haha...

podcast 0.1

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/24/1881832/The%20Un-named%20Podcast%200-1.mp3

My mouse looks like its moving by itself....


wtf?

Here is the article from RollingStone magazine I read recently


being sick isnt too bad, I can at least get some stuff done....

Here ya go, I encourage everyone to give it a read, I really liked it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Lies of Sarah Palin
By Matt Taibbi

I'm standing outside the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sarah Palin has just finished her speech to the Republican National Convention, accepting the party's nomination for Vice President. If I hadn't quit my two pack a day habit earlier this year, I'd be chain smoking right now. So the only thing left is to stand mute against the fit-for-a-cheap-dog-kennel crowd-control fencing you see everywhere at these idiotic conventions and gnaw on weird new feelings of shock and anarchist rage as one would a rawhide chew toy.



All around me, a million cops in there absurd post-9/11 space combat get-ups stand guard as assholes in paper-mache puppet heads scramble around for one last moment of network face time before the coverage goes dark. Four-chinned delegates from places like Arkansas and Georgia are pouring joylessly out the gates in search of bars where they can load up on Zombies and Scorpion bowls and other "wild" drinks and extramaritally grope their turkey-necked female companions in bathroom stalls as part of the "Unbelievable Time" they will inevitably report to there pals back home. Only 21st-centrury Americans can pass through a metal detector six times in an hour and still think they're at a party.

The defining moment for me came shortly after Palin and her family stepped down from the stage to uproarious applause, looking happy enough to throw a whole library full of books into the sewer. In the crush to exit the stadium, a middle-aged woman wearing a cowboy hat, a red-white-and-blue shirt and an obvious eye job gushed to a male colleague – They were both wearing badges identifying them as members of the Colorado delegation – At the Xcel gates.

"She totally reminds me of my cousin!" the delegate screeched. "She's a real woman! The real thing!"

I stared at her open-mouthed. In that moment, the rank cynicism of the whole sorry deal was laid bare. Here's the thing about Americans. You can send their kids off by the thousands to get their balls blown off in foreign lands for no reason at all, saddle them with billions in debt year after congressional year while they spend their winters cheerfully watching game shows and football, pull the rug out from under their mortgages, and leave them living off their credit cards and their Wal-Mart salaries while you move their jobs to China and Bangalore.

And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she's good enough likeness of a loudmouthed Middle American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant sized bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the sizzlin' picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else's, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because that image on TV reminds him of the mean brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning.

Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV – And this country is going to eat her up, cheering every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.

The Palin speech was a political masterpiece, one of the most ingenious pieces of electoral theater this country has ever seen. Never before has a single televised image turned a party's fortunes around faster

Until the Alaska governor actually ascended to the podium that night, I was convinced that John McCain had made on of the all-time campaign-season blunders, that he had acted impulsively and out of utter desperation in choosing a cross-eyed political neophyte just two years removed from running a town smaller than the bleacher section at Fenway park. It even crossed my mind that there was an element of weirdly self-destructive pique in McCain's decision to cave in to his party's right-wing base in this fashion, that perhaps he was responding to being ordered by party elders away from tepid, ideologically promiscuous hack like Joe Lieberman – Reportedly his real preference – By picking the most obviously unqualified, doomed-to-fail joke of a Bible-Thumping buffoon. As in: You want me to rally the base? Fine, I'll rally the base. Here I'll choose this rifle-toting, serially pregnant moose killer who thinks God lobbies for oil pipelines. Happy know?

But watching Palin's speech I had no doubt that I was witnessing a historic, iconic performance. The candidate sauntered to the lectern with the assurance of a sleepwalker – And immediately launched into a symphony of snorting and sneering remarks, taking time out in between the superior invective to present herself as just a humble gal with a beefcake husband and a brood of healthy, combat-ready spawn who just happened to be innocent targets of a communist and probably also homosexual media conspiracy. She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who "Five children later" is "Still my guy." It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.

Within minutes, Palin had given TV audiences a character infinitely recognizable to virtually every American; the small-town girl with just enough looks and a defiantly incurious mind who thinks the PTA minutes are Holy Writ, and to whom injustice means the woman next door owning a slightly nicer set or drapes or flatware. Or the governorship, as it were.

Right-wingers of the Bush-Rove ilk have had a tough time finding a human face to put on their failed, inhuman, mean-as-hell policies. But it was hard not to recognize the genius of wedding that faltering brand of institutionalized greed to the image of the suburban American supermom. It's the perfect cover, for there is almost nothing in the world meaner than this species of provincial tyrant.

Palin herself burned this political symbiosis into the pages of history with her seminal crack about the "Difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull: lipstick," blurring once and for all the lines between meanness on the grand political scale as understood by the Roves and Bushes of the world, and meanness of the small-town variety as understood by pretty much anyone who has ever sat around in his ranch-house den dreaming of a fourth plasma-screen TV or an extra set of KC HiLites for his truck, while some ghetto family a few miles away shares a husk of government cheese.

In her speech, Palin presented herself as a raging baby-making furnace of middle-class ambition next to whom the yuppies of the Obama set – Who never want anything all that badly except maybe a few afternoons with someone else's wife, or a few kind words in The New York Times Book Review – Seem like weak, self-doubting celibates, the kind of people who certainly cannot be trusted to believe in the right God or to defend a nation. We're used to seeing such blatant cultural caricaturing in our politicians. But Sarah Palin is something new. She's all caricature. As the candidate of a party whose positions on individual issues are poll losers almost across the board, her shtick is not even designed to sell a line of policies. It's just designed to sell her. The thing was as much as admitted in the on-air gaffe by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who was inadvertently caught saying on MSNBC that Palin wasn't the most qualified candidate, that the party "went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives."

The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflective prejudices of their demographic, as they would for a reality-show contestants or sitcom characters. Hicks root for hicks, moms for moms, born-agains for born-agains. Sure, there was politics in the Palin speech but it was all either silly lies or merely incidental fluffery buttressing the theatrical performance. A classic example of what was at work here came when Palin proudly introduced her Down-Syndrome baby, Trig, then stared into the camera and somberly promised parents of special-needs kids that they would "Have a friend and advocate in the White House." This was about a half-hour before she raised her hands in triumph with McCain, a man who voted against increasing funding for special-needs education.

Palin's charge that "government is too big" and that Obama "Wants to grow it" was similarly preposterous. Not only did her party just preside over the largest government expansion since LBJ, but Palin herself has been a typical bush-era republican, borrowing and spending beyond her means. Her great legacy as mayor of Wasilla was the construction of a $15 million hockey arena in a city with an annual budget of $20 million; Palin OK'd a bond issue for the project before the land had been secured, leading to a protracted legal mess that ultimately forced taxpayers to pay more than six times the original market price for property the city ended up having to seize from a private citizen using eminent domain. Better yet, Palin ended up paying for the fucking thing with a 25 percent increase in the city sales tax. But in her speech, of course, Palin presented herself as the enemy of tax increases, righteously bemoaning that "Taxes are too high" and Obama "Wants to raise them."

Palin hasn't been too worried about federal taxes as governor of a state that ranks number one in the nation in federal spending per resident ($13,950), even as it sits just 18th in federal taxes paid per resident ($5,434). That means all us taxpaying non-Alaskans spend $8,500 a year on each and every resident of Palin's paradise of rugged self-sufficiency. Not that this sworn enemy of taxes doesn't collect from her own; Alaska currently collects the most taxes per resident of any state in the nation. The rest of Palin's speech was the same dog-whistle crap Republicans have been railing about for decades. Palin's crack about a mayor being "like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities" testified to the Republican's apparent belief that they can win elections till the end of time running against the Sixties. (They're probably right.) The incessant pausing about the media was likewise par for the course, red meat for those tens of millions of patriotic flag-waving Americans whose first instinct when things get rough is to whine like bitches and blame other people – Reporters, the French, those ungrateful blacks soaking up tax money eating big prison meals, whomever – For their failures.

Add to this the usual lies about Democrats wanting to "forfeit" to our enemies abroad and coddle terrorists, and you had a run-of-the-mill, almost boring Republican speech from a substance standpoint. What made it exceptional was its utter hypocrisy, its total disregard for reality, it's total disregard for reality, it's absolute unrelation to the facts of our current political situation. After eight years of unprecedented corruption, incompetence, waste and greed, the party of Karl Rove understood that 50 million Americans would not demand solutions to any of these problems so long as they were given a new, new thing to beat their meat over.

