“There is a long way to go to stem the flow of drugs into the United States of America,” McCain said. “The progress I’ve seen since previous visits here has been substantial and positive…”

How substantial? How positive? Oh, let the New York Times count the ways as it deconstructs GOP drug-war praises:

This enthusiasm rests on a very selective reading of the data. Another look suggests that despite the billions of dollars the United States has spent battling the cartels, it has hardly made a dent in the cocaine trade.

While seizures are up, so are shipments. According to United States government figures, 1,421 metric tons of cocaine were shipped through Latin America to the United States and Europe last year — 39 percent more than in 2006. And despite massive efforts at eradication, the United Nations estimates that the area devoted to growing coca leaf in the Andes expanded 16 percent last year. The administration disputes that number.
The drug cartels are not running for cover.

Washington spent $1.4 billion on drug-related foreign assistance last year — mostly to equip Colombia’s security forces and spray coca crops in the Andes. It spent another $7 billion on drug-related law enforcement and interdiction efforts at home and abroad. It spent less than $5 billion on education, prevention and treatment programs at home to curtail substance abuse.

Of course, it’s not that McCain is really in denial about the drug war. He knows exactly what’s going on. And here’s the video that explains it all.

Kimchi Bistro is a steal. And it’s pride is its namesake. For no charge—like bread in a French restaurant—the meal is preceded by kimchi. Six plates of it.

The best of the sextet was that one in the middle, a sprouted bean salad with a bit of crunch and the aromatic grace of sesame oil. I wolfed them all down before my bibimbap arrived, and asked for another round of my top four, saying I’d be happy to pay the cost. But when my bill came, there was no charge for the extra kimchi, even though at that point, I’d eaten ten plates.

…that makes me quite satisfied. I birdie—or as I prefer to call it, a shuttlecock—actually belongs on the lawn. And a lawn as big at the one shown above (thank you, Wikipedia for the image) deserves the biggest, most massive, hardest steel shuttlecock it can get. Giant traffic cones in bourgeois private parks on the other hand? Snoring.

Thanks for the tip, NaFun!

Paul Armentano, the deputy director of NORML (I’m on the board), refuted a government-funded study that found marijuana is more potent and thus super dangerous to kids. This is a perennial story engineered to scare parents that gets sucked up and regurgitated by the press. The argument doesn’t hold water: people smoke less pot when it’s high quality just like people drink less whisky than beer. And, um, pot can’t kill you like liquor can. But even the argument that pot is more potent is bogus, says Armentano.

“…even by the University of Mississippi’s own admission, the average THC in domestically grown marijuana — which comprises the bulk of the US market — is less than five percent, a figure that’s remained unchanged for nearly a decade.”

That bunched some panties at the drug czar’s office and they’ve written a response on their blog.

The “domestic” samples analyzed in the University of Mississippi’s report do not represent what’s found in the U.S. market. “Domestic” samples refer to marijuana plants that were found in the process of being grown and were then eradicated by law enforcement in the U.S. The potency of these “domestic” specimens is far lower because those specimens are most often taken from immature plants that never reached full cultivation (maturity) for distribution and consumption in the illegal market.

To which NORML responds here:

Oh, you’re counting domestic as stuff grown in the US before it’s harvested? Well, excuse us. Our mistake. If we knew that was how you were defining “domestic”, then we would have pointed out that 98% of your “domestic” seizures are feral hemp (”ditchweed”). You claim that these “domestic” seizures are averaging 5% THC content, but you define “ditchweed” as having virtually no levels of detectable THC.

We have no way of knowing how much of your “domestic” seizures were, in fact, ditchweed. But I’d venture to guess you’re not including ditchweed, because you’re wanting to make a point about consumer marijuana, and nobody is smoking ditchweed. Fair enough… but then you need to explain why you’ve spent $175 million taxpayer dollars since 1984 to eradicate something you don’t count as part of the consumer marijuana “problem”.

