It’s a weird, wacky world out there!

Take Holland - they have instituted a tobacco ban on restaurants and cafes. Big deal, you say. Everybody is doing that. Yeah, but does everybody allow you to smoke weed in those same restaurants and cafes? Well, Holland does!

From the UK Telegraph comes this story:

Smoking tobacco in restaurants and cafes across Holland is now illegal, but customers are still allowed to light up pure cannabis cigarettes. Dutch coffee shop owners claim the law, which has effectively put a stop to smoking the milder varieties of cannabis cigarette, threatens to put hundreds of them out of business.

Mark Jacobsen, chairman of the BCD, a nationwide association of coffee shop owners, said proper implementation of it would require inspectors to check each cannabis joint for tobacco content. “It’s absurd. In other countries they look to see whether you have marijuana in your cigarette, here they’ll look to see if you’ve got cigarette in your marijuana.”

Research shows that the majority of coffee shop patrons prefer less-potent joints in which cannabis is mixed with tobacco, and only 18 per cent favor the pure cannabis alternative. Some cafes have said they will get round the problem by producing more pure cannabis brownies or “space cakes”, while others have built smoking chambers within their premises which are off-limits to staff. But a catering industry spokesman said 1,600 coffee shops across the country have been put up for sale because their owners were convinced their businesses were doomed.

The Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, which is responsible for enforcing the ban, said it had trained around 200 inspectors: “They can tell the difference between a mix or a pure joint from its smell and appearance.” The Dutch health minister, Ab Klink, said he hoped the law would help to rid the country of cannabis-induced idleness. “Consumers who spend the whole day hanging out in coffee shops will find other things to do,” he said.

Dutch coffee shops are licensed to sell small quantities of cannabis to adults over 18.

That’s what this guy’s art project was called.

Source: New York Times:

A Boston-born performance artist, Yazmany Arboleda, tried to set up a provocative art exhibition in a vacant storefront on West 40th Street in Midtown Manhattan with the title, “The Assassination of Hillary Clinton/The Assassination of Barack Obama,” in neatly stenciled letters on the plate glass windows at street level.

I has an art!

By 9:30 a.m., New York City police detectives and Secret Service agents had shut down the exhibition, and building workers had quickly covered over the inflammatory title with large sheets of brown paper and blue masking tape. The gallery is across the street from the southern entrance to The New York Times building.

Noooooo! You be stealin’ my art!!

Later, Mr. Arboleda, who is 27, said in an interview: “It’s art. It’s not supposed to be harmful. It’s about character assassination — about how Obama and Hillary have been portrayed by the media.” He added, “It’s about the media.”

I has a new art.

Mr. Arboleda was led off to the Midtown South police precinct for what he called an interrogation. “The Secret Service had to do a whole questionnaire with me,” he said. “It was about an hour of questioning. They asked if I owned guns, if I was a violent person, if I had ever been institutionalized. The exhibition is supposed to be about character assassination. It’s philosophical and metaphorical.”

A Series of You Tubes put up a vid of, we guess, the dudes getting ready to set up their art installation. It involves multiple boards being carried around the city which, when assembled, represent a big black penis. The final board reads “Once You Go Barack…”

Warning: video NSFW:

Personally, we like the video because it uses “Take Five” by Dave Brubeck. Even silly art installations get much better with Take Five being played over them.

Ladies And Gentlemen, Our Long National Nightmare Is Over!

Clinton set to concede delegate race to Obama

Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation’s first female president. Obama is 40 delegates shy of clinching the nomination, but he is widely expected to make up the difference Tuesday with superdelegate support and votes in South Dakota and Montana. Once he reaches the magic number of 2,118, Clinton will acknowledge that he has secured the necessary delegates to be the nominee. The former first lady will stop short of formally suspending or ending her race in her speech in New York City.

More good news: Bill Clinton says “This may be the last day I’m ever involved in a campaign of this kind.” (from CNN Political Ticker). Oh please let it be so!

Well, the Clinton nightmare is over, anyway. A new one begins shortly, one involving Obamaman and McSame.

Have a drink, Hillary. You’ve earned it.

Update 1

CNN: Clinton Not Ready To Admit Defeat:

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s is “absolutely not” prepared to concede the race for the Democratic presidential nomination to Sen. Barack Obama, her campaign chairman said. Terry McAuliffe rejected as “100 percent” incorrect an Associated Press report that Clinton is preparing to acknowledge that Obama has the delegates to win the nomination Tuesday night as the five-month Democratic primary process comes to a close. Obama “doesn’t have the numbers today, and until someone has the numbers the race goes on,” McAuliffe told CNN.

Nooooooooooooooooooo!

