NEW JERSEY DEBATING MEDICAL MARIJAUNA

Good news out of New Jersey, I was unaware of this until I got a tip from a Searcher in New Jersey. Thanks NJ, fight the good fight, the enlightened ones know that Marijuana is so much more benign than Alcohol which kills upward of 100,000 people a year, and that's without vehicle deaths...it is time to legalize Marijuana, as well as row crop hemp, forget about all of these timber companies raping and pillaging the US, especially here in the PacNorthwest. Here is the story:

N.J. medical marijuana bill advances
Friday, June 05, 2009
By Trish G. Graber
tgraber@sjnewsco.com

TRENTON Ð Jack O'Brien feels shooting pain in his hands and feet that can become so intense that it wakes him out of a sound sleep.

The Cumberland County resident said the excruciating pain, resulting from a birth defect that also left him without fingers or toes, travels along his nerves all the way to his head. He takes pain medications but worries they will damage his liver or kidneys. And he says prescribed drugs leave him with little ability to function normally.

O'Brien has found that the one thing that does provide relief, without the often demobilizing side effects of pain pills, is marijuana. But he says he rarely uses it because he fears being arrested.

"I'm not a pot-head, I'm not a partier," the 54-year-old Commercial Township resident said. "But I need to live a quality of life that's better than (just) laying on the couch."
O'Brien and other New Jersey residents suffering from serious medical conditions could soon have the legal ability to use marijuana for pain relief.

Legislators are considering a controversial measure that would make New Jersey the 14th state in the nation to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes.

The Senate has already passed the bill. The Assembly Health and Human Services Committee approved the legislation Thursday by a vote of 8 to 1, with two abstentions, after amending it to further limit access to marijuana.

The bill would give residents, with their treating doctor's recommendation, the ability to obtain a registration card from the Department of Health and Senior Services to use marijuana for medicinal purposes without the possibility of arrest, prosecution or penalties.

The drug could be obtained from one of at least six "alternative treatment centers," facilities that would be designated to grow and distribute the drug.

The initial version of the bill also allowed for state-registered users to grow up to six marijuana plants at home, but the Assembly committee amended the legislation Thursday to prohibit home-growing after hearing concerns from critics, who said it would make marijuana too widely available and vulnerable to abuse...

And that's the way the story ends, and we all know that last statement about availability and abuse is total bullshit, it's a throwback from the 1930's, and William Randolph Hearst's successful smear campaign that went with ridiculous propaganda films like "Reefer Madness" ("Tell Your Children" is the original, Reefer Madness is the re-issue title)

Peace-

Mike

"A NATION OF COWARDS"

Eric Holder the new Attorney General of the US throws down the glove when it comes to race. Check it out courtesy of CNN:

"Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic
melting pot, in things racial, we have always been and we -- I believe continue to be in too many ways essentially a nation of cowards," Holder told Department of Justice employees at an event Wednesday celebrating Black History Month. He said that Americans are afraid to talk about race, adding that"certain subjects are off-limits and that to explore them risks at best embarrassment and at worst the questioning of one's character."

Regarding the melting pot myth: There is no such thing and there never has been. We are not a pot of fondue, we are human beings, different,unique, beautiful. For far too long the United States has forced people of color and especially the Natives to conform or be left behind, or worse, imprisoned or killed.

It is time to recognize our diversity and strength. Embracing the cultures that make up the United States, and acknowledging the atrocious behavior by the United States Government toward the people of African decent, people from Latin America, Native Americans, is a first step, but only a first step toward healing this country and laying to rest the ghosts of the past that continue to haunt the United States.

I can further tie this "cowardly race issue" in to the past election, and the way the electoral map shifted in the United States. What used to be the bible belt can clearly be seen for what it is and what is has always been: The Racist Belt. Check out this link for the map, click on the Voting Shift link if it doesn't take you right to it. It shows the way the country voted, either more democrat or more republican than in 2004. It is very telling. Here is the map:

You will notice, Arkansas and the bible belt voted MORE republican that in 2004, clearly disrespecting Obama, and embracing the embarrassingly ridiculous Republican party ticket of McCain/Palin. Even after the fucking nightmare of George W. Bush. They voted more republican, completely against their own interests. Once upon a time I was like that in Arkansas. Then I finally pulled myself out of the bowl that Arkansas is. You know? You get stuck in a bowl so long without being able to see above the rim, and you think the rest of the world is like this bowl, also. Fortunately it is not true. You can get out and have a better life.

Something else. When I lived in Arkansas, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. day rolled around, white people greeted each other by saying, "Happy Nigger Day." With a big grin and a smile. Don't tell me about the New South, and the Gem that Arkansas is, it simply is not true. The potential is there, but the leadership is not.

We have much work to do in the US. Things have begun, let us work to fully marginalize the right wing to a strictly yapping small regional party relegated to the South, and then let's push them right off the East and Gulf Coasts right into the sea where they belong. Stay strong Searchers, keep the heat on the right wing...and Mr. Holder, you're completely correct. Peace-

Onward.

map courtesy of New York Times, photobucket