Sarah Palin is that new, new thing, and in the end it won't matter that she's got an unmarried teenage kid with a bun in the oven. Of course, if the daughter of a black candidate like Barack Obama showed up at his convention with a five month bump and some sideways-cap-wearing, junior-grade Curtis Jackson (50 cent) holding her hand, the defenders of Traditional Morality would be up in arms. But the thing about being in the reality-making business is that you don't need to worry much about vetting; there are no facts in your candidate's bio that cannot be ignored or overcome.

One of the most amusing things about the Palin nomination has been the reaction of horrified progressives. The internet has been buzzing at full volume as would-be defenders of sanity and reason pore over the governor's record in search of the Damning Facts. My own telephone began ringing off the hook with calls from ex-Alaskans and friends of Alaskans determined to help get the "truth" about Sarah Palin into the major media. Pretty much anyone with an internet connection knows by know that Palin was originally for the "Bridge to Nowhere" before she opposed it (She actually endorsed the plan in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign), that even after the project was defeated she kept the money, that she didn't actually sell the Alaska governor's state luxury jet on eBay but instead sold it at a $600,000 loss to a campaign contributor (who is reportedly now seeking $50,000 in taxpayer money to pay maintenance costs).

Then there are the salacious tales of Palin's swinging-meat-cleaver management style, many of which seem to have a common thread: In addition to being ensconced in a messy ethics investigation over her firing of the chief of Alaska state troopers (dismissed after refusing to sack her sister's ex-husband), Palin also fired a campaign aide who had an affair with a friends wife. More ominously, as mayor of Wasilla, Palin tried to fire the town librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, who had resisted pressure to censor books Palin found objectionable.

Then there's the God stuff: Palin belongs to a church whose pastor, Ed Kalnins, believes that all criticisms of George Bush "Come from Hell" and wondered aloud if people who voted for John Kerry could be saved. Kalnins, looming as the answer to Obama's Jeremiah Wright, claims that Alaska is going to be a "refuge state" for Christians in the last days, last days which he sometimes speaks of in the present tense. Palin herself has been captured on video mouthing the inevitable born again idiocies, such as the idea that a recent oil-pipeline deal was "God's Will." She also described the Iraq War as a "task that is from God" and part of a heavenly "Plan." She supports teaching creationism and "Abstinence only" in public schools, opposes abortion even for victims of rape, has denied the science behind global warming and attends a church that seeks to convert Jews and cure homosexuals.

All of which tells you about what you'd expect from a raise-the-base choice like Palin: She's a puffed-up dimwit with primitive religious beliefs who had to be educated as to the fact that the constitution did not exactly envision government executives firing librarians. Judging from the importance progressive critics seem to attach to these revelations, you'd think that these were actually negatives in modern American politics. But Americans like politicians who hate books and see the face of Jesus in every tree stump. They like them stupid and mean and ignorant of the rules. Which is why Palin has only seemed to grow in popularity as more and more of these revelations have come out.

The same goes for the most damning aspect of her biography, her total lack of big-game experience. As governor of Alaska, Palin presides over a state whose entire population is barely the size of Memphis. This kind of thing might matter in a country that actually worried about whether its leader was prepared for his job – But not in America. In America, it takes about 2 weeks in the limelight for the whole country to think you've been around for years. To a certain extent, this is why Obama is getting a pass on the same issue. He's been on TV every day for two years and according to the standards of our instant-ramen culture, that's a lifetime of hands-on experience.

It is worth noting that the same criticisms of Palin also hold true for two other candidates in this race, John McCain and Barack Obama. As politicians, both men are more narrative than substance, with McCain rising to prominence on the back of his bio as a suffering war hero and Obama mostly playing the part of long-lost, future-embracing liberal dreamboat not seen on the national stage since Bobby Kennedy died. If your stomach turns to read how Palin's Kawasaki 704 glasses are flying off the shelves in Middle America, you have to accept that Middle America probably feels the same way when it hears Donatella Versace dedicated her collection to Obama during Milan Fashion Week. Or sees the throwing-panties-onstage-"I love you, Obama!" ritual at the Democratic nominee's town-hall appearances.

So, sure, Barack Obama might be every bit as much as a slick piece of imageering as Sarah Palin. The difference is in what the image represents. The Obama image represents tolerance, intelligence, education, patience with the notion of compromise and negotiation, and a willingness to stare ugly facts right in the face, all qualities we're actually going to need in government if we're going to get out of this huge mess we're in.

Here's what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins "Country First" buttons on his man titties and chants "U-S-A! U-S-A!" at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas

The truly disgusting thing about Sarah Palin isn't that she's totally unqualified, or a religious zealot, or married to a secessionist, or unable to educate her own daughter about sex, or a fake conservative who raised taxes and porked up earmark millions every chance she got. No, the most disgusting thing about her is what she says about us: That you can ram us in the ass for eight solid years, and we'll not only thank you for your trouble, we'll sign you up for eight more years, if only you promise to stroke us in the right spot for few hours around election time.

Democracy doesn't require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in awhile, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are.

This is a very different thing from shopping, which involves passively letting sitcoms melt your brain all day long and then jumping straight into the TV screen to buy a southern Style Chicken Sandwich because the slob singing "I'm Lovin' It!" during the commercial break looks just like you. The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn't require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.

And when it comes time to vote all you have to do is put your Country First – Just like that lady on TV who reminds you of your cousin. U-S-A, Baby. U-S-A! U-S-A!

So for those of you that like wrestling....

This Blog's for you

start it off with one of the funniest things i've seen...

Kids Promo



Dr D. Hogan has never had a woman



Rick Rude Doesnt know who dingo warriors name is



Ultimate Warriors Crazy Hogan Promo



Luger cant say WCW



This one had Embedding disabled, so here ya go, this is the link...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hELEcT2aZKU


The Legend, The Red Rooster



The Triple Dome of Terror (1988)




Hulk Hogan Crying


Hulks gonna kill SAYDAM HOOSAYN

so I am clicking through all the new bullitens online since the last time I was on...

and I came across this.

Its one of those chain posts... and I have to say, its sad.

This is what I like to call, The diary of someone who thinks too heavily on the past.
>
here ya go, let me know what you think


She was

my so called "best friend".





I

stared

at her

long, silky hair,

and wished she was

mine.





But she didnt notice me like that, I

knew it.




After class she

walked up to me and asked

me for the notes she had missed the day

before and

handed them to

her.




She said "thanks"

and gave me a kiss on

the cheek.




I wanna

tell her, I

want her to

know that I don..t

wanna Be just friends, I love her but I..m

just too shy,

and I don..t know

why...



11th Grade

The phone rang.





on

the other end

it was

her.




She was

in tears,

mumbling on

and on

about how her love had broke her heart.




She asked

me to come over

because she didn't want to be alone, so I

did.




As I sat

next to her on

the sofa, I stared at

her soft eyes, wishing

she was mine.




after 2

hours,

a drew barrymore movie,

& 3 bags of

chips, she decided to go

to sleep.




She

looked

at me,

said "thanks" and

gave me a kiss on the

cheek.



I wanna tell her,

I want her to

kno

that I don..t

wanna be just

friends, I love her but

I'm just too shy, and idk wHy



Senior Year

The day before prom she walked to my

locker.



"My date is Sick"

she said; he..s not qonna

go.




well I didnt

have a dAte and

in 7th qrade we

made a promise that if

neither of us had dates we would go

together

just as "best

friends".



So

we did.




Prom niqht

After everything was over I was standing

at her

front

door step.




I stared

at her, She smiled at me

I want her

to be mine,

but she

doesn..t

think of me like that

and I kno it.




then she said "I Had the

best time,

thanks!" and gave me a kiss

on the cheek.




I wanna

tell her,

I want her to kno that I don..t

want to be just

friends, I love her

but I..m just too shy,

and I

don..t kNow why



Graduation Day

a

day passed, then a week, then a month.




before I could blink, it

was graduation day.




I watched as her

perfect

body

floated like an anqel

up on staqe to qet her

diploma.




I wanted her to be mine, but she

didnt notice

me like that, and I knew

it.




Before everyone

went home, she came to me in her smock

and

hat, and

cried as I hugged her.




then she lifted

her

head from my shoulder and said, you..re

my

best friend,

thanks!" and gave

me a kiss on the Cheek.



I wanna tell her, I want her to know that

I

don..t wanna

be just friends, I

love her but I..m just

too shy, and I don..t know why



A Few Years Later

now I sit in the pews of the church.




that

girl is gettinq married

now.




I watched her say "i do" and drive

off

to her new

life, married to another man.




I wanted her

to be mine, but she didn..t see me like

that

and I knew

it.





But before she

Drove away, she came to

me n said you came!" She said.




"thanks!"

and kissed me

on the cheek.




