There but for the grace of God...

Absolutely astounding and heartbreaking to be reminded of just how much more people care about dogs and cats being left outside than the homeless, who are all "bums", "dope heads", losers, drunks, sex perverts and welfare leeches. 

Most of them are VETS, as in the men and women who put their lives o the line and served this country to defend YOUR rights. They are out in the streets because of how badly being ordered to kill women and children to defend the price of oil messed them up, because they alone survived being blown up by an IED while on patrol, or because they were subjected to incredible abuse or rape by toxic commanders who couldn't make it anywhere they didn't get paid to scream at kids in their underwear.... Not one of these is their fault... many of them joined believing they could better themselves, or trying to become part of a proud tradition, not a forgotten generation misunderstood and put down by their own families and countrymen.

So many folks love police dogs who do what they do because they are TRAINED AND ORDERED TO DO SO, while bragging that they walk right by someone who did their best to be a true American patriot. 

Remind me again about that dog that cured a disease, wrote an inspiring book, painted a magnificent canvas or carved an inspiring sculpture, who led an army, founded schools and hospitals, or fought (of their own free will, not because they had been trained to do so) to keep this country free. When a society cares more about its pets and its politics than its members, you can see the end from there...

This country seems to support the troops right up to the point that they come home as broken individuals, then it's "Nothing to see here... just some dopehead bum who is waiting for his next Obamacare check."

All Else is Silence

Saw a news broadcast last night telling me that the Congressional "Gang of Eight" are working on a visa system to allow "thousands of low tech workers into America to fill labor demands."

Apparently, I missed the nationwide announcement and ensuing celebration when unemployment for our own citizens fell to 0%.  I definitely missed the call from whoever it is that has my new job and paycheck just waiting, from the housing authority with a ready apartment or home or even corner room in the barn that my wife and I can move into immediately, no background check or interview required.

We just released over one thousand detainees, some of them guilty or suspected of crimes far worse than illegal immigration, some of them linked to the cartels we are claiming to battle, some repeat offenders with a half dozen kids and thousands of dollars in unmade child support payments, children who will be taking grants and filling spaces in our universities as well as our job market, because apparently it the fault of American citizens, not their parents, that they were born here to illegal aliens.

And we just put those illegals right back into that job market, while Americans in that same store roam the aisles with empty carts, amid slim prospects, trying to mortgage their dreams with the worthless promises of a corrupt administration.

Eight states and the district of Columbia allow gay marriage, and most people really couldn't care less, would certainly never suggest that resolving the issue will stabilize the economy or unite the country.  The government is not currently spending a single thin dime to interdict gay marriage, prevent gay people from crossing the border, arrest gay pastors, seize the furniture and assets and buildings of churches where gay marriages are being performed, or using the RICO Act to prosecute people who have made a career of planning gay weddings.

But this topic dominated every newscast, every discussion panel and forum, on the internet, radio and television for the last week, as the SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES considered a question "newer than cell phones or the Internet", whether or not the "right to marry" and thus, gay marriage, was a human right, instead of merely a codified piece of civil registration and fee schedules that makes county and city governments a tidy little revenue from the happiness of couples in their jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, EIGHTEEN states have decriminalized medical uses of cannabis, Colorado and Washington State have legalized it entirely for recreational or medical use by responsible adults, the District of Columbia is getting ready to open its first dispensary and ten more states are discussing legislation to regulate, decriminalize, or legalize.  TRILLIONS of dollars have been spent, millions of man hours used, and the lives of tens of thousands of American citizens have been ruined.

But this same Supreme Court refused to even hear arguments for why the Federal Government should consider rescheduling or removing from the schedule an herb that has not caused a single fatality in the history of mankind.  There is no dialogue for differentiating between this herb and its cousin the industrious hemp plant.  There is no support or tolerance for an exchange of ideas that would let us rejuvenate our nation and end a war on our own people to protect corporate profit margins.

And while they continue the siege, these mountebanks, these autocratic, self-important, overfed, overweening fools have the audacity to come to the nation and say, with the emotionally-wrought pleas of an easily-manipulated crowd of idealists echoing behind them, that we must now give up our small arms because the United Nations, an organization to which we have not regularly paid dues or even attention in decades, now insists we do so, even as it insists that we continue the war on drugs and the failed racist policies of prohibition.

Free will cannot die in this deluge of irrational acts, no matter how deeply bowed by the anchor chains of regret, no matter how suffocated by the shroud of despair.  It can only catch fire, burning brightly, unafraid of the cost of speaking out, of speaking true.  If illegal immigrants need a "path to citizenship", if their children need a nation with opportunity and a future, then LET THEM GO HOME AND FREE THEIR OWN NATIONS!

