So, we all know Willie. We know he likes his weed. And this border agent has to smell it to have a clue? Really?
(h/t Jerry in https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/willie/#comment-15372 )
From:
A West Texas prosecutor says that singer Willie Nelson can resolve marijuana possession charges if he agrees to plead guilty, pay a fine and sing “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” for the court.
County Attorney Kit Bramblett told The Associated Press Friday that he recommended those penalties to Hudspeth County’s judge Becky Dean-Walker.
[…]
Bramblett elaborated in an interview with the Daily Mail, saying “I’m gonna let him plead, pay a small fine and he’s gotta sing “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” with his guitar right there in the courtroom.”“You bet you’re a** I ain’t gonna be mean to Willie Nelson,” Bramblett told the paper.
My guess is it was the I-10 “border station” that’s about the middle of nowhere west Texas… and not anywhere near a border. Willie! Take I-40 next time!
At any rate, you jes gotta luv a place where the Prosecutor says “You bet your ass I ain’t gonna be mean to Willie” and wants to hear him sing…
Remember that at one time in Texas simple possession put you away for 50 years, no parole. It wasn’t that long ago either…
Dear Obama:
If you would like to carry Texas next election, Grant a presidential pardon to Willie, in perpetuity, for marijuana… Folks would look right kindly on someone with that kind of understandin’ o’ things…
Musings from the Chiefio 
First free Willie! and then the world. ;-) pg
In my humble opinion there is only one way to solve the problems with marijuana.
Just legalize it.
I am not sure about the hard drugs but legalizing drugs in general would kill the criminal business.
Unfortunately there are other ‘economic’ reasons to keep drugs and drug use illegal.
It’s the drug related economic complex with powerful roots in our political and legal system that would crash if drugs were legalized.
Thousands of lawyers, drug squads, government agencies, producers and operators of drug detection equipment, arms producers and dealers etc. would become obsolete.
Millions of US prisoners (read cheap labor) would be returned to freedom, crime numbers would collapse and the war on terror would dim down as the Taliban would loose a major source of revenue.
Legalizing drug would also liberate millions of women currently held hostage by the sex industry only because of their addiction and it would take out a major source revenue of organized crime.
But we can’t have that, can we?
Here in California marijuana is getting too cheap to steal. Hello! this is a roadside weed that anyone can grow, hell it will even grow its’ self. When I was a kid it grew wild along ditch and riverbanks all over the country. pg
In the Netherlands the use of marijuana was legalized.
The immediate effect was a major reduction in the number of car burglaries.
In the 80’s when drugs were illegal I parked my car in the city center of Amsterdam to attend a meeting.
When I came out of the hotel I saw my car with the passenger door open and a pair of legs sticking out.
The legs belonged to a junky who was in the process of removing the car stereo to finance his daily shot.
I called the police and he was arrested leaving me with a seriously damaged car and many lost hours as I was registered as a witness.
A few months later the same guy who broke into my car was in the newspaper where he was offered a pie with 100 candles to celebrate his 100st arrest.
For the Amsterdam police this was an act of desperation
because every junk they arrested was released almost immediately because the judicial system was not equipped to handle this kind of criminals in large numbers. Besides that, the judges with their personal experiences of drug use in the sixties were not prepared to demand high sentences.
This resulted in the so called ‘revolving door’ criminals.
When soft drug use was legalized the crime rates went down significantly and the police force was able to direct it’s attention to real crime which made Amsterdam more secure city.
The Dutch drug policy is under strong opposition from people inside and outside the country.
This is partially because of a crazy law that allows Coffee shops to sell drugs but makes it illegal to buy drugs in bigger quantities. This policy keeps the door open for the criminals.
The other problem is caused by drugs tourism which has become a big problem in the cities at the border with Belgium and Germany and this too keeps the criminals
busy.
But I am convinced that if the current law that makes the limited possession and use of soft drugs legal is scrapped, crime rates will go of the chart.
The success of the smoking ban which has been accepted without any serious opposition has encouraged the legislator to reconsider the current legislation on drugs also because of European directives on this field.
Control, suppression and enforcement unfortunately will remain the trend and that will only increase our problems.
And if you have any doubts about the effects of Government policies, just look at the Mafia infiltrating the carbon trading system of the EU.
I am in favor of maximum personal freedom and this requires a Government as small as it can get.
