The beauty of it all

Will God smite Mar-a-Lago?

Or will God spare Mar-a-Lago?

If God is indeed dead, as has been hypothesised by deep thinkers since the time of Nietzsche and beyond, will Mother Nature or Hurricane Irma spare or smite?

Allow me to speculate for a moment; what use is the death of God if Mother Nature and Hurricane Irma are rushing in to fill the void?

These were the questions I was pondering when there was a sudden knock on the door.

A knock on the door is a novelty in these parts. There's a reason folks like us live off the beaten path. We don't appreciate random knocks on the door. That's why our welcome mat has "naff off" embroidered into it.

I see where the Wynne regime has charted its own course on the legal weed journey. They'll grow a whole new bureaucracy called the "Cannabis Control Board." I'll bet growing that bureaucracy is gonna be a whole lot more lucrative than growing weed.

But that's how things play out when you let politicians run the show. Somewhere along the line those folks forgot that they were public servants, ie, servants to the public.

Hahaha... that's a good one, eh!?

A few days ago I breakfasted with my old pal Kipling at the Teviotdale Truck Stop. He's knee-deep in grandchildren these days, so it's hard to get together, but Kipling has an old-timer's perspective on this whole legal weed question. He figures the entire legal weed thing is a scam to put pot profits (triple alliteration!!!) into the hands of Bay Street wankers and their attendant bureaucracy sycophants, while cutting out guys like himself who have been growing quality organic shit for forty years.

I suspect he's right.

So there's a knock on the door.

The hounds go ballistic.

The Farm Manager wants to run for the gun cabinet.

Relax!

It's just a couple of local kids who hunted our property last year and repaid the favour with some mighty tasty goose summer sausage.

I gave them the thumbs up.

Conditional on another round of summer sausage of course.


The beauty of it all...

RIP Mike Baldasaro

When Wally went to his reward not too long ago, we wondered how long Mike was gonna keep on ticking without his long-term partner in "crime" by his side.

Not very long, as it's turned out. Yup, last week Mike joined Wally in that great hemp garden in the sky. Mike and Wally, or Wally and Mike, were pioneers in the legal pot movement for most of my lifetime. They've faded from memory a bit since younger and more media-savvy marijuana advocates joined the fray, but let's never forget their contribution to the battle!

I personally never met either of them, but we had mutual acquaintances, and by all accounts these guys were solid down-to-earth folks who would do anything for anybody they considered a friend. They say Mike was a little bit over-protective of Wally, but over the long term that was a good thing. Wally was just a little too trusting. He'd give interviews to random reporters and the narcs would be knocking on his door the next day. He needed an interlocutor.

That would be Mike.

They've both gone to a better place, and when you look around, you'd have to admit they made it in the nick of time.

RIP, boys!

While have-not states like Kentucky are burning their grow-ops, have-more states like Washington and Colorado are taxing them

This photo-essay at Bloomberg is ironic on several levels.

First off, it's got great thought-provoking photos like this one;



Yup, that's a law-enforcement official dousing a pile 'o pot with gasoline, the better to set it aflame.

Dude! If you wanna burn weed, stick it in a pipe or something!

What a waste!

So here's some food for thought. Have you ever thought that the reason some states (like, just to arbitrarily pick a couple of high-performance states out of the air at random; Colorado and Washington) habitually show up at the high end of the quality-of-life indices, and other states (again, completely random; Kentucky and West Virginia) habitually show up at the bottom, might have something to do with the average IQ of the denizens of those states?

Now I don't mean to offend my relations in Kentucky, but they got a lot of somewhat dopey folks among them, which I think might be at least partially the result of a) cousins marrying cousins, and b) marrying at age 15.

Meanwhile, over in your have-more states of Colorado and Washington, instead of spending money fighting the weed 'o wisdom, they're MAKING money taxing it! Oddly enough, these states also vastly out-perform the have-nots in educational achievement etc.

Coincidence?

I think not...

This is what Darwin was talking about.

The fight for fair marijuana distribution in Canada

It's hard to tell which way the winds are blowing in the marijuana decriminalization evolution in Canada.

Harper's tough-on-crimers have eased up slightly on who can be prescribed medical marijuana, but at the same time they're taking steps to ensure that legal weed and the profits thereof go to corporate types rather than to small scale cottage-industry folks who grow for their own use and may have a little surplus left over to share with friends.