I

wanna tell her, I want

her to

know that i dont wanna be just

friends, I love

her but I..m just too

shy, and i don..t

know why }]|



Years

passed,

I looked

down at the coffin

of a qirl who used to

be my "best friend".




at the service they

read a diary

entry she had wrote in

her hiqh school years.





This is what it

read: I stare at him wishing

he was

mine, but he doesn..t notice

me like that, and I

know it.





i wanna tell him, i want him to

kno

that I

don..t wanna be just friends,

I love him but I'm

just too shy, and I don..t know why.





I wish

he

would tell

me he loved me...I wish I

did too.




I

thought to myself, and I cried

> >

>> > >

>> > >> >REPOST THIS IN THE NEXT 20 MINUTES AND

>> > >SOMEONE WILL TELL YOU THEY

>> > >>LOVE YOU

> >AND WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR YOU... BUT IF

YOU

>> > >BREAK THIS CHAIN YOU

>> > >>WILL HAVE

> >RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS FOR THE NEXT 13

>> > >YEARS!!

>> > >> > > > > > >

> >SINCE U OPENED THIS

>>SOMETHING GOOD

>> > >>WILL

>> > >HAPPEN TO U AT 11:52 PM

IF YOU'RE A GIRL POST THIS AS "I WANNA TELL HIM"

IF YOU'RE A BOY POST THIS AS "I WANNA TELL HER"


Never keep secrets from the people you loveI WANNA TELL HIM"

IF YOU'RE A BOY POST THIS AS "I WANNA TELL HER"


Never keep secrets from the people you love



I dunno how I feel about this, Cause on one hand, its telling the reader; "Hey, dont sit back and be shy, take chances and be honest. Go for it"

which I'm all in favor of, and believe 100% should be done. for those of you in a friend zone relationship... I say screw it. Tell that chick how you feel, and move on. If she honestly doesnt feel that way, then you know for sure, and your friendship can probably recover. But dont sit there and think that one day she is going to come out and go after you.

But on the other hand, It seems just too... "What If" for me... You cant live your life thinking what if, If you do you'll be a sad, lonely, depressed individual for the rest of your life. All this, well what if I would have just said something... No.

Its over, Its in the past, and you cant change a damn thing about it.

Move on. But learn from your mistake

thats the most important thing that I think isn't even thrown out into this bulliten, its so depressing... and want to know why? the guy that wrote this lived his life thinking "what if".

Then years later, he finds out what would have happened, and he realizes what an idiot he was.

So now what? Nothing truly good comes of that, he just says, I'm an idiot and goes home, and cries himself to sleep that night. Again thinking "What If"

So the point I'm trying to make is this. If you live your life in the past, You're just going to miss more of whats ahead.

And all you have is whats ahead, the moment is fleeting, see what is just coming, and capitalize on that. Learn from your mistakes, but then move on.

Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking, Nothing special, I haven't had any super revelations about my life or direction or anything, But I've been trying my best to be content.

I think my reasons for this are two fold, one being that I want to prove to myself I have the ability to be content, because it seems for my entire life, I've never been so... But I think I can be.

And secondly its so I can keep paying off my debts at my current job. Cause I know if I were to go right now, into another job, I may not be able to pay all of these bills that come in every month.

Right now My family is kinda goin through a rough patch financially, and so they need me to start paying some of the payments for my college loan they took out for me, I had already been paying my own. But the one they took out, with plans on me paying them back when I finished paying my own loan off, is quite a bit more, and I figure if I can pay it, it would be wrong not too.

So if I can keep myself content, and happy where I am, then I can get some bills paid off, and hopefully make it so I can really hit the ground running when the time comes.

I've also been thinking about traveling, I haven't done nearly enough of it for my taste. I love going places and seeing new cultures and just doing things out of my realm of normalcy. I think its a good thing, to have that thirst for adventure and exploration. Its one of the things that keeps me going daily, just imagining one day, when I can have some extra money saved up, maybe some vacation time from wherever I'm employed and can just take the money, and buy a plane ticket to somewhere, somewhere far away, like Australia, or Japan, or even the UK. It would be so cool to get to go to these places for a week or two and really experience their version of the world. I really would like to visit Canada for awhile, maybe move there for a month or two and just try an see how life is up there...

I think about all these things, and I also realize, My life is pretty much a third of the way over! When am I going to be able to do all of these things? and go all these places? I need to do these as soon as possible, tomorrow is never promised. You only have today!

But then I sit, and I think, and my rational mind comes into play, and I realize that yes, Tomorrow is not promised, But this world is built on that promise. This world RUNS on the idea that you have a tomorrow. So even though its a cruel thought that you really, in order to survive, have to conform and live thinking you will have a tomorrow, with the reality that you might not. Think of all the people in the world that work, and plan, and prepare to do these things, But never reach them. Think about that? that's a sad thought, But its the truth.

If you don't live like there is a tomorrow, when tomorrow comes you wont be prepared. And its just the way the world is that the majority of the time tomorrow will come.

So I say Carpe diem, But always remember, whatever you do today will effect what you do tomorrow. But don't live always expecting tomorrow to come.

Got this from a friend, Its quite old, but very interesting since everyone talks about how Marijuana smoke has to be "Just as Dangerous" as tobacco...




Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 26, 2006; A03

The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.

The new findings "were against our expectations," said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."

Federal health and drug enforcement officials have widely used Tashkin's previous work on marijuana to make the case that the drug is dangerous. Tashkin said that while he still believes marijuana is potentially harmful, its cancer-causing effects appear to be of less concern than previously thought.

Earlier work established that marijuana does contain cancer-causing chemicals as potentially harmful as those in tobacco, he said. However, marijuana also contains the chemical THC, which he said may kill aging cells and keep them from becoming cancerous.

Tashkin's study, funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse, involved 1,200 people in Los Angeles who had lung, neck or head cancer and an additional 1,040 people without cancer matched by age, sex and neighborhood.

They were all asked about their lifetime use of marijuana, tobacco and alcohol. The heaviest marijuana smokers had lighted up more than 22,000 times, while moderately heavy usage was defined as smoking 11,000 to 22,000 marijuana cigarettes. Tashkin found that even the very heavy marijuana smokers showed no increased incidence of the three cancers studied.

"This is the largest case-control study ever done, and everyone had to fill out a very extensive questionnaire about marijuana use," he said. "Bias can creep into any research, but we controlled for as many confounding factors as we could, and so I believe these results have real meaning."

Tashkin's group at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA had hypothesized that marijuana would raise the risk of cancer on the basis of earlier small human studies, lab studies of animals, and the fact that marijuana users inhale more deeply and generally hold smoke in their lungs longer than tobacco smokers -- exposing them to the dangerous chemicals for a longer time. In addition, Tashkin said, previous studies found that marijuana tar has 50 percent higher concentrations of chemicals linked to cancer than tobacco cigarette tar.

While no association between marijuana smoking and cancer was found, the study findings, presented to the American Thoracic Society International Conference this week, did find a 20-fold increase in lung cancer among people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

The study was limited to people younger than 60 because those older than that were generally not exposed to marijuana in their youth, when it is most often tried.

Everyone Denied it would happen, People said it was dead, But Disco has returned to the world.

Granted, Its slightly different now. We've traded suits with big flaps for t-shirt dresses. Traded Elevator shoes for timbalands, and traded Blow for Bling. But in the year 2008 A.D. Disco has returned to the american Popular culture for a second time in the form of Hip hop.

With songs Like "Superamn Dat ho," "Get Silly," and Now "Donk." Overpopulating the mainstream radio and night clubs Hip Hop has somehow changed. A couple of years ago people were talking about how Violent Hip Hop had become with the advent and rise of "Gangster Rap". Songs like "Fuck the Police" had white conservative americans jumping into there station wagons and covering their childrens ears looking for the nearest exit to the suburbs. The Federal Government doing investigations into song lyrics and tv preachers condemning the artists. All were calling for a change, For the violent words to end. At first the rappers stood up for themselves and took the media frenzy as a challenge, creating more and more violent records, Like Eminem's "The Marshal Mathers LP."

Sadly though, Hip Hop has given up. The parents and politicians asked, and Hip Hop has given them what they want. No more do we hear songs about gangbangin' and pistol whipin', Those have been replaced with songs about dancing and walking next to your car while it rolls.

For me, I am left to ask... What happened?

Going through Highschool, you would hardly ever catch me with anything but a rap cd in my car, And now you have to look hard to find one thats not from those days. Gone are the personal lyrics... replaced by "She Got a Donk". No more Killing Cops, instead we sing about Being "Silly". Commercialized and sterilized. Thats what Hip hop now represents.

