Why NO: on Prop 19?

The negative physical and mental effects of marijuana use are well documented. (each statement of fact has been published in well-done academic studies. I can provide some papers to you if you would like)

1) Social: It’s associated with lower educational accomplishment, lower work productivity, increased risks of motor vehicle accidents, and heart and lung disease.Cannabis use in adolescence is a predictor of depression in later life. Students who regularly use marijuana have lower grade and test scores and are less likely to achieve personal goals. Marijuana smokers often jeopardize their future by engaging in risky sexual practices or committing criminal acts. Marijuana impairs a person’s judgment, coordination, balance, ability to pay attention and reaction time.

2) Physical: All forms of cannabis are mind-altering drugs due to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active chemical in marijuana. THC affects nerve cells in the region of the brain where memories are formed. This makes it difficult for the user to recall recent events. Chronic exposure to THC may hasten the age related loss of nerve cells. Smoking marijuana is more harmful than smoking tobacco because it contains 50-70 % more carcinogens than tobacco. It has the same adverse effects on the respiratory system as tobacco smoke and is associated with chronic cough, respiratory infections, bronchitis, emphysema, and lung cancer. Marijuana use has been found to increase blood pressure and heart rate and to decrease the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood.

3) Illicit nature: Considered a “gateway drug,” it often leads to abuse of even more dangerous substances. Most adolescents who use other illicit drugs admit that marijuana was the first drug they used. It is often intentionally used with other substances, such as alcohol or crack cocaine. And it has addictive qualities.

4) There has been some argument that legalizing it will decrease drug traffickers' crime. But when alcohol was legalized again, mobs turned to other alternatives - so the result was that it legalized a drug (alcohol) that is associated with destruction of many lives but did not decrease the crime it intended.

The Women's Movement

My friend sent this note along to me -

"Zach's mom really liked our gift from the WWHI. It sounds like
fantastic work and I was happy to support it. We had no ideas for
mother's day so it worked out great. I've been thinking more about
women's empowerment as a couple of weeks ago in Relief Society, the
lesson about prophets brought up the question of what were some of the
most important teachings and contributions by prophets. One woman's
answer "women should stay home" and another said "Prophets brought us
through the hardest times in history, the great depression, the 2
world wars, and the women's movement." I cannot tell you how steamed I
was, especially about the women's movement comment. It's hard as women
with so many choices to look down at those who fought hard for that,
and it's nice to have someone like you who is fighting for women
elsewhere who don't have options!"

The comment re: "got us through the women's movement" is an unfortunate understanding of Mormon history.

Brigham Young, a ferocious defender of women's rights who sent many women, notably Emiline B. Wells, to join the suffrage movements and fight for gender equality, said this, "If I had a choice of educating my daughters or my sons because of opportunity constraints, I would choose to educate my daughters."

Subjective Understanding.

Subjective review of bills and political decisions is dangerous...and is becoming more influential and dangerous here in the United States. Believing a blog or pundit from either side is ok, but can not be depended on exclusively for opinion forming, truth seeking ventures. I have often been accused of being a liberal - which I don't deny I lean more to the left - but I have always viewed myself as a thinking person. I implore all readers to do the same. Here is an example: The bill HB12 at first glance, or at least at first glance of a news caption, appears to criminalize women for miscarriages...WHAT? THAT IS CRIMINAL AGAINST WOMEN! would be my first response...and turns out was the response of many...

HOWEVER

My friend who is a studious and intelligent government process individual, revealed this:

"HB12 is the major abortion bill this session and as such draws diverging interest groups to their traditional battle lines. HB12 was written in response to the recent case in Vernal, UT where a young pregnant woman hired a man to assault her with the goal of causing an abortion. The assualt occured, the baby lived, the man was punished and the woman's case was dismissed since the act was interpreted as an abortion legal under Utah law.

HB12 allows for prosecution of a woman who "kills" her unborn child outside of a standard medical abortion. The language specifically includes exemptions for women who refuse medical care. That is, refusing medical care such as a C-section or prenatal vitamins and then experiencing a fetal death as a result of refusing the medical advice, would not constitute homicide. Additionally, there is the following wording

"This bill...provides that a woman is not guilty of criminal homicide of her own unborn child if the death of her unborn child: is caused by a criminally negligent act of the woman; and is not caused by an intentional, knowing, or reckless act of the woman..."