Guy's like Steven Stairs will no longer be able to grow their own medicinal pot if the Harperites get their way. He'll be forced to buy it from the corporate growers Harper has been empowering.

The judge's decision on Friday merely delays this process. The issue has in effect been kicked up the courts, so it could take years before we get that Supreme Court ruling. In the meantime everybody is operating in more or less of a legal limbo.

The blessing here is that it gives regular folks an opportunity to draw a little bit of publicity to the matter. Why should the cultivation and distribution of marijuana be rendered just another commodity in our consumer supply chain, just another profit centre for the corporate douchebags who've managed to take the joy out of everything else they touch?

Marijuana is a sacred sacrament to some, a medicinal herb to others, and a nice way to unwind after a long day for others still. Wally Tucker fought his whole life to get respect for pot; he wasn't fighting so money guys in suits could build a corporate empire.

Let's twist one up and see if we can come up with some better ideas.

Canada greenlights industrial-scale marijuana grow-ops

Obviously the Harper gang wants to let a bit of the pot-scented wind out of Justin Trudeau's sails.

And they're doing it in the typical Harper way.

To hell with the cottage industry types growing organic weed for the connoisseurs. So what if some hillbilly can come up with a hundred pounds of organic additive-free primo; the Harper gang wants to shut those guys down and deal with "legitimate businessmen" who have a verifiable track record of financially supporting the Conservative Party.

"Legitimate businessmen" who will undoubtedly be one or two degrees of separation away from Asian crime gangs or the bikers, the very groups attempting to monopolize the illegal trade now.

Maybe this is the quid pro quo attached to Harper's billion dollar gift of subway construction funding to the drug-dealing Ford brothers of Toronto?

Silent majority ready to let you fire up that fattie...

...without sending you to jail!

When the top story on the US edition of Google News informs us that a majority of Americans favor the legalization of marijuana, you know that a critical mass has been achieved.

Turning that critical mass of public opinion into actual law will be another matter, but this is certainly a milestone.

Alas, there are a lot of folks who get their bread buttered by the hugely destructive "war on drugs," and they won't be giving up their golden goose without a fight.

The Washington Post is one of the first out of the gate with this opinion piece by Peter Wehner, an alumnus of both Bush administrations. Wehner invokes Plato in his profoundly deceptive plea to maintain the status quo. Legalization will cause consumption to skyrocket. Families will be shattered. Lives will be shattered.

Every nightmare foreshadowed by Reefer Madness will come true!

Wehner provides a handy link to an article by another Bush alumnus, Bush II's drug czar, John Walters, who provided a glowing report in The Weekly Standard last year that details what a roaring success the "war on drugs" has been.

Make's you wonder what he's been smoking.

Cops discover marijuana "forest"

A thousand plants.

Ya, I know you were expecting more of a story, but hey, that headline drew me in too...

I share your disappointment.

Well, thank God they caught that tangle of electrical cords. That coulda burned the place down!

Sure hope they don't find the tangle of cords under my computer desk.

As for that "forest," lets get serious guys. The standard police math that puts a value of a thousand bucks on every seedling is long overdue for a rethink too.

Now that Washington State is good to grow, does anybody still think there is a US market for BC bud?

Maybe that's where that Polish guy comes in...

Granger the Ranger

Bob Granger was a guy I knew in high school. Had a hard-on for the wilderness even in those early days. When the rest of the guys were getting wasted and getting laid, or at least hoping to, Granger was off on solitary nature hikes.

Granger's nickname was "Danger Granger," which was an exercise in irony, exercised by Granger's high school peers who by and large wouldn't have been able to define irony, but intuitively knew it when they made it up.

Danger Granger could be counted on to always buckle his seat-belt, never drink to excess, just say no to drugs, and file his income tax return on time.

Or so I thought.

I dropped out of high school. Bob "Danger Granger" naturally finished high school and went off to college, where he studied to become a Forestry Conservation Officer.

I totally lost track of Bob the Knob, till a chance encounter about ten years later in a small town in Northern Ontario. I was passing through on my way home from one of my many failed missions to make my fortune in the West. Stopped in at this little bar & grill place on the Trans Canada Highway.

