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Comment count is 37
baleen - 2012-05-22

"Hi I'm a pseudo-intellectual fraud with a hideous voice, face, and personality. There are better magicians out there than me so now I have to yell incoherently for my bread."


aikimoe - 2012-05-22

Right...but at least he's not a hypocrite who's raiding medical marijuana dispensaries (i.e. destroying state-approved businesses and making it harder for sick and dying people to safely find the medicine that works for them) at higher rates than Bush did.

And...yeah! Shut up stupid, loud magician criticizing hypocritical authoritarians!


Old_Zircon - 2012-05-22

I agree with Baleen's assessment of Penn, but Penn is also more or less correct here.


Blue - 2012-05-22

Soooo... are you disagreeing with the points he made? I won't argue on matters of taste - I've got a bit of a crush and I'm sure I fancy him more than he is objectively attractive. But really, do you really think that this issue doesn't even merit a fucking mention?

Do you think his voice is worse than, say, someone kicking in your door in the middle of the night, dragging you from your home and locking you up for years because you might be having too much fun?

Is his face more hideous than a 3 year old girl shot in the face during a police action to stop a drug that is safer than caffiene?

Which do you think is worse, headless Mexican cops stacked like cordwood or his personality?


Menudo con queso - 2012-05-22

Penn's personality, duh.


baleen - 2012-05-22

It's pretty easy to point out the stupid things that Obama is doing. I don't think medical marijuana is going anywhere. I also don't think he's commanding the Justice Department to close down medical marijuana. It's a gray zone where a lot of less than legitimate people are making a lot of money from it. Within a few years the regulatory wars being fought behind the scenes in the vast tunnels of DC bureaucracy will play themselves out.


jangbones - 2012-05-22

Obama's number one concern right now is getting reelected, and the Gop have done a good job painting him as some kind of crazed leftist radical in the eyes of some swing voters.

But when it was obvious that enthusiasm was waning for Obama among his base, his campaign shored up his socially-liberal bonafides by having him support for gay marriage and by making a few vague statements on raising taxes on the rich. That appears to be all he's willing to do right now.

So it appears the Obama campaign will target moderates from here on out. Its too easy for the right's propaganda machine to scare middle class white people with lurid tales of scary brown drug dealers coming to rape your innocent daughters, so Obama ain't going to support easing drug laws until after the election, if ever.


aikimoe - 2012-05-22

It doesn't really matter if you "think" Obama is "commanding the Justice Department to close down medical marijuana." What matters is that it's doing it with his approval and that it would stop if he wanted it to. What matters is that he said he would do the opposite of what he's doing in regards to medical marijuana (and in regards to whistle blowers, waging war, state secrets, lobbyists, etc.). It really doesn't matter that people you consider to be "less than legitimate" were making more money than you think they should because it became easier to buy marijuana. What matters is that very legitimate people have had their lives destroyed because of Obama's flip-flop on this. Suggesting that this is no big deal because it will all be eventually worked out in the bureaucracy indicates a rather conservative level of compassion for the people who are negatively affected by Obama's policies.


Oscar Wildcat - 2012-05-22

I respectfully submit that it should _not_ be "pretty easy to point out the stupid things Obama is doing". I don't regret voting for the guy, but someone is going to have to spell out to me why I should again. This list of stupid things; it grows quite long in the telling.


Ursa_minor - 2012-05-22

I don't really like this guy either but he's dead on here.


baleen - 2012-05-22

Yeah. So for another year I'll have to get marijuana grown in my friend's backyard for my dad's back pain. I'll get over it. I'm frustrated, but there's still plenty of medical marijuana dispensaries out there. It appears to be a matter of personal choice among the many DA's, and a lot of the people they are busting are not good people. They are gangsters and sheisters in sheep's clothing. As I said, it's a battle going on in the bureaucracies, and yes, there's concern for swing voters too.

The analysis that he's trying to win moderates is a constant and true one. Blame massive propaganda campaigns by conservatives in swingstates, spreading fearmongering about this stuff. That's life.

My prediction, and I've been pretty good at calling most of Obama's bluffs over the past few years, is that upon re-election he's going to move back to the Left on medical weed.

I've always compared Obama to Eisenhower in his style. Eisenhower gave a great deal of play in his 1st term to leftist concerns, the social safety net, and the sanctity of unions. His second term, however, was far from kind to these interests. I'm surprised he caved on gay marriage before the election. It's almost like... maybe... we just have to be patient?


baleen - 2012-05-22

NORML's list of dispensaries.

http://canorml.org/medical-marijuana/California-collectives-an d-dispensaries-guide


Xenocide - 2012-05-22

A good message can be ruined by the wrong messenger. Penn's points are perfectly valid but when they come out of his mouth they end up sounding like exploding retard diarrhea.