Could a woman be prosecuted for not wearing a seatbelt or going skiing and subsequently experiencing a miscarraige? Perhaps, but I think this would be a very unlikely outcome.

In my opinion, the bigger concern is the more likely scenario where women who seek illegal abortions would face homicide charges. But since early-term abortion is legal in Utah, I personally do not know how many illegal, so called "back alley" abortions occur.

This bill, however, does not encroach on a woman's current access to medical abortion law in Utah. I personally do not agree that meaningful life begins at conception so I am opposed to a law that treats an unborn child on par with a living child. That being said, in my opinion, we spend way too much time discussing and fighting abortion. While we do need to remain vigilent to ensure abortion remains a legal choice, I personally am not overly concerned about this bill."

Hmmm....a process of intelligent discovery. I have since reviewed the bill myself and agree with her review. Take matters in your own hands! An ignorant population is full of docile believers - liberal or conservative.

THINK.

I Think Better of Men

This is a particularly interesting article - I agree with her re: although much freedom has come to women, is it really enslavement through sexuality simply disguised as choice? She observes, "I am not so stupid as to say that women don't enjoy power too, but ours is still exclusively sexual and entirely tied to the relentless ticking of the clock....And so long as there are plenty of women willing to do both(standing next to men like Spitzer and being prostitutes who sleep with men like Spitzer), men will have all the power..."

I don't disagree with this, however:

I think one argument which is rarely if ever discussed??? Why is there not an expectation for men to be better men...meaning - even though there are women who offer their bodies for pay, if there was no consumer, there would be no incentive for those women to stay in that market. Have we signed men off as the weaker sex by allowing or accepting or justifying their sexual desires as 'natural' if acted upon without restraint or self-mastery?

I think better of men.

Saga shows this is no country for old bags
Christie Blatchford
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
One of my girlfriends always says that before she dies she would like, just for a day or even an hour, to have a penis and so understand the incredible glory that is male power.
On this side of the gender divide, we all figure it must originate with the private bits, there being no other explanation for that astonishing sense of entitlement.
There are so many variations on the theme, New York Governor Eliot (Ness) Spitzer just one of them.
We all have our stories - the flabby, middle-aged guy who believes that if he can "get" this good-looking woman here, there's no reason he can't also "get" that better, younger one over there; the way the least attractive dude in the world confidently will parade naked before a new lover while she won't make a move without concealing one imperfect part or another with a towel; the very ordinary Joe who should count his lucky stars that his bed was graced by some far more accomplished, attractive dame but who behaves, afterward, as a horrid wretch.
Silda Wall Spitzer's tale - her hubby revealed as an alleged regular customer of a high-priced call girl outfit called the Emperor's Club - is an old familiar one, interesting only because of his high office and his carefully, and abrasively, staked out claim to the moral high ground as governor and before that, as crusading attorney-general.
In one brief period a few summers ago, two male acquaintances of mine separately popped into town and demanded we have dinner, only to separately regale me with stories of how at the age of 50 they were just barely reaching the apex of their attractiveness to women.
Both are fine and talented fellows, but the one I quite like is an overweight, sweaty guy with a reputation for hired girlfriends (at our dinner he announced that his next one, who should be as pretty as the last one, would have to pay her own way), and the one I don't much care for is a skinny nerd with an enormous ego.
Several years younger, no more or less physically repellant than they are, with what I judged to be no more or less baggage, and no more or less successful, at the time I hadn't had a date in years. I wanted desperately to believe they were blowing smoke out their respective lumpen and saggy butts, but knew they were not, alas.
Eager to get out of there, and not wanting by any measure to be in the debt of either one of these two clowns, I paid the tabs - without a murmured protest from either one - and rushed home, there to contemplate why I should not slash my wrists.
Big fat cheap old guy: Sex symbol. Skinny weirdo cheap old guy: Sex symbol. Unfat, not cheap slightly younger old bag: Old bag.
The 47-page official complaint from the assistant U.S. attorneys who prepared the file - God bless America, the whole kit and caboodle is easily accessible on the Web - is replete with evidence of male power and how women variously aid and abet that universal aggrandizement process.
Forget the few pages that detail the arrangements with "Client No. 9," the man identified as Mr. Spitzer.
My favourite bit, perhaps because I know several men who are fascinated by strippers and/or prostitutes but who always insist the women are all also bright intellects simply fallen upon hard times - I get what men like about them, but abhor that they also need to paint them as hard-working entrepreneurs, let alone nascent rocket scientists - is a magnificently illiterate Jan. 24 e-mail from the young Englishwoman the Emperor's Club was trying to recruit and who was quibbling over the proposed fee of £500 an hour.
"I have just spoke to a friend of mine who done her first job for you," she wrote. "Unfortunately I wasn't very happy to find out that its only 500 ph + over 50 per cent commission fees ... I was little bit shock and confuse that she had a sex with him twice in an hour and without [him] taking her out for dinner before.
"So I am very sorry but I don't think this is my kind of thing ... I was told by your assistant in London this is more like a dating agency than an escort ..."
Then, in delightful mimicry of that very old joke, the young woman wrote, clearly aggrieved, "But to provide sex for £500 an hour, I just thing [she meant, poor lamb, "think"] this is not a price I would ever consider of doing it for ..."
But also in the complaint is Mark Brener, the alleged kingpin of the ring, describing one prostitute as looking "like a butcher in my opinion"; there's the client complaining that a prostitute was "more sex than sexy" (methinks she was too efficient, and did not act enough like a real girlfriend); there's another of the owners, worrying that a prostitute may have rushed a client, noting, "we just found out the other day that she has children and she went to pick them up from school immediately afterwards ... the girls who have children tend to have ... a little more baggage going on"; there's the client who wanted "multiple girls for multiple hours."
I am not so stupid as to say that women don't enjoy power too, but ours is still exclusively sexual and entirely tied to the relentless ticking of the clock. It lasts a New York minute, not a lifetime.
Only a very few of us choose to actually make money from our money-makers. More, like the hooker who thought she should get a nice dinner too, settle for being kept, one way or another. Ms. Wall Spitzer, who ditched her own career as a corporate lawyer to raise their three children while Mr. Spitzer pursued his political goals, seems to me to have made a variation on that ancient bargain.
You couldn't pay me enough to have stood beside that man this week, as she did, when he faced the press and confessed, sort of, his sins. You also couldn't have paid me enough to have sex with him (or anyone else) either, as the prostitute Kristen did. And so long as there are plenty of women willing to do both, men will have all the power, and it will continue not to matter in the slightest what old bags think.