If an artist wants to sell albums, They just have to come up with a line that can become a catchphrase and say it in the chorus, Put a dancing beat under it and Poof! they make money.

If history tells us anything, its that this wont be around for long and that hip hop will rise again. But for that to happen, Someone has to step up.

Here is a section from The wikipedia Disco page.
"turning the genre from something vital and edgy into a safe "product" homogenized for mainstream audiences. Though disco music had enjoyed several years of popularity, an anti-disco sentiment manifested in America. This sentiment proliferated at the time because of oversaturation and the big-business mainstreaming of disco. Worried about declining profits, rock radio stations and record producers encouraged this trend. According to Gloria Gaynor, the music industry supported the destruction of disco because rock music producers were losing money and rock musicians were losing the spotlight."

If you replace Disco with new hip hop, And Rock with Gangster Rap... You can see exactly what I want to happen.

Kill DiscoRap.

heard about it from the Rogan Boards... its a sad day for comedy... The man was amazing at what he did... He's gonna be missed.



here is one of his more recent specials:
..
Here is the AP story:




SANTA MONICA, Calif. - George Carlin, the frenzied performer whose routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television" led to a key Supreme Court ruling on obscenity, has died.

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas. He was 71.

"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.

Carlin's jokes constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the "Seven Words" — all of which are taboo on broadcast TV and radio to this day.

When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.

When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the "Saturday Night Live" debut in 1975 — noting on his Web site that he was "loaded on cocaine all week long" — and appearing some 130 times on "The Tonight Show."

He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" in 1989 — a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (and sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).

"Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?" he once mused. "Are they afraid someone will clean them?"

He won four Grammy Awards, each for best spoken comedy album, and was nominated for five Emmy awards. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

Carlin started his career on the traditional nightclub circuit in a coat and tie, pairing with Burns to spoof TV game shows, news and movies. Perhaps in spite of the outlaw soul, "George was fairly conservative when I met him," said Burns, describing himself as the more left-leaning of the two. It was a degree of separation that would reverse when they came upon Lenny Bruce, the original shock comic, in the early '60s.

"We were working in Chicago, and we went to see Lenny, and we were both blown away," Burns said, recalling the moment as the beginning of the end for their collaboration if not their close friendship. "It was an epiphany for George. The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."

That direction would make Carlin as much a social commentator and philosopher as comedian, a position he would relish through the years.

"The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition," Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. "There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."

Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, and grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of high school in the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force in 1954. He received three court-martials and numerous disciplinary punishments, according to his official Web site.

While in the Air Force he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WEZE in Boston.

"Fired after three months for driving mobile news van to New York to buy pot," his Web site says.

From there he went on to a job on the night shift as a deejay at a radio station in Fort Worth, Texas. Carlin also worked variety of temporary jobs including a carnival organist and a marketing director for a peanut brittle.

In 1960, he left with Burns, a Texas radio buddy, for Hollywood to pursue a nightclub career as comedy team Burns & Carlin. He left with $300, but his first break came just months later when the duo appeared on Jack Paar's "Tonight Show."

Carlin said he hoped to emulate his childhood hero, Danny Kaye, the kindly, rubber-faced comedian who ruled over the decade Carlin grew up in — the 1950s — with a clever but gentle humor reflective of the times.

It didn't work for him, and the pair broke up by 1962.

"I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn't really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people," Carlin reflected recently as he prepared for his 14th HBO special, "It's Bad For Ya."

Eventually Carlin lost the buttoned-up look, favoring the beard, ponytail and all-black attire for which he came to be known.

But even with his decidedly adult-comedy bent, Carlin never lost his childlike sense of mischief, even voicing kid-friendly projects like episodes of the TV show "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" and the spacey Volkswagen bus Fillmore in the 2006 Pixar hit "Cars."

Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.

So I got this off a forum site I read and like to hang in... Anyways apperently at the start of the new millenia the Dali Lamma (Sp?) put out a list of 18 rules to live by...


I have to admit the dude is smart, and I think everyone should try to live by all these rules...


1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three Rs:
Respect for self
Respect for others
Responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

Alright, so I have only like 2 days left in evansville... shoot, I just realized alot of ya'll prolly dont know whats goin down. So for you... Here's the Recap.

Just a little under two weeks ago, I turned in my two weeks notice at work, I had already turned in my 30 days notice at my apartment. I'm quitting my job in tv, to try an get into radio. I've given tv a try, and I'm not much of a fan. I think if it was a job just editing, I wouldnt mind it, But i'm really not a fan of tv news. Now, On to what I'm doing. I'm gonna be moving back in with my parents for now. Gonna be working a full time job at krogers in harrison, and also, Hopefully I can get ahold of a good part time radio gig (Or full time... Either one). Anyways, so I'm working my second to last day at work today.

then tomorrow night my brother and my dad are coming out so that on monday, we can load everything into a truck and take it home.

Here are the problems...
1. Land Lord has disapeared...

-I went to talk to my landlord about what I need to do to move out... And she's gone, she has a note on her door saying that she'll be gone untill tuesday.

(So, if your keeping track, that puts a problem in my plans of moving on monday)
But I think I can still do it, I'm gonna call the "need of help NOW" phone number and just be like, heres whats up, what do I need to do. Hopefully, they say, put your keys and a letter or somethin in her drop slot on the door, and go. we'll send you a bill. But who knows...

2. Havent packed anything but my DVD's.

- Yeah, I know, thats bad, but I just cant get around to doing it. I think most of it works with the fact I'm here for another like 2-3 days, I dont know what I'm gonna need, and I dont wanna dig through boxes to find everything. I'm thinking I'll pack as much as I can tonight, then if thats not alot, I'll stay up late sunday night packing, Cause I can be tired for moving day, not too big of a deal.

3. I am Boxless

- I'm out of boxes, I threw a bunch away when I moved in, and now I'm short on boxes to pack in, and even if I hadnt thrown them away, I'd still be short, cause I've bought a fair few things while living here (Dvd's mostly) Anyone know where in this town I can get some boxes?

4. My birthday is 2 days from when I get back in town.

-Here is the deal here. I have a birthday on the 28th. I would like to not work that day, or the day after so that I can just relax and have fun. So I need to check on how to do that with beth walker at kroger. And here is the second problem related to the Birthday. with moving 2 days before hand, its hard to get something together to do, I realize I dont usually have BIG birthday parties, and thats not what I want, I just want at least a couple friends to get together... So if your readin this next WEDNESDAY night, you need to call me and come hang with me. Its my 21st, I need to at least do something!

5. Changing my Address is gonna cost me...

- I went onto my Esurance account the other day and asked to change my address, and they said it would cost me 27 more dollars per 6 months to live there instead of where I currently live. Why this is? I have no clue whatsoever... But it kind of pisses me off... Really why should it matter if I live in Lawrenceburg or Evansville? either way I'm in the same state, driving the same car, and am the same person being insured. It makes no F'ing sense.



So thats all the problems in this petty little world of mine. Hope your life is even less complicated, talk to ya'll later.

Oh, and if ya wanna come wednesday night, give me a call 812-893-1101

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/05/21/smiley.face.killer/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

This is a story I got off of CNN, and while its yet to be completely proven, it seems like all the big time serial killers in the past have always had that first coupld stories where everything is basicly theory, Before the next coupld of killings begin to add up the evidence and then finally it becomes proven that it is in fact an organized killing....

Anyways, its a really really interesting story, and you could prolly work this into a movie and make it pretty interesting... IDEA!


ALBANY, New York (CNN) -- At the age of 21, Christopher Jenkins appeared to have everything going for him. The University of Minnesota senior was good-looking, had a near perfect grade-point average and had a future in business.


Christopher Jenkins, 21, vanished on Halloween 2002. Four years later, police ruled his death a homicide. Then, suddenly, he vanished.

He was last seen celebrating Halloween at a bar in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2002. Jenkins' friends said he left about midnight. Four months later, his body was found in the Mississippi River, still wearing his Halloween costume.

Minneapolis police classified the drowning as accidental.

Jenkins' blood-alcohol level was well above the legal limit, and police told his parents that he'd probably had too much to drink after bar -opping with friends. They thought he'd fallen into the river.

Despite a lack of evidence, his parents, Steve and Jan Jenkins, insisted that there had been foul play.

"He was loaded into a vehicle, a van, driven around and eventually murdered," Jan Jenkins told CNN. "He was murdered and thrown away like a piece of trash."