And if the government of the United States is considering withdrawing troops from the Middle East, might I suggest that, instead of the Korean theater you have quite obviously been preparing ever since we chose to go to war with a country that "might" have Weapons of Mass Destruction (Iraq... oh, and Afghanistan????) instead of the one that had just proven their possession of the same by setting one off for the whole world to see, might I instead be bold enough, to have the crass audacity to suggest that we invade South America, kill the juntas and the tribunals and the narcolombians and CIA cash cows and that we wipe MS13 from the face of the world?

Or would that just get rid of too many boogeymen at one time, leaving virtually nothing to divide the United States, or the new United Hemisphere of Independent States?  No need for the prisons, the cops, the SWAT teams, no more material for COPS or candidates for American Midol, REAL lives to lead instead of a narcotic haze of vague fear and dissatisfaction?

Keep dreaming.

But this final word of promise, and all else is silence.

Keep sticking it to us, Washington, Wall Street, assorted state legislatures and police forces and extremists on the left and right.  Keep reaching through the bars with a long, sharp stick, poking at that vaguely-glimpsed shape that grumbles and stirs but still slumbers, slowly waking to rage, in the back corner of the golden cage you have built around mankind.

You will not rest, for you have sown the wind, and the wasteland in your heart hungers for that harvest.  You will not cease, until you wake the Dragon.

And on that day, in the hour when one burning eye finally opens and fixes you with its unwavering hunger, its unforgiving judgement and unquenchable rage, you will rest, this I promise you, for my hands will join the rising tide of millions who will put you to rest.

In peace, or in pieces.

Inconsistency

Over the past four years, Mexicans have been locked up and deported in record numbers, while young black men and Negro veterans have been imprisoned and/or killed for doing exactly what the black man currently in the Oval Office laughed about having done as a youth, while cancer, PTSD, and MS patients and seniors have been forced back into the black market, had their homes raided and their children held at gunpoint while their pets were killed, despite that black man in the Oval Office's implied promise, during his last campaign, NOT to target medical cannabis users and suppliers.

Nonetheless, in the wake of a huge Latino turnout in November and the tragedy at Sandy Hook, gun control and immigration reform have become the primary focus of the second term, despite the fact that the Oval Office itself lost guns that later killed Federal agents, that dozens of Sandy Hooks have happened all over this country in the last decade without a meaningful peep from the press or the Prez, and despite the fact that immigration, legal and otherwise, is at 10% of the levels we had in 2000.

Ignore the fact that armed thugs in body armor are smashing in front doors and holding children of the exact same ages at gunpoint, so long as THOSE criminals have a badge.

Pay no mind to the fact that a far higher percentage of people than EVER voted for Obama think that cannabis and its cousin hemp should be taken off of the Federal Drug Schedule and regulated like alcohol and tobacco, a truly bipartisan moment that every facet of the press on the left and right is doing its very best to ignore; 

How do you talk meaningfully about "growing the economy" when, due to your actions and those of your Attorney General, the once prosperous city of "Oaksterdam" and the state of California have both lost millions in tax revenues due to Federal disruption of state-certified businesses and trade, while other states with cannabis legislation waste months in which they could be generating tax revenue, jobs, and new businesses, awaiting a Federal interpretation of intent regarding respect of their laws?

How do you justify Federal silence and inaction when almost half the states in the Union currently allow medical use of cannabis or have decriminalized personal possession? 

How can you talk about immigration reform and border violence and still not act to reduce the profitability of cannabis smuggling for the cartels, thus reducing their ability to buy guns, bribe politicians and cops or maintain a strong enough presence to dominate a region?

Latinos are voting in record numbers BECAUSE THEY ARE BEING DEPORTED and the crime cartels are losing all their money laundering and courier connections, all their operation fronts.  Want to reform immigration?  The Federal Investigation into Joe Arpaio's criminal activities might have been a good start, followed by Eric Holder's indictment and Barack Obama's impeachment for the Fast and Furious debacle.

Isn't it great that the Progressive Obama Government decided that, while promising our veterans jobs on their return and spending trillions to restart our economy, playing games with the fiscal cliff and the budget crisis, there were 50,000 children of illegal immigrants (you know, criminals?) could have jobs and/or get a college education?  I can't tell you how glad I am that a college education and a decent job aren't burdens I'll have to shoulder in the near future.

Illegal immigration is fixing itself... Latinos are going south in record numbers, here in the southwest. This is a smoke-and-mirrors issue.... Ignore the absence of the little brown man behind the curtain, we are Oz, the Great and Terrible...

