New Zealand topped the table with a score of 9.4 after coming second last year. In second place was last year's leader, Denmark with 9.3 followed by Singapore and Sweden tying at 9.2 and Switzerland at 9.0...Hey, our government is only one quarter corrupt. Isn't that awesome?
Britain came 17th in the list and the United States was 19th with a score of 7.5.
Portland News - – OregonLive.comThe Cannabis Cafe will be the second public place for medical-marijuana patients to get together. On Oct. 1, Steve Geiger opened Highway 420, a small lounge at the back of his pipe shop at 6418 S.E. Foster Road...Oregon continues to fascinate me. Turns out that you can get a card to grow marijuana, you can get a card to use marijuana, but you can not sell marijuana in Oregon.
The pot lounges are the first of their kind in the nation, said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the national NORML. California has dispensaries where medical marijuana can be purchased, but only Oregon will have public places where people can socialize and use marijuana.
"The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest," Goldman’s Griffiths said Oct. 20, his voice echoing around the gold-mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s financial district. "We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all."I distinctly remember this story as part of my childhood Sunday School lessons. The story of Jesus going to the temple, hanging with the money lenders, and saying, "You guys are alright."*
In order to save itself from financial oblivion, the state of California seems inclined to just do it. Just say yes. To become Amsterdam.So the nation elects a black President and pot gets legalized (at least in California, maybe). It's a really good idea to legalize. I'm all for it. Hitching it to Obama is a bad idea. A really bad idea. Lay this one on Schwarzenegger. Let the Republicans have this win. Calling Obama the Pot President is just more fodder for the good-old-boys (and girls).
It may be the biggest thing to come out of the financial meltdown. We won’t get meaningful reform of the banking system, but we’re going to get legalized pot...
So forget health care. Obama is going to be the pot president. Hell, Franklin Roosevelt, in his Depression, saw the end of prohibition.
Once again providing the leading edge in the marijuana issue...Push to Legalize Marijuana Gains Ground in California - NYTimes.comIn addition to the California politicians weighing the issue, three ballot initiatives aimed at legalization are quickly gaining the signatures needed to put them before the citizenry in 2010.
State lawmakers are holding a hearing on Wednesday on the effects of a bill that would legalize, tax and regulate the drug — in what would be the first such law in the United States. Tax officials estimate the legislation could bring the struggling state about $1.4 billion a year, and though the bill’s fate in the Legislature is uncertain, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has indicated he would be open to a “robust debate” on the issue.
Cartels Face an Economic Battle - washingtonpost.comIf they ever fully legalize in the United States those mom-and-pop operations will be forced out of business by big AmericanStiff competition from thousands of mom-and-pop marijuana farmers in the United States threatens the bottom line for powerful Mexican drug organizations in a way that decades of arrests and seizures have not, according to law enforcement officials and pot growers in the United States and Mexico.
Ian Pearl: I Am Not a DogThis is a call to arms for all the pro-lifers out there. Give up on the abortion clinics for a couple of weeks and go chant in front of Guardian Life Insurance Co., home of the broken promise and the privatized death panel.
I was the first wheelchair-bound student "mainstreamed" in the schools of Broward County, Florida. I became a poster child for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and president of my high school class. I entered college in 1990 with plans to work in politics and patient advocacy, but at 19, I had a severe setback and I was confronted with a stark choice. My survival would require a machine to breathe and round-the-clock nursing care.
A breathing machine usually means life in a nursing facility. But my father's small business had health insurance from Guardian Life Insurance Co., which promised "Solutions for Life." The health policy had no lifetime benefit cap and covered home nursing care. Relying on that contract with a 149-year-old company, I decided to go on a mechanical ventilator for the rest of my life.
Since then, I've endured life-threatening medical complications and long hospitalizations. I've lost my privacy and ability to travel. But I never regretted my decision to live, to continue to learn and write, and to share in the lives of family and friends.
After decades of medical emergencies, we still weren't prepared for the latest crisis -- this one created by the same insurance company that once saved my life. Guardian abruptly withdrew our health plan from all policyholders in New York where my father's business is based. Guardian offered a 'replacement' plan with low benefits and no home nursing benefits. They knew that I would never survive with such a plan, but they didn't care.
Suspecting that this action was related to the high cost of my care, we filed a lawsuit and have asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to enforce existing federal laws and require Guardian to continue my health plan. Without federal intervention, I will lose this insurance, and that would be a death sentence.
