I really can’t think of public figure with a bow tie that I don’t like, Even Jim Rogers… Who I don’t agree with, but I like his schtick.
John Stewart made a very nice comparison of popular attitudes to marijuana vs beer. I can’t view this video but I’m pretty sure its the bit. Hang on you’re here too, you won’t be able to view it either. Maybe someone in the US can view it and confirm it contains a nice juxtaposition of harm perception?
Oh its also ‘texting’ in there because… ummmm… get those damn kids off my lawn.
2 Likes
I would say that the dick in a given situation is pretty much automatically the one who’s advocating subjecting people to violence and throwing them in jail for victimless crimes. Nothing Blumenauer could possibly have said to this guy would make him a dick. Breaking into his house and killing him would make him a dick, but it’s no worse than Botticelli’s hired thugs have done to plenty of people, and he obviously feels no remorse for that.
7 Likes
Mr Blumenauer became might be a little frustrated because there is really not much of an argument to be had, yet we have to waste time on it anyway.
If alcohol is legal, marijuana should be also. There is nothing more that needs to be said in defense of marijuana legalization.
2 Likes
I like that scene. But I tend to imagine George Lucas sitting in the Supreme Chancellor’s seat.
1 Like
Mark,
Don’t feel sorry for Botticelli. He’s a corrupt & dishonest functionary supporting a crime against humanity.
6 Likes
Pretty much. You can usually always distrust a law that’s hastily rushed into existence and given a name of a victim who died from the issue in question.
It usually avoids any sort of serious review of the guardians/individuals own culpability, because you can’t allow anything like logic or reason to compete with tragic, emotional overreaction.
Dear Pres,
The war on marijuana is no longer sustainable
When people discover that the government – like the boy who cried wolf – constantly lies about marijuana, they stop believing everything the gov’t says about drugs.
4 Likes
If you’ve seen other hearings like this, it seems like the drug policy and DEA suits never give straight forward answers. You don’t know the greater context of the video, so you don’t know if Botticelli had been avoiding providing direct answers for a long time or had done so previously. There’s also a limited time for these things, so letting Botticelli redirect the topic of the hearing with his talking points (as he attempted to do) could fill up important time. You don’t know if Blumenauer had met with Botticelli or another person in his office previously and gotten the lack of responsiveness before.
Another example: DEA chief can’t answer similar, very simple questions: http://youtu.be/kFgrB2Wmh5s
5 Likes
Thx man, I’ll check it out.
In case these content producers didn’t know… Tunnelbear provides more than enough free VPN access for me to watch all this region-locked stuff every month.
They’re only making themselves work, while I just have to click on an adorable digging bear!
2 Likes
I wanted to know the answer too and the fact that Botticelli refused to directly answer the very simple question would make me cut off his attempts at redirecting the conversation to his scripted talking points. If the problem that Blumenaur sees is that these bureaucrats keep perpetuating their absurd tactics at the expense of ruining the lives of citizens with needless incarcerations, I don’t see how letting Botticelli recite his talking points would be productive. When he did get to speak, he used the example of parents of prescription drug overdose victims who don’t like marijuana legalization. What the hell did that have to do with anything?
6 Likes
The man is a pathetic coward and liar, how can anyone respect anything he has to say?
1 Like
I’m not clear to what extent he (Botticelli) is culpable for writing the drug laws in the USA, and to what extent he’s merely the lackey of the day employed or appointed to try to justify the USA’s crazy drug laws to an oversight committee. I guess the honourable thing to do would be to resign rather than take a pay-check to uphold something that’s clearly illegitimate and broken - (US drug policy) - or to use his office to set about reforming it in a positive manner.
No, Botticelli is an asshole who absolutely refused really simple questions. He got cut off when he refused to answer the question. If he had simply answered and given a qualified answer, I would agree that Botticelli was being used. He didn’t. He flatly refused to answer and just started to spew verbal diarrhea.
There is a reason why these douchebags never NEVER answer; they are sitting around trying to defend the indefensible. The only way you can defend the indefensible is to refuse to stand and meet the argument.
4 Likes
Rep. Blumenauer is my representative. I’m a radical leftist who generally refuses to vote for Democrats at the national level because they are almost as awful as Republicans (and even occasionally worse! Looking at you, Joe Lieberman), but I make an exception for Blumenauer. As congressional Dems go, he’s pretty good.
3 Likes
Marijuana is illegal because the 1% crowd can’t figure out how to make a buck off of it. We can subsidize tobacco and alcohol, we can run a pipeline of toxic sludge through the heart of the country and never give a rats ass about the harm done because it will make the rich a bit richer. At the end of all the bullshit and blather about danger to kids it still comes down to following the money. If the 1% crowd could make a buck off pot you could pile dead kids up across America and pot would be legalized anyway
12 Likes
Doesn’t he count as a public figure?
2 Likes
Botticelli knew the job was disingenuous when he took it.
DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING! (This!)
Here’s a thought of mine that I don’t remember having seen articulated, and I think has a lot of legitimacy going for it.
Marijuana is more of a gateway drug when it’s criminalized than it would be if it were legalized. And this is articulated well in this video. If Uncle Sam idiotically places marijuana on the same level as crack and meth and heroin, a kid who smokes weed doesn’t see it as being a big jump to move to those other drugs. But if marijuana were legal, and put on the same level as alcohol from a legal perspective, it would seem like a much bigger jump to the other drugs, and more pot users would separate use of pot from other harder drugs.
This all seems very obvious to me. Why isn’t this brought up as a retort, when the drug law status quo idiots go down the whole “gateway drug” argument for keeping pot criminalized?
5 Likes