Hundreds of miles away, Kevin Gannon, a retired detective with the New York Police Department, was investigating the mysterious deaths of several college men from New York state. Each of the deaths had been ruled an accidental drowning. Watch how clusters of drowning deaths raise suspicion »

In 2006, nearly four years after Jenkins died, there was a break in the case. A tip from a man in jail, described by Minneapolis police as a witness or suspect, caused police to change Jenkins' cause of death from "unexplained drowning" to homicide.

It was a lucky break for Gannon. He had promised the parents of Patrick McNeill that he wouldn't quit until he'd found out how the Fordham University student died. McNeill's body washed up in the East River two months after he left a bar in New York.

Gannon enlisted the help of another former NYPD officer, Anthony Duarte, when Christopher Jenkins' death became a homicide. In 2003, the two traveled to Minneapolis to investigate Jenkins' death.

They learned about a string of student drowning deaths, many of them involving young men who attended colleges along the Interstate 94 corridor in the Midwest -- in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.

Nine of the deceased attended the University of LaCrosse, in Wisconsin. Three attended colleges in New York state.

In all, the investigators say they've connected the bizarre drowning deaths of at least 40 college-age men across the country.

The two detectives believe that in each case, and in others they investigated, the men were drugged and then their bodies were slipped or tossed into the water to make it appear as if they'd drowned.

Why would the killer or killers put the bodies in the water? The effect of water on evidence makes for an almost perfect crime, Duarte said. Not only does it make it appear like an accidental drowning instead of a murder, but the water frequently washes away key pieces of evidence such as fingerprints and fibers, so the killer can't be identified.

Together, the two detectives began mapping out the drowning deaths and working the case backward. Instead of focusing on where the bodies had been found, they used GPS devices and tracked river flow patterns and water levels to figure out where the bodies entered the water.

As Gannon and Duarte investigated the deaths, they began to see a trend. The cases spanned 25 cities in 11 states, and at least some of them were connected by a creepy symbol left near the water's edge: a smiley face painted on trees and other surfaces.

The detectives believe that the smiley faces were left by the killer or killers. They varied in size, with each face more haunting than the next.

The most sinister was found in Iowa. It was drawn in red with a devil's horns. Next to the smiley face was a note that read, "Evil Happy Smiley Face Man."

Asked whether he believed there was a hidden message in the smiley faces, Duarte told CNN, "The message is, they're taunting the police."

Duarte and Gannon said they found 12 other matching symbols similar to gang graffiti. But, to protect their investigation, they wouldn't describe them in detail. The detectives say the string of deaths could be the work of more than one killer because some of them took place on the same day in different states.

"It's so widespread. We have so many different victims in so many different areas," Duarte said. "It would, in my view, be impossible to be one person."

The detectives also believe the victims were targeted. All of the young men were popular, athletic and good students.

Who would commit this type of crime?

"The type of person that would be the opposite, not smart, someone not good in school, maybe doesn't have a job, not popular," Duarte said.

Gannon and Duarte believe that the young men were drugged to weaken them and given a substance that couldn't be detected by an autopsy.

"I believe these young men are being abducted by individuals in the bars, taken out, at some point held for a period of time before they're entered into the water," Gannon said.

He also believes the victims were abused mentally and sometimes physically before they were killed.

"This is a chance for them to have power and control over somebody else and manipulate. The fear of death is just as important as the act of death itself," Gannon said.

Minneapolis police are not convinced that Jenkins' death was the work of a serial killer.

"Although we have collaborated with investigators from the FBI and communicated with other jurisdictions in which similar drowning deaths have occurred, we can neither confirm nor endorse the 'smiley face murders' theory currently being publicized," the department said.

The FBI also has its doubts.

"To date, we have not developed any evidence to support links between these tragic deaths or any evidence substantiating the theory that these deaths are the work of a serial killer or killers. The vast majority of these instances appear to be alcohol-related drowning," the bureau said in a statement.

Still, Gannon and Duarte are concerned that the killing could continue. They say whoever killed Jenkins might already be stalking other college students.

"Unless you've been out there to the scenes to evaluate [them] yourself, if you haven't done that, you're basically Monday-morning quarterbacking," Gannon argued.


Duarte thinks local police forces did not investigate the cases adequately and that the FBI could have done more, too.

"I don't think any of them went out to the field and beat the bushes," he said.

I keep getting updates on the deal goin down in Minnesota. They are currently trying to pass a medical marijuana law. But the local/state police force is trying to stop the law from being passed... Which is expected, But what isnt expected is their complete retardation, and ignorance of facts... They have continually said the same statements over and over even though the people for the bill have debunked and proven false every single one of their claims.

And then They like to provide my favorite reason for making their statements true...

"These Claims are accurate opinions of professional Minnesota law enforcement officers with extensive experience in narcotics investigations"

which is like saying, "Just Because We Say So"... And further, if you read the document at the end of this blog, You will see that the claims they use this on make no sense, because their "Experience" is under the current system of unfair and wrong jailing of people using marijuana for personal use... and yet they are saying bad things will happen if the bill is passed... YET, they have NO experience with a law where marijuana is legal to medical patients with lots of regulations and tracking systems... So their "experience" means Bull here.



Here is the latest Document defeating Every claim from the Minesota Law Enforcement

*if you want the links to past documents Go here


Repeated False and Misleading Comments From Law Enforcement Regarding the Medical Marijuana Bill



Law enforcement claim 1: "H.F. 655 does not currently provide for background checks on 'primary caregivers contrary to the assertions of MPP.' MPP inaccurately references S.F. 345 rather than H.F. 655 in their comments. Under H.F. 655, background checks are limited to 'agents, employees or board members of registered organizations.' [S.F. 345 does provide background checks for both 'registered organization' and 'primary caregiver.']"

The facts: The version of the bill quoted in the above passage is no longer relevant. As the authors note, background checks on primary caregivers were accepted by proponents and added to S.F. 345 prior to passage. They will be included as part of a wide-ranging amendment to H.F. 655 that will bring the two bills into agreement.

_________

Law enforcement claim 2 (a): "Under H.F. 655's language, law enforcement cannot verify the legitimacy of a suspect's claimed lawful use of 'medical' marijuana without the ability to access specific identifying data pertaining to a registration identification cardholder, such as name address, and date of birth."

The facts: As we've noted previously, law enforcement will be able to check the legitimacy of a cardholder's participation in the medical marijuana program against a blind registry administered by the Department of Health, through the use of a unique identifying number. To provide law enforcement with the information specified above would have a chilling effect on the program, as they well know.

Law enforcement claim 2 (b): "H.F. 655 does not even require a photograph on the registration card as S.F. 345 does."

The facts: This amendment was accepted by the bill's proponents in the Senate prior to passage of S.F. 345.

Law enforcement claim 2 (c): "Under both H.F. 655 and S.F. 345, a search warrant or other court order would be required to obtain specific identifying information concerning a 'medical' marijuana cardholder if law enforcement is investigating claims of illegal marijuana use in a dwelling. This will result in needless wasted time of valuable law enforcement resources."

The facts: This is simply false. If law enforcement has reason to suspect that there is illegal marijuana use in a dwelling, they will proceed as they do now and investigate. Occupants of that dwelling are either legitimate participants in the medical marijuana program or they are not. If they are not but claim to be, they face increased penalties, so there is little reason to falsify one's participation.

____________

Law enforcement claim 3 (a): "These [claims that medical marijuana will increase teen use] are accurate statements based upon the extensive experience and opinions of Minnesota's law enforcement leaders and sources cited in our May 1, 2008 email to you."

The facts: As we've demonstrated previously, this has not been borne out in any of the 12 other medical marijuana states, in all of which youth use declined after passage of their laws. A comprehensive report analyzing all available data from those 12 states can be found here.

The actual data from official surveys conducted by the states themselves provide better insight than the "experience and opinions" of the authors.

Law enforcement claim 3 (b): "The information provided by MPP in its latest attacks upon law enforcement's positions (which included no cites to sources or copies of the statistics referenced) relating to the decrease in marijuana use by youth in various states is false or misleading:

- MPP inaccurately claims Hawaii's youth marijuana usage dropped 15%. [It is claimed to have dropped from 8.3% in 2001 to 7.04% in 2005/206 – this is a drop of only 1.26%.]

- MPP inaccurately claims Nevada's youth marijuana use dropped by 35%. [It is claimed to have dropped from 11.6% to 7.57% -- this is a drop of only 4.03%.]

- MPP inaccurately claims Vermont's youth marijuana use dropped by 9%. [It is claimed to have dropped from 11.11 in 2003/2004 to 10.08% -- this is a drop of only 1.03%.]

- MPP inaccurately claims Montana's youth marijuana use fell by 17% [It is claimed to have dropped from 12.73% to 10.56% which is only a drop of 2.17%.]"

