Obama Insults Online Community For Supporting Marijuana Legalization
At his Online Town Hall meeting this morning, President Obama joked about the overwhelming popularity of marijuana legalization questions on his online forum.
Well, Mr. President, if you "don't know what this says about the online audience," allow me to clue you in. We're more than just some nicknames on a computer screen. We're Americans and we have the same right as anyone else to be heard and to be treated with respect.
As nearly a million among us are arrested each year for marijuana, it should come as no surprise to you that we've come together to ask why. The reason you find us in every category of your site is because the harms of the war on drugs reach into every facet of American life. Drug prohibition destroys all it touches and there is scarcely a problem we face as a nation that couldn’t be made more manageable by ending this great war that continues to stigmatize and divide us.
You can trivialize and dismiss our argument, but you cannot silence our movement. You make us more powerful with every public forum you hold.
Update: This quote from Jack Cole at LEAP pretty much sums it up:
"Despite the president's flippant comments today, the grievous harms of marijuana prohibition are no laughing matter. Certainly, the 800,000 people arrested last year on marijuana charges find nothing funny about it, nor do the millions of Americans struggling in this sluggish economy. It would be an enormous economic stimulus if we stopped wasting so much money arresting and locking people up for nonviolent drug offenses and instead brought in new tax revenue from legal sales, just as we did when we ended alcohol prohibition 75 years ago during the Great Depression."
- Article from Stop the Drug War (DRCNet).
Comments
Obama comments
Another thing that should be noted in this clip is how everyone in the audience laughed and clapped after his answer. Obama is a showman. If if went the other direction and said what he might really think, he would have lost face in that situation. The fact that he said one thing today and may do another next term is not exactly unthinkable to anyone who knows how politics works. And really, that he even mentioned it and said how high the question ranked is a very good sign that the movement is succeeding.
He's said marijuana
He's said marijuana legalization wasn't a good idea for purely economic reasons, but he doesn't say it's not a good idea for the combination of economic/health/social reform, listen between the lines, the guy's a master speaker.
Jumping right into the legalization debate would torpedo his first term, leaving it mired down in moral arguments, it's better in his situation to let the individual states dictate their standings, and then conglomerate the rule during a second term.
That being said, despite the AG's comments about stopping the raids on med pot dispensers, one more was hit in SF, so who knows
COCKSUCKER,YOU LIED!
He said ANYTHING to get my vote!Now,I feel like I feel like I was gangraped by islam and I have AIDS.
C()CKSUCKER,YOU LIED!
I feel like I've been gangraped by islam and now have AIDS.
YOU SAID ANYTHING TO GET MY VOTE!
Bill Maher
"Acquire" a copy of Real Time 03/27/09(Bill Maher) and peep his comments on Obamas statement.
hiya - wow - you guys are
hiya -
wow - you guys are totally misrepresenting what he is saying.
try to be more clear -
you claim this is a issue of legalization - when that is not at all what is being discussed.
yah people tend not to
yah people tend not to listen to what is really said and just get all knee jerk... sigh.
The way to listen to someone like him speak is to imagine him on trial every day.
I think We all got fooled by
I think We all got fooled by this guy, I am starting to think that We progressives set ourselves up for failure with Obama. Me thinks he is in it for himself and all the Hope and Change Rhetoric was just that. Who writes TWO AUTOBIOGRAPHIES about himself before has even accomplished much, that's as narcissistic as they come. An honest look is in order guys.
Persistence
It saddens me to see Obama speak so flippantly about something that is so important to so many.
I understand that he prefers to smoking cigarettes - his drug of choice. In my mind's eye, I can see him
standing in a quiet corner someplace, puffing away and maybe hoping no one will notice.
Obama is wrong about Marijuana, just as he is wrong about Tobacco. In the coming weeks and months,
it falls to us to show him, educate him about how wrong he is.
Obama has said that the main reason he succeeds, is through persistence. I say let persistence also be our
motivation - to finally bring an end to Marijuana Prohibition!
He's an OBOMINATION when it
He's an OBOMINATION when it comes to dealing with marijuana. He could have at least hinted that something needs to be done and discussed the millions of innocents in jail for enjoying what Willie Nelson rightfully claims is the best stress reliever. All those idiots in government need to smoke some nice hash and find out what they're missing out on.
Obama's reply
He's an OBOMANATION when it comes to dealing with marijuana. He could have at least hinted that something needs to be done and discussed the millions of innocents in jail for enjoying what Willie Nelson rightfully claims is the best stress reliever. All those idiots in government need to smoke some nice hash and find out what they're missing out on.
marijuana legalization
Why is it U.S. policy basically dictates how the rest of the world treats marijuana. I mean you could legally buy hashish in Nepal until I believe 1973 until the U.S. forced them to change their laws. I'm sure they're putting pressure on the Dutch as well. Bastards. If only someone could get a picture of Obama smoking a reefer............