Why are we fighting to free the Middle East, when the nations south of the Rio Grande are controlled by one of the largest criminal organizations in history?  How can we claim to combat terrorism and border violence and the growth of the cartels when MS13 has a cell in every city in America, while they make billions on the illegal import of low-grade cannabis?

See the bigger picture... look for the connections.

Gun Control, the other topic sure to unite America, means hitting your target as many times as you pull the trigger. Guns made our nation free, guns, not talk, stopped global tyranny, and the responsible use and ownership of guns will keep our nation and our world free, from outside influences as well as the forces, corporate, private, conservative and liberal, attempting to subvert our government from the inside. Retention of background check data in a LEO eyes-only database, with required state and federal input of felony and mental data to the NICS, and uniform enforcement of the current laws, with no loopholes, no special cases, and no privileged class would remove the need for any new legislation regarding guns. 

No gun has ever simply pointed itself at someone and killed them. 

And NO ONE, EVER, IN ALL OF RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY, DIED FROM THE USE OF CANNABIS. 

We have enough laws about humans and guns... we need clarity and reason, we need enforcement, and we need consistency between our scientific knowledge, our laws, and our actions. Cognitive independence is a term that is getting thrown around a lot.  In an age of increasing government invasion, shrinking freedoms, genetic research and scientific advances in artificial intelligence, it may be long past time to start considering jujst where a competent, thinking individual draws the line between external and internal authority and autonomy.

When the government holds medical patents on a plant that same government defines as a drug with no medicinal value, when the courts refuse to hear evidence to the contrary, the same old answers and issues will not continue to distract or dissuade a public too well informed and personally experienced to accept  those tired clumsy shenanigans.  

When SWAT and RUSH task forces are raiding family homes, killing pets, holding children and seniors at gunpoint, destroying any notion of freedom and justice, when entire cities are reduced to slums and empty storefronts by Federal contempt for states' and citizens' rights, how can we continue the meaningless charade of talking about high-capacity magazines or border fences as a solution or source of our problems?

Don't Let Go, and You Won't Fall Off of The Fiscal Cliff, either.

Posting this again, because given Washington State and Colorado's recent VOTER initiatives to legalize cannabis and regulate it in the same fashion as alcohol and tobacco, I think it is a crime that NONE of the major news outlets on the right or left has shown much interest in a historical moment in American politics. Focusing on immigration due to Latino turnout? Millions of white, black, brow

n and red voters turned out , and in November, and a significant number of them spoke far more loudly to the issue of a trillion-dollar war on our own people than the rapidly-diminishing illegal immigrant problem, which is down to 10% of 2000 levels.

How about you focus on the issues, Congress and Mister Obama, and stop trying to win the next state elections before you deal with the current problems?

AVOID THE FISCAL CLIFF.

One simple step: Executive Order (like the one for Bin Ladin's execution) decriminalizing hemp and cannabis, releasing all non-violent offenders, dismissing all pending cases for simple possession with or without intent, legalizing personal production and growing co-ops.

Results: compassion and dignity for patients and caregivers, reduced stress for the same, lower Medicaid and Medicare doctor and prescription costs, lower infrastructure costs (hospitals and clinics), lower enforcement and incarceration budgets, no new prison costs, increased jobs and tax revenues across the country (Washington estimates 2 billion in the next 5 years just from new taxes, stores, patients, clinics, and dispensaries. I've estimated a savings of almost 2 million PER YEAR for Medicaid and Medicare; http://roninsroad.blogspot.com/2012/06/no-value.html).

Decriminalization also means exponential reduction of the profit margin of the cartels and black markets, reduction of inner city crime levels, revitalization of urban and farm communities, and an increasingly competitive America.

So how 'bout instead of partisan politics and special interest accomodation as usual, we all join in on a solution that offers immediate relief and forward momentum?  Or is that too much to ask from a group of lifelong bureaucrats?

Foundations

So, here are the hard, cold facts.

95% of your world was created by people using cannabis.

Right now, if you are sitting at a computer, or holding an iPhone or a Kindle or in some other way interfacing with the Internet and the World Wide Web of data sharing, you are enjoying the fruits of the intellectual and physical labors of a group of cannabis-using scientists.

If you are enjoying some music with your surfing, starting your morning, during your commute or throughout your day, anything from classical to light jazz to country to, yes, even a few gospel tunes, you are listening to the work of folks who routinely used hemp, cannabis, and hemp flower extracts to deal with stress and pain.

