Amsterdam no toking signs now for sale.

So, does this mean that it might be OK to stop making fun of Tom Cruise and John Travolta and all their space opera madness?

Over the last 24 hours or so, the media has gone wild with this story about the pot muffins that were delivered to a school in Texas. Today, the MSNBC news babes are parroting that the muffins “made 18 people sick.” The Fort Worth Star Telegram and UPI are using similar language. Can we at least all agree that these people were stoned, not sick? What this person did is wrong and properly illegal, but I am continually baffled that in 2006 we still suffer from the most absurd and irrational case of reefer madness.

In today’s Dallas Morning News piece, reporter Kristine Hughes does her part to perpetuate the mythological madness by reiterating that 19 people “became ill” from the muffins. Ill, Kristine? Don’t you mean high, stoned, freaked out, or - if you really want to be gentle - affected? But ill? That’s just intellectually dishonest.
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The buzz among people-who-know this week is that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald informed Karl Rove and his attorney on Monday that the grand jury would be indicting him on charges of obstruction of justice and perjury. Most media outlets are not going with the story for the very good reason that they cannot confirm it. If it’s true (I believe it is), then based on Fitzgerald’s prior M.O., I’d expect you won’t hear it in the media until very shortly before he announces it at Justice.

And now, here are a couple tasty nuggets from the evening news:
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This is more of a “diary” entry than the usual article, so bear with me.

As many of you know, I have departed fama PR, the high-tech PR agency I helped start over four years ago. I learned a ton, worked with excellent people, served some exciting clients, and helped build an excellent business that I am proud of. However, as an entrepreneur with a short attention span, the time had come for me to start the head-clearing process and consider what might be next. I have found that a break between ventures is very good for the soul; I realize people have economic realities, but I’ve never understood how people can jump from one thing to another with any sense of clarity or direction. The time in between - for inner exploration and reflection - is precious and well worth the cost.
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I sent in a flavor suggestion to Ben & Jerry’s a year or two ago and was summarily ignored. So now I share it with you, dear readers, in hopes that you will go out and make it and achieve greatness.

Here is my e-mail to them:
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General Michael Hayden’s name is being floated tonight by senior officials as a potential replacement for fired CIA chief Porter Goss. Hayden is principal deputy director of US intelligence and was the director of the NSA for five years. He carried out the President’s unconstitutional spying on hundreds (or possibly thousands) of Americans … an illegal operation conducted to “protect American freedom”. Recently speaking about the scandal, former White House counsel John Dean sagely observed that “a nation that has lost control of its Commander-in-Chief has become something other than a democracy.”
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This weekend, our so-called leaders finally began using words like “crisis” to describe the oil-powered shotgun we Americans have stuck in our mouths. Many indications are that we’ve crossed the point of “peak oil” worldwide, and production is now diminishing by a couple percent per year. (According to the IEA, oil production is now in decline in 33 of the 48 largest oil-producing countries.) Couple this with skyrocketing global demand, and whether you think we have ten years or one hundred years of supply remaining, it means one thing for prices: an upward trendline until it is gone.

And we Americans, while good at many things, are not so good at planning ahead. So, we are likely to keep doing what we’ve been doing: driving our SUVs, full of cases of cheap Chinese goods, along our sprawly commuter routes from our well-lit downtown workplaces to our ARM-financed suburban homes until the music stops. I am not an economist, so I don’t know quite when the model “breaks” - but my hunch is that it’s closer to $100 a barrel than $200, and no matter where the breaking point is, we stand closer to it than we ever have.
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