I'd been driving 24 hours straight and finally succumbed to the craving for a pitcher of beer and a jumbo wing platter. Over there in the corner is a table of very rowdy locals, six or so pitchers of beer on the tables in front of them. Seemed every one of them was telling a story at the same time. In the midst of this maelstrom of beer and bullshit I saw...

Danger Granger? No! It couldn't be!

Well fuck me!

Yup, it was little Bob the Knob, Danger Granger. But now he was Danger Granger the Forest Ranger.

Turns out he'd got a job with the Department of Lands and Forests after graduating from college. Worked his way up, and a couple years ago had been assigned to the 150,000 acre conservation area just up the road. He was the Big Dog in his own government sanctioned fiefdom.

Bob had come a long way. From the irony of "Danger Granger" he'd become a very knowledgeable afficianado of guns and motorcycles.

Me and Bob closed the place. Then he had his intern drive us out to his field office. Rustic shack in the woods. Rent free. Comes with the job.

We're barely in the door and set into our chairs in his little field kitchen, when he pulls a garbage bag out of the freezer. Opens it up and passes me a stalk of hemp.

Seems Granger the Forest Ranger is running a 150,000 acre grow op.

His official duties of watching out for poachers, checking hunting licences, and reporting forest fires leave a little time for some amateur horticulture.

Which he obviously excelled at.

After that I made a point of heading up north once in awhile to catch up with Granger the Ranger. We'd meet up in town for wings and beer. Then we'd head out to HQ for serious discussions on solving the problems of the world.

Until one fateful weekend when things went horribly wrong.

I accidentally burned down his field office.

The key word there is "accidentally" and I regret that Granger the Ranger has not come around to seeing the truth of the matter. He prefers to stew in bitterness.

It was me and Bob and a couple of his friends from town, and we'd been sitting around the Field Office having a few beers and sampling the previous season's wares. Somebody was taking way too much time in the bathroom.

I decided to take a whiz in the ash pail. Unfortunately this was just a couple of minutes after I'd filled the ash pail with hot coals out of the wood stove.

There ensued a cloud of smoke and steam that immediately filled the room, causing at least one of those present to panic and start running around in the smoke-filled room screaming for a fire extinguisher. In her panic she tripped over the ash pail, knocking it over and sending the contents all over the floor.

Long story short, there were still enough hot coals to start several small fires throughout the kitchen.

And it was really smokey.

And we were drunk and then some.

And Bob's field office burned to the ground.

And I haven't been invited back since.

But one has to put this sort of life lesson into perspective. In fact I believe there are several life lessons embedded in this story;

• have a plan B ready when pissing in the ash pail
• don't piss in the ash pail
• don't pre-judge your high school peers

Because as the Good Book tells ya, judge not, lest ye be judged.

And Danger Granger the Forest Ranger is just one high school peer deemed way short of the mark back in high school, who ended up way ahead of it twenty years later.

Wheel of Karma

So this dude wins 25 million in the lotto.

And he does what any reasonable lotto winner would do.

In Robert Erb's case, that would be donating a half million to the campaign to legalize marijuana.

Good on you dude!

You could have just slunk away and let your new-found millions keep the cops at bay.

Instead, you've thrown your lot in with the legalize it camp.

Wally Tucker would be proud!

Big pharma has America by the balls

Here's a sad story about the suicide epidemic among American veterans. They are killing themselves at rates approaching the world record set on Canadian Indian reservations.

What I find interesting about the story is how the writers dance around the subject of pharmacological complicity in this suicide epidemic. Our man Busbee was on prescription drugs, and that's the end of it.

I'm willing to bet that most military suicides are on prescription drugs.

It's also an open secret that virtually all mass shooters have been on prescription drugs.

There is absolutely zero research about how many Indian teens on Canadian Indian reservations are on prescription drugs, but I have a hunch that prescriptions for psychotropic anti-depressants on reserves will mirror the suicide rate.

Maybe we could fund some social scientists to sniff out the answer.

In the meanwhile, it seems pretty obvious to me that big pharma is killing us.

Burn your prescription, dump your doctor, and smoke weed instead.

Why Ted Nugent should fire up a fattie

Don't get me wrong. I love Ted. He's one of the finest rock-and-roll guitarists who ever lived. As far as I'm concerned he's right up there with  Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.

In fact, I think one reason he has never gotten his due as a musician is because he goes so far out of his way to push the envelope of political incorrectitude.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's an envelope I often try to push in my own way.

