The American Medical Association has recommended that the federal government change the classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug to allow for its use under medical supervision. Schedule I drugs are those considered to be to hazardous to have any medical value and cannot be prescribed by physicians, even with a controlled substance license. This is getting harder to justify considering that, while doctors still cannot prescribe marijuana, thirteen states now allow individuals to use marijuana for medical reasons and others are considering it. (Hat tip to Jessica S, whose law practice might grow tremendously as she predicts that one day she will become “the Weed Queen of Defense.”)
Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought
Tea Baggers, Clones, and The Holocaust
November 11, 2009 — Ron Chusid| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Men Who Stare at Votes | ||||
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John Stewart ridiculed the tea party protests against health care reform and their comparisons between health care reform and the Holocaust (video above). He later demonstrated how Sean Hannity used video from another date to inflate the size of the crowd (video below):
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Sean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck’s Protest Footage | ||||
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Sean Hannity isn’t the first to use editing to increase the size of a crowd. I made fun of George Bush’s campaign for doing this in an ad in this post written during the 2004 presidential campaign:
Army of Clones?
Breaking News: George Bush develops army of clones, first seen in Bush ad (photo above).
It is speculated that the Bush administration developed this clone army, based upon an idea from George Lucas, in order to proceed with the neoconservative agenda of world dominance, without having to resort to a draft. Critics of the plan point out the effects upon the Republic when implemented.
Others speculate that these are actually alien clones, as first revealed by Chris Carter. Under this theory, the bulge on George Bush’s back in the debates was either an alien communication device or mind control device.
Proponents of both theories fear that Bush might also be planning to use cloned Republican voters to steal the election next week.
Others speculate that this actually represents use of Photo Shop to create the illusion of a larger attendance at a Bush rally–a rather boring explanation.
Update: Sean Hannity reportedly will be addressing the issue on his show tonight. I’d love to watch his show but I had already planned to spend the time doing something more interesting, perhaps such as watching to see if the grass is still growing this time of year. I bet that Jon Stewart will fill us in (but I fear it won’t make it until tomorrow’s show).
Even Fox Debunks Sarah Palin’s Imaginary War on Coins
November 11, 2009 — Ron ChusidA couple of days ago I noted a couple of the areas where Sarah Palin had her facts wrong in a recent speech. This included both her continued mischaracterization of the health care reform legislation and her claims about changes in coins. She was talking about a “disturbing trend” seen with the movement of “In God We Trust” to the edge of coins. She saw this as a new move by secular liberals in the Obama administration, but this change was actually commissioned in 2005 under a Republican Congress and approved by George Bush.
As with so much of what Sarah Palin says, there’s no basis in reality. Even Fox, which generally repeats Republican talking points as fact, wouldn’t go along with a comment as off the wall as her statement on the coins (video above). If only Fox would fact check the conservative statements they repeat more often.
False Positive on Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
November 11, 2009 — Ron ChusidIf anyone is running Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, beware that a database from earlier on Tuesday had a false positive. Normally the program is very valuable in eliminating malware but sometimes it has false positives. Most of the time it is not a problem as programs removed can be easily restored by running the program.
On Tuesday the program was recommending removal of some registry entries which turned out to be essential to load Windows. Those of us who did as the scan advised found that we could not boot into Windows at all (not even safe mode).
It was a real challenge to fix this considering it wasn’t possible to get into Windows or run Anti-Malware to reverse its actions. It took a several hours, tips from other people in the Malwarebytes forum who were also trying to figure out how to fix this, and several Google searches. Finally I managed to export the registry keys from another installation of Windows, get access to the computer, and figure out how to import the registry keys into a copy of the registry which was not running. Hours later the computer is finally back up and running.
Malwarebytes has updated their database and any users should make sure they update the program before running it.