Update 2

BreitBart: Hillary Open To Being VP:

Hillary Rodham Clinton has told congressional colleagues she would be open to becoming Barack Obama’s vice presidential nominee, saying she would consider it if it would help Democrats win the White House.

Nooooooooooooooooooo!

Here’s something from the LA Times:

“They sell Bud. We sell Weed,” he said. “What’s the difference?”

The Place: WEED, CALIFORNIA

The federal government is telling the owner of a small brewery here that the pun he’s placed on caps of his Weed Ales crosses a line. “Try Legal Weed,” the caps joke.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau says those three little words allude to marijuana use. Vaune Dillmann, owner of Mt. Shasta Brewing Co., says he was just trying to grab attention for his beers and this tough-luck place in the morning shadow of Mt. Shasta.

The Logo for Mount Shasta Brewing Company

The bureau’s bureaucrats have told Dillmann he needs to stop using the “Try Legal Weed” bottle caps. If he doesn’t, he could risk fines or sanctions. His worst fear: being forced out of business.

“This is ludicrous, bizarre, like meeting Big Brother face-to-face,” says Dillmann. “Forget freedom of speech and the 1st Amendment. They are the regulatory gods, a judge and jury all rolled into one. This is a life-or-death issue for my business.”

Besides, he said, the town itself was named for a man, not a plant. Abner Weed was a lumber baron who served as a state senator from these parts a century ago.

This Famous Photo’s Origins Now Revealed: The College is actually called College of the Siskiyous

Folks in Weed — population 3,000 — know whom they’re rooting for. “Government is keeping us safe from bottle caps,” mocked the headline above an editorial in the Record Searchlight newspaper of Redding, an hour’s drive south down Interstate 5. “Let’s get real,” the editorial concluded, “anyone old enough to legally buy a six-pack . . . is mature enough not to be dragged into a life of drug-addled debauchery by a message on the bottle cap.”

On the bottle caps in question, “Try Legal Weed” is surrounded by the slogan “A Friend in Weed Is a Friend Indeed.” To Dillmann’s supporters, that spells civic boosterism, not drug pushing. Weed has a tradition of exploiting the double-entendre of its name. A pithy placard on the way out of town announces “Temporarily Out of Weed.” Gas stations sell “High on Weed” T-shirts. (The town, after all, is at an elevation of 3,500 feet.)

Though the town is no counterculture haven, the metal entry arch downtown is something of a stoner stopover. Summer days find traveling pot aficionados playfully posing for snapshots under the archway’s sign, “WEED.”

Dillmann says the government treats Budweiser with kid gloves, despite the fact that “This Bud’s for You” also could be mistaken for marijuana slang. “They sell Bud. We sell Weed,” he said. “What’s the difference?”

Source: Sun Times
Location: Morningside Elementary School, Port St. Lucie, Florida (where else?)

Kindergarten teacher Wendy Portillo has been reassigned after she allowed her students to oust a fellow 5-year-old from the classroom because of his disciplinary problems. Last week, Portillo held a vote in her classroom in which the students “voted out” 5-year-old Alex Barton, who is in the process of being tested for Asperger’s Disorder, a type of high-functioning autism.

After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn’t like about Alex the teacher said they were going to take a vote, Barton said. They said he was “disgusting” and “annoying,” Barton said. By a 14 to 2 margin, the students voted him out of the class.

Barton, who said she is considering legal action, said Alex began the testing process in February for an official diagnosis under the suggestion of Morningside Principal Marsha Cully. Alex has had disciplinary issues because of his disabilities, Barton said. The school and district has met with Barton and her son to create an individual education plan, she said. A veteran of 12 years of teaching, including nine at Morningside, Portillo has attended these meetings, she said.

Barton said after the vote, Alex’s teacher asked him how he felt. “He said, ‘I feel sad,’” she said. Alex left the classroom and spent the rest of the day in the nurse’s office, she said. Alex hasn’t been back to school since then, and Barton said he won’t be returning. He starts screaming when she brings him with her to drop off his sibling at school.

Poor Alex just got a lesson in American democracy. Somebody on the Sun Times web site named “jedijahendo” wrote this eye-opener:

On the side of the child, this is a horrible lesson in the lack of trust and compassion in the world, especially in our public school systems. “Cast out” by a majority vote because you’re different, and being too young to understand what happened or why will leave him cold, and unwilling to trust people around him for a very long time.

On the side of the teacher, this is a lesson in democracy and government to the children. He was being disruptive to their studies at a very critical age, where they learn the importance of school, and how to behave in such a setting. This is a learning experience for all involved.

Indeed! For this commenter just hit upon the true function of government schooling - to prep good little conforming citizens. Majority vote, mob rule. Might as well start the lesson early!

By the way, Wendy Portillo’s email is portillow@stlucie.k12.fl.us.