The facts: It is false that no source was provided in our original document: The information is provided in endnote 6 in the original text – citing the study "Marijuana Use By Young People: The Impact of State Medical Marijuana Laws," authored by University of New York, Albany associate professor Mitch Earleywine and several MPP researchers – which also provides a Web link to read the full report. The data in that report is drawn from publicly available state surveys on marijuana use by adolescents, and detailed citations for all statistics cited are provided

But more to the point: the 1.26 overall percentage point drop in Hawaii – from 8.3% to 7.04% -- is a drop of 15.18% in overall use. In Nevada, the 4.03 overall percentage point drop – from 11.6% to 7.57% -- is a drop of 34.74% in overall use. And so on. You don't simply subtract the current use rate from the previous use rate to determine the percentage difference – you divide the previous use rate by the difference[M1] to see how much use has changed over time. This math is literally taught in junior high school, and it is beyond shocking that the authors should get it so wrong.

These mathematical errors should not obscure the larger point: These opponents have consistently claimed that a medical marijuana law will increase youth use. This hasn't happened in any of the 12 medical marijuana states, but they simply soldier on, repeating the charge as though it had validity, and get the numbers wrong for good measure.

Law enforcement claim 3 (c): "The bottom line, disregarding any competing statistics, is that 'medical' marijuana sends the wrong message to kids."

The facts: There are no competing statistics. On the one hand, there are statistics from official, state-conducted surveys of youth. On the other hand, there is bad math and claims to authority based on the "opinions" of the authors.

Secondly, if medical marijuana laws sent the wrong message to kids, why would youth use decrease in every single medical marijuana state after passage of their laws?

And finally, this bill is not about sending messages to anyone. It is about not arresting and jailing the sick and dying for using medical marijuana, under the supervision of their medical practitioners, to alleviate the symptoms of debilitating illnesses. By opponents' logic, all narcotic pain drugs should be banned immediately because their medical use "sends a message" that these drugs are okay to use as toys. That's absurd.

____________

Law enforcement claim 4: "If H.F. 655's supporters only want it to apply to '150-200 seriously ill and dying persons' as was claimed last year in testimony, the langauge[M2] should be revised to remove 'intractable pain' as a qualifying condition and limit access only to persons determined by a doctor to be suffering from cancer, glaucoma, HIV, Hepatitis C, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease, Alzheimer's disease, or Tourette's syndrome. This is exactly what the Minnesota County Attorney's Associaiton (MCAA) recommended last year. Although suggested 13 ½ months ago, this change has not been made to this bill – clearly indicating that the bill's supporters have no interest in restricting widespread use of 'medical' marijuana for persons only suffering from pain or other conditions not associated with any of these listed medical afflictions."

The facts: First of all, this claim is disingenuous at best. Nineteen specific amendments were made at the request of law enforcement, and, in response, their spokespeople flatly stated that no number of concessions would ever be sufficient.

Secondly, "intractable pain" as currently defined in the bill – which they single out here as a reason to oppose the bill – was one of those 19 concessions to law enforcement. It is remarkably bad faith to cite something specifically amended in the bill at your request as a reason to oppose it.

And finally, if intractable pain was removed from the bill entirely, some of the most suffering Minnesota patients would not be covered. For instance, former Minnesota sheriff and legislator Neil Haugerud, who suffers debilitating pain due to an inflammation of the lining surrounding the spine, would not be covered. Should Mr. Haugerud be forced to suffer because his illness is not as well known as multiple sclerosis? Again, the point of many of law enforcement's objections seems merely to be to cripple it from functioning well.

___________

Law enforcement claim 5: "Under both H.F. 655 and S.F. 345, the ability of law enforcement to prosecute a person possessing or using marijuana illegally in the presence of a 'medical' marijuana user would be hampered."

The facts: This claim has been made and debunked already. There is nothing in the bill that prohibits law enforcement from investigating and prosecuting illegal marijuana use, regardless of where it transpires. A person is either a participant in the program and covered, or he or she is not. Please see Section V. of our previous document, available here.

____________

Law enforcement claim 6: "To claim that 'patients' will absolutely be under the 'care and scrutiny of their doctor' in a 'bona fide doctor/patient relationship' is dependent upon the qualifications and professionalism of the doctors in question, none of whom could be subject to any criminal or professional sanctions for shortcomings or negligence."

The facts: To begin with, the contempt with which the authors treat Minnesota doctors and nurses is startling. These men and women are some of the most highly trained and vital members of our community, yet the authors nearly suggest that malfeasance is the rule rather than the exception.

And the claim itself is simply false. The bill states that medical professionals cannot be sanctioned for their simple participation in the program. There is nothing that states or implies that medical professionals would become immune from normal oversight or exempt from punishments for malpractice, all of which would apply exactly as in other aspects of medical practice. This is a deliberate attempt to misconstrue the intent and effect of the bill.

Finally, the authors make an unwarranted comparison to California, citing the pop-culture magazine Rolling Stone. The California law – the first in the country – was passed by voters as an initiative, was 11 lines long, and provided little guidance as to how it would be implemented. By contrast, the Minnesota bill has gone through a rigorous committee process and now totals 11 pages of specific provisions and safeguards. It is a completely different, much more carefully-crafted piece of legislation.

______________

Law enforcement claim 7: "Even 'physicians assistants' and 'advanced practice registered nurses' can issue authorization to use 'medical' marijuana under both H.F. 655 and S.F. 345. MCAA noted in March 16, 2007 additional comments that only licensed medical doctors should be allowed to issue and supervise the use of 'medical' marijuana and yet no change in the language of this bill has occurred. This is clearly inappropriate and inconsistent with MPP's claims that there will be absolute care and scrutiny by a doctor."

The facts: Licensed physicians assistants and licensed advanced practice registered nurses have prescribing authority under Minnesota law. This means they already have the ability to authorize the use of narcotics like morphine and Oxycontin, which, unlike medical marijuana, are highly addictive and potentially deadly drugs. There is no reason why they should not also have the ability to recommend the use of a far more benign medicine like medical marijuana to treat the symptoms of serious and debilitating illnesses.

Further, it is unreasonable to think that seriously ill Minnesotans wouldn't already be under the routine care of a doctor – or of multiple doctors in many cases – whether or not they receive their current prescriptions from a PA or RN instead.

___________

Law enforcement claim 8: "Crude marijuana has no proven medical value." [Quoted from the March 23, 2008 paper entitled "The Arguments Pro and Con About 'Medical' Marijuana," by the Drug Free Schools Coalition]

The facts: This quote is cited in defense of the authors' statements declaring the same. The Drug Free Schools Coalition's paper goes on to cite the alleged lack of support for medical marijuana from several national medical societies and even from the Institute of Medicine, whose 1999 report on the subject noted multiple medical uses for marijuana.

The Drug Free Schools Coalition is a highly-biased source, and the arguments listed are misleading. All of these claims have already been made and debunked, and are not even altered in this new formulation. Please see Sections VII – IX in our previous paper, available here.

_______________

Law enforcement claim 9: "These [claims regarding "many other" FDA-approved alternatives to medical marijuana] are accurate statements based upon sources cited in MCAA's Policy Position Paper 'Opposing the Medical use of Marijuana in Minnesota', dated February 16, 2007 and our May 1, email to you."

The facts: The sources in question are almost entirely quotes pulled from the Drug Free Schools Coalition's paper cited in "Law enforcement claim 8," which the authors then quote extensively.

Apart from being conspicuously biased, the Drug Free Schools Coalition (which not a medical organization) also fails to note the recent studies – published in prestigious journals like the St. Paul-based Neurology – documenting medical marijuana's extraordinary efficacy in treating neuropathic pain in HIV and AIDS patients, a condition for which there is no FDA-approved treatment at all.

Furthermore, the existence of alternatives is no reason to limit the available options to doctors and patients, and certainly not a reason to threaten cancer, multiple sclerosis, and HIV/AIDS patients with arrest and jail for working in concert with medical professionals to alleviate their pain. As the Institute of Medicine noted, there is always a subpopulation of patients for whom these existing treatments don't work.

In any case, these claims have been made previously and already debunked. Please see Section VIII in our previous paper, available here.

_____________

Law enforcement claim 10: "These [claims regarding Marinol as a sufficient substitute for medical marijuana] are accurate statements which are based upon the sources cited in MCAA's policy paper 'Opposing the Medical use of Marijuana in Minnesota', dated February 16, 2007 and our May 1, email to you. MPP's criticism of the first statement (Claim 15) is nothing more than semantics."