Pillager - 2012-05-22

@ Oscar Wildcat,

http://www.godvoter.org/Mitt-Romney-platform.html

1994: "Abortion should be safe and legal in this country."
2002: "Let me make this very clear, I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to
choose."

Vs.


2011: "I believe people understand that I'm firmly pro-life."





Abortion & Going to war with Iran, China, Russia, or everywhere else as a distraction...

Obama wins hands down.


aikimoe - 2012-05-22

Sure, baleen, you'll get over it. But being compassionate means seeing beyond yourself. Not everyone has a friend's backyard and some people use MM not for their dad's back pain, but because of chronic pain, or chemo, or glaucoma.

And, sure, some people selling MM aren't "good people" (however baleen chooses to define that), but does that mean you get to shrug your shoulders at all the people who are good whose lives are destroyed by Obama's policies?

It's funny how the more reflexively people try to pretend that Obama isn't really all that bad (or that he's not nearly as bad as magicians who obnoxiously subject their opinions to people who hit "play"), the more conservative they sound in their attitudes towards suffering people.

And sure, you can "be patient," because you don't need MM, your MM establishment hasn't been destroyed by feds, you're not a whistle blower or an innocent terror suspect or a peasant in Yemen whose village is getting cluster bombs rained down upon it.

It's easy to be patient when your biggest concern is whether or not the person in the White House who's actively involved in the destruction of innocent lives is a Republican or a Democrat. The people whose lives are being destroyed don't really care.


Bort - 2012-05-22

Breaking news as of just a few minutes ago:

"Planned Parenthood In Pennsylvania May Be Defunded"

Any guesses as to which party is behind that?

Step one has to be keeping Republicans out of power; they ruin everything they touch. Only after step one has been completed is it safe to move on to step two, which is improving the Democrats. If you try to jump straight to step two, well, look how well things went in 2010, when progressives stood aside and let the Teabaggers waltz in.


memedumpster - 2012-05-22

Fiving the Deocons of poeTV. Obama assassinated a goddamned American citizen while foreign citizens go through our courts, civil and military, for greater crimes, but OH NO MY WEEEEDZZZ!!!


aikimoe - 2012-05-22

Last comment, I promise.

Bort, the reason why Obama and the Democrats can behave essentially the same way as the Bush administration (and often, worse) on a variety of issues, is because they can count on the votes of people who think there is no other path to goodness than to support the serial murderer with the lower body count.

meme, the video is about pot. If it had been about assassinating people (no matter what their citizenship), the same conversation would be essentially the same. When it comes to foreign policy and civil rights, Democrats are basically neocons, now.


baleen - 2012-05-23

I'm not pretending that Obama isn't all that bad. He's a moderate left-leaning Democrat. I'm not pretending that he's not. It's you guys that are pretending he's not.

The fact that he doesn't do everything on your schedule appears to be the main contention here.


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2012-05-23

There's also that nagging problem called Congress, which kind of prevents most presidents from ruling via fiat (not that the Bush Administration had a problem with that, using executive orders and signing statements willy-nilly). Even if you accept the notion that Obama is the "lesser of two serial killers" or whatever you want to say, how is that not preferable to Romney and the Republicans?

For crissakes, the GOP has introduced over 400 bills across the nation's state legislatures restricting abortion and health care for women while saying they're all about jobs. In their spare time, they want to deregulate banking/investing even more and give more tax breaks to the 1%. Anyone who even thinks the GOP is remotely a good choice for running things either can't get the Bush/Cheney sticker off their car or they have their heads firmly up their asses, hoping that somehow trickle-down economics will make them rich and they can retire in a mansion built by people from the debtor prison system.


Bort - 2012-05-23

"Bort, the reason why Obama and the Democrats can behave essentially the same way as the Bush administration (and often, worse) on a variety of issues, is because they can count on the votes of people who think there is no other path to goodness than to support the serial murderer with the lower body count."

I've heard the other alleged paths to goodness, and they're even less plausible. Let the Republicans win so that, after they've destroyed everything, everyone will see how bad they were and the good guys can fix everything? Create a third party that somehow remains perpetually incorruptible as it dominates both the Democrats and Republicans? That's dogshit stupid, and it's what passes for "good ideas" among disaffected progressives (more on them later).

The solution here is to put more and more Democrats into power; the more that are there, the more latitude we'll have the to be selective. We were only about one Lieberman away from a public option; that's how much difference a single Senator can make. The last time the Democrats truly dominated was for the signing of the Civil Rights Act; it's not a coincidence that their fortunes have plummeted since then. But the point is, put enough Democrats in Congress to do the right thing, and they will. Take a look at every positive step Congress has made in the past 100 years, and see how many of them were backed by the Democrats, and how many by the Republicans. A pattern will emerge.