Our lawsuit uncovered insurance company documents that confirmed my suspicion that I'm a target of discrimination. The documents revealed Guardian had compiled a "hit list" of its costliest members, including patients with muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, brain injury, and paralysis. Guardian executives referred to us all as "dogs" and "trainwrecks," and they debated how and when to dump us from the rolls. Laws prohibited the cancellation of the individual members with serious chronic health problems, so Guardian opted to cancel the plan for all members of this specific health plan in New York, an action that violates federal law.
Of all the wingnut mythology surrounding healthcare reform, nothing has stirred greater fury or louder denials than the suggestion that government might somehow provide insurance to America's undocumented workers and their families. "You lie!" screamed Rep. Joe Wilson as the President told Congress that his plan would provide no coverage to them. "No, we don't!" replied the Democrats, who scrambled to make sure that the undocumented are excluded by statute.We must provide health care to all to protect ourselves. I love it!
Yet as the nation prepares for a possible swine flu pandemic this winter, we are learning that the firm determination of both parties to deny medical care to people without papers is actually quite flaccid. Even the most hysterical immigrant-bashers seem content to allow the government to vaccinate immigrants against the H1N1 virus (unless, that is, they happen to be among the right-wing chorus that suspects vaccination itself to be a nefarious socialist plot). Even they seem to realize that viruses don't discriminate on the basis of citizenship -- although they wrongly tried to blame last spring's first outbreak of swine flu on the Mexicans among us.
Obama Swastika Carved Into Golf CourseIn case the police need a little help with their investigation, given the spacing between the O and the BAMA, the vandal is probably Irish. Just round up all the Irish in Boston and start asking questions. How many can there be?Police and grounds keepers at a Massachusetts golf course are trying to figure out how someone snuck onto the grounds and carved a giant swastika message for Barack Obama onto the field – and what exactly did they mean with their message.
The swastika two traditional messages. When rotating counter-clockwise, it is the symbol used by National Socialist Germany and is widely considered a "hate" icon. However, Hindu and Buhdist faiths use the a clockwise-rotating swastika in their religion and is a considered to be symbol for good luck, hope, and peace...
Police are not sure if the vandal or vandals made a mistake or not.
The vanquished Vice President doesn't think there's room for debate on climate change. I do. The debate's over. There's no global warming.Is there room for debate or is the debate over? Or was there room for debate but now the debate is over? Or is there room for debate because the debate is over? Like when there is room in the ring for Sesame Street Live because Wrestlemania is over.
BBC NEWS | Nobel peace prize goes to Obama"Hi! I'm Barack Obama. I'm not Bush and I'm not a bumbling idiot." Give that man a Nobel Prize!
The Nobel prize for peace has been awarded to US President Barack Obama.
The Nobel committee said it awarded him the prize for his 'extraordinary work to strengthen international diplomacy'.
Dalai Lama Set Aside By Obama, Honored At U.S CapitolOur planet is a funny little place.
The Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled religious leader -- brushed aside by U.S. President Barack Obama in favor of communist China -- was saluted at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday for his work for human rights.
Me: Should I get help?It was a blood pressure spike caused by a stressful situation. They took some meds and within an hour had returned to normal. Thank goodness.
Coworker: Just give me a minute. I can't afford to go out of here in an ambulance again.
Among Ardipithecus's ancestors, such a strategy could catch on if searching for food required a lot of time and exposure to predators. Males would be far more successful food-providers if they had their hands free to carry home loads of fruits and tubers—which would favor walking on two legs. Females would come to prefer good, steady providers with smaller canines over the big fierce-toothed ones who left as soon as they spot another fertile female. The results, says Lovejoy, are visible in Ardipithecus, which had small canines even in males and walked upright.Evangelicals now have a tough choice in front of them. They can either accept this scientific theory that supports their supposed love of heterosexual monogamy or dismiss it in favor of their darling creationism.
Lovejoy's explanation for the origin of bipedalism thus comes down to the monogamous pair bond. Far from being a recent evolutionary innovation, as many people assume, he believes the behavior goes back all the way to near the beginning of our lineage some six million years ago.
BBC NEWS | Iran 'concealed nuclear facility'So what if Iran does have a hidden nuclear agenda? What if they are secretly amassing WMD's? That's the problem with crying wolf.
Iran concealed a partially-built second uranium enrichment plant in defiance of calls for transparency over its nuclear plans, US President Barack Obama says.
Chronic City: Marijuana Arrests Drop For First Time Since 2002 - San Francisco NewsAmericans who have used marijuana (a theoretical majority) are fessing up to their past use. Police are backing off of the pot arrests saying, "Even most of us have smoked pot."
Marijuana arrests in the United States declined in 2008 -- the first such drop since 2002 -- according to figures released by the FBI today.The new report comes on the heels of the 2008 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, released Sept. 10, which showed increases in both the number and the percentage of Americans who admit having used marijuana.
