Marijuana activists smoldering over Hurley bust

A sobering experience
Marijuana activists smoldering over Hurley bust



by Jesse J. Smith

To hear Joe Barton tell it, a terrible crime occurred on the morning of Friday, November 14 at his two-story house in a serene, isolated corner of West Hurley in the shadow of the Catskill Mountains.

According to Barton, armed men stormed his home, holding him and his son captive for hours before making off with thousands of dollars in cash and thousands more in valuable property. The fact that the armed men were from a county-wide anti-drug task force and their haul included 45 pounds of marijuana, hashish and marijuana-growing equipment, doesn't change the charge - armed robbery - leveled by Barton, a 62-year-old disabled Vietnam veteran and longtime marijuana legalization advocate.

Four days after the bust, Barton sat in his living room with his son and codefendant Jay Debberman, 33, beneath a bookcase holding a tome on constitutional law, a copy of Ron Paul's Revolution and a sign reading "Smoking Room." Outside the window, down a long, gently sloping hill, one can see the narrow gravel and dirt causeway across a wide swamp that vexed police investigating the case. The front door remains splintered from the battering it received at the hands of a heavily-armed raid team, but the house appeared relatively neat, at least compared to photos Barton displayed showing piles of clothing and furniture scattered around the place following the raid. He said the disorder was the result of police trashing the house. A few days before, a detective told the Daily Freeman that the two men lived in a state of squalor, a charge that clearly still rankles. "[During the raid], they said, you have marijuana, you have no rights, they called us dirty hippies," said Barton. "That's a hate crime."

Four marijuana legalization advocates crowded into Barton's living room Tuesday to listen and weigh in as he, pointedly unrepentant, described the raid and his plans to fight the charges.

"They stole my marijuana and they violated my rights," said Barton sitting in his living room with his son. "This is the government making war on the people and the Constitution does not give them the right to do that."

According to police, members of the Ulster Regional Gang Enforcement Narcotics Team (URGENT) raided the house at 473 Spillway Road after receiving an anonymous tip about a "large-scale drug processing and distribution center" operating out of the two-story clapboard home where Barton and Debberman have lived for about three years. Police painted a sinister picture of a well-concealed weed farm protected by its isolated location on the far side of a swamp, as well as a system of motion detectors around the property and generators to conceal the amount of electricity used for the indoor growing operation. Police said they spent two months investigating the marijuana operation hindered by the inhospitable terrain and wide open space around the house.



400 plants confiscated

Police said they came away from the raid with 400 marijuana plants, weighing in at 45 pounds, along with nearly $30,000 in cash, hashish and hash oil, "chukka sticks," police batons, daggers and equipment used for growing and processing the herb. Police also described a DVD recording seized during the raid that depicts Barton "describing in a historical and biographical fashion the way he rose from a drug user in the 1960s to drug dealer in the present," and includes descriptions of the self-proclaimed "hippie" smuggling pot from Mexico and outlining the difficulties of laundering drug proceeds.

Barton and Debberman tell a different story. In their version, the motion sensors were a simple home security system, and had not even been installed, the three Titan generators were still in their original packaging and were intended to deal with power outages in the winter and to be used in a "free people's convention" for marijuana reform he's putting together. Twenty thousand dollars of the money seized, they said, was in donations for the conventions, while police added Debberman's coin collection to the tally of suspected drug proceeds. The men also accuse police of "stealing" everything from a display table, which Barton uses for selling homemade jewelry (and which he claims later appeared in a newspaper photo piled high with seized weed), to flashlights and a pair of night vision goggles. As for the marijuana, Barton and Debberman freely admit to growing it and in fact, take pride in the quality of their "100 percent organic, chemical free" product.

"It wasn't schwag," said Debberman, who works at the High Falls Food co-op. "It was high quality, medical grade marijuana."

The men declined to discuss the purpose of the marijuana growing operation except to say that police had found no evidence that they were selling the herb. Barton said that the 45 pounds of marijuana cited by police included wet dirt clinging to the plants when they were yanked from beds of Rubbermaid tubs in the grow rooms, as well as unsmokable leaf cuttings. When dried and processed, the operation would have yielded about eight pounds of pot, most of which Barton said he planned to smoke himself or give away for medical use. Barton said he uses the plant to treat his arthritis and post traumatic stress disorder. One of the activists at his home Tuesday, Abigail Storm of Woodstock, said she had been using marijuana donated by Barton to treat a local man suffering from terminal cancer. While major physicians groups have signed on to the idea that marijuana can ease the suffering of cancer patients, Storm claims that oil extracted from the plant can actually cure cancer.

"The man I'm taking care of needs two ounces [of marijuana extract] to be cured and what [police] have done is stopped the process," said Storm who said she is a lobbyist for a group called Citizens Against Marijuana Prohibition. "I have to get more bud donated and I have to go this week and bang on the governor's door to get him to sign an executive order to stop the eradication of marijuana because it cures cancer."



Doomed defense

Barton said his battle for legal marijuana dates back to when he was in his 20s and saw a 16-year-old neighbor sent off to a mental hospital after his parents found pot in his bedroom. In 1971, he represented himself at trial in New Jersey on drug charges by arguing that his religious beliefs compelled him to smoke the weed. The judge didn't buy the argument and Barton spent 18 months in prison. Over the years he represented himself in two more unsuccessful legal battles, always based on his belief that marijuana is a divinely sanctioned, medically beneficial herb, not a dangerous drug. He and Debberman are planning a similar, and apparently similarly doomed, defense this time around.

"I doubt any lawyer is going to fight this case the way we want to fight it. They'll say 'We can get you a lesser charge,' but nobody wants to take on the system," said Barton, who claims that he gets by on disability payments from the Veterans Administration and money made selling jewelry. "I already know we won't get a fair trial because they leave us no way to defend ourselves. I'm 62 years old and, if they lock me up, I'll die in prison and the taxpayers are going to have to pay for my funeral."

Despite their dim prospects for success in court, medical marijuana advocates plan to lobby politicians, including U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-Hurley) and state Assemblyman Kevin Cahill (D-Kingston) on their behalf as part of a wider push to end marijuana prohibition. Legalization advocates point to the accession of a Democratic majority in the state Senate, where a medical marijuana bill stalled last year after passing the Democrat-controlled Assembly and moves in Washington, where Hinchey sponsored an amendment to prevent federal law enforcement officials from going after medical marijuana users and sellers in states where it is legal, as evidence that their battle for medicinal pot is gaining traction. If New York's laws do change, they say, Barton and Debberman will be needless casualties of what they believe is a fruitless war on marijuana.

"We called Hinchey and we're trying to get his help," said Rob Robinson, executive director of the New York chapter of the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws (NORML). "If he would make a public statement, that would be great, we want to see where these guys support really lies."

Reached Tuesday, Hinchey spokesman Jeff Lieberson said he was unaware of any attempts by Barton and Debberman's supporters to contact the congressman. He said the lawmaker's support for medical marijuana extends only to preventing federal interference in states that already have medical marijuana laws on the books.

Cahill, who has spoken on the assembly floor about his father's use of medical marijuana while battling terminal cancer in the late 70s, said that, while he supported legislation to allow for controlled use of the drug in a medical setting, state drug laws remain in force.

"The bottom line, the reality, is that we are a society of laws and it is still illegal in New York State," said Cahill. "And as long as it is illegal people can be, and obviously are being, arrested for it."


Federal charges?

Barton and Debberman remain free on their own recognizance after Hurley Town Justice Elizabeth Corrado turned down an Ulster County District Attorney's office request that the men, who have lived in Ulster County for 30 years, be jailed in lieu of $50,000 bail. On Wednesday, November 19 URGENT co-commander Det. Lt. Ed Brewster said that the team was still investigating the case and was looking into whether there was an opportunity to bring federal charges against the men.

"We're looking at how big their distribution network was, depending on where that leads, there could be some federal involvement based on the weight," said Brewster. "Obviously 45 pounds of marijuana is much more than personal use as far as we're concerned."

Barton and Debberman face a host of felony charges including criminal possession of marijuana, possession of a controlled substance (for the hash oil) and weapons possession which could send them to state prison for years. More immediately, the men face eviction from their rented home after, Barton said, claiming that police told his landlord they would move to seize the property if the pair was not kicked out.

"Marijuana people should not be locked up," said Barton. "We're not hurting anybody, if you want us to pay a fine, or tax it, okay, but to lock us up; that's wrong. I don't care how much you have."++
For more on the case, visit http://www.ulsterpublishing.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=473257

Move over Amsterdamn Nor-Cal is taking over!

And a big thumbs up to wxii 12 for writing this non-biased piece!


This article explains what I see everyday........If you live in Northern California this is what you can expect to see or experience.. Move over Amsterdamn Nor-Cal is taking over!

Source:http://www.wxii12.com/money/20099327/detail.html



Peace and Sweet Cali Nugz, Drew

SAN FRANCISCO -- A drug deal plays out, California-..style:

A conservatively dressed courier drives a company-leased Smart Car to an apartment on a weekday afternoon. Erick Alvaro hands over a white paper bag to his 58-year-old customer, who inspects the bag to ensure that everything he ordered over the phone is there.

An eighth-ounce of organic marijuana buds for treating his seasonal allergies? Check. An eighth of a different pot strain for insomnia? Check. THC-infused lozenges and tea bags? Check and check, with a free herb-laced cookie thrown in as a thank-you gift.

It's a $102 credit card transaction carried out with the practiced efficiency of a home-delivered pizza -- and with just about as much legal scrutiny.

More and more, having premium pot delivered to your door in California is not a crime. It is a legitimate business.

Marijuana has transformed California. Since the state became the first to legalize the drug for medicinal use, the weed the federal government puts in the same category as heroin and cocaine has become a major economic force.

No longer relegated to the underground, pot in California these days props up local economies, mints millionaires and feeds a thriving industry of startups designed to grow, market and distribute the drug.

Based on the quantity of marijuana authorities seized last year, the crop was worth an estimated $17 billion or more, dwarfing any other sector of the state's agricultural economy.

Experts say most of that marijuana is still sold as a recreational drug on the black market. But more recently the plant has put down deep financial roots in highly visible, taxpaying businesses:

Stores that sell high-tech marijuana growing equipment. Pot clubs that pay rent and hire workers. Marijuana themed magazines and food products. Chains of for-profit clinics with doctors who specialize in medical marijuana recommendations...

The plant's prominence does not come without costs, say some critics. Marijuana plantations in remote forests cause severe environmental damage. Indoor grow houses in some towns put rentals beyond the reach of students and young families. Rural counties with declining economies cannot attract new businesses because the available work force is caught up in the pot industry. Authorities link the drug to violent crime in otherwise quiet small towns.

"For those of us who are on the front lines. It's not about pot is bad in itself or drugs are bad," said Meredith Lintott, district attorney in Mendocino County, one of the country's top marijuana-..producing regions.

"It's about the negative consequences on children. It's about the negative consequences on the environment."

Still, the sheer scale of the overall pot economy has some lawmakers pushing for broader legalization as a way to shore up the finances of a state that has teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. The state's top tax collector estimates that taxing pot like liquor could bring in more than $1.3 billion annually.

On Tuesday, Oakland will consider a measure to tax the city's four marijuana dispensaries, which the controller projects will ring up $17.5 million in sales in 2010. The city faces an $83 million budget shortfall, and expects the marijuana tax to raise $300,000.

Advocates point out that making pot legal would create millions if not billions of dollars more in indirect sales -- the ingredients used to make edible pot products, advertising, tourism and smoking paraphernalia.

With a recent poll showing more than half of Californians supporting legalization, pot advocates believe they will prevail. And they say other states will follow.

Tim Blake is the proprietor of a 145-acre spiritual retreat center which holds an annual marijuana bud-growing contest in the heart of Northern California's pot-growing country.

Politicians, he says, are "going to see the economic benefits, they're going to see the health benefits and they're going to jump on the bandwagon."

___

On a property flanked by vineyards, Mendocino County farmer Jim Hill grows marijuana for up to 20 patients, including himself and his wife. He believes passionately in marijuana's purported ability to treat the symptoms of diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer's; he says his wife suffers from a serotonin imbalance, and he uses the drug to treat digestive problems and intestinal cramping.

Hill's plants enjoy careful nurturing in a temperature-..controlled greenhouse. On a recent spring day, his college-age son spread bat guano to fertilize two dozen 6-foot-tall plants.

Hill is 45 years old; he says he spent $10,000 to set up the garden. Patients receive their drugs free in exchange for helping with his crop.

"It's kind of like living on an apple orchard," Hill said. "You don't pay for an apple."

Though marijuana is cultivated throughout California, the most prized crops come from the forested mountains and hidden valleys of Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties -- the Emerald Triangle.

The economic impact of so much pot is difficult to gauge. Authorities say the largest grows are run by Mexican drug cartels that simply funnel money from forest-raised crops back into their own bank accounts.

Still, marijuana money from outdoor and indoor plots inevitably flows into local coffers. Marijuana increases residents' retail buying power by about $58 million countywide, according to a Mendocino County report. The county ranks 48th out of 58 counties in median income but, by counting pot proceeds, could jump as high as 18th.

Businesses benefit from mom-and-pop growers who cultivate pot to supplement their incomes and from marijuana plantation workers who descend on the Emerald Triangle from all over the country for the fall harvest. Pot "trimmers" can earn more than $40 per hour.

In Ukiah, the county's largest city, business owners say the extra cash is crucial. "I really don't think we would exist without it," says Nicole Martensen, 37, whose wine and garden shop is stocked with bottles from county vintners.

The skunk-like smell of marijuana hangs over the town of about 11,000 during the October harvest, when cash registers brim with $100 bills. Sometimes the wads of cash spent in Martensen's shop come dusted with pot.

But Ukiah banker Marty Lombardi says existing businesses cannot compete with pot industry wages for workers. Lombardi's bank does not make loans to anyone suspected of trying to fund a pot operation, but he said most growers do not need them.

"I don't think you or I have any sense for how much money is generated," he said.

Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman says medical marijuana operations that follow state and county laws will face no hassles from his department. His deputies left intact 154 marijuana grows they visited last year, he said

"If you're living in the boundaries, I'm not going to mess with you," Allman said.

Which is not to say that there is no legal risk to growing, selling or buying marijuana. Federal laws still apply, and pot dealings not deemed medicinal are considered criminal by the state.

Local, state and federal authorities pulled up 364,000 plants across Mendocino last year. And the state Department of Justice reported more than 16,000 felony arrests and nearly 58,000 misdemeanor arrests for marijuana offenses in 2007 -- the highest numbers in a decade.

Sparky Rose sits in the federal prison in Lompoc, serving a 37-month term. Law enforcement officials insist he is one of many sellers who have used the medical marijuana law as a guise for old-time drug dealing. Rose does not disagree, although he would like to think he helped some legitimate pot patients in the process.

A one-time Web designer, he started out in 2001 making $15 an hour as a "bud tender" working the counter at an Oakland club. Four years later, he was overseeing a dispensary chain with stores in seven cities, 283 employees and sales reaching $5 million a month.

That's not as much as it seems, he says. Much of the money went to pay salaries, to purchase equipment and to buy 200 pounds of marijuana each week.

Rose says he was making $500,000 a year before his 2006 arrest, a sum he considers fair given the chain's volume and the risk he assumed as the company's public face. Before opening a new location, he would meet with local officials and police to get their implicit OK.

"We operated out in the open, and the feds knew who we were and they let us do it for four years, so as time goes on you get this comfortable feeling," he says.

"While I was still in the business, a lot people would ask me, 'I'm thinking about starting a club, what advice do you have?' "And I'd say, 'The biggest warning is sooner or later, you will start to think it's legal.'"

___

Even people accustomed to buying marijuana over the counter are impressed when they visit the Farmacy, a dispensary-..cum-New Age apothecary with three locations in Los Angeles. Decorated in soft beige and staffed by workers in lab coats, the Venice store sells organic toiletries, essential oils and incense along with 25 types of pot stored in glass jars, including strains such as Beverly Bubba and Third Eye.

Anyone can shop there, but to buy the cannabis-..infused gelato, olive oil, soft drinks and other "edibles," customers must show a doctor's recommendation,.. have the information verified by the doctor's office and obtain a patient identification number for future visits.

During a two-hour span, the dozen or so customers who made a purchase all bought pot products and paid the 9.25 percent state sales tax on top of their purchases. The clubs, which are not supposed to turn a profit, call their transactions "donations."

Allen Siegel is 74; he is dying of cancer and wants to try smoking marijuana to ease his pain without knocking him out like prescription drugs do. So his wife Ina brought him to the Farmacy for his first visit as a legal pot patient.

"You go in there and they have so many choices," she says.

California's "green rush" was spurred by a voter-approved law 13 years ago that authorized patients with a doctor's recommendation to possess and cultivate marijuana for personal use. Although a dozen other states have adopted similar laws, California is the only one where privately owned pot shops have flourished.

Los Angeles County alone has at least 400 pot dispensaries and delivery services, nearly twice as many outlets as Amsterdam, the Netherlands capital whose coffee shops have for decades been synonymous with free-market marijuana.

Promoted as a way to shield people with AIDS, cancer and anorexia who use marijuana from prosecution, the 1996 Compassionate Use Act also permitted limited possession for "any other illness for which marijuana provides relief."

The broad language opened the door to doctors willing to recommend pot for nearly any ailment. In a survey of nearly 2,500 patients, longtime Berkeley medical marijuana advocate Dr. Tod Mikuriya found that more than three-quarters of the patients used the drug for pain relief or mental health issues.

Dispensaries began selling marijuana, although they were risking federal charges. Some operators have become less fearful since U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said this year that the Justice Department would not target pot operations following state laws, reducing the risk of random federal raids that existed under the Bush administration.

California's pot dispensaries now have more in common with a corner grocery than a speakeasy. They advertise freely, offering discount coupons and daily specials.

Justin Hartfield, a 25-year-old Web designer and business student, founded WeedMaps.com, where pot clubs and doctors who write medi-pot recommendations.. list their services and users post reviews. Hartfield says the site has brought in nearly $250,000 in its first year.

Hartfield exhibited at THC Expo, a two-day trade show at the Los Angeles Convention Center that attracted an estimated 35,000 attendees in June. There was hydroponic gardening equipment and bong vendors and bikini-clad models wearing leis made of fake marijuana leaves.

Like just about everyone else connected to the cannabis trade, Hartfield has a letter from a doctor that entitles him to buy medical marijuana from a dispensary. But he sees no point in pretending he is treating anything more than his taste for smoking weed.

"It is a joke. It's a legal way for me to get what I used to get on the street," he said.

He recalls telling the doctor who provided the referral that he suffered from insomnia and anxiety, though neither was true. As he signed the paperwork, the doctor "congratulated me like I was getting my degree from Harvard."

___

What would happen if marijuana were legal -- not just for medical uses, but for all uses?

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, wants to tax and regulate all pot as it does alcohol. State Board of Equalization chairwoman Betty Yee, a supporter, projects the law would generate $990 million annually through a $50-per-ounce fee for retailers and $349 million in sales taxes. (The state now collects $18 million each year in taxes on medical marijuana.)

The state would not start collecting taxes on marijuana under Ammiano's bill until the federal government lifts its restrictions on the drug.

That's not enough for pro-pot activists who want Californians to vote next year on a proposal that would allow adults to legally possess up to one ounce of pot and allow cities to sell and tax the drug.

"Local governments are malnourished and in need of revenue badly," said Aaron Smith, state policy director for the Marijuana Policy Project, which advocates legalization. "There's this multibillion-..dollar industry that's the elephant in the room that they're not able to tap into."

Lintott, the Mendocino prosecutor, is not convinced that legalization would put an end to the underworld's marijuana operations. She argues that big-time growers would never bother filing tax returns. "Legalizing it isn't going to touch the big money," she says.

But others predict the black-market business model would fall apart.

Large-scale agri-..businesses in California's Central Valley would dominate legal marijuana production as they already do bulk wine grapes, advocates argue. Pot prices would fall dramatically, forcing growers to abandon costly clandestine operations that authorities say trash the land and steal scarce water.

And legalization, supporters insist, would save state and local governments billions on police, court and prison costs.

But others survey California in 2009 and say the cannabis future is now. Richard Lee has parlayed a pair of Oakland dispensaries into a mini-empire that includes a marijuana lifestyle magazine and a three-campus marijuana trade school. Oaksterdam University's main campus is a prominent fixture in revitalized downtown Oakland.

All without legalization.

"It's like here's reality, and here's the law," Lee says. "The culture has gone so far beyond the law, people have gotten used to being able to get quality product. They are not going to go back."




..

Medicinal Cannabis Update for South Lake Tahoe

The drought has been broken and South Lake Tahoe has joined the rest of California, opening 3 new Medical Cannabis dispensaries.

Tahoe Wellness Collective. Dispensary Address, 3445 Lake Tahoe Blvd. City, South Lake Tahoe. State, CA. Zip Code, 96150

City Of Angels 2 909 Third Street South Lake Tahoe CA 96150


Patient To Patient Collective 2314 Lake Tahoe Blvd. South Lake Tahoe CA 96150 Phone (530) 541-3240

as well as one on the North Shore in Tahoe City:

Tahoe Herbal Care Tahoe City CA 96145 (530) 563-8423



I hope this helps patients that need medication but are unaware or uninformed of their locations.

SUPPORT THE AMERICAN HORSE SLAUGHTER PREVENTION ACT

SUPPORT THE AMERICAN HORSE
SLAUGHTER PREVENTION ACT

Dear Member of Congress:

After four years of increasing public demand for an end to horse slaughter, you have an immediate opportunity to end this cruel practice. Congressional Horse Caucus Chair John Sweeney (R-NY) and Representatives John Spratt (D-SC), Ed Whitfield (R-KY) and Nick Rahall (D-WV) have introduced H.R. 503 to prevent the slaughter of horses for human consumption abroad. We ask you to support this bill, the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. Horses have always been a symbol of America..s free spirit. No other animal stirs such an emotional reaction. Horses have carried our leaders into battles, pulled our wagons into the untamed West, and thrilled us through sport. In fact, horses such as Secretariat, Man O.. War and Citation are considered among the top 100 athletes of the 20th century. The famous story of Seabiscuit, a once ..unwanted horse.. turned great champion, was recently considered for an Oscar.

Yet regardless of their fame and notoriety, no animal should be hauled across the country under the unhealthy and cruel conditions slaughter-bound horses face. Following their faithful service to humankind, our horses should not be killed at one of the three foreign-owned slaughterhouses in the United States so diners abroad can feast on their flesh. We strongly support the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act and have rejected arguments from those who claim ending horse slaughter will be bad for horses. Don..t be misled; ending horse slaughter will be nothing but good for horses, and we are confident that once you consider the facts, you will agree.

We urge you to follow the outstanding leadership of Representatives Sweeney, Spratt, Whitfield and Rahall on this issue and support H.R. 503. It..s not only about saving the lives of thousands of innocent horses; it..s about a better America.

On behalf of my friends, I thank you for your urgent consideration of the effort to end horse slaughter. If you would like more information, please visit www.saplonline.org.

Sincerely,

Willie Nelson
LUCK TEXAS

Ed Asner
Shane Barbi
Sia Barbi
Barbara Bosson
Ed Begley Jr.
Randy Bernard,
CEO, Professional Bull
Riders, Inc.
Kelly Bishop
Linda Blair
Barbara Bosson
Bruce Boxleitner
Jeff Bridges
Christie Brinkley
Rita Coolidge
John Corbett
Alex Cord
Catherine Crier, Court TV
James Cromwell
Sheryl Crow
Tony Curtis
Ellen DeGeneres
Ron Delsener
Bo Derek
Clint Eastwood
Mike Epps
Will Estes
Shelley Fabares
Morgan Fairchild
Mike Farrell
Jorja Fox
John Forsythe
Morgan Freeman
Kinky Friedman
John Fusco, screenwriter
Richard Gere
Melissa Gilbert
Whoopi Goldberg
Jane Goodall, PhD.
Merv Griffin
Arlo Guthrie
Gene Hackman
Merle Haggard
Jack Hanna
Daryl Hannah
Tess Harper
Tippi Hedren
Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit
George Jones
Ashley Judd
Toby Keith
Eddy Kilroy, Hank..s Place
Carole King
Carson Kressley
Kris Kristofferson
George Lopez
Wendie Malick
Peter Max
Mrs. Roger (Mary) Miller
Steve Miller
John Trudell
Leonard Cohen
Bonnie Raitt
Stewart Copeland
Pierce Brosnan
Keely Brosnan

A rejuvenated Grateful Dead winds up first tour in five years
By Paul Liberatore
Posted: 05/11/2009 03:17:07 PM PDT
Updated: 05/11/2009 11:21:08 PM PDT


Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh (left) and guitarist Bob Weir (front) perform at the Shoreline Amphitheater. The Dead performed its first homecoming show at the end of their first tour in five years in front of a packed house of fans at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View on Sunday. (Special to the IJ/Douglas Zimmerman)Fourteen years after Jerry Garcia's death, the four surviving members of the Grateful Dead have finally come together again as a band.

And the 20,000 Deadheads who sold out the Shoreline Amphitheater Sunday night for the band's homecoming show couldn't be happier about it.

The Shoreline concert, the first of two at the airy Mountain View venue, came at the end of the Dead's first national tour in five years.

"It's everything I could have hoped for," said 49-year-old Scott Bucey of Corte Madera, a member of the Marin Symphony board and a Deadhead since 1978. "It brings us back to where we were before Jerry died in 1995. I only wish that they had done this sooner."

Wearing a tie-dye T-shirt, Bucey was at the concert with his

Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart address the crowd to be patient for the start of the concert because thousands of ticket holders were still outside the amphitheater at the scheduled start of the concert Sunday. (Special to the IJ/Douglas Zimmerman)wife, Jennifer.
"The people in the audience are saying, 'This is it, finally,'" she said. "'It's taken 14 years, but this is it.'"

After they lost Garcia, the Grateful Dead's lead guitarist and charismatic paterfamilias, the four other founding members - guitarist-singer Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann - feuded over business and personal issues. The only thing they seemed to agree on was dropping "Grateful" from their name in honor of their fallen bandmate.

That's why this 20-plus-concert reunion tour has become such a milestone in the 40-year history of the Marin-based band.

And even in the worst economy since the Great Depression, the Dead remain a highly attractive touring act, playing major markets like New York and Washington D.C.
"We're selling 15,000 to 20,000 tickets every night," said Tim Jorstad of San Rafael, the Dead's business manager. "In this economy, that's really good. The guys are stoked."

Mickey Hart certainly was, standing backstage before the show with a lit cigar in one hand and a drumstick in the other.

"We really found each other on this tour," he said with his characteristic energy and enthusiasm. "We're renewing our friendship. We're starting to become a group again."
The man who has promised to reunite the country, President Barack Obama, also did his part in reuniting the Dead.

They came together for the first time at a Warfield fundraiser for Obama the night before the California primary. And a huge Obama benefit concert in Pennsylvania last year sealed the deal for this tour.

The president was so grateful for their support that he invited them to visit him in the Oval Office when the band played in Washington D.C.

Rolling Stone magazine ran a photo of him and the band under the headline "Deadhead in Chief."

And it turns out that several members of the president's staff, including senior advisers Pete Rouse and David Axelrod, are Dead fans. With other West Wingers,

Huntington Beach resident Julie Postel (center) holds a Grateful Dead poster before the start of the concert. Her first Grateful Dead concert was in 1985. (Special to the IJ/Douglas Zimmerman)they were happily grooving at the band's April 15 show in D.C.
That same night Hart invited Tipper Gore, a longtime friend, to sit in on drums on "Sugar Magnolia."

At Shoreline, the Dead started 45 minutes late, waiting for the jubilant crowd to file in from the vast parking lots, and played past the amphitheater's 11:30 p.m. curfew. Bolstered by lead guitarist Warren Haynes of the Allman Bros. Band and Government Mule, and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti from Weir's band Ratdog, the Dead played classics like "Sugaree," "Sugar Magnolia" and, to close the first set, an operatic rendition of "Uncle John's Band" with pipe organ harmonies.

The packed house seemed to move with the music like one giant undulating organism at a pot party. Balloons and beach balls floated above the crowd and occasionally bounced onto the stage.

The Dead, concentrating on their trademark improvisational rock, may disdain showmanship, but they know how to put on a show. During their traditional "Rhythm Devils" and "Space" numbers, a sexy group of five female fire dancers came out to add even more heat and light to the far-out proceedings.

The Dead seemed extra soulful on more introspective songs like "Unbroken Chain" and a 20-minute version of "Help on the Way." Because they are now among rock's senior citizens, choosing "Touch of Grey," their only Top 40 hit, as their final encore seemed symbolic.

Asked if they will tour again, Hart said, "We need to get through this tour first."

But the sense was that, as long as they remain healthy, this tour may be the beginning or a late career revival. Or not.

"Since Garcia died, everyone was unsettled musically and personally," said Hart's wife, Caryl. "It took a long time to find a new balance, and that's what you're seeing now."

The Dead play again at Shoreline on Thursday night. There's no telling when they may do that again. As someone close to the aging band said: "If you're a Deadhead, you don't want to sit this one out."
MY SHOE

Contact Paul Liberatore via e-mail at liberatore@marinij.com




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Grateful Dead fan Tahoe Jimbo 420 wears tie-dye shoes before the start of the concert. (Special to the IJ/Douglas Zimmerman)

DEA Raids a Cannabis Dispensary

http://hightimes.com/video/ht_admin/5225


A week after the Attorney General defended state-sanctioned medical marijuana, federal agents raid a cannabis collective in San Francisco.

WATCH THE VIDEO

I made the local NEWS

Medical marijuana has become a growth industry in Colorado

Medical marijuana has become a growth industry in Colorado
By Joel Warner
published: February 05, 2009

Michael Lee tends to his latest crop of medical marijuana.

Scott Carr (above) is the THC Foundation's regional manager in Colorado; Warren Edson (right) co-authored the state's medical marijuana law.

Subject(s):
medical marijuana, dispensaries, Cannabis TherapeuticsSee photos of 12 strains of Cannabis Therapeutics' supply at westword.com/slideshow

Behind a locked, unmarked door in a Colorado Springs strip mall, the state's largest marijuana dispensary is open for business.

The operation's aromatic showroom is packed floor to ceiling with pot and anything and everything related to it. "Welcome to Cannabis Therapeutics. Intended for prescribed medical use only!" announces a large sign on the wall.

Glass cases display Baggie upon Baggie of pot — 35 varieties in all. Those looking for cheap medicine can go for the $250-an-ounce, bargain-basement Holland's Hope or upgrade to $300-an-ounce Thunderstruck or $400-an-ounce Purple Haze. Big spenders can opt for top-shelf meds such as a crop of Chocolate Chunk priced at $500 an ounce. It's all available to buy loose or ready to smoke in pre-rolled blunts. And, for green thumbs, cloned marijuana seedlings sit in a bubbling tray of water, waiting for the right buyer.

Today an older woman is here buying some Silver Skunk to help ease lingering pain from a shattered right femur she suffered in a car accident, as well as recurring migraines and fibromyalgia. "I don't like marijuana, but I have no choice," she says as she pays part of her $136 bill in cash and puts the rest on a debit card.

A mother in a track suit leaves her teenage daughter pouting in the lobby while she shops; a younger fellow in baggy jeans and a hoodie samples some Mexican True Blue.

A staffer is ready to help newbies who've just coughed up their $25 annual membership fee establish what mixture of sativa and indica, the two core strains of medical marijuana, is appropriate for their particular illness. For multiple sclerosis, it's best to go with a cross breed that's at least 65 percent indica, known for its relaxing physical high. Sufferers of debilitating stress, on the other hand, typically opt for sativa, which provides more of a mental high.

To administer the medicine, there is a smorgasbord of colorful glass pipes and bongs available, courtesy of a Manitou Springs glass blower. For those who don't want to smoke their determined dosage, there are vaporizers to help clients inhale it, as well as THC pills, THC oils, THC butter, THC fudge, ice cream, bubble gum, hot chocolate mix, cheese, fountain drinks, roll-on pain relievers and bubble bath. Stashed away in a cabinet are jars filled with marijuana marinating in Don Julio and Cazadores tequila.

"It's not about getting high," says Michael Lee, the owner of Cannabis Therapeutics. "It's about getting medicated." Lee founded the operation three years ago under the auspices of Colorado's Amendment 20. The constitutional amendment — approved by voters in 2000 — allows people with cancer, glaucoma, HIV, AIDS, muscle spasms, severe pain, severe nausea and other medical conditions to use marijuana.

With a recommendation from a licensed Colorado doctor, patients can obtain a state-issued Medical Marijuana Registry identification card to show to police — though it does nothing to change the fact that the federal government still considers marijuana illegal. Patients may cultivate their own medicine or designate a primary caregiver to provide it for them. Lee and his colleagues at Cannabis Therapeutics, for example, are designated caregivers to more than 600 patients around the state.

This arrangement has proved lucrative: Lee, 44, says his dispensary earns about $105,000 a month, $75,000 of which he says goes back out the door for more monthly product. This onetime owner of a Colorado Springs flooring company insists, however, that his current occupation is more than a business.

"I clinically died. I can't lie. I won't lie," he declares, gesturing to a faded news clipping on the wall. It describes a car crash years ago in Santa Barbara, California, in which a young passenger was killed, and notes that "the driver, Michael Lee, 19, suffered head and internal injuries, and his condition is listed as critical."

After being clinically dead for 41 minutes and spending eleven days in a coma, he turned to marijuana for healing. Years later, lingering pain and muscle spasms led Lee, who is also a member of local mega-churches New Life and Radiant, to become one of Colorado's first certified medical marijuana patients, and he soon found himself helping other people who used marijuana for pain and illness. Now there's no more established operation around for getting medicated.

Lee has signed contracts with seven Colorado growers — all legal under Amendment 20, he promises, because they're registered caregivers for some of his patients. Each grower provides him with roughly a pound and a half of dried marijuana per month. Cannabis Therapeutics is also insured, says Lee, who convinced his insurance agency to design a dispensary policy just for him.

He also has a good relationship with the Colorado Springs police, having invited them in for a tour in 2006 after the cops caught wind of the operation.

"It was very educational," says Lieutenant Catherine Buckley of the visit. "It was not something the officers see on a daily basis."

When the Environmental Protection Agency poked around in response to a complaint about alleged chemical dumping, they couldn't find a single health or safety violation. All in all, says Lee, who goes by the nickname "the Herbologist" on websites like www.rollitup.org and www.weedtracker.com, everything here is square with Amendment 20. After all, his lawyer, Warren Edson, co-authored the law.

That leaves Lee in the center of a booming state industry. The number of patients who've received a medical marijuana ID card recently crested 5,000, twice what it was a year ago. And while it's hard to determine the absolute number of active dispensaries, there are at least two dozen, along with clinics dedicated to helping people obtain marijuana ID cards, lawyers and tax attorneys hanging shingles as authorities in pot law, even an ad hoc university churning out potential new dispensary owners and employees.

"In the last year, it is my understanding that the number of dispensaries in Colorado has grown from two to about thirty," says Keith Stroup, founder of the national pot lobbying group NORML. "Without question, there are more medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado than in any state other than California."

But the cottage industry is fraught with problems. Many doctors refuse to recommend marijuana, in part because possessing and smoking pot is still a federal offense, while a bad few could be exploiting the medical marijuana laws for financial gain. As an unregulated and gray-area industry, there are also inconsistent practices, high prices, oversized egos, safety concerns and possible black-market involvement — not to mention disregard, if not outright hostility, from law enforcement and city officials.

A major change could be on the way. On March 18, the Colorado Board of Health — the advisory board for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment — will consider new medical marijuana regulations.

Along with expanding Medical Marijuana Registry application requirements, the proposal would require caregivers to offer additional services to their patients besides providing them with pot. Most significant would be the reinstatement of a five-patient-per-caregiver limit the state health board put in place after Amendment 20's passage, a restriction that deterred the growth of Colorado dispensaries until it was overturned in Denver District Court in 2007.

The new rules "could have an impact on the large-scale operations," says Ron Hyman, registrar of vital statistics for the CDPHE. "I would say it probably will."

The changes could make business more difficult for Lee — but by that point, he may have already moved on. When an anonymous caller threatened to kidnap his young son several months ago, it was one frustration too many. Lee moved his family, got a German shepherd to guard his son and started thinking about selling his dispensary.

"I'm done. I don't care anymore. I've seen a dark side to this," fumes Lee. "I clinically died. I demand life to be fair!" His face turns crimson and his temper bubbles to the surface. Exasperated, he decides to let off some steam. Excusing himself for a minute, he gestures to an employee to fetch him his foot-long Technicolor pipe.

"I'm gonna go medicate."


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For a bunch of supposedly lazy stoners, Colorado's marijuana activists are a committed bunch. At 9 a.m. on a recent Saturday, hundreds of people gathered at Regis University in northwest Denver for the Colorado Marijuana Reform Seminar and Activist Boot Camp.

"I think this speaks volumes about our movement," Brian Vicente, executive director of the drug-policy reform organization Sensible Colorado, told the group.

There were nicely dressed middle-aged folks, older couples in knitted sweaters and younger guys wearing backpacks decorated with Grateful Dead patches. A full day of activities lay ahead: sessions on lobbying strategies and media relations, plus panels featuring Denver City Councilman Chris Nevitt, Colorado State Representative Paul Weissmann and Colorado ACLU Legal Director Mark Silverstein. Lunch would feature sandwiches donated by Cheba Hut, a restaurant chain offering its signature "'Toasted' Subs" in Boulder and Fort Collins.

And just so everybody knows, Vicente reminded the group, "This is a non-smoking workshop. We are here to change the laws, not break the laws."

Vicente and his colleagues have big plans for Colorado, building on years of victories. In 2005, Denver became one of the first cities in the country to have its voters "decriminalize" marijuana by making it legal for people over 21 to possess up to an ounce of it. Two years later, the city's voters agreed that law enforcement should make adult marijuana possession its lowest priority. Part of the plan today is to strategize about ways to pass similar initiatives in other Colorado communities. While an attempt to pass a state law decriminalizing up to an ounce of marijuana failed in 2006, activists here believe it's only a matter of time before such legislation passes.

"This will be the nail in the coffin of the drug war," Vicente continued. "Colorado will be seen as the place that ended the government's ninety-year prohibition of marijuana."

It all started with Amendment 20. The law allows a person suffering from certain illnesses or that individual's caregiver to possess up to two ounces of marijuana or six marijuana plants, but it doesn't specify much about the relationship between patients and caregivers. To help fill in the holes, in 2004 the CDPHE developed a five-patient maximum for caregivers, says Hyman. "We were trying to determine how many patients a caregiver could provide for that would be significant and reasonable," he explains.

But when Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves suspended that limit in 2007 because it lacked public input, caregivers were allowed to take on as many patients — and their marijuana quotients — as they liked, even make a business out of it.

That, it turns out, was part of the plan all along for Amendment 20, the only medical marijuana law in the nation that's a constitutional amendment.

"The plan was to write it into our constitution so it couldn't be tweaked," says Edson, the law's co-author. "There is a reason there are no limits to the number of people you can be a caregiver for. There is a reason a caregiver isn't specifically designated as a doctor or a nurse. It is left open to a broad range of individuals."

For one thing, if doctors were responsible for actually providing patients with marijuana, the federal government might retaliate by revoking their Drug Enforcement Administration-issued licenses, which allow them to prescribe narcotics.

Furthermore, Edson had noticed the inklings of a dispensary industry developing in California, whose open-ended 1996 medical marijuana law led to an industry there that now boasts hundreds of such businesses. He decided that an entrepreneurial take on medical marijuana would encourage product diversity, innovative practices and competitive prices, all to the benefit of patients.

"I like to see some of these places where a patient has some options," he says. "Where it's not just one guy in his basement with one type of medicine."

So while other states included impediments to dispensaries in their medical marijuana laws or eventually had lawmakers implement such restrictions, in Colorado the free-market approach was allowed to flourish.

The results were evident at the activist boot camp. In a side room, staffers in vendor booths handed out brochures and business cards for dispensary operations, not to mention marijuana-friendly medical clinics and drug-law-savvy lawyers.

Denver real-estate broker Michael Griffin says he's recently picked up three clients, all looking to open 1,500- to 3,000-square-foot dispensaries in the area: "People are noticing it as a viable business. Once it's legal, I think it's no different than a liquor store."

Michelle LaMay has also found a niche. Last fall, the longtime Denver activist launched "Cannabis University," a day-long, $250 program that gives students a run-down on marijuana laws and growing practices. It's for patients wanting to produce their own medicine, and a mini-MBA for those wishing to break into the business.

"I'm hoping the vast number of caregivers and dispensaries will have to hire some people. And maybe they will hire our students," she says.

While they go by different names, dispensaries or caregiver cooperatives operate under roughly the same model. Patients who wish to buy pot must designate that operation as their primary caregiver on their medical marijuana license by filling out a state health department application. Since the law doesn't say where the pot has to come from, dispensaries can theoretically pick it up anywhere: indoor grow rooms overseen by a dispensary's owner or employees; out-of-sight backyard gardens tended by patients; middlemen hawking stuff from large, clandestine outfits squirreled away in the mountains or in networks of fluorescent-lit basements.

According to Amendment 20, the marijuana is legal as soon as it gets into a patient or caregiver's hands, so no need to ask too much about its provenance.

Many dispensaries operate quietly, relying on word of mouth, while a few advertise openly. If Edson's predictions are correct, local dispensary owners could eventually be servicing a statewide client base of 50,000 registered patients.

"It's a full-on gold rush," says Paul Saurini, producer of Marijuana Radio, a weekly pot-themed radio podcast recorded in a slick studio in the Santa Fe Arts District and broadcast in many a dispensary. "People are rushing here to make a buck. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but I think it's a fascinating moment for the movement."


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To get a Colorado Medical Marijuana ID card, Colorado residents first need a doctor who will recommend them for the confidential state registry. And to get that recommendation, many patients turn to the Hemp and Cannabis Foundation in Wheat Ridge. Of the 5,000 people on the registry, about 2,700 relied on its services.

One of those is Sandra, who's been on the registry since 2005, but who, like all medical marijuana patients, has to go through the state's annual renewal process. That means another visit to the foundation's 1,500-square-foot, third-floor office in a professional building on Wadsworth Boulevard.

Sandra, her pigtails streaked with gray, sits in a solemn, bare-walled waiting room surrounded by people filling out paperwork or watching a marijuana video on TV. It's a scene that's playing out in similar waiting rooms across the country: the nonprofit, known as the THC Foundation, also has clinics in medical marijuana-friendly states like Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, Montana, California, Nevada and Michigan.

Eventually, Sandra is called into the office of Eric Eisenbud, a lanky Colorado ophthalmologist. Before Eisenbud has a chance to review Sandra's history — her multiple sclerosis diagnosis in 1995, her MS-related leg spasms that qualify her for medical marijuana, and the recent discovery that she has degenerative disc disease in her spine — Sandra blurts out, "Thank you for being here for us." She's well aware how hard it is to find a doctor who will recommend patients for the registry. Before she found the THC Foundation in 2006, she asked her primary care physician to recommend her for medical marijuana — and says the doctor nearly threw her out.

Eisenbud's heard hard-luck stories like this before. "My feeling is that a large number of doctors in Colorado are open-minded, but they've been misinformed," he says later. Much of the confusion and apprehension in the medical community stems from the fact that after Amendment 20 passed, then-attorney general Ken Salazar warned doctors that they could face federal charges if they participated in the program. It doesn't help that the Colorado Medical Society hasn't taken a stance and that the American Medical Association has said it won't recognize the medical use of marijuana without further studies. (Other prominent medical groups, such as the American College of Physicians and the British Medical Association, have endorsed the idea of medical marijuana.)

Many doctors play it safe by not dabbling in marijuana at all. At Denver Health Medical Center, physicians are allowed to write letters to help patients get registered, says hospital spokeswoman Dee Martinez. But patient Eric Easter counters that notion, saying his doctors refused to recommend him for the state registry: "They said they don't do this even if you were dying of AIDS."

"That's where we come in," says Paul Stanford, the Portland-based founder of the THC Foundation. "When we first moved into Colorado, in 2006, there were only 700 medical marijuana cards statewide." Now, three years later, the Wheat Ridge clinic sees about seventy new patients a week, says Scott Carr, the foundation's regional manager in Colorado. Carr also believes the foundation has helped the medical community warm up to medical marijuana. According to the state, more than 500 doctors have now signed for patients here, and some insurance carriers cover THC Foundation visits. "I've had HMO nurses call and ask what the best vaporizer is for patients to buy," says Carr. The clinic even has a competitor — an operation called CannaMed that opened in Denver offering similar services. CannaMed representatives did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

But the THC Foundation also has at least one critic: its former doctor on duty, Shawn Elke Glazer. "They're all about making as much money as possible until marijuana gets legalized," says Glazer, a former Libertarian candidate for state representative who now runs the Colorado Green Cross medical clinic in Wheat Ridge.

She believes the THC Foundation signs up as many people as possible so they'll fork over the $200 visit fee, whether they warrant medical marijuana or not. The fact that a marijuana dispensary now operates in the same building as the foundation raises red flags as well, since it could put the clinic in violation of a 2003 Supreme Court ruling saying that doctors can't assist patients in obtaining marijuana.

Stanford calls that nonsense, but Glazer isn't the only one who has questioned the foundation's motives. In 2005, the Oregon justice department began looking into the Portland-based nonprofit for potential IRS violations, such as a $100,000 reimbursement it made to Stanford. "It's an ongoing thing. It has caused a little extra scrutiny, but it hasn't caused any problems whatsoever," Stanford says.

Carr notes that the Wheat Ridge clinic only works with patients who have medical records proving they qualify for the state law and turns away those who don't. He also adamantly denies association with any dispensary, including the one that operates in the same building. The owners of that business, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, concur that there's no connection.

Sandra has no complaints about the THC Foundation, and she'll follow it when it relocates to bigger digs near Speer Boulevard and I-25. Yes, the cost of the visit on top of the $90 annual state registration fee isn't easy on her budget, especially since she spends about $300 a month on marijuana. Still, she's grateful for its existence: "Thank goodness the service is here and it's helping me. This place is safe."

In the past, she didn't feel so safe obtaining her medicine. In 2005, before the THC Foundation opened, she went to a Loveland doctor who charged her more than $400 for the service. Then, to get marijuana, she relied on an operation run out of a former Denver church called the Colorado Compassion Club. The club operated at night and had armed guards at the doors, Sandra says. "There were all these people, and I didn't feel safe at all. It was like being in a bread line."

After that, Sandra was referred to Ken Gorman, a well-known Denver pot activist and one-time write-in candidate for governor.

"I don't have my medical certification up to date," she remembers telling Gorman when she reached him by phone. "Are you sick?" he replied. "That's all I need to know."

"Here was someone I'd never met, and he was so kind to me," says Sandra, who decided to make him her caregiver. She never got a chance to follow through. That weekend, on February 17, 2007, Gorman was shot and killed in his home.


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Gorman's death, which is still unsolved, sent shockwaves through the medical marijuana community. It also created a vacuum that permanently changed the industry in Colorado.

Today there are storefront operations like Cannabis Medical, the Healing Center, North Reasonable Access Denver, Denver Patients Caregivers Cooperative and the Kind Room, and delivery services like Confidential Caregivers Unlimited and the Organic Medicine Club. Among them are settings to suit every taste, from dorm-room-like operations with mismatched thrift-store furniture and mega-sized posters of killer kind bud to dentist-office-like venues complete with cushy couches and bubbling aquariums.

Because state law doesn't explicitly sanction dispensaries, the businesses try to protect themselves by making sure that everyone involved is either a patient or a caregiver. "Most of their employees are patients themselves and are listed caregivers for some of these people," Edson says. "And most of the dispensary owners are listed as caregivers for some of the people. But the equivalent of a pharmacy just doesn't exist under the amendment." That's why dispensary owners typically consult with a cadre of lawyers, squirrel away documentation listing their patients and are reluctant to talk to the press.

"We hate to be this evasive," says Daniel Tsirlin, co-owner of Alternative Medicine of Southeast Denver, a newly opened dispensary. "Why not let people know? On the other hand, you don't want to be the first to do anything. Be the second."

That's a good approach, judging by the comments of Jeff Sweetin, special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain field division of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

"We are investigating some dispensaries throughout this region," Sweetin says, without giving specifics. "The DEA investigates large, well-organized, well-funded organizations. Some of these dispensaries rise to that level." Sweetin is concerned that elements of the medical marijuana scene are tied up with organized crime, in part because Amendment 20 doesn't include rules about where dispensaries can buy their pot.

Early last year, authorities busted a multimillion-dollar marijuana ring involving dozens of indoor grow operations in the north metro region — and Sweetin believes there's a connection to the medical marijuana scene. "It's the largest, most organized indoor grow operation I have ever seen," he says. "I don't believe that's coincidence. I believe they purposely moved that operation to Colorado."

For the most part, however, he says the dispensaries are the problem of local and state agencies — and so far, no one seems to know exactly what to do about them.

Police officers are frustrated by trying to differentiate between illegal drug users and state-certified patients and caregivers, says Captain William Nagle of Denver's Vice and Drug Control Bureau, especially since the only time state health employees can verify certifications is during weekday business hours — not the most conducive time for drug cops. When mistaken raids have occurred, judges have sometimes demanded that law enforcement return the confiscated marijuana and paraphernalia — though police say that by doing so, they could be breaking federal law themselves.

Dispensary owners have grievances, too. While they operate without problem in Denver, other cities haven't been as welcoming. Former Aurora dispensary owner John Chipman says he was hardly up and running before he was run out of town because a city ordinance there didn't allow businesses to operate in violation of federal law. "They said they don't have pit bulls, they don't have massage parlors and they don't want any dispensaries," he says.

Others have problems with crime. Last November, Fort Collins dispensary owner James Masters told reporters that his operation had been burglarized or vandalized nine times in a month. While Masters couldn't be reached for comment, several sources claim these crimes were part of a rash of medical marijuana robberies — including, according to Carr, an attempted break-in at the THC Foundation.

Patients have their own complaints, grumbling that the current business climate is filled with grandstanding and ego clashes, slapdash practices and exorbitant prices. There's no easy way for them to shop around to find better options, however, since they're required to designate only one caregiver.

Officials, law enforcement, caregivers and patients can agree on one thing: The industry should be regulated. They say they'd like to see consistent health standards and better communication between police, government agencies and medical marijuana operations, not to mention dispensary-specific rules and licenses. But since Amendment 20 is written into the Constitution, there's no easy way to tweak the law without a vote of the people, not to mention courting antagonism from either the state's growing medical marijuana community or the federal government.

"The reason you don't have clear and positive regulatory enforcement is that a lot of entities are afraid to piss off the feds by setting up any kind of regulatory environment," says Matthew Kumin, a San Francisco attorney who consults for numerous California dispensaries. "You have something that should be happening more but isn't because of fear."


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Michael Lee runs his soil-dusted hands under the faucet at Cannabis Therapeutics. He's spent the morning planting new strains of marijuana seedlings in a grow room, preparing for his next big endeavor. He just got a call finalizing his purchase of $20,000 worth of dirt that he'll use to fill a 30-foot-by-97-foot plot of land he's obtained at an undisclosed spot along the Front Range. Eventually, he says, he'll ask United States Department of Agriculture officials to inspect the site, since his plan is to grow certified organic marijuana.

That way, even if he does sell Cannabis Therapeutics, he'll still be involved with producing medicine for it and other dispensaries. He'll also continue to operate Genovations Laboratories, the research-and-development company for marijuana-infused products that he runs out of a secure warehouse space near Cannabis Therapeutics. There, thanks to an expensive extraction machine and a full-scale chemistry lab, he's pulling THC out of plants and inserting it into tinctures, foods, maybe someday into self-replicating yeast. "I can medicate your hot dogs," he says. "I can medicate your hamburgers."

And while Lee may shift his business focus away from his dispensary, he and other owners say the proposed new regulations won't go through without a fight.

"We're probably going to rent buses. We are going to try to get 1,000 patients there," says Edson of the March 18 Colorado Board of Health hearing. "I've been dealing with these [medical marijuana] folks for ten-plus years. I don't think the attorney general's office and the health department appreciates what is about to happen."

The health department's Hyman understands that the meeting will be "energetic." The point, he says, is to include as many people as possible in the process, which is what Judge Naves said the department didn't do when he struck down the five-person-per caregiver rule in 2007.

Lee believes it will take another vote to make changes to Amendment 20, and despite his talk of selling Cannabis Therapeutics, he has many more plans. A few doors down from the dispensary, he's opened a patient activity resource center, where, amid a pool table, a massage chair and a cappuccino machine, patients meet with caregivers and receive alternative treatments for their conditions.

"It can't just be about weed," he says. "You're going to see more places like this once the bar is set, because the state will say places like this can stay open while others have to close."

And he has even bigger dreams for the day marijuana becomes legal for everyone: A gentlemen's club, ready from day one, with prices starting at $500 an ounce. After all, he says with a grin as he reaches for his bowl, "Why shouldn't I be a household name?"

DEA Defies The Obama Administration

DEA Defies The Obama Administration; Second Day In Office
By Betty Nuggs Northern California Cannabis Clubs Published January 23, 2009


The DEA continues to defy Obama's claim to end all funding distributed toward performing raids on medical marijuana facilities. In defiance, the DEA performed three senseless raids on medical marijuana dispensaries that led to no arrests, but only an organized legal form of robbery.

January 22nd the DEA raided Holistic Solutions in South Lake Tahoe. This was the first Federal raid to occur since President Obama took office. However, no arrests were made only cash, medical marijuana, and paperwork were confiscated. Successful medical marijuana dispensary owners are already paying state taxes up to $300,000, which doesn't even include federal taxes that are double that number. Not only is arresting medical marijuana dispensary owners not progressive, but how about double taxing honest taxpaying business owners by robbing their facility of money and product through legalized thuggery progressive? The only progress made through an action like that, is fear. Government funding should be used to fight terrorism against our country, not incite within. Our country is ready for a change and we fully supported and elected the individual who promotes that change.

Please exercise that same power and let your voice be heard by calling the White House. As provided by Americans for Safe Access, if you are speechless about these events, please feel free to use this dialogue below when calling the White House.

President Obama's position on medical marijuana is no secret. This is the single most important action you have been asked to take this year. We need President Obama's support. Once you've made this phone call, please forward this message to friends and family. Then visit www.whitehouse.gov/contact to copy and paste the above message.



Call The White House Today!

White House Comment Line: (202) 456-1111

"Hi, my name is _____________. Today, the Drug Enforcement Agency raided a medical cannabis dispensary in Tahoe, California. The dispensary was raided by DEA despite numerous statements by President Obama saying he would end federal interference with state medical cannabis laws. I'm very concerned about outgoing DEA officials undermining these state laws and aggressively threatening innocent Americans. I'm also concerned about DEA taking action that is an affront to President Obama's position. I am pleading with President Obama to issue an immediate suspension of all federal funds used to investigate, intimidate, arrest, or prosecute individuals who use or provide medical cannabis in accordance with their state laws. We are being threatened by our own DEA. Please help us."



Useful Links:
We have provided the following links for reference:

http://www.examiner.com/a-1413681~Feds_raid_Peninsula_s_only_marijuana_club.html

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle_blog/2008/nov/06/will_obama_end_the_medical_marij

Obama on med pot
This is from November of last year:

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/11/25/479649.aspx

"My attitude is if the science and the doctors suggest that the best palliative care and the way to relieve pain and suffering is medical marijuana then that's something I'm open to because there's no difference between that and morphine when it comes to just giving people relief from pain,” Obama said. “But I want to do it under strict guidelines. I want it prescribed in the same way that other painkillers or palliative drugs are prescribed.”

Morphine, of course, is Schedule 2, which means the doctors have to file each prescription with the DEA, who are on the lookout for doctors that prescribe "too much." This is considerably more restrictive than, for example, the med pot regime they have in California.

So, reading between the lines a little bit, it would seem that the president-elect wants to move marijuana from Sched 1 (no medical use) to Sched 2 (yes, medical use, but really, really closely watched, and only if you really, really, need it). Schedule 2 means the doc has to file each prescription with the DEA. If this happens, what happens to the marijuana dispensaries in California?

Well, one answer is that they would have to close their doors, because there is no longer a justification for them. Those people who really need the pot can go through the "strict guidelines" and get it the precise measured doses that they need rather than the free-for-all you have in California. The new Michigan initiative, which as I understand it would allow patients to grow their own, would seem to be out as well. All these local initiatives will be replaced by the Schedule 2.

All of this is consistent with the "Dear Friend" note you got from Obama for America, and I'd consider that a real possibility.

Since the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, the federal government has had the task of regulating prescription drugs. As it ought to; having a patchwork quilt, each state drawing up its own rules is very cumbersome for a matter as complicated as this.

A BRIEF LIST OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE SMOKED MARIJUANA

Wooden Bears

To all my deadhead readers and friends.

I got an e-mail the other day from a guy named Keith who said he had seen a picture of my old truck the warthog, and he wanted to send me a bear for the rear view mirror. I answered and told im that the warthog had gone to the junkyard in heaven, and he answered back saying he wanted me to have one anyway.

I got not one but two in the mail yesterday, a small magnet and a larger one we just hung on the christmas tree. They are beautiful and if you want one here is Keith's e-mail address:
kpolfuss@yahoo.com and his website is:

http://www.geocities.com/kpolfuss/Beartracks.html

So check out his site, and help a brother and your karma and pick one up.

MEDICAL MARIJUANA FARM FUTURE IS UNCERTAIN

Buddhist prayer flags lined the walls and a German shepherd slept at the foot of a mint-green couch as Valerie Leveroni Corral considered life and loss from her office chair.She spoke about the impending loss of a home and garden that has provided medicine to the sick for over 15 years as she discussed the impact her work as co-founder of Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM) has had on her life.“The best thing about WAMM is this community of heroes. We are courageous and generous and wacky,” Corral said. “We’re everything. We see each other’s frailties and each other’s strengths. And during the hardships, and the hardest thing of all — death and illness — we still manage to find the way to survive.”WAMM, a local nonprofit organization that has provided free medical marijuana to the terminally ill since 1993, faces possible extinction.Corral, and separated husband and WAMM co-founder Michael Corral, face the loss of the land on which WAMM’s marijuana plants grow.Due to a combination of legal blows, the Corrals are fighting to keep WAMM afloat.A lawsuit following federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raids on WAMM’s garden, complications with inheritance of the property upon the death of their land partner, and the inability to qualify for a loan may seal the fate of WAMM.“We are constantly chasing money instead of chasing the integrity of our efforts. It turns into this kind of financial dance,” Corral said.She said that because of generous checks that arrived by mail from WAMM supporters, the organization will be able to survive December.Corral continues to hope for a miracle.“I’m still hoping that there might be an investor or a philanthropist who might see a possibility — something that we could build on.”Ben Rice has been WAMM’s lawyer for 15 years and a friend of the Corrals for more than 20.Rice says that what crippled WAMM financially was the raid on its plants and property in 2002 by the federal government.“Because the government did that to WAMM, they have never been able to regain their financial footing,” Rice said.“It’s always hard for a nonprofit collection that’s based on the goodness and passion of people like Val and Mike to sustain itself, but WAMM had been able to do it for a number of years.It was [the DEA] taking that much of their medicine — roughly a year to two-year supply — which forced WAMM to turn to other methods of getting their medicine to people. It really set them back and also caused a lot of health issues for people.”In response to the DEA raid, WAMM filed a lawsuit against the federal government. Six years later, the lawsuit has yet to be resolved.Proposition 215, which legalized medical marijuana to seriously ill patients, was passed in California in 1996 by a 56-percent yes vote.Emily Reilly, a former mayor of Santa Cruz and member of the Santa Cruz City Council, expressed her sadness.“The loss of the WAMM land is really a sad day for this community,” Reilly said.“It’s sad for WAMM but especially for this community, and this country really. The fact that we’re just not able to have some logic and compassion over this issue is really shameful. Medical marijuana has never been about the illegal use of recreational drugs — it’s about having compassion for sick and dying people. That’s all Mike and Val have ever been focused on and it’s a loss for us all.”Corral acknowledged the support Santa Cruz has provided WAMM over the years.“We live in the most amazing community,” she said. “We have really been alive and survived this long because of Santa Cruz and the people that live here. Because of our City Council, our Board of Supervisors and also because of community members, our attorneys … the support has been just overwhelming and amazing.”Corral and WAMM recently became involved with a nonprofit program called Raha Kudo, the Design for Dying Program.“It is designed to take care of people when they are dying and to keep people at home — whatever they choose, however they choose it,” Corral said.Regardless of the situation regarding WAMM’s garden, Corral said Raha Kudo (Persian for “the pathway to heaven”) would continue.Corral recently wrote an article about a Raha Kudo patient and friend named Laura Huxley in which she described Raha Kudo.“[The article is] a snapshot into the way a person designs their own death,” Corral said. “I talk with a lot of people about dancing with death — about kind of entering into a courtship with death, so that people are not so afraid of this ‘grim reaper’ thing.”“Death is so natural,” she continued. “It’s what happens to everybody. We’re talking about it differently. What’s important about [Raha Kudo] is that we can engage with one another, be there at people’s deaths. And I’m often at people’s bedsides.”Corral said her work with WAMM has provided her a perspective on life.“A great thing about WAMM is living with a constant reminder of the uncertainty of life, because it’s so uncertain,” Corral said. “I’ve learned so much to trust that in the unfolding of our lives, the most remarkable things can happen if we don’t stay fixed on some single notion.”

Please consider donating to keep this wonderful organization alive!!! And don't forget to repost this too.

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Countdown

2700 year old stash found!

By THE CANADIAN PRESS
OTTAWA – Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly "cultivated for psychoactive purposes," rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.The extremely dry conditions and alkaline soil acted as preservatives, allowing a team of scientists to carefully analyze the stash, which still looked green though it had lost its distinctive odour."To our knowledge, these investigations provide the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent," says the newly published paper, whose lead author was American neurologist Dr. Ethan B. Russo.Remnants of cannabis have been found in ancient Egypt and other sites, and the substance has been referred to by authors such as the Greek historian Herodotus. But the tomb stash is the oldest so far that could be thoroughly tested for its properties.The 18 researchers, most of them based in China, subjected the cannabis to a battery of tests, including carbon dating and genetic analysis. Scientists also tried to germinate 100 of the seeds found in the cache, without success.The marijuana was found to have a relatively high content of THC, the main active ingredient in cannabis, but the sample was too old to determine a precise percentage.Researchers also could not determine whether the cannabis was smoked or ingested, as there were no pipes or other clues in the tomb of the shaman, who was about 45 years old.The large cache was contained in a leather basket and in a wooden bowl, and was likely meant to be used by the shaman in the afterlife."This materially is unequivocally cannabis, and no material has previously had this degree of analysis possible," Russo said in an interview from Missoula, Mont."It was common practice in burials to provide materials needed for the afterlife. No hemp or seeds were provided for fabric or food. Rather, cannabis as medicine or for visionary purposes was supplied."The tomb also contained bridles, archery equipment and a harp, confirming the man's high social standing.Russo is a full-time consultant with GW Pharmaceuticals, which makes Sativex, a cannabis-based medicine approved in Canada for pain linked to multiple sclerosis and cancer.The company operates a cannabis-testing laboratory at a secret location in southern England to monitor crop quality for producing Sativex, and allowed Russo use of the facility for tests on 11 grams of the tomb cannabis.Researchers needed about 10 months to cut red tape barring the transfer of the cannabis to England from China, Russo said.The inter-disciplinary study was published this week by the British-based botany journal, which uses independent reviewers to ensure the accuracy and objectivity of all submitted papers.The substance has been found in two of the 500 Gushi tombs excavated so far in northwestern China, indicating that cannabis was either restricted for use by a few individuals or was administered as a medicine to others through shamans, Russo said."It certainly does indicate that cannabis has been used by man for a variety of purposes for thousands of years."Russo, who had a neurology practice for 20 years, has previously published studies examining the history of cannabis."I hope we can avoid some of the political liabilities of the issue," he said, referring to his latest paper.The region of China where the tomb is located, Xinjiang, is considered an original source of many cannabis strains worldwide.

Currently listening : Blood on the Tracks By Bob Dylan Release date: 2004-06-01

A Thought (or two)

Well after being told that a few people like my writing, I have also had an experience that I had only heard about. Writers Block. For a long time now, I haven't been able to express myself via written word. This feeble attempt is my first attempt in a long time, for good or bad. Here goes...


Having voted for Barak Obama, I THOUGHT I was actually going to see things change, (maybe too soon on my end), but, with the choosing of the VP, all the way down to the cabinet positions. It's Washington as usual
But so far (I have to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt) all I have seen are the OLD, TIRED, Professional politicians that go through the revolving door. Hillary as Sec of State? might as well appoint Bill too. There is a LOT of baggage there alone. Didn't those people just finished a particularily nasty primary race? Never once heard Bill actually come out and truly endorse our new President, ever.

I'd say more, but I had to sell my soapbox to pay my rent.

Speaking of, all of these bailouts, from corporations through home owners, not once have I heard a peep about some of our brothers and sisters who can't now or ever will actually own a house. Of course those people are not really equal, they don't /can't contribute to campaigns. There are a LOT of people a paycheck away from being homeless, who have no say in things, but society doesn't see or hear them anyway, so most don't even bother. I've been there, invisible even at 450+ lbs.

I can still hope for things to CHANGE, and dreams are free...

Finally

South Lake Tahoe has finally joined the rest of California!
We have a Medicinal Marijuana doctor with a practice IN TOWN!
ABBY COHEN, M.D. 530 541-3286 SOUTH LAKE TAHOE

Remembering Kesey 11/10/2001

Article & photos by Tim Owen
Saturday, November 10th, 2001 marks a day of mourning and reflection here in Eugene, as we deal with the passing of our friend Ken Kesey, author, storyteller, cultural pioneer, innerspace astronaut, family man and salt of the Oregon earth.
A day as typically Oregon-beautiful as I've seen; warm, hazy sun, not the slightest stir of a breeze, upper 60s, a myriad of stunning cloud patterns floating ever so slowly across the sky... but the quiet stillness, the pastel colors against the glittering greens of the tree covered rolling foothills; an unmistakable omni-presence of magic, of energy release, of peace, of joy.
Kesey lived just a few ridges to the East of us, about 20 miles away. I saw him countless times about town and at events over the past 20-plus years I've been here. When I would bump into him on the way to the bank or store when we lived just a few miles apart, he was never in too much of a hurry to stop and exchange a few words. His mastery of word crafting was always at the ready. The first time we crossed paths was backstage after a Dead show outdoors in rural Oregon in '82. Mingling in the afterglow of a great day, my simple greeting led to Kesey spinning a 10 minute thought provoking tale about a frog and a muskrat. I wish like hell I could remember it now.
Ken's family here in Eugene has a vast presence as well as past. They moved here to live on his grandparents' farm in 1943, when he was eight years old. While attending the University of Oregon, where he became a star wrestler, he married his high school sweetheart, Faye Haxby, in 1956. Receiving a literary fellowship to Stanford, Kesey would then embark on a four year whirlwind that would produce the cornerstone of his most affective contributions to the changing and expanding face of America.
After volunteering for LSD experimentation at Stanford in '61 and '62, he completed his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Published in '62, the novel struck a nerve at the core of our society by serving as a wake up call on a nation stirring out of a long slumber, challenging the predisposed norms and the terms of sanity.
In '64, Kesey's second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, was published. A sprawling, ambitious work immediately heralded as a great American classic, Kesey had brought to life with his vividly captivating descriptions a unique, mystical land called Oregon, whose harsh and unrelenting nature shapes the tough and original members of the Stamper's, a rural logging family in the 30s.
That same year he had banded together some fellow LSD experimenters, called them the Merry Pranksters, and set out on the road as a traveling psychedelic show in a rainbow day-glo 1939 International bus called "Further," which he bought with earnings from Cuckoo's Nest. A notorious adventure of LSD-induced fun and chaos ensued as they pranked their way through America, forever immortalized in Tom Wolfe's book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. At that time, the relatively unknown Grateful Dead became the house band for the Pranksters, and they maintained friendships throughout the years.
In 1968 Ken moved back to Oregon and a rural farm south of Eugene, where he turned a huge barn into a large rambling house, raised a family, worked the land, raised cattle and immersed himself in the community. Ken Babbs, fellow Prankster and lifelong friend, lived nearby, and together they collaborated on Prankster adventures over the years. Ken's brother, Chuck, and his family founded and still run the successful Springfield Creamery, as well as operating a retail natural food store in Springfield until the mid 80s.
Kit Kesey, Ken's nephew, has been a concert and video producer over the years, and in recent months took over the McDonald Theater in downtown Eugene and refurbished it as a live music venue. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters recently performed there at a benefit in October. The last time I saw Ken was in early September, the night he introduced Taj Mahal at the grand opening of the theater, while I was shooting the event.
Kesey contributed immensely to raising the bar in challenging the status quo to re-examine, renew, and embrace such fundamental American terms as "freedom," and "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and to live them. He was full of stories, bigger than life, yet casually present, a ruggedly independent individual, who contributed endlessly to family and community, and the celebration of life. As one of Americas most affecting and colorful modern pioneers, he was truly a great American hero. Always ready to take a playful poke or a chastising swipe when he smelled bullshit, regardless of where it came from, he was never mean spirited. His approach to life was not from an adversarial or confrontational stance, but an offering of goodwill.
Ken's creativity wasn't limited to his immense depth as a writer. He continually sought new theatrical vehicles and happenings to relay his message, whatever it may be. You might be listening to him read a new children's book and tell stories, in full shaman's garb on the steps of the library, or hearing him recite his heart-felt tribute to Jerry Garcia, or watching him belt out "Gloria," with Kool-Aid jug in hand, wearing a U.S. flag suit and top hat, backed by Bob Weir, Jack and Jorma.
For a production of his childrens story, Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear, Kesey collaborated with the Eugene Ballet, with music by Art Maddox and sound effects provided by Keseys whimsical invention, The Thunder Machine.
Ken s generosity and compassion came across in many ways. He often teamed up with musician and friend Mason Williams for Mason's annual Christmas show with the Eugene and Portland Symphonies. A few years back in Portland, Kesey showed up on stage in the role of a street Santa. A down and out alcoholic with a pint in his pocket. Directing members of a choir into the audience to collect money for the poor, he and Mason were able to hand out over $6,000 to homeless street people. The shocked symphony was reluctant to have Kesey return the next night, but rather than more antics, he delivered a wonderful reading of St. Matthew's Christmas Story.
Sharing this valley and this community with Kesey has always been somehow comforting, being part in some sense of the continuing adventure, swept along just a little "further". His absence will leave a gaping hole around here, way bigger than you could drive a bus through. The world, as it is, will be a scarier place without him and his sometimes flamboyant but always thought provoking escapades.
His life was honored in a solemn and celebratory memorial service at the McDonald Theatre, drawing a full house that filled the lobby and spilled out onto the street, where admirers milled about the psychedelic bus waiting to take him on a last ride home to his resting place.
With Kesey's rainbow marbled casket center stage, speakers included his career-long literary agent, Sterling Lord, University of Oregon President Dave Frohnmeyer, musician Mason Williams (who spoke and performed) and close friend and fellow Prankster Ken Babbs. Zane, his son provided various video clips of Ken at home and performing that brought smiles, laughter and tears.
As the bus carrying Ken Kesey pulled out of sight, the clouds parted and a brief glimpse of a rainbow lit the sky. Farewell, my friend. " The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."
--Ken Kesey
(C) Article and Photos by Tim Owen

Hey Saraha Palin!

Oh and by the way, you truly suck, and I shudder to think you are #2 behind a 72 year old fossil.

Yogi comes to visit

This happened only a mile from my house here in South Lake Tahoe! A couple of months ago there was one walking along the top of my backyard fence. There are about 300 of them in the Tahoe Basin.

Epidemic (Where the DRUG WAR should be waged)

King of Smear

One of the most vile smear peddlers of the 2004 election has found a new target.

Jerome Corsi just published a new book full of rehashed distortions and the same old lies about Barack Obama, and the right-wing noise machine is in full gear promoting it.

In 2004, Corsi helped launch the Swift Boat smear campaign with a book of distortions and lies he wrote about John Kerry. We cannot afford to let Corsi get away with the same dirty tricks that fooled so many people then.

The media have shown that they aren't going to stop him. It's up to you to spread the truth.

Sign up to get involved and join the Rapid Response Team:

http://www.democrats.org/rapidresponse

Together we'll show Corsi, the Republicans, and John McCain that Barack Obama and the Democrats don't back down from a fight.

Thanks.

----

The latest research on Jerome Corsi:

TOO CRAZY EVEN FOR SWIFTBOAT LIARS

Corsi Was Dropped From Unfit for Command Promotions Because of His Anti-Muslim, Anti-Catholic Comments. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote in an editorial, "Consider the book "Unfit for Command," put out by a collection of partisans who have now made it acceptable for veterans to attack each other's war records. The current National Review carries a piece decrying the bookstores that fail to carry "John O'Neill's book." This is curious in that the volume has a second author, but Jerome Corsi has dropped from the marketing because he has been revealed as the author of religiously bigoted remarks published on a Web site. Corsi not only considers Muslims to be pederasts, but he took the trouble to slam Catholic priests and refers to the pope as senile. Rather than wonder whether a book written by such a man can be trusted, the marketing tactic has shifted to pretend Corsi doesn't exist." [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania), 9/19/04]

O'Neill Tried to Minimize Corsi's Role in Unfit for Command After Bigoted Comments Came to Light. "In a bit of historical revisionism, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth founder and Unfit for Command co-author John O'Neill distorted Jerome Corsi's role in co-authoring the book. O'Neill's backtracking comes on the heels of Media Matters for America's documentation of Corsi's history of posting bigoted comments. During appearances on MSNBC's Scarborough Country on August 10 and CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports on August 11, O'Neill downplayed Corsi's role in writing the book. When asked about Corsi's involvement, O'Neill asserted, Corsi was "simply an editor and not really any sort of co-author." But an MMFA item entitled "Unfit book materials show Corsi more than just an 'editor,'" revealed Corsi to be much more than simply an editor of the anti- Kerry book. [Media Matters Press Release, 8/13/04]

"Anti-Kerry Book Author Apologizes for Slurs." "One of the authors of a new anti-John Kerry book frequently posted comments on a conservative Web site describing Muslims and Catholics as pedophiles and Pope John Paul II as senile. In chat room entry last year on freerepublic.com, Corsi writes: 'Islam is a peaceful religion - just as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered and the infidels are killed.' In another entry, he says: 'So this is what the last days of the Catholic Church are going to look like. Buggering boys undermines the moral base and the lawyers rip the gold off the Vatican altars. We may get one more Pope, when this senile one dies, but that's probably about it'." [AP, 8/10/04]

ONE PARANOID BOOK OF LIES AFTER ANOTHER

Corsi Wrote a Book Saying Bush's "Globalist Agenda" Is Leading to a North American Union. "The real reason behind President Bush's push for immigration reform, says author Jerome R. Corsi, is to unite the United States, Mexico and Canada by erasing borders and creating a "North American Union." That is the theme of Mr. Corsi's new book, "The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada," which says the Bush administration's 'globalist agenda' is leading to a merger of the countries through the implementation of policies and laws to open trade barriers and renovate the highway systems in anticipation of increased travel within the new megastate. Mr. Corsi said a growing number of Americans think the North American Union is being forced onto Americans. Government officials say the idea is no more than an unjustified conspiracy theory spread through the Internet. Mr. Corsi said the impetus of the plan was the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, announced by leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada at Waco, Texas, in 2005." [Washington Times, 7/18/07]

Conservative Human Events Writer: Corsi Isn't "Any More Worthy Of Being Taken Seriously Than Those Who Think Jews Rule The World Or The 'Truthers' Who Think President Bush Is Responsible For 9/11." Under the headline "There Isn't Going to Be a North American Union," John Hawkins wrote, "Yesterday, Jerome Corsi was prattling on about the North American Union again after Michael Medved deservedly spanked him for spreading conspiracy theories. While I don't think Corsi is any more worthy of being taken seriously than those who think Jews rule the world or the 'Truthers' who think President Bush is responsible for 9/11, I thought I would respond to him one last time. (I think that's about the fourth time I've said that.) Now, why respond again? What's the point? Well unfortunately, a lot of conservatives consider this conspiracy theory to be so preposterous that they believe it's beneath them to even bother discussing it, and that leaves Corsi and his ilk to dominate the debate. And since there are a lot of conservatives being taken in by this North American Union nonsense, somebody has got to step up to the plate." [Human Events Online, 1/10/07]

Editor of Human Events: "I Guess There Are People Who Believe In" Corsi's North American Union Conspiracy, "But There Are People Who Believe In Bigfoot." "Corsi plays on growing nationalist fears. He sees a scenario in which a North American Union is born and shares a currency, the "amero." Even some right-wing standard-bearers regard the fears as over-blown. Jed Babbin, editor of the conservative newspaper Human Events, says: "I guess there are people who believe in [the plan for a North American Union]. But there are people who believe in Bigfoot." [Newsweek, 12/10/07]

Corsi Wrote a Book Disagreeing With Most Scientists That There is a Limit to Oil. "All his life, Jerome Corsi's been told that we're running out of oil. "I remember driving with my dad in a 1952 Plymouth and listening to him talk about the end of oil," says the 59-year-old New Jersey author. "Hasn't happened yet, and it's not going to happen." What makes him so sure? He doesn't buy the fossil fuel theory--that oil comes from dead plants and dinosaurs. He believes it comes out of the ground naturally, and that there's more coming up all the time...Eighteenth century Russian scientist Mikhail Lomonosov found biological debris in oil and concluded that it must have biological origin. "I'm at the point where the dinosaur theory seems silly," says Corsi. "You take a pile of cats and you bury them, dig them up 10 years later and you don't get oil." "The truth is that there is so much oil around the world that it's been easy to find," Corsi says. "We're awash in oil. There's more oil today in proven reserves than ever before in human history." [Western Standard (Alberta), 2/13/06]

Corsi Wrote a Book Claiming Democrats Were Being Corrupted by Iranian Funding and Helping Iranians Get Nukes. "After their bitter campaign 2004 experience with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, John Kerry and his fellow Dems aren't waiting to be shot at again. Yesterday, aides to Sens. Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy jumped all over literary mugger Jerome Corsi, co-author of the Kerry-bashing best seller 'Unfit for Command.' They knocked him to the ground and kicked him in the face (metaphorically, anyway) over his next Democrattrashing tome, 'Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians.' The book - which Nashville's Cumberland House Publishing won't release till next month - claims Democratic pols are being corrupted by Iranian money and helping the nuke-seeking mullahs in Tehran." [Daily News (New York), 2/24/05]

Corsi Wrote Unfit For Command Although He Was Not a Veteran. "Though not a veteran himself, Corsi co-authored ``Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry." [Boston Herald, 1/25/05]

THE WRITINGS OF A PARANOID AND HATEFUL MAN

To read more of his posts, follow this link: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/user-posts?name=jrlc

HATRED AND INTOLERANCE TOWARD ISLAM

* "Let's see exactly why it isn't the case that Islam is a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion? Where's the proof to the contrary?"
* "Islam is like a virus -- it affects the mind -- maybe even better as an analogy -- it is a cancer that destroys the body it infects."

ATTACKS ON JOHN KERRY...WITH NO MILITARY BACKGROUND

* "First let's undermine the US in Vietnam. Then we can go for gay marriage. When you get to be Pres. JFK-lite, there will be no end to how much of America we can destroy."
* "Just don't let anybody put a tablet with the Ten Commandments in front of the school where that girl wants to wear a Muslim scarf -- OH, No --- then the RATS would complain. Anti- Christian, Anti-American -- just like their Presidential Candidate -- Jean Francois Kerrie."
* "After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal gradparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?"
* "Kerry has a long history of Communist supporters."
* "Kerry offers a clear choice. Anti-American hatred."
* "John F-ing Commie Kerry and Commie Ted discuss their plan to hand America over to our nation's enemies."

DESPICABLE WRITINGS ON ISLAM SHOW BLIND HATRED

* "The only good Mullah is a dead Mullah." [12/21/01]
* "Forget about democracy. Just get out the checkbook and put everybody in Iraq on the payroll. That's all they want. Pay them first, democracy (or some b.s. Islamic version of it) will follow." [6/18/03]
* "Mohammed-al-Mohammed proclaiming guidance from his hate-god allah-i'll-be-da*ned-allah kills another dozen women and children by convincing a teenager to blow him/her/self up for victory in another world. Haven't we all had enough of this stupid "religion"?" [5/17/03]
* "Another Mohammed-al-Mohammed Islam religion of hate maniac bites the dust. (Top Iraqi army official surrenders") [5/17/03]
* "Certainly can't be one of the Islam is a Religion of Peace hijackers?" [Bus Hijacking Near Bremen, Germany] [4/25/03]
* "One more Mohammed al-Mohammed el-Mohammed Mohammed iced -- great. " [Car Bomb Kills Egyptian Islamist in Lebanon Camp] [3/1/03]
* "Let them build mosques -- seems about all the Germans are worth these days."( Germany's Economic Woes) [2/6/03]
* "Islam - the Legacy of Clinton." (AFP: Two Chechens with belts of explosives stopped in Moscow) [12/24/02]
* "Islam is like a virus -- it affects the mind -- maybe even better as an analogy -- it is a cancer that destroys the body it infects. A throwback, Medieval, anti-modern, anti-science, anti-knowledge doctrine." [11/26/02]
* "Forget it -- the only thing these Islamonazis understand is force -- time to nuke the Temple of the Dome and send this "religion" back to Hell, the place it came from. " [11/17/02]
* "Go for the Oil Fields. Set the mad dog lawyers loose!!! Let's ROLL!!! Take even the diapers from their heads. Remember -- according to the Koran, Islam approves of lying as long as it is to non-believers. Saudis are lying killers who harbor killers." [11/17/02]
* "All-ah be damned. What took him so long?" [11/14/02]
* "Islam is like a virus -- it infects the minds of the believers. Islamonazis are, unfortunately, the logical extreme of the "religion."" [11/13/02]
* "Good plan -- raise OBL from the dead every time we get ready to ice another Islamonazi -- ON TO BAGHDAD. LET'S ROLL !!!" [11/13/02]
* "Nuke the ISLAM-nazis and let's move on. No more MUSLAMO-fascists!!" [11/10/02]
* "Islam has declared World War III against everything non-Muslim. " [10/28/02]
* " When will the liberal media wake up to see that Islam has declared a World War against everyting non-Muslim. May Allah be damned to the hell Muslims wish to create on earth." [10/25/02]
* " Are there any Islamic "clerics" who aren't violent?" [10/20/02]
* " May Islam join the garbage heap of worthless religions we have grown beyond. Any believers of Hermes out there?" [10/13/02]
* "Muslims regularly trash religious sites holy to others. Jerusalem has a series of sites the Muslims have wrecked (e.g., the bus station they placed below the "Golgatha" site honored by many as an alternative location for the Christ's crucifixion). Seems like the Muslim principle that it is okay to lie to infidels. Very different mindset -- no respect for anything non-Muslim" [9/30/02]
* "ALL Arab MUSLIMS lie (the Koran endorses lying to infidels, namely us) -- none of these names are real -- Abdallah is really Mohammad Mohammad Mohammad readily altered to include Atta or Haj or whatever else they decide to call themselves for the moment." [7/10/02]
* "Gotta love this stupid religion, ISLAM -- Makes the Nazis look like a Sunday stroll in the park. ISLAM -- it's gotta be straight from HELL. Just the Devil in disguise -- that seems to about sum it up." [6/14/02]
* "Arabs lie. ISLAM preaches lying to Infidels. Fingerprints don't lie. Boo-hoo -- time to demand IDs to check into hotels and passport registration for all foreign nationalists who want hotel rooms. Also, ID checks and passport registrations for anyone renting an apartment." [6/5/02]
* "Let's get rid of all the Saudi Arabians -- that would have gone a long way to preventing Sept. 11." [6/5/02]
* "Yet another violent raghead named Mohammad. What's new? Islam looks like a cancer, a plague, a deadly virus. No doctor worries about the free speech rights of cancer cells." [6/5/02]
* "Yet another Little Islamic Man of Hate. Is there any other kind?" [5/31/02]
* "The only thing the Islamic world understands is force. Let's destroy a few of these hate schools and start targeting these mad preachers of hate." [5/22/02]
* "Let's see -- who is it not politically correct to profile? Islam the "Peaceful Religion" whose Fundamental believers are insane, suicidal killers that hate America and all democratic societies? Or Arabs whose racial hatred of Jews drives them to create secret societies of terrorists sworn to eliminate Israel and all states who support Israel?" [5/20/02]
* "Finally a way to end Jihad. Maybe the whole Arab world will blow itself up -- live by the sword, die by the sword -- seems an ancient formula. Bye, Bye Jihad." [5/20/02]
* "I repeat: Muslims, cancer cells. It's hard to tell the difference. No doctor worries about the First Amendment rights of cancer cells. The therapy is to eliminate cancer cells so the body can go on living. Great to repeat it -- keeps the thread going. Let the Muslims stop preaching terror and I'll revise my view. Meanwhile, Muslims, cancer cells is an equation that works." [5/20/02]
* "May all these Arab maniacs explode and kill themselves -- next time, maybe they will take Arab*RAT with them. Best solution to the homicide bombers is that they eliminate themselves, with as little loss to civilians as possible." [5/20/02]
* "I repeat: Muslims, cancer cells. It's hard to tell the difference. No doctor worries about the First Amendment rights of cancer cells. The therapy is to eliminate cancer cells so the body can go on living." [5/19/02]
* "Muslims, cancer cells. It's hard to tell the difference. No doctor worries about the First Amendment rights of cancer cells. The therapy is to eliminate cancer cells so the body can go on living." [5/17/02]
* "File under the category "Islam is a worthless, violent CULT, not a Religion."[3/28/02]


CORSI HAS LOST TOUCH WITH EVEN THE FALSE REALITY HE LIVES IN

FALSE: "We find there is even uncertainty whether Stanley Ann and Obama Senior were ever married in a church." [p. 44] REALITY:CORSI ADMITS ON THE SAME PAGE THAT OBAMA'S PARENTS HAD A LEGAL AMERICAN MARRIAGE

TIME Reported On Obama's Parents' Divorce Records. TIME reported, "On Feb. 2, 1961, several months after they met, Obama's parents got married in Maui, according to divorce records." [TIME, 4/9/08]

Corsi Cites Time Story To Say "Divorce Papers Confirm..." Corsi wrote, "Other sources say divorce papers confirm that a civil ceremony was held on Maui, on February 2, 1961, when Ann was three months pregnant with Obama." Corsi cites the April 9th, 2008 Time story for his reference to Obama's parents' wedding. [p. 44]

EVEN A LITTLE BASIC RESEARCH DISPROVES CORSI'S FABRICATIONS

FALSE: "Senator Obama could claim to be a citizen of Kenya, as well as of the United States. Obama can trace his heritage back to his mother, who was born in the United States and was an American citizen when he was born, and to his father, who was born in Kenya and was a Kenyan citizen when Obama was born." [p 103]
REALITY: OBAMA CANNOT CLAIM KENYAN CITIZENSHIP

Kenya Does Not Allow Dual Citizenship Applications for People Over 21 Years of Age. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management writes of Kenya, "DUAL CITIZENSHIP: Not recognized except for persons under 21 years old." The Kenyan Constitution writes, "A person who, but for the proviso to section 87 (1), would be a citizen of Kenya by virtue of that subsection shall be entitled, upon making application before the specified date in such manner as may be prescribed by or under an Act of Parliament, to be registered as a citizen of Kenya: Provided that a person who has not attained the age of twenty-one years (other than a woman who is or has been married) may not himself make an application under this subsection, but an application may be made on his behalf by his parent or guardian." [U.S. Office of Personnel Management; Kenyan Constitution]

Even if Obama Had Applied for Dual Citizenship Before He Was 21--Which He Did Not--It Would Have Expired. "A person who, upon the attainment of the age of twenty-one years, is a citizen of Kenya and also a citizen of some other country other than Kenya shall, subject to subsection (7), cease to be a citizen of Kenya upon the specified date unless he has renounced his citizenship of that other country, taken the oath of allegiance and, in the case of a person who was born outside Kenya, made and registered such declaration of his intentions concerning residence as may be prescribed by or under an Act of Parliament." [Kenyan Constitution]

INVENTING WILD CONSPIRACIES ABOUT ANYTHING HE CAN

Corsi Wrote a Book Claiming Democrats Were Being Corrupted by Iranian Funding and Helping Iranians Get Nukes. "After their bitter campaign 2004 experience with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, John Kerry and his fellow Dems aren't waiting to be shot at again. Yesterday, aides to Sens. Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy jumped all over literary mugger Jerome Corsi, co-author of the Kerry-bashing best seller 'Unfit for Command.' They knocked him to the ground and kicked him in the face (metaphorically, anyway) over his next Democrattrashing tome, 'Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and American Politicians.' The book - which Nashville's Cumberland House Publishing won't release till next month - claims Democratic pols are being corrupted by Iranian money and helping the nuke-seeking mullahs in Tehran." [Daily News (New York), 2/24/05]

---

The DNC Rapid Response Team is a grassroots rapid response group for Democrats to push back on misleading media, spread the truth, and take positive action.

Sign up for the DNC Rapid Response Team now:

http://www.democrats.org/rapidresponse

Writers Block

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays.

These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country.Here are last year's winners....

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. Traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. At a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Closing down the Warfield with Phil and Friends

It was a beautiful Sunday morning as we finished breakfast at one of favorite little stops on the way down the mointain (it's The Getaway Cafe,before the bug station in Meyers). I am the kind of guy who once gets behind the wheel doesn't want to stop until I have to, but springtime in the Sierras slows me down enough to appreciate the beauty of it and the rushing American River.

We got through Sacramento and up I80 to SF without a hitch rolling in about the same time the fog lifted at 1:30PM or so. Our hotel checkin wasn't until 3, so I did a little tourism, as Rubi (a naitive San Franciscan) had never been to Coit Tower. So we kiled a little time and money $4.50 to ride a rickety assed elevator,but the view was worth it.

Before we knew it it was check-in time and we pulled into the 55PARC hotel, a block from the Warfield, and got a room on the 14th floor(it was awesome), a little rest a few drinks and it was off to Market Street. The usual Tenderloin zoo was in full force as we paitiently waited to get inside and when we did we were seated at a table about midway through the first floor (disabled seating) and after settling in we split up the cubensis and waited for both the show and the other things to come on.

And just as we start to feel funny, (I was wearing my wizard hat) and someone handed this old wizard a big brown vial...now I am very experienced but this night of DIAMONDS was the most micrograms I think I have ever done at once, and damn was it awesome. It seemed the backdrop was something organic moving and changing colors (or mabye it wasn't)
From the opening notes of Come Together > Dark Star with Bobby Weir,Molo,and Phil, I knew we were in for a special treat. And it truly met all of our expectations, it was such a night (and morning)

Then as things got stranger and stranger, and more and more colorful and beautiful I ran into an old friend named Hugh Romney a.k.a. Wavy Gravy, who said high and graced our presense for a few minutes. By this time the second set had started with Jackie and Larry doing a several beautiful acoustic numbers, Goodnight Irine and Sing Me Back Home .
Deep Elem Blues ?Instrumental? The Warfield Waltz Love Please Come Home & Goodnight Irene again
SET LIST

Phil Lesh & Friends Sunday, May 18th, 2008 Warfield Theater, San Francisco, California

Prior to 1st Set: Phil comes out and says “It’s going to be a long night, so settle in and get comfortable.” He then says there will be a lot of special guests and special music and they are not really sure what they are going to play, “just like the old days.”

1st Set

(78 Minutes 9:17pm – 10:35pm)

Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, & John Molo

Come Together >

(BW) Dark Star > (Phil sang 1st verse, Bob sang 2nd verse)

Loose Lucy (BW) West L.A. Fadeaway * (BW)

The Wheel > *

Not Fade Away *

* with Jeff Chimenti from Ratdog and Larry Campbell

Phil introduces Jeff Chimenti and Bob Weir, calling Bob “my prodigal brother.”

Phil then says “Bob, John, & I have been wanting to do that for a long time and I am glad you got to see it.”

2nd Set

(29 Minutes 10:44pm – 11:13pm)

Acoustic Set w/Larry Campbell & Jackie Green

Lorene

Sing Me Back Home

Deep Elem Blues (LC on lead vocals)

Texas Crapshooter

The Warfield Waltz (as introduced by LC)

Love Please Come Home

Goodnight Irene

3rd Set

(90 Minutes 11:40pm – 1:10am)

Phil Lesh & Friends

Shakedown Street >

Like a Ball & Chain

Big River (LC on lead vocals)

Mississippi Half-Step * >

Althea * Mexican Girl *

Stella Blue (Instrumental) * >

Sugaree *

* with Mark Karan from Ratdog

4th Set

(15 Minutes 1:15am – 1:30am)

"Skinny Singers" Jackie Green & Tim Bluhm

The Ballad of Spider John

Where The Rain Don’t Go

Squeaky Wheel * * with Nicki Bluhm on backing vocals

5th Set

(90 Minutes 1:55am – 3:25am)

Phil Lesh & Friends

(Balloons drop from the ceiling)

Sugar Magnolia

Unbroken Chain >

Mountains of the Moon >

Terrapin (Inspiration) >

I Know You Rider

Donor Rap, Band

Intros

E: Jam > * Truckin' > * And We Bid You Goodnight

* * with Mark Karan from Ratdog

All in all it was one of the most fantastic shows I have attended in a very very long time, and I have been going to shows since I was a pup of 13, I am so proud to say I have turned my wife into a true deadhead, who enjoys them as much as I do, and I know,

OUR LOVE WILL NEVER FADE AWAY.

Obama on Medical Marijuana

Marijuana Policy Project Alert
May 12, 2008


On the verge of becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) has renewed his commitment to protecting medical marijuana patients from arrest and jail.
Here is a quote from Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt from an article in today's San Francisco Chronicle:
"Voters and legislators in the states — from California to Nevada to Maine — have decided to provide their residents suffering from chronic diseases and serious illnesses like AIDS and cancer with medical marijuana to relieve their pain and suffering. Obama supports the rights of states and local governments to make this choice — though he believes medical marijuana should be subject to (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) regulation like other drugs.”
With Sen. Obama now widely expected to win the Democratic nomination and in a year when Democrats are favored to win the White House, this means we might be only eight months away from having a White House that stands with us on medical marijuana access.
You can also watch a video of Sen. Obama talking about medical marijuana here.
In the months leading up to the New Hampshire Democratic primary election, MPP helped persuade all of the Democratic presidential candidates and three of the Republican candidates to pledge to end the arrest of patients in states with medical marijuana laws.
In response to questions from MPP on the campaign trail, Sen. Obama stated that arresting medical marijuana patients is not a good use of resources and promised to end the federal raids on state medical marijuana patients and their caregivers.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has also promised MPP that she would end the raids.
Unfortunately, the Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), earned a grade of “F” from MPP for his inhumane stance on medical marijuana. In response to repeated questions from MPP on the campaign trail, Sen. McCain incorrectly stated that a majority of medical experts oppose medical marijuana, and he also gave a patient who was politely questioning him a glimpse of McCain's famous temper.
Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.), who also remains in the Republican race, has been an outspoken opponent of marijuana prohibition and has consistently voted in favor of legislation to end the DEA's raids on patients.
Please visit MPP's campaign site, www.GraniteStaters.com/candidates, for statements from each of the candidates.
MPP is the only drug policy reform organization that's systematically influencing the presidential candidates to take positive positions on medical marijuana — and punishing those who don't. Would you please consider making a donation to support our work today?
Sincerely,
Rob KampiaExecutive DirectorMarijuana Policy ProjectWashington, D.C.
P.S. As I've mentioned in previous alerts, a major philanthropist has committed to match the first $3.0 million that MPP can raise from the rest of the planet in 2008. This means that your donation today will be doubled.
P.P.S. You can opt out of receiving fundraising mentions in the e-mail alerts I send you in 2008 by visiting www.mpp.org/2008optoutpreference at your convenience.

Mountain Girl on the Doctor

Dear dear man, a ball of energy, and so useful and kind to spirited people, and women, and all of us, sadly, he's gone.

I was fortunate that he lived long enough for me to meet him, he kindly invited me up to his house, just 4 weeks ago. March 24th. Life has some twists and I caught one. Sad, but good. At 102, yes.

I had given a speech at the World Psychedelic Forum in Basel, home of historic medieval alchemists, over the weekend, and was honored to be asked to meet the great wizard himself. It was a lovely ride up into the hills, going from Easter flowery spring, to howling winter in a few klicks. His house perches over a great fall of fields down to France on one side, and back to solid snowy Switzerland on the other. It's a a concrete flat-roofed modern home, not large, set with cherry trees and swaying alpine firs, pasted with ice.

His dear wife had just passed away around Christmas, after a long illness, and you could see how hard it had been for him, that he'd been through a terrible ordeal.
He was so sweet to me, chatted and joked about musicians and black market LSD, chocolate and cherry trees, instructed me very seriously about the importance of hanging upside down every day, to improve the blood flow to the brain.. The snow flying outside, I sat on the warm polished wood bench by the window and he sat in a small ornate chair, with an ornate brocaded footstool. We compared chocolates. His old friend Juri Styk brought along some little cakes which we split up but no one touched.






I asked him about purification of LSD, wasn't it a long process? He denied it vigorously, saying " LSD is very easy to make, you just do the recipe and if it crystallizes, that is it, it's done and very pure. No need to do anything else. " And then launched in to a rapid exchange in German with his lovely daughter sitting on the couch, a petite elegant mother of two paying very close attention to her father. ( Juri later told me it was about Dr. Hofmanns eldest son, who had rejected LSD all his life till just recently, and then absolutely loved it and wanted more.!)

I wish my German had been better, I could have spoken to him more easily. His English was excellent, anyhow, and I told him a little about the Grateful Dead, and he lit up and said he had always been hearing about them, they played existential music, yes? And from small beginnings, it got large? With the help of LSD, the energy and telepathic melting together as they played... he understood that. He asked about Jerry. And Juri reminded him about the Acid Tests, and he lit up again and said "Oh yes, the Acid Tests. and the Grateful Dead played there long ago?, and you were there? " And I smiled, yes, and pulled out the Acid Test diploma I had made for him. I presented it in the usual fashion, saying that he had proven beyond doubt that he had fulfilled all the requirements and had certainly passed the Acid Test, and had earned this Acid Test diploma!
He took it and tried to read the PaulFoster decorations, and then had me sign it, with both my names, and date it. He said it was no good unless I signed it. I took a picture of him holding it up. He was really delighted! Not just being polite, either, but actually giggling.

Dr. H. bragged proudly that he now had three women to look after him. And he hoped they wouldn't argue about him.

And then it was over, and we stood up, and Dr. Hofmann staggered , almost fell as he got to his feet, and I steadied him up. He must have weighed about 85 pounds, so small and light. And perfectly mannered, took my arm and walked me to the door. Juri took a final picture of him with my camera, and the doctor smiled and asked me to come back, and bring the sun please. The wind whipping the snow out of the trees as silent puffs of feathers. The walkway to the car was thick with ice. A few cat tracks showed the way. I didn't get to meet the cat, who sleeps on the doctor's bed since his wife passed away. Now wheres the cat sleeping tonight?

I had been thinking hard yesterday and today, about getting this meeting all written down, as the conversation ran to many topics in my short hour or so with him. I wrote a couple of letters to friends today, about my visit with the great man, and didn't realize he was dying today. Chances sometimes only come once, and I'm so glad I took this one. I'm really sad, mostly for myself. Wanting more, not to be.

All my love to my dear, living friends, MG

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

RIP albert hoffman, father of lsd

albert hoffman husband and father/inventor of LSD
died today at the ripe old age of 102.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann
much luv to the man, chemist and philosopher responsible for millions of lives hanging in the balance, living on the crest of a wave, people dreaming the undreamable, lives living the reality of unreality,
and discovering secrets of the universe,time and space
all wrapped up in a few hundred micrograms of lysergic acid
and our brains the enigma trying to solve the riddle
wrapped in the enigma
and searching to find the lost chord, while hearing colours, and smelling sounds,
smelling colours (ah the ol factory hues)
and the searching for the answer to the answerless questions,
on quests to understanding
and
prosperity............
the doors of perception have been thrown wide open
for any innocent bystander to see
at a few bucks a hit, or a good deed done for only to be a good person.
hallucination engines running smoothly,
running on organic fuels that make and bake our bread.
generations of iconic music and lifestyles have been paved around
the invention of the fellow dr.
lives have been lost and/or won in psychological battles on the
minds psyche battlegrounds.
psychic energy has been begged,borrowed and stolen,
and then given freely to any who beckoned and pondered its restorative experience
today the angels sing
and countless souls will feel the shiver up and down the
proverbial spine and smile and never know why..........
rip dr.albert hoffman, you've had a good run sir.
and your accomplishments will NEVER be forgotten.
luv
me2

Friend of the Devil

Endless war on the installment plan

The Hippies Were Right

Published on Wednesday, May 2, 2007 by The San Francisco
Chronicle

The Hippies Were Right!
Green homes? Organic food?
Nature is good? Time To Give The Ol' Tie-Dyers Some Respect

by Mark
Morford

Go ahead, name your movement. Name something good and
positive and pro-environment and eco-friendly that's happening right now in the
newly "greening" America and don't say more guns in Texas or fewer reproductive
choices for women or endless vile unwinnable BushCo wars in the Middle East
lasting until roughly 2075 because that would defeat the whole point of this
perky little column and destroy its naive tone of happy rose-colored sardonic
optimism.

OK?

I'm talking about,
say, energy-efficient light bulbs. . I'm looking at organic foods going
mainstream. I mean chemical-free cleaning products widely available at Target
and I'm talking saving the whales and
protecting the dolphins and I mean yoga studios flourishing in every small
town, giant boxes of organic cereal at Costco and non-phthalates dildos Ben &
Jerry's ice cream at Good Vibes and the Toyota Prius becoming the nation's
oddest status symbol. You know, good things.





Look
around: we have entire industries devoted to recycled paper, a new generation of
cheap solar-power technology and an Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth" and even
the soulless corporate monsters over at famously heartless joints like Wal-Mart
are now claiming that they really, really care about saving the environment
because, well, "it's the right thing to do" (read: It's purely economic and all
about
their bottom line because if they don't start caring they'll soon be totally
screwed on manufacturing and shipping costs at/from all their brutal Chinese
sweatshops).



There is but one
conclusion you can draw from the astonishing (albeit fitful, bittersweet)
pro-environment sea change now happening in the culture and (reluctantly,
nervously) in the halls of power in D.C., one thing we must all acknowledge in
our wary, jaded, globally warmed universe: The hippies had it right all along.
Oh yes they did.





You know it's true. All this hot enthusiasm for healing the planet and eating
whole foods and avoiding chemicals and working
with nature and developing the self? Came from the hippies. Alternative health?
Hippies. Green cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of
animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMA seeds? It
came from the granola types (who, of course, absorbed much of it from ancient
cultures), from the alternative worldviews, from the underground and the
sidelines and from far off the goddamn grid and it's about time the media, the
politicians, the culture as a whole sent out a big, wet, hemp-covered
apology.



Here's a suggestion, from
one of my more astute ex-hippie readers: Instead of issuing carbon credits so
industrial polluters can clear their collective corporate conscience, maybe, to
help offset all the savage damage they've done to the soul of the planet all
these years, these commercial cretins should instead buy some karma credits from
the former hippies themselves.
You know, from those who've been working for the health of the planet, quite
thanklessly, for the past 50 years and who have, as a result, built up quite a
storehouse of good karma.

You think?



Of course, you can easily argue that much of the "authentic" hippie ethos —
the anti-corporate ideology, the sexual liberation, the anarchy, the push for
civil rights, the experimentation — has been totally leeched out of all these
new movements, that corporations have forcibly co-opted and diluted every single
technology and humble pro-environment idea and Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone and
Odwalla smoothie to make them both palatable and profitable. But does this
somehow make
the organic oils in that body lotion any more harmful? Verily, it does not.



You might also just as easily claim
that much of the nation's reluctant turn toward environmental health has little
to do with the hippies per se, that it's taking the threat of global meltdown
combined with the notion of really, really expensive ski tickets to slap the
nation's incredibly obese ass into gear and force consumers to begin to wake up
to the savage gluttony and wastefulness of American culture as everyone starts
wondering, oh my God, what's going to happen to swimming pools and NASCAR and
free shipping from Amazon? Of course, without the '60s groundwork, without all
the radical ideas and seeds of change planted nearly five decades ago, what we'd
be turning to in our time of need would be a great deal more hopeless indeed.





But if you're really bitter and shortsighted, you could say the entire hippie
movement overall was just incredibly overrated, gets far too much cultural
credit for far too little actual impact, was pretty much a giant excuse to slack
off and enjoy dirty lazy responsibility-free sex romps and do a ton of drugs and
avoid Vietnam and not bathe for a month and name your child Sunflower or Shiva
Moon or Chakra Lennon Sapphire Bumblebee. This is what's called the reactionary
simpleton's view. It blithely ignores history, perspective, the evolution of
culture as a whole. You know, just like America.



But, you know, whatever. The proofs are easy enough to trace. The
core values
and environmental groundwork laid by the '60s counterculture are still so
intact and potent even the stiffest neocon Republican has to acknowledge their
extant power.
It's all right there: Treehugger.
com is the new '60s underground hippy zine. Ecstasy is the new LSD. Visible
tattoos are the new longhairs. And bands as diverse as Pearl Jam to Bright Eyes
to NIN to the Dixie Chicks are writing savage anti-Bush, anti-war songs for a
new, ultra-jaded generation.





