Yesterday morning at Lafayette Square across from the White House, David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, locked himself into a cage in a civil disobedience protest against US policies on the cultivation of industrial-grade hemp for use in food and fibers.

Bronner notes that the US is the biggest market on Earth for industrial hemp products, and yet US farmers are cut out of the market; as a result, his company is forced to buy hemp oil from Canadian outfits to the tune of $100,000 per year. Bronner also pointed out the hypocrisy of the Obama government in that as an Illinois state senator, Obama voted twice in support of industrial hemp cultivation, but as El Presidente, he has actively interfered in the rights of states to legalize the growing of industrial hemp, including his refusal to to meet with a delegation from North Dakota, whose government — from the Governor on down — has signaled its wishes to allow its farmers to cultivate industrial hemp.

From about 8am until the DC Fire Department arrived to cut the locks and bolts holding the cage closed, Bronner harvested some of the half-dozen or so industrial-grade hemp plants he had on hand — at .06% THC, smoking it would give you nothing but a headache — sifted the seeds, and used them to demonstrate a hand-cranked seed-oil press.

(Note: Owing to currently-insoluble issues with Vimeo’s new uploading system, I’m forced to revert back to YouTube for the foreseeable future… and yeah, it kinda sucks. Apologies.)

Continue reading "La Cage Aux Chanvre" »

I had this flash of inspiration from a post by my comrade Owen Paine, who writes for Stop Me Before I Vote Again, where he quips in his trademark beat poetic fashion:

yes the ever more empty “fatal center”
where all hope plunges down and down toward citizen despair
and corporate joy

If you’re like me, you’ve heard the blabbing heads on TV mention the Democrats “reaching across the aisle” and “moving to the center” so goddamn’ many times it makes you want to put your head through a plate-glass window.

If you’re also like me, you do a massive facepalm every time the Democrats attempt another ill-advised and entirely lame “reach across the aisle” and end up being screwed, blued and tattooed by the GOP yet again. You’d think by now the Dems would have learned something about how “the Center” is a great bottomless time and energy-sucking maw of Hell, but apparently they have the learning capacity of a housefly — and if you know anything about houseflies, you know that’s damn’ near absolute zero.

With that in mind, I present the Democratic Party attempting to “move to the center” and “reach across the aisle” and having what I call a Wile E. Coyote Moment. You know how, in those old cartoons, the coyote is chasing the road runner across the top of a mesa, and the road runner — traveling at near supersonic speed — rockets effortlessly over the edge and across the gap to the top of the neighboring mesa while the coyote, recklessly following him, gets about halfway across and suddenly realizes he’s way the hell out there in the air all by himself, and right in that moment he thinks to himself “what the fuck am I…” just before he begins that long fall? Well, kind of like that.

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Continue reading "The Abyss" »

As I emerged from my REM sleep early last Wednesday morning, the first thing I heard was footage of President Sparkle Pony announcing his “support” for gay marriage on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program. Also — as per usual — as during the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster two years ago, President Sparkle Pony sat on his ass for weeks before being dragged kicking and screaming into speaking up on the situation. Like his speech on Deepwater Horizon, his day-late-dollar-short announcement on gay marriage was tepid and lukewarm, full of vaporous, non-committal tap dancing — in other words, classic Obama.

For some otherworldly reason, following President Sparkle Pony’s mealy-mouthed announcement, the mainstream media — along with, of course, vast swaths of Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans/Whatever America — practically crapped its pants with excitement. This was especially great news for the media, who had a ready-made excuse to spend the next week avoiding all discussion of the economy, the war in Afghanistan, the indefinite detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act, the health care debacle, and a host of other more important issues. This was also good news in the context of the current Presidential Freak Circus, as it finally gives the Romney and Obama campaigns something to disagree on.

So, I’d like to take this opportunity to offer my heartiest congratulations to GLBTW America, for so cleverly diverting the attention of the People, the ruling class and the media away from far more important issues to your goddamn’ lame-assed hot-button bullshit culture-war pissfight.

Next week: flag burning!

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Continue reading "Just Married" »

So, here we are two years after the massive oil spill from BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore rig which devestated ecosystems, fisheries and tourism along the US Gulf Coast. Our Exalted Boy Emperor and Nobel Laureate, Barack Drone Strike Obama, responded by sitting around saying nothing for a couple of weeks before giving a speech so empty and loaded with blue-sky platitudes about our wonderful energy future that he should’ve been wearing a cardigan.

Meanwhile, large numbers of eyeless shrimp and mutated fish are being caught by Gulf Coast fishing boats, Gulf fisheries are in deep decline, and not a single BP executive has served so much as a day of prison time for this crime.

Happy anniversary, everybody! Have some cake.

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…and for those of you with long-term memory issues — or, “looking forward”, as your average Democrat would say  — here’s a quick recap of the Gulf Coast oil disaster:

“Spill, Baby, Spill!” 04.30.10
“Climate Change?” 05.12.10
“Plugged, At Last!” 05.29.10
“Nerobama no. 2″ 06.17.10

Continue reading "Happy Anniversary!" »