The smallest nessesary government and as close to the people as possible is the best kind of government. That is the formula for the future. pg
Willie’s on the docket
Just about minor crime
Wound up in the courthouse
While trying to unwind
Teammates on the tour bus
Trying to catch a buzz
Tour bus gets pulled over and he blows it with the fuzz
Down at the courtroom
Not in the street
Willie and Attorneys will play
Blue Eyes Cryin nice and sweet
DA makes the offer, and and people just got to smile
Willie can plead guilty if he solos for a while
Poor boy to the IRS but big to Texans true
DA gives another chance—the media makes a zoo
Play for the courtroom
Not in the street
Willie for his freedom will sing
Blue Eyes Cryin’ nice and sweet
Even though the story seems to hang around
DA’s in a pickle, he was laying humor down
Over at the newsrooms there’s a happy noise
People blog from all around like kids with their new toys
Down at the courtroom
Not in the street
Willie for his freedom will sing
Blue Eyes Cryin’ nice and sweet
Down at the courtroom
Not in the street
Willie for his freedom will sing
Blue Eyes Cryin’ nice and sweet
===|==============/ Level Head
Level_Head
Can you also do “On the Weed Again”?
@P.G. Sharrow:
Saw a drug dealer on TV complaining that the “Medical Marijuana” stores were putting him out of business with low prices. Gotta love a free market ;-)
The stuff does grow pretty much anywhere in California, tended or not.
@R. de Haan:
Some relatively obscene level of the total money we waste on the prison system goes to folks using grass. Doesn’t stop it, probably increases it. It was legal all through the Roaring ’20s and on into the 1937 stamp act.
Somehow we were not a nation of marijuana addicts all those years….
IMHO, it was making it illegal that made it “cool”. Just like prohibition turned us from a beer and wine nation into a mixed drink hard liquor nation (the “cocktail” was invented to make “bathtub gin” drinkable…).
Were it up to me, I’d make every single drug legal over the counter. If the pharmacist is willing to despense it (and take whatever liabilty that entails) I’m “good with that”.
I know of a weed that grows all over this area, a ‘loco weed’, I also know of a few kids that tried it instead of breaking the law and trying grass… It does get you high, but it’s easy to overdose…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_stramonium#Toxicity
“In the United States the plant is called jimson weed, or more rarely Jamestown weed; it got this name from the town of Jamestown, Virginia, where British soldiers were drugged with it while attempting to suppress Bacon’s Rebellion. They spent eleven days generally appearing to have gone insane:”
I’ve seen it growing wild roadside from California to Virginia including Texas.
So I’d much rather folks smoked some grass than play with that.
Most grass smokers are a bit dumb, but harmless, IMHO. If we make stupidity a crime, we might as well lock up everyone as we’re all stupid some times.
I’ve also known a lawyer or two and some other professionals who smoked grass and seemed to function fine. I don’t, so I don’t… it makes me sleepy and forgetful and I just nod off. Not much fun. Then I’m a bit stupid for the next couple of days. So I don’t see the point of it all. Then again, I already know I’m a bit different… One kid in the dorms got great grades and was high most of the time. I’ve also worked with a guy who smoked daily but was fully socially functional and wrote good code. It seems to have individual actions.
At any rate, I just don’t see the point of locking up all those people for doing something other people don’t like and where the major rational for making it illegal is that folks have to steal to pay for the drugs that would be cheap enough they would not need to steal if legalized…
Big rat hole of money going down the “Criminal Injustice” system pipe.
Oh, wait, I just realized I’m not supposed to think those things… I’ve been told I’m supposed to be an evil “Right Wing Conservative”… and clearly advocating the abolition of the entire Drug Bust Business is not in keeping with that stereotype… what was I thinking… ;-)
Were drugs (marijuana or whatever) legal, obviously the price would drop and the politicians would have to give up one of their big sources of donations. Same with the banks laundering money. And no, that is not just conspiracy thinking, that is pretty much the fact of it, as far as I can tell.
One thing does really mystify me though about drugs…
The genes for making THC were figured out long ago. It would be a fairly simple thing — wouldn’t it? — for someone to insert the THC genes into an oak tree, or a tomato, or dollar weed, or such. Why have we not seen this? Any ideas? Anyone? This seems to me to be such an obvious move by some young, hip botany student that I have been expecting to read about for the last decade or so. How on Earth could the police track every potential source of THC?
