One Conservative's Understanding of the Real and Genuine Need for Medical Marijuana

My trip to the pot shop

PUEBLO WEST, Colo. — It’s 9 a.m. on a weekday, and I’m at the Marisol Therapeutics pot shop. This is serious business. Security is tight. ID checks are frequent. Merchandise is strictly regulated, labeled, wrapped and controlled. The store is clean, bright and safe. The staffers are courteous and professional. Customers of all ages are here.

There’s a middle-aged woman at the counter nearby who could be your school librarian. On the opposite end of the dispensary, a slender young soldier in a wheelchair with close-cropped hair, dressed in his fatigues, consults with a clerk. There’s a gregarious cowboy and an inquisitive pair of baby boomers looking at edibles. A dude in a hoodie walks in with his backpack.

And then there’s my husband and me. [...]

It's a very compelling story she tells. And as usual, Michelle Malkin has done her homework, like a real journalist should. Read the whole thing for the interesting story and the embedded links.
     

South Africa's mine owners and miners.

Cry the beloved country no more

When I first went to South Africa as a callow correspondent in the last year of white rule, veteran colleagues said that of the reams of agonised apartheid literature there were just two books I needed to read: Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country and Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart. For the first time in many years I have found myself thinking of both books as the stark images from South Africa’s Lonmin mine massacre have played on television screens around the world.

My 1993 reading list spoke more to the preoccupations of western editors than to the travails of the Rainbow Nation. The first encapsulates the dilemmas and uncertainties of the white liberal. The second is a no-holds-barred, to be read with several glasses of brandy and coke, evisceration of Afrikaner angst and the country’s tortured racial politics. But both books have searing passages that remind the reader how the tortured narrative of South Africa over the past 140 years is woven around the saga of the excavation of some of the more lucrative – and inaccessible – mining seams in the world: first diamond, then gold and now increasingly platinum. The resilience of apartheid was founded on the gold mined each year from the Witwatersrand. It was also, as Paton and Malan show in very different ways, based on the labour of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers. The former addresses the nightmarish world of these young men separated from their families, living in fetid single-sex hostels. The latter recounts the murder of two policemen by striking miners whipped up by witch doctors and the frustrations of years.

If they read this far, old friends in the ANC will be clicking their teeth. One of the lazier syndromes in the international media of recent years has been the way that every political, social or economic drama of the post-apartheid era, from the rise of the firebrand Julius Malema to the fluctuations of the rand, has been presented abroad as an existential crisis. So, the sort of conflict of interest that in, say, India or Brazil is seen as irksome but not disastrous, is in the South African context routinely depicted as a step on the road to Zimbabwe. How many reports in the British press of gruesome murders in Johannesburg have had “Cry the beloved country” in the headline? [...]

It gives some good suggestions for dealing with/resolving the conflict, much as it might be done had it occurred anywhere else. But will they?
     

Will the Main Stream Media be responsible for a November Surprise tomorrow?

Victor Davis Hanson has an article today called The End of Journalism, where he states that "Sometime in 2008, journalism as we knew it died, and advocacy media took its place." The media has been biased for quite some time, but his year, they haven't even bothered to make the pretense of being unbiased. They have decided for us.

In blogging for this election, I've spent a lot of my time blogging about Obama, and the things about him the MSM failed to report on. The sad part of that is, I would have much rather spent my time talking about the advantages of a McCain/Palin ticket, instead of trying to make up for the deficiencies, lies and distortions of the MSM.

I see the photos of huge numbers of people at McCain/Palin rallies, at JohnMcCain.com. I look for the rallies on the MSM, and they aren't there. But the lies and distortions are.

Most people get their news from the MSM, not blogs. If McCain/Palin manages to win, it will be because it's what the majority of American people really want, despite the efforts of so many in the media to manipulate the outcome.

If Obama looses, and riots ensue as some are predicting, it will be the MSM who is responsible, for building up false expectations.

Republicans have not been the ones committing voter registration fraud, accepting illegal campaign contributions and bullying critics into silence. The MSM has not only failed to report substantially on these and other things, but have focused their resources on publishing skewed polls and erroneous stories presented as facts. All in support of their Chosen One.