(Quite of few of them also used laudanum, opium, morphine, absinth and cocaine, which were then accepted as natural remedies, just as citizens of voting age were considered mature enough to determine those remedies’ use in their lives.  There was, oddly enough, no drug problem, no multi-billion dollar prison and drug enforcement system.  My, how the times have changed…)

If you enjoy the paintings, sculptures, poetry, literature, or craftworks of 95% of the last three centuries, you are, in fact, enjoying the effects of cannabis and other mind-altering substances on the real world.

Have any number of these artists died of addiction or the diseases that come with it?  Yes, many if not most of the greats that we know did indeed succumb to their appetites and the dark inner flame that lit their world in the first place.

Not one of them died from cannabis.

In fact, in seven thousand years of recorded history, including the incredibly detailed records of the dynasties of Asia, not one person has ever died from the effects of cannabis; smoked, brewed into tea, eaten, or rubbed into the skin.  It is humanly impossible to consume the amount of cannabis it would take to deliver enough THC to disrupt bodily function.  Imagine trying to smoke a bail of marijuana in an hour.  That’s how much it would take.

But I digress.

If you live or have lived in a house, or a condo, or an apartment that you did not construct from ground to doorbell with your own two hands, there is a good chance that someone using marijuana created the materials, was involved in their shipping and/or delivery, and installed or assembled them into the structure that kept the rain and snow from your head. 

The streets you drive on, the shops you patronize, the restaurants you eat in, all built and staffed and possibly owned by cannabis users or their relatives or friends.  The town you live in, the state in which it is located, and the country in which that state exists, all discovered and founded by cannabis and hemp growers and users. 

For hundreds of years, cannabis users have been laying the foundation stones of your world.

Cannabis and hemp; twined branches of the same tree.  Useful for paper, cloth, a wide assortment of building applications, fuel, protein, and a thousand potential applications to replace and preserve our depleting fossil fuels, forests, drinking water and arable land.  Jobs for literally millions; farming, harvesting, processing, breeding strains for food, fuel, medical and textile applications, packaging, manufacturing, warehousing, transport, security, logistics, marketing, education, outreach, clinics, research… the list grows as rapidly as the reasons to rethink our long-held, misguided views on this beneficial plant.

Why, out of so many useful plants, is this one demonized?  I’m not talking about opium poppies or cocoa leaves or psychedelic mushrooms, although medical science has found uses for all three- morphine and cocaine have been accepted as legitimate painkillers for hundreds of years, and new research into the use of psilocybin for post-traumatic stress and hospice care as well as a host of other mental disorders, is yielding amazing results.

No, I’m talking about a plant that our government has not once but twice encouraged all citizens who could do so to produce in bulk quantity.  During colonial times, it was a mandate that “every household plant at least one teaspoon of good Indian hemp seed”, and hemp formed one of the principle exports of the colonies. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both grew hemp. Ben Franklin owned a mill that made hemp paper. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper , and most of our early money was printed on fine hemp paper.

Somehow, a century and a half later, this foundation stone of American life and agriculture suddenly became the demon weed.  There are any number of reasons why one can see this happening; a racist reaction to white teens mixing with other races to listen to jazz, a response to the continuing influx of laborers from countries with long cannabis associations, and of course the well-documented government manipulation by corporate interests to ensure proper development of their investments.  

Yet our government and the corporations that increasingly control it are adept, if nothing else, at reversing themselves without batting an eye.  During the Second World War, when our supply of hemp from the Philippines was cut off, American farmers were exhorted by the US government to grow “Hemp for Victory!” 

But when soldiers in Korea seemed disinclined to rush out and kill the enemy after discovering cannabis, and with the burgeoning music scene in London and Germany on the rise, American authorities once again labeled cannabis the “gateway drug” and filled schools and theaters with propaganda, little if any of it based in fact.

Such as the fact that NOT ONE Presidential research committee into cannabis/marijuana has ever uncovered ANY permanent, negative side effects from its use.

Right now it is costing American taxpayers 5 billion dollars every year just to fund the DEA.  Well over 80% of that money is for cannabis interdiction.  95% of the victims of that interdiction are NOT criminals.  They are parents and young people, seniors and veterans, patients and mechanics, carpenters and plumbers and roofers and electricians, teachers and writers, painters and musicians and mentors, foster parents and cab drivers, shopkeepers and janitors.  They are the thousands of people who hold this society upright and together.

We have so many battles ahead.  Worthy battles; to restart our economy, to clothe and feed and house and employ our people, to bring hope to the downtrodden and redemption to the broken and lost right here in our own homeland.   

Together, we have come so far, and accomplished so much.

Isn’t it time to end the war on our own people?

The fight goes on...

And I am tired.