And I know that in his heart Ted is a sportsman when it comes to his hunting activities. Just today he was Tweeting from his deer-sit where's he's spending Christmas Eve with a crossbow.

That's a far cry from sitting in that deer-sit holding a Bushmaster with a 30 round clip.

I know Ted would correct me. That's not a clip; it's a "magazine."

So we know that Ted is, after all and above all, a true sportsman.

But when a toff like Piers Morgan gets him on TV Ted doesn't do himself any favors. What the hell is up with that "suck on my machine gun" stuff?

Ted, get a grip; that just makes you sound like a weirdo.

That's why you should fire one up now and then, Ted. It'll mellow you out a bit. In fact, if you want to head up this way I can hook you up with the coyote hunters around here. Nobody's got a 30 round clip, but they're providing an essential public service to the local farm economy.

And they bag dozens of coyotes every winter.

I can hook you up with some primo Puslinch red-hair too. It does a great job taking the edge off.

Hell, you won't even miss that 30 round clip.

High in Seattle

I burned one in the shadow of the Space Needle way back in the early 70s. At the time no one would have believed it would take another 40 years to do it legally. But here you go.

In the interim tens of millions of Americans have been arrested and saddled with criminal records for the crime of smoking marijuana. Pot prohibition has been a wildly successful strategy in terms of keeping hundreds of thousands of cops and public defenders and prosecuting attorneys busy and the jails full. It's been a blunt stick to beat down minorities and the working class.

It remains to be seen if Obama will call off the feds and let common sense and the will of the people prevail.

Snow? November? Who knew?

I know from long experience that the local school board often enough has "snow days" in October.

But why is that first snowfall always such a shock, even when it happens at the end of November?

I have two snow-blowers on the premises. And a few shovels.

The ancient walk-behind was sitting in front of the garage most of the summer. When I say "ancient" I mean its metal panels are fashioned from what has got to be at least 16 gauge steel. She's one heavy old  beast. But I have to replace one of the back wheels, and fine-tune the belts.

This old girl is big on belts. There's got to be about three or four of them in there under the cowling.

And I've been meaning to look in there all summer, but there's always so much on the to-do list...

Then there is the snow-blower I attach to the back of the Ford 4000. While the Ford has a forward PTO the snow-blower doesn't have the mounting hardware, so whenever I use this rig I have to be in back-up mode.

You do this a few times at 6 in the morning in the middle of a blizzard, and suddenly those Las Vegas real estate ads look a whole lot more appealing.

And it's way easier to get your hands on a Glock down there.

But I think I could get life in prison for that quarter pound of weed that's stashed in the rafters of the garden shed.

Think I'll stay put.

But winter is a bitch.

Ganja nation salutes Justice Reichbach

While Obama and Biden and their squirrely fellow traveler north of the 49th have been busy with stay-the-course pronouncements about drugs legalization, here comes Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach announcing that the weed 'o wisdom should be decriminalized.

No shit!

The amazing thing is that the good judge is still on the bench. Still judging!

Pity that the man had to contract pancreatic cancer before he warmed up to the weed, but better late than never I say.

Judge Reichbach has taken the unprecedented step of coming clean in a newspaper editorial he has written. Confirms what people have been saying for years; marijuana is a serious medication that can soothe all kinds of ills.

Needless to say, the pointy-headed legions are agog at the judge's brazen honesty.

He'll be kicked off the bench in no time.

But thank you Justice Reichbach, and best wishes in your struggle.

BC mayors call for legalization, regulation of marijuana

A coalition of British Columbia mayors has written a letter to the premier and the leaders of the opposition parties pleading for an end to current drug enforcement strategies.

“We stand together as B.C. mayors because we think our communities will be safer and our children better protected from criminal elements if we overturn marijuana prohibition and implement policies that strictly regulate the adult use of cannabis” the letter states.

The moves comes just months after four former BC attorneys general called for legalization and regulation.

Meanwhile the Harper gang is ploughing ahead with plans for harsh new sentences for possession of small quantities of pot.

Just who is out of touch with reality here?

Flush those pills and fire up God's anti-depressant instead!

A new study claims that for most people using them the risks of common anti-depressants outweigh the benefits.

Drugs that stimulate seratonin production in your body can mask the symptoms of depression, but also mess with the 101 other things seratonin does in your body. As a result the use of common anti-depressants can depress you, depress your sex drive, and even kill you.