No matter who wins this, the MSM will have a great deal to answer for. We should all be holding them accountable. Real journalism, that scrutinizes and reports on ALL the candidates, needs to live again.


Related Links:

Voter registration fraud and the Democrat Activists who work and lie to perpetuate it

23,000 attend McCain/Palin rally in Virginia

MSM does their best to Kill the Messenger

Palin and the Negligent Malevolence of the MSM

Obama Thugs go after NRO Journalist

Barack Obama; the larger, complete picture

When you can't debate, restrict your opponent
     

Palin and the Negligent Malevolence of the MSM

I have recently read a "Straw Man" argument on the Politico blog:

Why the media should apologize
Sarah Palin gave a really good speech. Why go beyond that, asks Simon.

ST. PAUL, Minn. — On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry.

On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry.

We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.

We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?

We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice?

Bad questions. Bad media. Bad.

It is not our job to ask questions. Or it shouldn’t be. To hear from the pols at the Republican National Convention this week, our job is to endorse and support the decisions of the pols. [...]

It goes on, and on, and ON like that. What complete and utter BS. Not to mention arrogance and disdain.

I've never said the media shouldn't ask questions, and I don't know ANYONE who has. So what the hell is he talking about? What has Palin supporters upset is not questions, but the lies, smear and distortions about Governor Palin that are demonstrably untrue, that the media is so quick to embrace, promote and acclaim.

That's quite a different thing from being upset about questions being asked. Note to Simon: don't talk down to us or at us like we're ignorant morons, too stupid to understand the value of questioning. It's just that sort of weaselly, disingenuous elitist BS that's got so many of us angry with the MSM. Many of us understand the difference between real journalism and partisan propaganda.

When I went to college in the late 1970's my major was "Mass Communications". A great deal of that dealt with journalism basics. How to gather information and check facts to assemble and present a news story that could withstand scrutiny.

That is something fundamentally rudimentary to what a journalist does (or should) do.

So it's with this background that I look upon "journalism" by the main stream media today. I'm appalled at what I'm seeing.

So-called journalists seem to simply be lifting and repeating George-Soros Democrat talking points verbatim. They are repeating smears and rumors without doing any research, fact checking or verification. If I, who have even fewer fact checking resources available to me than professional journalists have, can go on line and search through public records and see, in context, what things Sarah Palin has said and done as a mayor and as Governor of Alaska, certainly journalists can do the same?

The talking point today is that she's hiding. The media has sharpened every knife in their drawer, and they now demand that she present herself for a stabbing-fest.

If she's not in a hurry to rush into that, I can't blame her. She's not hiding, she has been available talking to voters on campaign events, but the media doesn't want to cover that.

A lot has happened in her life in a short time since the nomination. She's still Governor of Alaska, and still a mother with kids, including a son about to go off to war. She's juggling a lot of things right now. If she needs some time to prepare herself before facing the decidedly hostile media, so be it. Obama has had a lot more time to prepare for the spotlight in a national campaign, much more than she is going to get. We understand that the MSM would rather deal with her as unprepared and vulnerable as possible, and therfore don't want to wait. But they will have to for a bit.

In the meantime, what the media could do, is actually get off their backsides and do some REAL journalistic WORK. Many of the supposed questions they are asking already have answers; they don't all have to be answered personally by Sarah Palin. If I, a non-journalist, can find the answers to so many of their questions, answers that are in things she has already said publicly, then surely the journalists could do the same - if they were sincerely interested in actually finding factual, true answers.

The MSM has revealed their bias for some time now. Remember Dan Rather-Gate? Fake memos about President Bush, being pushed by CBS as true during the 2004 election?

What about all the things about Barrack Obama that the media neglected to tell us, about his lengthy associations with hate-mongers and terrorists? I was able to find these things out on my own, before they became widely known to the general public. Surely journalists could have done the same? Those things only became know in the MSM because bloggers kept talking about issues that the MSM would not, until it became impossible for the MSM not to address them.