@R. de Haan
Here in SA, we use to ask: “do you know why the white house is white? :-)
@E.M.Smith
“I’ve been told I’m supposed to be an evil “Right Wing Conservative”… and clearly advocating the abolishion of the entire Drug Bust Business is not in keeping with that stereotype… what was I thinking… ;-)”
Common sense is something that has become a scarce asset not only with the Right Wing Conservatives but also the Dimocrats.
There is room for a “Common Sense Party”.
And I am sure that it will be a success.
Every idiot in the country will apply for a membership.
The bad thing about grass is that those who tend to smoke it are too lazy already, while those that could really need to slow down are sniffing coke instead ;)
But I agree that it doesn’t make sense to outlaw it anymore.
@Jason Calley:
Um, given that my Son did a gene transplant in high school, it doesn’t take a college student these days…
(It’s a common lab trick now in high school, you put the ‘glow in the dark’ gene from glow worms into bacteria and watch them glow…)
So it’s a very interesting question….
@R. de Haan:
Well done! Maybe we ought to start a “Geniuses Party” just to get all the idiots to sign up in the same place ;-)
@Espen:
Well, the ones that are dong “almost nothing” can slow down by 50% and it wouldn’t matter. Then at least the rest of us would not need to be spending something like $50,000 per head to house them in prison…
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2010/01/26/new-out-of-state-prison-costs-soar/
And what ARE the crimes those $50,000 / yr folks did?
http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/62
for 2009 they put slightly over 1/2 as “drug” crimes.
(Biased source here, but still):
http://yourbrainonbliss.com/Blog/?p=536
Yeah, that’s my state…
So I don’t know about you, but I could live with a lower crime rate, and a 50% reduction in my costs for prisions (and all related police, legal, public defender, courts etc. costs AND all their pensions…)
Especially since my state is bankrupt…
@ E.M. “Um, given that my Son did a gene transplant in high school, it doesn’t take a college student these days… ”
Interesting. I did not know it was that easy. So…. I think the reasonable conclusion is that THC genes (and other such genes) are being put into ordinary plants right now and probably have been for some time, but it is just not public knowledge.
“Marijuana?! No, officer, but I do have some wonderful plums and tasty carrots.”
@Jason Calley
LOL!
“Marijuana?! No, officer, but I do have some wonderful plums and tasty carrots.”
All they need to do is splice it into potatoes. Then the potato chips made from that would create and sustain the munchies.
Hey! Maybe this ties back into the Pringles post. There’s no need to put more Pringles in a can if the consumer MUST buy another and another and another… etc… can ;o)
It’s the marketing holy grail, I tell ya!
There are two Amendments on the US Constitution that stand as historic proof that you CAN’T legislate morality, temperance, etc., etc.. The first instituted something called Prohibition, the second revoked it. Last time I looked, my kids still had the same genes their grandparents and great grandparents had. Hummmm.. Go figure!
PS: Donna Laframboise has an interesting article about Horse Manure on her blog today, it’s well worth the read. Says a lot about how far we’ve come and how much we haven’t. I am personally very glad that we’re pumping gas and not shoveling sh-t in places like NYC, but think of all that free fertilizer we could also have. What a waste! (Really!!! It is! Anyway you look at it;-)
[ I presume you mean this one:
http://climatechange.mensnewsdaily.com/2011/03/29/the-horse-manure-problem/
-E.M.Smith ]
@ H.R. “Hey! Maybe this ties back into the Pringles post. There’s no need to put more Pringles in a can if the consumer MUST buy another and another and another… etc… can ;o)”
Oh Jeez! H.R., it has been a long day for me, but that is the best laugh I have had since I got out of bed and looked in the mirror this morning. Thank you! :)
@Jason Calley
It’s your own fault. You started it! ;o)
Anyhow, once it gets into the food supply we will all become a nation of Jabba the Huts…………. wait!… we already are…
Hmmmm… time for an Archer Daniels Midland conspiracy post.
-EM
Ref. above. Thank you! Yes or at her blog at –
http://nofrakkingconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/the-horse-manure-problem/
IMO, drugs and including alcohol are a scourge to Mankind. They make people think and behave irrationally; get into fights with family, friends, cops, and strangers; lose jobs; lose friends; lose family; lose pretty much everything; causes car crashes; and causes death by a variety of means.