Writes Armentano:

As Gandhi once said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” Well, I guess it’s safe to say we’re at the stage where they finally fight!

2) A convenience store with people smoking crack under the awning and one doorway boarded up.

I came home last week to find that the convenience store owners, in an effort to stop people from hanging out in one of the unused doorways, had boarded that area up.

Boarding things up is saying you lost. Like, we’ve given up on the neighborhood and no longer want to have neighbors keep an eye out. We’ll just barricade ourselves in our businesses and homes. Of course, I understand that the store owners are sick of poeple drinking and pissing in the doorway. But what are you even trying to protect if the neighborhood is just boards…? Number two is the worse of two evils.

All this Styrofoam is gonna double the size of the garbage patch and it’s all my fault. It’s a good thing I elected to have the miso soup while I waited or the lady would have brought me a fifth Styrofoam container.

Undercover officers make hundreds of raids each year — and they will say that nothing is routine.

That was never more clear than on the night of April 30, when a narcotics team moved in on a suspected drug house on East Rich Street, NBC 4’s Marcus Thorpe reported.

The raid ended in gunfire and two officers being injured. Two suspects were taken into custody.

Those detectives are now out of the hospital and spoke to NBC 4 on Wednesday.

John Gillis and Anthony Garrison are no rookies. In fact, they’ve logged more than 20 years on the force — 14 of which they spent working side-by-side on local roads.

But for the first time in their careers, gunshots connected with them on April 30. Harrison was shot in the arm and hip and Gillis was struck in the leg.

Both officers spent significant time in the hospital, undergoing surgeries. During the weeks of recovery, the officers said the concern and well-wishes are bringing them back.

“I think I thought about it when I looked at my wife’s face. It’s kind of upsetting for me,” Gillis said.

Of course, he meant that he hadn’t accepted the severity of the trauma until he saw someone he loved and realized he could have lost that person. But what he said was looking at his wife’s face made think about getting shot in the leg, and that his wife’s face is “kind of upsetting.”

But now there are two more exhibits based on the same idea of rendering small things really big. First, big post-it notes and push pins.

Then, these enormous traffic cones all over the park.

They’re both cool ideas. But, seriously, there’s nothing to think about them but, “Wow, those things are like gigantic.” I’m over it.

Two comments: 1) I like that these wormhole openings are unscheduled, because that means wormhole openings somewhere else are scheduled. I really gotta get in one of those schedules.

TWO—That really is the correct spelling of “continuum.” It’s like “vacuum,” which always looks wrong but never is.

Daniel Williams decided he’d listen to his girlfriend and his 8-year-old son and finally quit smoking, with the help of a new prescription drug called Chantix.

He started taking the medication, and a couple of nights later, as he was driving his pickup truck on a country road in Louisiana, Williams suddenly swerved left.

His girlfriend, Melinda Lofton, who was with him, later told him that his eyes had rolled back in his head and that it had seemed as if he was frozen at the wheel, accelerating.

Moments later, they were in a bayou, struggling to escape the murky water, Williams said.

“Since I was a kid, never had anything like this ever happened before,” he said. “It never happened before, and it hasn’t happened since. And all the tests I’ve taken say I have nothing wrong with me at all.”

The nonprofit Institute for Safe Medication Practices last week linked Chantix to more than two dozen highway accidents reported to the Food and Drug Administration, saying the mishaps may have resulted from such drug side effects as seizures.

The FDA had earlier issued a warning about suicidal thoughts and suicides among patients taking Chantix and is now evaluating whether it needs to expand and strengthen that precaution.

Pfizer, the drug’s manufacturer, said that as early as May of last year, it had added a warning to the prescribing literature for Chantix that patients should exercise caution when driving or operating machinery until they know how the medication affects them.

Of course, I’ll stick with not smoking anything at all. Not to beat a dead horse, but marijuana—which can get you really fucked up—doesn’t have any of these affects and it’s still illegal. But drug manufacturers can crank this stuff out by the ton, and not only to they not go to jail, they get rich.