The facts: Dakota County Attorney Backstrom's original statement is wrong for far more serious reasons than semantics.

He stated, "In fact, there already exists a legalized form of 'medical marijuana' in our Country - it's called Marinol."

And we responded, "Marinol is not a "legalized form of 'medical marijuana': It is a synthetic that contains only one of the more than 60 active components of marijuana and is inferior to medical marijuana in a number of ways."

This is verifiably true, and its relevance has been validated by both research and anecdotal reports, acknowledged by such organizations as the American College of Physicians. Marinol is far too intoxicating for some patients, is available only in pill form (the least effective method of delivery, and one that is not even possible for patients suffering from chemotherapy-induced nausea), and has been outperformed by natural marijuana in controlled studies.

The authors go on to cite the same point, made in almost the same language, in the very biased Drug Free Schools Coalition's paper, which was addressed above.

Please see Sections IX -XII in our previous document for a longer discussion of this already debunked argument.

_______________

Law enforcement claim 11: "These [claims regarding the necessity of FDA approval to ensure safety and the FDA's 2006 rejection of medical marijuana] are accurate statements based upon the opinions of Minnesota's law enforcement leaders and sources cited in our May 1, 2008 email to you."

The facts: FDA approval is not a guarantee of safety – as the Vioxx controversy clearly demonstrated – and the 2006 FDA statement was regarded by virtually all credible sources as a nakedly political document, made without conducting any research or analysis of existing data. Further, the federal government has actively obstructed the kinds of studies on medical marijuana necessary to gain FDA approval.

As in the previous claim, the authors go on to cite the same point, made in almost the same language, in the Drug Free Schools Coalition's paper. No new arguments are made or refutations offered.

All of these points have previously been made and debunked. Please see Sections XII and XIII of our previous document&183;

_______________

Law enforcement claim 12 (a): "Smoking tobacco is harmful enough, smoking marijuana, which contains 50-70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke, is of even greater danger.

• This is an accurate statement and is taken directly from sources cited in MCAA's Policy Position Paper Opposing the Medical Use of Marijuana in Minnesota, dated February 16, 2007."

The facts: Smoking marijuana is not a greater danger, according to official studies conducted for the United States federal government. In a 1999 study conducted for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the Institute of Medicine reported, "There is no conclusive evidence that marijuana causes cancer in humans, including cancers usually related to tobacco use."[1] Furthermore, in a huge study that followed 65,000 California HMO patients for 10 years, tobacco use, as expected, resulted in rates of lung cancer as much as 11 times that of nonsmokers. But marijuana smokers who did not use tobacco actually had a slightly lower rate of lung cancer than nonsmokers.[2] A major, federally-funded study conducted at UCLA also found no lung cancer risk connected to marijuana smoking.[3] Here's a Washington Post article on the study:

Law enforcement claim 12 (b): "As to the smoking of marijuana and its dangers, the March 23, 2008 paper of the Drug Free Schools Coalition on "The Arguments Pro and Con About 'Medical' Marijuana" states:

- 'NO FDA-APPROVED MEDICATIONS ARE SMOKED. It is difficult to administer safe, regulated dosages of medicines in smoked form. Furthermore, the harmful chemicals and carcinogens that are byproducts of smoking create entirely new health problems.'"

The facts: As we have noted multiple times, medical marijuana does not have to be smoked. Indeed, many medical marijuana patients in the 12 other states ingest marijuana through baking it in food, vaporizing it, and making it into tinctures.

The Minnesota Law Enforcement Coalition again cites the position paper by the Drug Free Schools Coalition, which itself cites a study from 20 years ago. Why would the authors not use more recent medical studies or studies cited by respected medical organizations such as the American College of Physicians?

Law enforcement claim 12 (c): "MPP claims that 'medical' marijuana need not be smoked, but can be consumed by use of a vaporizer or in foods or teas. While this may be a true statement, it is a vast mischaracterization to suggest that most persons issued "medical" marijuana cards will not be smoking this controlled substance. MPP also claims that it is through smoking that marijuana provides the greatest effects and ability to self-regulate dosages. Smoking in any form is dangerous to human beings as the Minnesota Legislature itself acknowledged by enacting laws prohibiting smoking in bars, restaurants and other public places just last year. To now be considering the passage of a law that encourages the smoking of a controlled substance that is even more dangerous than tobacco seems in direct conflict with prior actions of this Legislature."

The facts: To our knowledge, there have been no surveys of medical marijuana patients to determine the method most patients use to ingest marijuana. The Minnesota Law Enforcement Coalition offers no evidence that more patients choose to smoke marijuana, rather than ingest it in other ways. Additionally, they do not dispute the fact the tars and other unwanted irritants in smoke have nothing to do with marijuana's therapeutically active components, called cannabinoids.

As such, the fact remains that many patients ingest marijuana through methods other than smoking, including baking it into foods or vaporizing it. Vaporizers take advantage of the fact that cannabinoids vaporize at a temperature well below that at which marijuana burns. By heating marijuana to just this point, vaporizers allow patients to inhale cannabinoid vapors without smoking, achieving the same rapid action and easy dose adjustment without the tars and other irritants in smoke. A study of one such device, called the Volcano, was published in the June 2006 Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. Researchers confirmed that the device works as intended, concluding: "What is currently needed for optimal use of medicinal cannabinoids is a feasible, nonsmoked rapid-onset delivery system. With the Volcano, a safe and effective delivery system appears to be available to patients."[4] Since this study was published, there have been other studies on the effectiveness of vaporizers. These studies have also concluded that vaporizers are simple devices that give users the fast action of inhaled cannabinoids without most of those unwanted irritants. The Minnesota Law Enforcement Coalition has not disputed these facts or studies, yet they claim that this medical marijuana legislation is bad policy because of the risks of smoking it.

We challenge the Minnesota Law Enforcement Coalition to name one medicine that has ever been banned because one possible mode of administration carries some risks.

For additional discussion of these repeated and increasingly tired arguments against the bill, please Section XIV of our previous paper, available here.

______________

Law enforcement claim 13 (a): "As to the potential problems, merely look to the situation in California as documented in a recent article in Rolling Stones [sic] magazine entitled 'The Great California Weed Rush' (Feb. 22, 2007) and a transcript of a 60 Minutes program that aired on December 30, 2007."

The facts: These reports focus solely on the limited situation in one state. California's medical marijuana law is 11 lines long; Minnesota's medical marijuana bill is 11 pages. Minnesota's proposed legislation is more closely based on the laws in Vermont and Rhode Island. One would assume that if the laws in these states were creating a lot of problems, the legislators in those states would be trying to abolish the programs, or least curtail them. However, the opposite has occurred.

In 2007, the Vermont legislature expanded its medical marijuana program. Based on the claims of Minnesota's law enforcement officials, this broad expansion should have been met with outcries from Vermont citizens and law enforcement; however, both chambers passed the bill on overwhelming bipartisan voice votes.

Rhode Island, which passed its initial law in 2006 with a one-year sunset provision, made it permanent in 2007. More than 80% of the representatives and senators voted to make it permanent -- more than voted to pass it in the first place, and a clear sign that they had not experienced the disastrous consequences envisioned by the Minnesota Law Enforcement Coalition.

Law enforcement claim 13 (b): "One recent email from a representative of the California Police Chiefs Association to the Executive Director of the Minnesota Police Chiefs Association stated the following: 'Please, fight on......Trust me, it is a battle you don't want to lose!'"

The facts: While one individual may indeed have written this, the fact remains that he is apparently in the minority, and in clear disagreement with Terrence Hallinan, the former District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco (1996-2004), who concluded in testimony submitted to the Minnesota Legislature: "In short, these are good laws that protect a limited number of people. In my experience, they do not increase the availability of marijuana to youth or in the criminal market generally, they do not result in additional cost to the state in terms of law enforcement resources, and they do not compromise our efforts to combat illicit marijuana use. In fact, the medical marijuana law actually reduced illicit marijuana dealing in some of our city parks. I would encourage the Minnesota Legislature to pass the medical marijuana bill and the governor to sign it. I would also discourage my counterparts in law enforcement from spending an inordinate amount of their time opposing this legislation. In time, they will find, as I did, that their concerns are largely unfounded.".

Please see our discussion of this identical claim in the previous paper, available here.