That being said, I have come to realize that if I want small government, I can’t try to fine tune it to my lights. I would accept legalization of all drugs. That would make it harder for evil men to make tons of money. As long as addicts couldn’t shoot up in parks or on the sidewalk and did their thing in their home (if they could keep one), then so be it. Let’s have true freedom and a free market. Let’s cut government to the bone.
@Jim:
Legalizing drugs does not mean legalizing the bad behaviours they bring. So “drunk in the park” and “furnishing to minors” and “beating the spouse” still get you into the slammer. Pass out in your bedroom? Not my problem…
Crash your car into my car on the street? I get your assets for “impared driving”.
Pick a fight with a cop, undercover or not, hello jail.
Etc.
Basically, I’m not legislating morality, just saying “in public, you play nice or else”. That ought to encourage most folks to keep it behind closed doors, and that’s fine with me as then my payments for it, and any collateral damage, are minimized.
Drugs can be a scourge or a blessing. They can be used to improve the quality of life or avoid life all together. Addiction is what destroys family and fortune. A little alcohol every day is good for you and a lot is bad. A little pain proves that you are alive and a lot can make you wish you were dead.
Drug prohibition is costly to freedoms and the public purse and always fails, always. All creatures that I have encountered have some inclination to ingest mood altering materials. People are no different. People will try to obey the rules if they can, make the rules too difficult and they will ignore them all. Nancy Reagans’ “Just say No” campaign worked better the anything thing else that has been tried to reduce illegal drug use. Make all drugs legal over the counter and nearly all drug crime will disappear.
I guess that is way too logical. pg
Talk about irony. Consider the 2008 Presidential election. The conservative candidate was John McCain; his wife, Cindy, is the heir to a major brewing corporation. While the US still runs its official “War on Drugs,” we see a potential First Lady who is a professional drug dealer, and a leading member of the most powerful drug cartel in the nation.
Of course our “double-think” filters keep us from looking at it that way; phrasing it so bluntly will be met with loud denials.
@Jason Calley:
Yes, but she’s pushing MY drug ;-)
“Beer, the foundation of civilization. -E.M.Smith” ;-)
(Read your ancient Babylonian and the ‘myth’ of Gilgamesh…)
@Jason Calley
Marijuana?! No, officer, but I do have some wonderful plums and tasty carrots.
Hope that works with grapes :-)
@ E.M.Smith
“Beer, the foundation of civilization. -E.M.Smith” ;-)
Yup. People who drank the water didn’t live long.
My understanding was that peoples everywhere came up with fermented beverages because it prevented the sicknesses that water could cause. The buzz was just an encouragement to further explore fermentation, culminating in the achievement of distillation for maximum buzz.
Necessity may be the mother of invention but there’s no incentive like a good buzz to propel in-depth research. I mean, c’mon! Who would figure out that you could get high licking toads without some powerful incentive to go where no man has gone before? :o)
Wait a minute! It just occured to me that the toad licking discovery may have been the result of a “double-dog dare.”
How many great discoveries in the history of the human race came about from the all-powerful and sacred “double-dog dare?
And how many idiots were eliminated from the gene pool for the same reason?
@ E.M.Smith
“Beer, the foundation of civilization. -E.M.Smith” ;-)
Having let our observations percolate together in the same pot for a little while, I now disagree with you, E.M. and I claim:
“Double-dog Dare; the foundation of civilization. – H.R.” ;o)
It weeds out the weak and stupid and is the font of discovery.
@ E.M. “Yes, but she’s pushing MY drug ;-)”
Yes! And that is exactly (as you well know) the point! Even though I KNOW it is not true, I still tend to think of alcohol as being in a different category than marijuana. Somehow, when I am just thinking in a sort of every-day-not-too-specific-just puttering-around kind of way, I put alcohol in the class of “things which I may choose to consume responsibly” but the illegal drugs all automatically go into the class of “Taboo! Dangerous! Watch out!” I know that in the case of marijuana, the real danger is not the marijuana, it is the man with the uniform and gun who might be overly concerned about it. I’ve got it, I am a carrier, I have caught the cultural mind virus of drug taboo! That does not make it true though…
That concept of memes, of mind viruses, is a powerful idea. I think though, that it is only half the picture, the positive half, as it were. The negative half is the existence of anti-memes, of concepts which we MAY NOT think about, even if they are right in front of our face. If I had to make a sweeping conclusion about NTs versus Aspies, it would be this: Aspies do, in fact, tend to do better at meme assimilation and manipulation, but the more important factor is that Aspies are much more resistant to the assimilation of anti-memes. Aspies cannot NOT see what is in front of them.