It seems that many journalists knew about John Edward's mistress and her baby. But they deliberately made a decision to not tell us about it. They decide to spoon feed us only what they want us to know or believe.

All things considered, it seems that most journalists in the MSM can't be trusted to dig for information and present facts that don't support their own personal political agenda.

Regarding Palin, it seems that the MSM has already chosen Obama for us; and if we want something different, they are going to fight it. Real journalism be damned.

One of the courses I took in college was called "Propaganda and Public Opinion". I learned how public opinion could be manipulated by withholding information, presenting information out-of-context, and mixing up lies with facts, and repeating lies until they become generally accepted. With such creative mixing and editing of facts and lies, you could make JFK look like Hitler, and Hitler look like JFK. It was a real eye opener.

We need real journalism, not propaganda. Of COURSE the media does need to question Palin; I have no doubt they will have plenty of opportunity soon enough. But let them be warned; we want real journalism, not just regurgitated George Soros talking points. Not neglectful research, partial facts, rumors, unsubstantiated gossip, or opinion masquerading as fact.

Some advice for the MSM:

Just as Sarah Palin needs to prepare to be questioned, Journalists also need to DO THEIR HOMEWORK before they question her; not waste her time and ours by asking questions they could have easily found the answers to on their own, like so many of the rest of us have done already. DON'T WASTE OUR TIME.

I should also add "Don't waste our time asking stupid chauvinistic questions from the 1950's that offend and bore those of us who are already living in the 21st century." I can't believe some of the stuff I've been hearing. Is this really the 21st century? Sheesh!

Journalists need to report on the whole, larger picture, not just fragments they can spin to suit their own agendas. That may have worked in Hitler's Germany, but we expect something better.

They need to be equally vigorous in their questioning to BOTH political parties, and seek to find real answers, not opinion and conjecture. There ARE such things as FACTS. We are tired of their attempts to merely sway public opinion toward the answers they want us to embrace.

To the journalists who want more respect, I say: Start actually DOING your JOB, and you might get it. Ask tough, intelligent questions, of ALL the candidates. Let us decide from the facts, stop talking down to us, stop presenting your opinions as facts, and stop making things up!

I realize that it's human nature to be biased. Save your bias for opinion pieces and editorials; that's where it belongs. Being a PROFESSIONAL in journalism actually needs to mean something; when it does, you will find you are respected more.

More journalism, less BS, please. Thank goodness we are going to see actual debates to base decisions on, not just media sound bites. At least, I hope we are.


Related Links:

Hell freezes over

Sarah Palin Smears, Lies, Rumors and Gossip

Governors, Senators, Qualifications & Reforms
     

Sarah Palin Smears, Lies, Rumors and Gossip

If you can't argue with what someone says, assassinate their character. That's what the left is making a massive effort towards doing to Sarah Palin.

I've been reading things this past week that are just ridiculous. Total fabrications. Even the MSM is quoting lunatic posts from the Daily Kos as if they were facts! How is anyone supposed to debate about things that are just made up out of thin air? Whatever happened to journalism? Checking facts?

Here are two sources for Palin fact checking:

FightThePalinSmears.com

We are not connected to or supported by the McCain/ Palin campaign. Strictly supported by ads.

Many of the major lies are listed in the left sidebar for quick and easy reference. Breaking stories in the center. Lots of links. References and resources in drop down menus from the top.

Palin Rumors

Cripes, this has gotten ridiculous. Folks, look, let’s just run through a list here. (Updated.)

An extensive list, with embedded links. The list numbers 53 items, at the time I'm publishing this link.

Fortunately, the true facts do matter to many of us. Wouldn't it be nice if the MSM thought the truth was important, too?

Here is an introductory video about Sarah Palin, that was meant to introduce her at the RNC. They cut it from the program due to time restraints, which is unfortunate. It's only about 4 minutes long, and it would have cleared up some things about her.



By not showing the video before she gave her speech, the teleprompter was thrown out of synchronization. Sarah gave that great speech just from her notes. Looking on the bright side, we found out she doesn't NEED a teleprompter.