Tired of causes, of interests, of hobbies.  Tired of the endless Internet chatter of affirmations and discoveries, secret plots and sunny family photos of nothing.  I am tired of writing hundreds of diatribes to idiots and slackers and stoners who all want to legalize cannabis but have not one single clue of how to get off their asses and get something done in a unified fashion.

I am deathly tired of lazy liberals who want to post about the revolution and call for Change but still cling to the same fake badges that wanted to cut them up for bait.  People who aren't ready to sacrifice and expect an easy path to revolution and victory.

The only thing guaranteed in a revolution is casualties.

Where does it start, and where does it end?  Do we rise up, and revolt, join the idiots at Occupy and immediately launch a coup to seize that movement before it is giving away useless college loans to univesities without the government support to offer decent classes or teachers? 

Do we re-invent the wheel and begin our own movement, or do we rely on the folks at NORML to finally end their comfortable rearguard action of polls and meetings and endless verbal jousting with the Federal government and actually call for a general strike?

Do we face armed Guardsmen and police with non-violence as we are teargassed and beaten and forced off of our own public parks and public lands? 

I have loved and defended this land, right and wrong, for most of my life, inside its borders and beyond.  I have accepted that the corrupt men in high places who sell poison to our children and old people have a right to make laws controlling my use of an herb. Instead of speaking out, or acting, I simply participated in the black market and reveled, to some degree, at my participation in the game that keeps such men in power.  I danced on my strings, grazed with the herd, and wished someone else would do something about legalizing cannabis.

Then I fell in love with an MS patient, and saw firsthand what prescription drugs were doing to her, and saw as well the heroic spirit fighting inside the pain and disability for just a little space to breath.  I saw the immediate relief when she tried cannabis, and I watched the fear she went through at the prospect of blood tests; tests that would reveal the damage the 'scripts had done to her organs; tests with the potential for positive THC results that would disqualify her for housing and grocery assistance, Medicaid, Medicare, and her SSDI monthly income.  It didn't matter that for $400 each month she could replace $2,500-3000 in prescriptions and the inevitable cost of damaged liver, spleen and kidneys. 

Or perhaps it did matter, to the very corporations that fund the Drug War while applying for (and getting) patents for cannabis-derived medicines.  Perhaps it is for this reason, and not any "gateway drug" propaganda, that the same Federal government which arrests MS, cancer, and PTSD patients for possession and production of cannabis has reserved for itself a patent on cannabis-derived medical pain and nerve applications.

I find myself at the point where Malcolm X once stood; I would seriously advise the leaders of this nation to heed those who would only see change come non-violently.   You have made non-violent change increasingly impossible, and you would seem to wish violent change to become inevitable, to justify the killings and beatings, the arrests and lives destroyed, the riot police, the teargas, the dogs and barricades, the FEAR and LIES used to destroy the textile industries and farmers of the south and the freedoms of a nation.

How can you expect men and women of honor to stand unresisting after such a long history of abuses and injustice from their fellow countrymen and the government which was formed to serve all citizens, without respect to economic or social standing?  After a decades-long war of  physical and spritiual assaults against our homes, families and selves, seizure of our properties and destruction of our state-licensed and approved businesses and thus our very means of earning a living; of public slander and distortion, of suppression of scientific facts and denial of succor to those in pain, how can you expect us to simply hold hands and sing as you wade into our midst, jackboots and nightsticks swinging in a fog of mace?

For too long have we remained silent.  For too long have we danced to the tune of a malicious piper.

Do not place your faith in the Vote.  All those vying for the Throne would wear the crown, not thrust it back into the hands of the People. 

Men will talk of States' rights when States are all that they can control.  But when a man stands in the highest office in the land and rules the destiny of ALL states, that appreciation for autonomy fades rapidly before the headiest drug of all: POWER.

The Vote is simply the Carrot, with which the forces of corruption and Tyranny will lead you on toward the unattainable goal of Change From Within the System.  It is a tragic comedy in which the masks change but the true players remain the same.  There can be no change in the system when there is no opportunity for outsiders to enter the system.  Those who have been bred and groomed to survive in the Political and Corporate jungle have closed the gates against outside interference or change.  The police, public opinion, your church, your place in the community, arrest, discomfort, imprisonment, public infamy and slander, these are all the Stick, used without compassion against those who would point out the fallacies, the Illusion of the Will of the People, and stand up rather than meekly bow before the show of force.

We stand at a crux, at a time of important decisions and great actions.  In flight navigation, in climbing mountains, in piloting uncertain seas, and at certain points in history, there comes a time of final choices, a Point of No Return.

The question is simple.

Is peace so dear and life so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?

ALMIGHTY GOD FORBID IT!!!

I know not what others may do, but as for me, GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME DEATH!