Law enforcement claim 13 (c): "The March 23, 2008 paper of the Drug Free Schools Coalition on "The Arguments Pro and Con About 'Medical' Marijuana" states:

- 'Citizens in states which have passed 'medical' marijuana laws have grown tired of the marijuana-related crime, noise and abuse which "medical" marijuana dispensaries bring to neighborhoods. Since California passed its "medical" marijuana law, more than 90 cities and counties in the state have had to pass moratoriums or bans on the distribution of marijuana in their communities. As a result of these abuses, only 24 out of

California's 58 counties now issue marijuana ID cards. (Vendor's Reefer

Sadness LA Times, December 27th, 2006, LA City Beat, La, Ana, February 15th, 2007). The average marijuana clinic in California makes $20,000 in profit each day. Marijuana providers buy pot wholesale from street dealers and resell it for twice the amount. (Glazer, Andrew. Medical Marijuana Clinics Face Crackdown, Associated Press, March 11th, 2007). In North Hollywood, California alone, there are now more "medical" pot clubs than Starbucks outlets. Less than two years ago, there were only four marijuana dispensaries in Los Angles. Today, there are more than 100. (Daily News Los Angeles, CA January 19th, 2007, Santa Cruz Sentinel, As We See It: Medical Marijuana Abuse?, March 12, 2007.""

The facts: Once again, the authors only cite information from California that is entirely irrelevant to the Minnesota bill and don't actually respond to the information MPP presented. But if citizens in California or other states are so outraged by the medical marijuana laws, why has there not been any effort to repeal these laws? As noted above, even law enforcement officials in other states who were initially opposed to the laws passing now support them, and there are no moves in state legislatures to repeal them.

Furthermore, public opinion polling conducted in 2006 actually shows that that medical marijuana laws remain extraordinarily popular in the states that have them, with approval levels ranging from 59% to 79%. In seven of the eight states whose laws were passed via ballot initiative, support now substantially exceeds the vote percentage in favor of the ballot measure. In Montana, current support exactly equals the "yes" vote in 2004: 62%. Nine of the 11 polls were conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, Inc. of Washington, D.C. from mid-September through early October 2006. Support for the laws is extraordinarily broad, with solid majorities crossing boundaries of age, sex, or region. Support was generally bipartisan as well. In 9 of 11 states, pluralities — and in most cases, majorities — of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents support their state's medical marijuana law.

A recent poll commissioned by the Minneapolis ABC affiliate and conducted by reputable national polling firm SurveyUSA found similarly overwhelming and broad levels of support for the passage of this bill in Minnesota. It's available here.

_______________

Law enforcement claim 14: " These [claims about increased availability of marijuana and thus increased crime due to a medical marijuana law] are accurate statements based upon the extensive experience and opinions of Minnesota's law enforcement leaders.

• These statements are also supported by the opinion of our nation's highest court. In Gonzales v. Angel, et al., the U.S. Supreme Court specifically acknowledged in 2005 the adverse impacts of increasing crime and illegal marijuana use that will result from the passage of state laws similar to H.F. 655/S.F. 345. In Gonzales, the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court made the following conclusions:

- 'The exemption for cultivation by patients and caregivers can only increase the supply of marijuana in the [state] market.'"

The facts: Once again, the authors do not offer any evidence or studies to counter what MPP originally stated; they simply respond with the argument, "it's true because we say it's true." While the opinion expressed in the Supreme Court ruling is no doubt interesting to the authors, it falls far short of being meaningful data. Please see a fuller discussion and rebuttal of this identical claim in our previous document, available here.

________

Law enforcement claim 15: "These [claims that one marijuana plant can produce 1-2 pounds of marijuana] are accurate opinions of professional Minnesota law enforcement officers with extensive experience in narcotics investigations. "

The facts: Regardless of the "opinions" of the authors, the United States Federal Sentencing Commission estimates the average yield for a marijuana plant to be 0.22 pounds. Are Minnesota's law enforcement officers suggesting that the federal government data on how much a plant can produce is wildly inaccurate? Once again, they rely on the claim, "It's true because we say it's true."

Please see a fuller discussion and rebuttal of this identical claim in section XVIII of our previous document, available here.

____________

Law enforcement claim 16: "These [claims that marijuana is a gateway drug to the use of other illegal drugs] are accurate statements based upon the extensive experience and opinions of Minnesota's law enforcement leaders."

The facts: The authors once again confuse correlation with causation, and, in any case, the "gateway theory" is irrelevant to medical use. Virtually all patients impacted by this bill are already taking enormous amounts of highly addictive and dangerous drugs – legally. The notion that someone in severe pain and currently prescribed OxyContin or morphine should be threatened with arrest and jail for using medical marijuana on the recommendation of his or her doctor is cruel. The notion that this should be the case because of the authors' concern that marijuana will lead that patient to harder drugs – like OxyContin or morphine, for instance – is absurd.

In any case, the authors offer no evidence to suggest that a person's marijuana use causes them to use other drugs. According to a recent RAND Corporation study commissioned by the British Parliament, "The gateway theory has little evidence to support it, despite copious research."[5] According to the Institute of Medicine (in a report commissioned by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy), "There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping stone [to other drugs] on the basis of its particular physiological effect."[6] It's not surprising that most hard drug users have used marijuana. It is widely available in our society, and people who are inclined to try drugs start with those that are the most common — usually tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana. But the vast majority of marijuana users do not move on to use hard drugs. Nearly 100 million Americans have tried marijuana, and almost 15 million use it monthly, yet only 3.5 million have ever tried heroin, and only 136,000 use it monthly.[7]

Please see our rebuttal of this identical point in Section XIX of our previous document, available here.

____________

Law enforcement claim 17: "Marijuana is much stronger now than it was decades ago. One study showed that the average THC levels in marijuana in the past two decades has increased from 6 percent to more than 13 percent, with some samples containing THC levels of up to 33 percent (which is far higher than the 1 percent potency levels in marijuana used in the mid-1970's)."

• This is an accurate statement based upon studies cited in MCAA's Position

Paper Concerning "Medical" Marijuana, dated February 17, 2007."

The facts: As we've noted previously, while there has been an increase in the level of THC in marijuana, it has been nowhere near the levels stated by the authors. In any case, this argument has no bearing on whether or not sick and dying patients should be arrested for using it. It is literally impossible to suffer a lethal overdose from marijuana, and no research has shown that higher THC levels cause greater levels of addiction or health problems.[8] Higher-THC marijuana can actually be beneficial for users who smoke: They need to smoke less to achieve the desired effect and therefore take in less of the irritants in smoke. Additionally, it is curious that the authors have no problem – indeed, are enthusiastic – about allowing patients to use Marinol, which is 100% THC, but not to ingest marijuana with only 12-14% THC. This makes little sense.

For our previous rebuttal of this identical point, please see Section XX of our previous document, available here.

If you've never had the chance to watch a Ring of Honor PPV, here is your chance.

This is Ring Of Honor "Rising Above"

The main matches to watch if you want to see some of the best of ROH, Make sure to watch the Tag Team Scramble! its the best match I've seen in a long time...
and make sure to keep an eye on El Generico and Kevin Steen...

It may take a little while to load. But just start the video, hit pause and go do something while it loads... Its completely worth it.

The only really bad things about ROH are...

The announcing team is not very good, the play by play announcer sounds like he is 15...
and then the obvious low end production quality, But thats because this is a smaller up and coming promotion.

Check it out.


Part 1:
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Part 2:
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Part 3:
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Part 4:
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So I was just online checking out some stuff. and happened to stumble onto what can only be called the freaking mother load of comedy...

foreign versions of our movies...

There all over on youtube. Not the full movies, but usually a good 5-6 minutes, which just shows how awesome they are!

Forget this talking, lets get straight to the point of this blog. First off...

Turkish Rambo:


This is absolutely awesome, And don't forget to pick up your RPG's after your done with them, cant leave those lying around, then anyone could get a hold of them...


Number Two:

*This one isnt really a version of our actual movie, But is pretty funny nonetheless Its Rambo, singing a spanish music video. You really dont have to watch the whole thing, but at least the first minute...


And now back to movie versions...

Turkish Star Wars...

Yeah, for real.

Here is the posters explanation...
"I've skipped straight to the end of the movie. There's no need to show you the rest- it's equally as ridiculous.

Following the space battle you saw in part one, this version of Star Wars then begins to resemble a Bruce Lee movie...on acid.

Sit back and watch as the middle-aged Luke Skywalker equivalent bounces around like a bunny and beats up/rips apart a series Sesame Street rejects, Cylon rip-offs, Robbie the Robot and a whole host of other people in £5 costumes to the Indiana Jones theme.

Pay special attention to the demise of the gold-clad Darth Vader proxy. He gets cut in half- yet both halves have a nose!"

And here is the video...


Now for Italian Spiderman...
This is the trailer BTW


this isnt foreign or anything, but its funny as heck!
Batman on Drugs: