It's official. The much-feared government shutdown has now begun as of midnight on January 20, 2018--exactly one year after Trump was inaugurated. All because Congress couldn't get their act together and pass even a very brief stopgap funding bill in time, let alone come to a longer-term budget deal.
Like the previous shutdown in 2013, the blame lies primarily with Republicans. This time around, it was their refusal to negotiate with Democrats about several pressing issues, most notably DACA, in the past several weeks that led to the current impasse. Granted with a Republican president this time, the roles of offense and defense have been reversed, but Trump has clearly sent mixed signals and has essentially been engaging in chaos manufacture all this time. And while the Democrats are not entirely blameless (after all, they did overwhelmingly block the stopgap funding measure), the lion's share of the blame clearly goes to the party that controls not only both houses of Congress, but in fact controls all three branches of government--REPUBLICANS.
That said, the TSAP hereby gives virtually all 535 members of this most dysfunctional Congress in history, especially (but not limited to) Republicans, a vote of "no confidence", and we will take their government shutdown to imply the resignation of such members. We also do the same for Trump as well, obviously. We thus encourage every reader of this blog to sign the following petitions:
Dear Congress: We Accept Your Resignation
No Pay for Congress During Shutdown
No Budget, No Pay
Minimum Wage for Congress
Impeach Donald Trump Now
Let them know that We the People have had ENOUGH of the gridlock, grandstanding, backstabbing, corruption, venality, follies, lies, recklessness, childishness, and otherwise outrageous behavior of Congress, along with the mendacity, recklessness, instability, incompetence, hate, chaos manufacture, grift, graft, and scandals of the orange menace in the White House. If we weren't clear, we'll say it again:
YOU'RE FIRED!!!
So what's the opposite of "progress" again? You guessed it.
Saturday, January 20, 2018
Tuesday, January 2, 2018
California Dreaming Has Finally Become A Reality
Well, it's official now. Cannabis is now fully legal for recreational use California, with the first legal recreational sales having begun on January 1, 2018. The Golden State now joins seven other states and DC where recreational weed is currently legal to one degree or another, though medical use (now legal in a whoppoing 29 states now) has in fact been legal in California since 1996.
While Trump and especially Jeff Sessions are unlikely to take very kindly to this development, the fact remains that the proverbial dam has now finally broken, and the anti-legalization forces are becoming increasingly impotent despite the occasional rear-guard crackdown here and there. Prohibition is quickly unraveling as we speak. Legalization at the federal level has really become inevitable at this point--it's no longer a matter of if, but when.
Are there some flaws with California's system of legalization and regulation? Yes, it's not perfect, but if we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither. For example, no matter how much we as both TSAP and Twenty-One Debunked loathe the 21 age limit, we nonetheless grudgingly supported it since we knew it would not have had a prayer of a chance at passing during the crucial years of 2012-2016. Once the dust settles, though, and national legalization really is a foregone conclusion, we will increasingly take all states to task for not lowering the age limit for cannabis to 18, just as we currently take all states to task for not lowering the drinking age to 18 and recently some states and localities for raising the tobacco smoking age to 21.
Canada, for example, already plans to set it at 18 federally, while at the provincial level it will be 18 or 19 depending on the province, as is the case with alcohol. Uruguay chose 18 as well. And the Netherlands has set it at 18 since 1996. No good reason why it should be any higher than 18 in what should be the land of the free as well.
In the meantime, we shall nonetheless rejoice at one of the very few bright spots in America's increasingly dark night of the soul that began on November 9, 2016 and began in earnest on January 20, 2017.
While Trump and especially Jeff Sessions are unlikely to take very kindly to this development, the fact remains that the proverbial dam has now finally broken, and the anti-legalization forces are becoming increasingly impotent despite the occasional rear-guard crackdown here and there. Prohibition is quickly unraveling as we speak. Legalization at the federal level has really become inevitable at this point--it's no longer a matter of if, but when.
Are there some flaws with California's system of legalization and regulation? Yes, it's not perfect, but if we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither. For example, no matter how much we as both TSAP and Twenty-One Debunked loathe the 21 age limit, we nonetheless grudgingly supported it since we knew it would not have had a prayer of a chance at passing during the crucial years of 2012-2016. Once the dust settles, though, and national legalization really is a foregone conclusion, we will increasingly take all states to task for not lowering the age limit for cannabis to 18, just as we currently take all states to task for not lowering the drinking age to 18 and recently some states and localities for raising the tobacco smoking age to 21.
Canada, for example, already plans to set it at 18 federally, while at the provincial level it will be 18 or 19 depending on the province, as is the case with alcohol. Uruguay chose 18 as well. And the Netherlands has set it at 18 since 1996. No good reason why it should be any higher than 18 in what should be the land of the free as well.
In the meantime, we shall nonetheless rejoice at one of the very few bright spots in America's increasingly dark night of the soul that began on November 9, 2016 and began in earnest on January 20, 2017.
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