And oh
yes, speaking of good ol' MDMA (Ecstasy), even drug culture is getting some new
respect. Staid old Time mag just
ran a rather snide little story about the new studies being conducted by
Harvard and the National Institute of Mental Health into the astonishing
psychospiritual benefits of goodly entheogens such as LSD, psilocybin and MDMA.
Unfortunately, the piece basically backhands Timothy Leary and the entire
"excessive," "naive" drug culture of yore in favor of much more "sane" and
"careful" scientific analysis happening now, as if the only valid methods for
attaining knowledge and an understanding of spirit were through control groups
and clinical, mysticism-free examination. Please.



Still, the fact that serious scientific research into
entheogens is being conducted even in the face of the most anti-science,
pro-pharmaceutical, ultra-conservative presidential regime in recent history is
proof enough that all the hoary old hippie mantras about expanding the mind and
touching God through drugs were onto something after
all (yes, duh). Tim Leary is probably smiling wildly right now — though that
might be due to all the mushrooms he's been sharing with Kerouac and Einstein
and Mary Magdalene. Mmm, heaven.





Of course, true hippie values mean you're not
really supposed to care about or attach to any of this, you don't give a damn
for the hollow ego stroke of being right all along, for slapping the culture
upside the head and saying, See? Do you see? It was never about the long hair
and the folk music and Woodstock and taking so much acid you see Jesus and Shiva
and Buddha tongue kissing in a hammock on the Dog Star, nimrods.



It was, always and forever, about connectedness. It was about how
we are all in this together. It was about resisting the status quo and fighting
tyrannical corporate/political power and it was about opening your consciousness
and seeing new possibilities of how we can all live with something resembling
actual respect for the planet, for alternative cultures, for each other. You
know, all that typical hippie crap no one believes in anymore.

Right?

Thoughts for the author?
E-mail him. Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and
Friday on SFGate and in the Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle.



© The San Francisco Chronicle
-------------------------------------
original source article with links
in this article that work (I don't have time to put all the links in this copy
paste here)
http://www. commondreams.
org/archive/2007/05/02/915/

On Psychedelics by BEAR OWSLEY

There has been a trip taken by many people over a number of years, starting in the 1960's. It is a trip to renew our connection with the planet we live on and its lifeforms. It seemed as though this journey was a natural and important one for our survival and the survival of the world as our home. We thought of ourselves as exploring new ways of looking at the universe, but as it turns out, the adventure is almost as old as man himself.
One of the ideas that developed throughout this period was that the psychedelics (I still feel most comfortable with this old term coined by Humphrey Osmund) were some sort important hormone -like substance which was necessary to the human race, like the various hormones which the body produces within its structure. Unlike these hormones, there are others, perhaps you could call them "planetary hormones" which the plant world produces for the use of animals, and are part of the Gaia or conciousness of the biomass of the whole planet. Healing plants are part of this category. The ones which alter our state and perception of the universe around us are no less important to our development as enlightened entities than those which heal our bodies. Research into the ethnobotanical practices of indigenous peoples around the world show that only the "modern" or western (ie. ours) cultures place any opprobrium on the use of these plants. In fact only the "west" is in the business of trampling on the environment with out regard for the conciousness of the whole or of its importance to us as a part of it. Indigenees almost universally hold that the planet is something alive and that their role is as the protectors of that life. The concept of "owning" the land is nearly impossible for these people to grasp.
I thought that we might just survive and the planet with us if we could manage to get enough people to experience the view which the psychedelics sacraments give. I know that some of you who will read this will object to the term sacrament, but the word is completely appropriate. With the advent of Christianity sacrament has come to be divested of the old meaning and to assume a more ephemeral definition. The magical plants used by folks for tens of thousands of years have been for the most part forgotten. People need to alter their perception of the world around them, in fact it seems to be something done by all animals. In the west there is only two permitted options Alcohol and tobacco. I'm not going to belabor the point, but this "choice" is not something which leads in any way to higher ground.
Shamanism and the use of plants to alter conciousness has a long and respected history in the development of human society. Today it is still found in parts of the world, coexisting with the modern forms of accepted religious activity. In fact, in places like the remote areas of Mexico some of the old ways are openly part of the worship rituals of the Catholic church. Not usually the plants, but the Native American Church in the US has certainly achieved a synthesis of sacred plant use and a form of Christianity. Perhaps this (the inclusion of aspects of Christianity) was necessary to be accepted as a real religion, although that seems odd, the scientologists have succeeded in having their organization accepted as a "church", and it has nothing even remotely suggestive of a spiritual nature about it. Or perhaps it's to do with the fact that the people are the dispossessed Indigenees of a land of colonial immigrants. Or with the fact that they are using the plants.
Today the followers of the Grateful Dead have been preyed upon by law enforcement at many of the venues the Dead visited. They could not peacefully practice what is to them a true religious practice without persecution. I guess it'd be the modern version of feeding Christians to the lions practiced by the government of Rome a couple of thousand years ago. So much for the rhetoric of "freedom of religion", so oft repeated nowadays. So what if the psychedelic of choice is LSD rather than peyote? Is it OK to eat peyote if you are a native American indigenee but not if you are a white or black or other native of America? Since when is there any difference? Why should there be some sort of barrier to joining any religious group? There is only one answer: you are not allowed to be different, to think original thoughts, to act as if you were really free. You are not supposed to experience the world in any way differently to the way those in power wish you to.
It is a fairly modern turn which has led us to this point in time. Plants have only in recent times been unlawful. Although there have been reactions to the introduction of various kinds of psychically active plants into social use...coffee caused a bit of a stir when it was first introduced, as was chocolate. Still, the prohibition movement is a phenomenon of this century. First the war against alcohol, which failed to successfully introduce laws through Congress outlawing booze (the Supreme Court declared that Congress didn't have the authority to do that), succeeded in pushing through an amendment to the Constitution. This was a terrible mistake, and the country still has a powerful Mafia as a direct result of the huge "money for nothing" fees people paid to have access to the drinks they wanted. Even the Volstead amendment didn't criminalize use or possession.
With the repeal, those used to the easy money, having acquired money and therefore power, set about to have introduced new laws which would recreate the money tree. This time they were able, by claiming that the drugs represented a "health and safety" problem, to get passed and approved by the court laws outlawing a variety of plant derived drugs from cannabis to coca and opiates. The inclusion of cannabis may have been the desire of certain industrialists to limit the competition hemp fibers presented to the emerging synthetic fiber industry. Funny thing the court actually said that a tax stamp created with the express intent of never being issued, therefore a defacto prohibition was constitutional! Harmless and joyful cannabis, the wonderful plant which has adapted itself so completely to the service of man, was depicted as a Killer of Youth, Creater of Madness, with all the power of a popular press in the full vigor of its prime. Whether Hearst was paid off to do this, or just thought that anything sensational enough to sell newspapers was ok, will probably never be known.
Today we are seeing a more moderate approach to the hemp matter. People are rediscovering all the uses to which this plant can be put, from making paint to paper. Still there is a weird aversion to the medicinal and recreational values so celebrated throughout history until recent times. "Drug free" strains are touted for the production of fiber and oilseed. What a load of nonsense, as if the conventional recreational drugs were safe and desirable? Even the opiates wouldn't be much of a problem if they weren't illegal, forcing a myriad of eager dealers into the streets for the money for nothing of the black market created by the laws.
Society should never intentionally create a black market. All black markets are a danger to the community due to the lack of controls and the high delivery fees that they force on the delivery system. Likewise there is a huge loss in revenue to the normal flow of commerce through the community. The amounts of money available leads to the inevitable corruption of all who attempt to interfere in the flow of goods in this black market. Black markets made fortunes to the entrepreneurs of the world wars. Tires, fuel and meat made fortunes for those who could divert supplies to their clients. Anything can be a black market. The only thing required is scarcity, or illegality, and a demand for the items.
The use of psychedelics as a part of the religious experience has forced literally hundreds of thousands of otherwise law abiding people into the black market for their supplies. Due to the dangers and costs many have had to turn to dealing to gain access. Within a community which is devoted to the ingestion of these sacred substances there are many who feel that it is a noble calling to be the source for their friends and fellow worshippers. Hold on, some may say, what about those who are merely thrill seekers? Well, maybe the first time a person uses LSD or the other entheogens, they may be motivated by such a motive. The nature of the experience is that of a profound union with the universal mind. This takes place over time, at first things happen one way, then they change with further trips.
The term, "War on Drugs" is a non sequitur. There cannot be a war on anything except people. The question is, why does the government want to wage a war against its own people? The simple principle of harm reduction dictates that all drugs should cease to be illegal. Very few people would become junkies without someone on the street corner offering it to them, with the added attraction to the young of defying authority. Likewise the widespread belief that advertising is a form of speech which should be protected, and therefore unregulated, is wrong. Advertising is a form of coercive behavior, directed at producing a response without regard to the real merits involved, as long as there is a profitable result for the advertiser. This has nothing to do with the value to the individual or to the community. Tobacco is an excellent example. Joe Camel has been implicated in the early commencement of tobacco use by children. Why advertise tobacco? Any one would not have any trouble knowing about the stuff as long as it was available. No coercion can be intelligently defended.
As well, what about the ads "You can win a million" promulgated by the usually government run lottos? Anyone with any knowledge of gambling knows that the odds against winning are around 50 million to one. You are far more likely to be struck by lightning, or even a meteorite than to pick the winner in a lotto. But the ads imply that it's easy...not one word about the odds. Somebody has to win, I hear it said, but the roll over to super jackpots should put paid to that one. Even so, it's the people least likely to afford it that wind up pouring their money into it in the vain hope of being the lucky one. I don't think such things should be outlawed, people want to gamble, take drugs, smoke tobacco and/or pot, and they should not have these activities criminalized. But neither should they be the subject of advertising.
The US Constitution directs the government to "provide for the general welfare" illegality of drugs creates a health and welfare crisis of immense dimensions. Unknown dosages, unknown composition, contamination both chemical and biological. Death and disease are the direct result of the laws, not the use of various drugs. So far as I know the Supreme Court has never ruled as to whether the laws on drugs violate the powers given to congress. Judging on the basis of the Volstead Act, it would appear that they should throw the lot out. But there is no mechanism whereby a case may be forced to the attention of the court. Perhaps in the current climate of illogic, where a kid who introduces a couple of people he knew, one who grew, and one who sold marijuana, can be given life in prison, although he didn't see the weed nor share in any monies, the electorate might pass an amendment to the constitution to continue the insanity.

Zane and the Ducks need your help, part of the Kesey legacy

Ken Kesey would be kicking up plenty of dirt about the way the new athletic director is treating his beloved Oregon Wresting. I am Ken's son, when I was young I learned about his passion for this team. Eventually my brother and I were lucky enough to be University of Oregon wrestlers, my father couldn't have been prouder. Every one of these Ducks spilled sweat, tears and blood for the team, my brother died in a wreck while the teams van was traveling to Pullman, you can't give any more than that!
Now with a single underhanded stroke of Pat Kilkenny's pen, our team is axed in favor of baseball. Wrestlers are good sports and never argue with the official, but something smells completely wrong here. My coach, Ron Finley, the nicest guy you ever will meet has been calling in all the favors he has ever done to raise money to pay for this program. Ron is obviously well loved, as he has raised nearly 3 million in cash and pledges. Yet Kilkenny just seems to scoff at these monumental, heartwarming efforts. It is exactly during this kind of stink that Ken Kesey would step in and make sure the people see the ugly truth of what's happening. I am not Ken Kesey, but I will no longer be silent while this tragedy unfolds.
We CAN save Oregon Wrestling! I am calling all wrestlers, pranksters, and friends of Kesey past and present to join me Saturday aboard Ken's bus FURTHER for an evening of spreading the word loudly throughout the town.
I will start at Roaring Rapids Pizza around 4:00, all press is welcome, we will have plenty to say!

Zane Kesey

Pleasant Hill, OR

484-4315

keyz@key-z.com

For a great website about Oregon wrestling, go to:
saveoregonwrestling.com/?cat=1

! Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler !

Well, another fantastic road trip is in the books! Although the weather called for snow on show day (and for days ahead) we lit outa Tahoe in a sunshiney daydream and took a short side trip to see our new granddaughter (yep, I am a grandpa now) in Placerville and then on our way nonstop to see Phil & Friends at the Mardi Gras Ball at the Bill Graham Civic in San Francisco.

We got to our motel in Berkeley (same one as last show at the Greek. even the same room) with 90 minutes to spare to get downtown. Rolled into the civic and got parked whithout a hitch (except the $12 fee) and got treated super well by the staff at the show, being disabled got us great seats on the balcony so we were able to catch all the excitement unobstructed.



For most of the shows we have attended in the last couple of years, it has been pretty much shoot from the hip aand usually by showtime funds are running low, well this time I planned ahead so's we had plenty of duckets to spend, and good thing we did, it cost us $20 for 2 domestic Miller beers (24oz.) to wash down our shrooms.



Just as I started coming on Dumpstaphunk opened the show, and damn were they smokin hot, they tore the roof off, if I was Phil, I wouldn't wan't to follow these guy's too often, Ivan Neville has quite a crew put together, and it just jumped with Louisiana soul.



Give San Franciscans a reason to dress up in costumes and the will not disappoint you, there were costumes of all sorts and during Phils break there was a contest for best costumes and was won by a giant blue bear!

Phil opened the show with a Jackie Greene fronted One More Saturday Night, and on with the show!
Set One: (1 Hour 18 Mins. 9:21pm - 10:39pm)

One More Saturday Night
Brown Eyed Women
Pride Of Cucamonga
Cold Black Devil >
Golden Road To Unlimited Devotion >
In The Midnight Hour*
Viola Lee Blues >
Caution >
Viola Lee Blues



Phil: "More music and special treats on the way!"

Costume Contest w/Phil as MC (11:07pm - 11:18pm)
Won by The Dancing Bear!

Set Two: (2 Hours & 15 Mins. 11:34pm - 1:49AM)

Shakedown Street > #
Iko Iko > * # (MARDI GRAS PARADE w/Floats, Dancers, Stilt walkers, Dragons, & Costume contest participants dancing in front of the stage)
Truckin' > * #
Jack Straw
St. Stephen >
The Eleven >
Unbroken Chain
Fire On The Mountain >
I Know You Rider
Morning Dew >
Uncle John's Band

E: (1:55AM to 2:08AM)
Phil w/Family member of Jeff Setzekorn (who died, but saved 4 lives) doing the Organ Donor Rap
Box of Rain

* First time played (with this lineup)
# With Ivan Neville on Keyboards & Vocals



It was one hell of a show! And my only criticism was, OK Jackie is the front man, but he spends too much energy trying to outplay Larry Campbell instead of playing rhythm. And I wondered after a whole tour why he still needs to use charts to play? I usually don't criticise so these are merely observations and didn't affect our enjoyment at all, Rubi loves Jackie Greene and has nothing bad to say about him.. And even though it was dumping rain in the city and we had to drive through a whiteout to get home, nasty blizzards again, we made it safe and sound by 6 o'clock Sunday night.




If you went to this show and didn't have a great time something is wrong with you! We go to see our friend Melvin Seals next weekend can't wait for that one! And Jackie Greene is doing a show here in South Lake on Feb 17 and you can bet we will be there, (I work it that night for Renegade Productions anyway).

Well, another for the books, and a pair of happy hippie deadheads waiting for the next show...