On the other hand you can say "no thanks" to Big Pharma and turn to God's own organic anti-depressant. You'll forget your troubles, your sex drive will be fine, and it hasn't killed anyone yet.

Marijuana: medicine for a messed up world

And oh vey, is it a messed up world or what?

There's so many important stories out there that urgently require comment that I can't even imagine keeping up.

There's a story breaking in the UK that ties MI6 to the worst excesses of the Gadaffi regime.

How about that? The Monster of the Maghreb was not only enabled by us, but encouraged and paid to do our dirty work!

Makes you want to fire one up and forget about it, doesn't it?

The ongoing suicide of the sovereign entity formerly known as Greece will eventually have many books written about it. How do we come to a place where a handful of German bureaucrats and EU functionaries can dictate to a people the conditions of their extinction?

Makes you want to fire one up and think pleasant thoughts.

No matter how many sensible and knowledgeable military insiders counsel against a war on Iran, there's a certain constituency that still beats the war drums incessantly.

Makes you want to fire one up and forget about it...

If we could just get these leaders to fire one up and forget about it, we wouldn't have all these problems to begin with.

Ron Paul high on hemp in North Dakota

Speaking to a crowd of farmers while on a campaign stop in North Dakota, Ron Paul praised the potential of industrial hemp as a cash crop, AP reported today.

"There's no reason, in a free society, why farmers should not be free to raise hemp," Paul told the cheering crowd.

Actually, I'm guessing Paul doesn't even know the extent to which hemp was a mainstream agricultural product in America before it got tainted by the drugs prohibition movement.

Hemp is a near cousin to marijuana of course, which gets the war-on-drugs crowd hot under the collar. These are the folks who think the reason that fifty years and hundreds of billions of dollars haven't won the war on drugs is because we haven't been trying hard enough.

Paul is the only candidate in the GOP race who approaches the drugs question with an iota of common sense. He recognizes that 50 years and hundreds of billions is long enough to prove it ain't gonna work, so maybe trying something else, like regulation and taxation, might be worth a try.

So it stands to reason that he's not going to go along with a hemp ban just because the plant looks like pot.

Before the fear-mongers got all over it Henry Ford was experimenting with using hemp fibre for body panels on his cars. It's also useful for making clothing, construction material, and alternative fuel.

Hell, hemp could save America!

Here's the article:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jDcO2-n1XQVO9fzxkzpH2cVbs-2Q?docId=1269e9b4a0d4429083c359c924b1c82c

Top cops call for legal marijuana

Four former Attorneys General have written to British Columbia Premier Christy Clark recommending that she lobby the federal government to legalize marijuana.

British Columbia has a major drug-cultivation scene and the underground marijuana economy would make pot the province's biggest money-maker if it were to be legalized, taxed, and regulated.

The four are certainly not the first government insiders to make such a call. Four former Vancouver mayors have also called for legalization. It's been obvious to all concerned for at least two generations that the "war on drugs" is a lost cause.

Legalization, taxation, and regulation would bring the business out of the hands of the gangs and into the mainstream. Less gang involvement means less crime, which means hundreds of millions saved in prison, policing, and court costs.

Taxation means hundreds of millions in new revenues for governments at evey level. Where is the downside in this scenario?

Alas, something so sensible isn't likely to get the thumbs-up from the law-and-order guys in Ottawa. Any measure that would reduce the need for cops and prisons isn't going to see the light of day in the Harper era.

Canada stakes future on legal marijuana

OK, it wasn't Canada per se; it was the Liberal Party at their national conclave last weekend.

Fresh from their banishment to the political wilderness under the leadership of that Harvard wanker last election, the Liberals have been casting about for a platform that will return them to relevance in the Canadian political universe.

Legalize pot? Why not?

It's an idea whose time has come and gone several times in the last fourty years. Remember the Le Dain commission? Legalize pot!

That was back in sixties if I remember correctly.

My best guess is that we'll be well into the twenty-sixties before anyone takes this seriously. The Liberal Party is coming up with this concept because they are for the time being relegated to the dung heap of history. The moment they extract themselves from the dung and become contenders again it'll be "good-bye legal pot and hello mandatory sentencing!"

At which point the electorate will fling them back to the dung heap.