Meanwhile, in North Carolina just the other week, 34% of voters turned out to screw GLBT citizens even harder than they're already screwed. What's interesting is that the biggest turnout, proportionally speaking, came from conservatives ... meaning that, if conservatives showed up somewhere above 34%, progressives turned out at 34% or lower. And this was an issue that should have had progressives lined up around the corner to vote. They could have even won it, hypothetically, with a turnout of roughly 75%; but as it works out they didn't even bother to put up any kind of fight. Obama may be history's worst monster, but at least he bothers to show up to work. Progressives are the demographic that make their angry demands, but when push comes to shove, they won't even vote on the issues that mean the most to them. There is zero payoff to courting progressives, so why should the Democratic Party even bother? Fuck progressives, fuck them hard; for all the bitching they do, they are absolutely useless. Just ask North Carolina.


Syd Midnight - 2012-05-24

Penn Gillette embodies that libertarian atheist paradox where half the time they're right, so they figure the rest of the time everyone else must be wrong. And the things they're right about are usually no-shit issues.


StanleyPain - 2012-05-22

The city I live in just had big FBI raids of local business and at least two homes over some stupid bullshit herbal blend of "fake marijuana" that's pretty much harmless. For about 2 years I worked at a smoke shop and basically we were constantly monitored by painfully obvious plainclothes agents for whether or not we would sell herbal smokes as "pot alternatives" and advertise them as such.
When you're around that kind of shit you really do gain an amazing perspective on just how fucking out of touch with reality drug laws in this country are.
I disagree with Penn on a lot of things, but he's pretty much spot-on here.


joelkazoo - 2012-05-22

Must agree. He's an egocentric douchebag, but on this issue, he is right.


sosage - 2012-05-22

10 Print "ONE IN SIX"
20 goto 1


misterbuns - 2012-05-22

cocain


Oscar Wildcat - 2012-05-22

Sh Alrigh, Sh Alrigh, Sh Alrigh, Cocain.


cognitivedissonance - 2012-05-22

"My career is over, but I can milk a few more years out of by pandering to a highly dedicated political sect!"

This happened with Dennis Miller and Victoria Jackson, too.


Binro the Heretic - 2012-05-22

In the 1980s, schoolkids had the following message drilled into our heads:

"POT WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE."

We asked, "how?"

"BECAUSE THERE ARE LAWS IN PLACE TO RUIN YOUR LIFE IF YOU GET CAUGHT WITH POT!"

"Why do we need laws that ruin lives?"

"WE NEED THE HARSH LAWS TO DISCOURAGE PEOPLE FROM USING POT!"

"Why?"

"BECAUSE POT WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE!"

Three decades later, this bullshit is still going on.

Also, fuck the haters. I like Penn. I don't agree with everything he says, but I don't have to.


Dr Robot - 2012-05-22

I've seen his magic show live. I really enjoyed myself. So did my girlfriend at the time. Or maybe it was the pot brownies we ate beforehand.


Cockmaster Flash - 2012-05-22

Penn Gillette will suddenly stop complaining when a Republican gets elected president.


Accidie - 2012-05-23

Penn will never stop complaining.


baleen - 2012-05-25

But he might stop dancing.


jangbones - 2012-05-22

memedumpster, you are correct, and don't forget his continuation of the Bush tax cuts, which have done nothing to help the economy and have added about 800 billion dollars to the deficit. Obama is a centrist, and the only people unaware of that are crazed, ancient conservatives and the media toadies that benefit financially from them.

In his first term, he has carried a few socially-liberal banners, but not boldly, and he's been cautious and opportunistic about it. Marijuana will be legal in America someday, but Obama has too many other social causes to worry about right now, and I think the issue does not offer a great deal of political gain and features a lot of risk.


Bort - 2012-05-23

Al Franken on why he supported the continuation of the Bush tax cuts:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-franken/the-hardest-vote-ive- take_b_796716.html

"But for Minnesota's middle class, struggling to get by in a tough economy, there's a lot in this bill that will really help: tax cuts for working families, a payroll tax holiday, energy tax credits, and the extension of Recovery Act initiatives that are already making a difference.

"And for the Minnesotans truly suffering right now -- men, women, and children on the edge of economic disaster -- the alternative is simply unacceptable. If we let Republicans block unemployment benefits, even temporarily, there will be a lot more pain for working families, a lot more homeless kids spending Christmas in a shelter or a car."


Enjoy - 2012-05-23

If you take away the goatee and glasses, Penn is turning physically into Rush Limbaugh. He is also using many of the same phrases with the same voice. I'm not sure what conclusion to draw here but I've never been more right.


Cheese - 2012-05-23

Gotta love a guy who hangs out with Penn wearing a Penn & Teller shirt. Just in case one of them forgets which one's the alpha.


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