The most powerful groups in our human cultures are those who have developed strong anti-memes that prevent us from recognising when we are being parasitised by them. Look for the groups who may not be criticised. Look also for those who are criticised in only a joking way. For example, consider lawyer jokes and politician jokes. Look for the subjects which cause angry reactions even when mentioned in an impartial, abstract sort of way.
H.R. points out that certain human traits may be dangerous for the individual but good for the society at large. “Double-dog-dare” promotes the discovery of new and dangerous modes of action. Homosexuality may promote tribal survival when none (or few) of the men come back from that big battle, but a few of the gay men have remained home with the women. (And yes, gay men will breed with women if that is what is available — just like straight men will have gay sex if that is all that is available.) So Aspies, and anti-memes — where does that fit? That fits right on the pointy end of the intellectual spear, going boldly where no or few people are otherwise willing to go. That may just be an important survival skill…
@Jason Calley
“H.R. points out that certain human traits may be dangerous for the individual but good for the society at large.”
Bingo! Dang, you are good!
Just my upbringing, but I rarely state bluntly what’s on my mind. It was deemed ‘im-perlite’ or too forward. It’s not the best way to communicate, but I’m stuck with a lifetime of doing it that way. Never say directly what you can say obliquely and with softness or humor.
I see that you have seen past my style to what I’m saying. Much appreciated.
And to your observation:
“That concept of memes, of mind viruses, is a powerful idea. I think though, that it is only half the picture, the positive half, as it were. The negative half is the existence of anti-memes, of concepts which we MAY NOT think about, even if they are right in front of our face.”
I’ll have to ponder that a while. On the down side, I’ve done a lot of looking without seeing, as do most people. On the plus side, I do have experience seeing without looking, but that’s less frequent. Looking and seeing is probably the hallmark of wisdom and possibly true intelligence.
@H.R.:
Not to provide “ammo to the opposition”, but…
A friend is fond of the saying “All Scottish Quisine is based upon a dare.” ;-)
@Jason Calley:
I can read those “scrambled letter” puzzles amost as fast a regular type and I often look at the “face / vase” type pictures and see both images… sometimes they swap, sometimes they are at the same time.
One of my prefered modes of invsitigation is to look at “The negative space of a thing”. So, tell me that it is raining hard, I’ll ask “When does it not rain?” Tell me that dogs chase cats I’ll ask “What do cats do?” Say the sea level is rising I’ll ask “Can the land be falling?” etc.
Top down, bottom up, ends in, middle out, turn to see all sides, then look at the negative image and see if it is interesting… The president is bombing Libya: Where are we not bombing but maybe ought to be? Why bombs not shelling from ships? Or soldiers on the ground? Why Libya and not Syria or … And why isn’t someone else doing the bombing (and the non-bombing…)
So one could make the case I’m stuck with the “see the non-seen” meme… (Show me a picture of a starlet in evening gown on the red ‘runway’ and I’m wondering where her “date” is… they always have a date… is he on a runway posing too? Picture of a person fleeing a forest fire? Where is the picture of what they are fleeing toward? Is it a sea of filre engines, or a grass fire with barely one lane open to run down?… The “picture” needs a complete “fit” and 1/2 a picture isn’t done “fitting”….)
Makes me lousy as a movie director. I can’t take 10 different places and mentally “stitch them together” worth a damn into one fictional place to then use that to make the movie. So put the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Sausalito? “non-fit” and “where’s the rest of the bay?”….
Folk in entertainment are very good at ONLY seeing what is in front of them… One of the few masters of using the Unseen but strongly implied “negative space” was Hitchcock. You typically never really SAW the evil in most of the scarriest build up. Then again, he was an Aspe…. You can also see the “swapping perspectives” when, for example, in The Birds: There is the scene with everyone panicked in the diner, car catches on fire, lady stuck in the phone booth, birds attacking; then he pulls back to serene high altitude “birds eye view” of the event… The “negative space” of the close up pandamonium…
I love Hitchcock movies… they “speak to me” ;-)