A Must See

Canadians are undergoing ridiculous scrutiny whilst trying to cross the border. There were dirty rumors that the "Christmas Day Bomber" came from the Great White North...he didn't. I love Canadian Humour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZfbTlYpKYo

Canada.

My sister sent me this email...

Once in a while someone does a nice job of describing a Canadian, this time it was an Australian dentist.



An Australian Definition of a Canadian

In case anyone asks you who a Canadian is . . .

You probably missed it in the local news, but there was a report that someone in Pakistan had advertised in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed a Canadian - any Canadian.

An Australian dentist wrote the following editorial to help define what a Canadian is, so they would know one when they found one.



A Canadian can be English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. A Canadian can be Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, Arab, Pakistani, or Afghan.

A Canadian may also be a Cree, Métis, Mohawk, Blackfoot, Sioux, or one of the many other tribes known as native Canadians. A Canadian's religious beliefs range from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, or none. In fact, there are more Muslims inCanada than in Afghanistan. The key difference is that in Canada they are free to worship as each of them chooses. Whether they have a religion or no religion, each Canadian ultimately answers only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

A Canadian lives in one of the most prosperous lands in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which recognize the right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

A Canadian is generous and Canadians have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return. Canadians welcome the best of everything, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services, and the best minds.

But they also welcome the least - the oppressed, the outcast, and the rejected.

These are the people who built Canada. You can try to kill a Canadian if you must as other bloodthirsty tyrants in the world have tried but in doing so you could just be killing a relative or a neighbour. This is because Canadians are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, can be a Canadian.

reflection on parenting...

In this NYT article, I found myself laughing outloud when I read the following:

"Most of my married friends now have children, the rewards of which appear to be exclusively intangible and, like the mysteries of some gnostic sect, incommunicable to outsiders. In fact it seems from the outside as if these people have joined a dubious cult: they claim to be much happier and more fulfilled than ever before, even though they live in conditions of appalling filth and degradation, deprived of the most basic freedoms and dignity, and owe unquestioning obedience to a capricious and demented master."

That is funny...