it all. “It seems to happen every week: Some new piece of good economic news comes out, and Republicans sink a little deeper in the polls.” To share their admiration, it helped if you ignored the way the wealth was being distributed. Or if you were a repo man.

But the whole debate became moot on Sept. 15, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Now the economy may be the most burdensome of all the Bush legacies that Barack Obama will have to shoulder.

The current financial and economic crisis has grown so massive, consuming everything in sight, that one might be able to forget that it started with bad mortgages. Well, one could try to forget, as long as one still has a home, or is not among the nearly one in four mortgage-holders whose homes are worth less than the debt on their homes.

How bad is it? “An average recession is one in which we lose about 3 percent of GDP. Three percent of GDP is about $500 billion,” UCLA economist Lee Ohanian told Salon. “It’s not inconceivable that this could be twice as worse, which would be close to a trillion.”

How much poorer are we going to get before we start getting richer again? Here are some (scary, morbid, gruesome) clues.

Expected shortfall of gross domestic product below normal growth path in 2009: $900 billion (more…)

side note: i’m not seeing this in the news anywhere. kind of scary considering what has happened.

By Antrim Caskey, AlterNet.

On December 26, 2008, the Roane County Codes Enforcement Office condemned three homes along Swan Pond Circle Road in Harriman, Tennessee, four days after 5.4 million cubic yards, more than 1 billion gallons, of coal combustion waste (CCW) slurry surged, “like a tsunami” according to residents, into the confluence of the Emory and Clinch Rivers after breaking a 40-acre holding pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Kingston coal-fired power plant.

The Schean family lake house, which they had spent that last 3.5 years restoring from a beaten up lakeside shack, was thrown off its foundation across the road thirty feet. Fifty-three-year-old James Schean was asleep in bed when the earthen retaining wall broke, sending a wave of coal sludge through his home; Schean escaped by kicking out the bedroom window and clamoring out of the house, just as emergency personnel arrived at the scene. Neither his wife nor his daughter were in the house at the time.

DeAnna Copeland, a neighbor of the Scheans, expressed her dismay at the destruction of the Schean lake-house, “every waking moment they were working on that house.” The Schean house, the bass boat and James’ red pick up truck all lay under a dark grey sludge, which was punctuated with household items, toys, and clothing that had been expelled from the house. (more…)