*****************************************************

Hunter S. Thompson's last request? Thompson's friend Warren Hinckle has told the New York Post that, shortly before the writer walked into the kitchen of his Colorado home and fatally shot himself, he told his son, Juan, he wanted a "great funeral -- I want my ashes shot out of a cannon." Hinckle says Juan was visiting Thompson with his wife and young son at the time of his father's suicide, and that Thompson's wife was out at the gym. Hinckle says Juan told him that his father, moments before his death, was "talking about a funeral, great funeral. Typical Hunter ranting, nothing out of the ordinary about that. And then he walked into the next room ... and pow."

*************************************************

He was no problem to the so-called power brokers, because he was just an old drunk and most of his writing is a highly literate and impassioned version of drunken verbal abuse.

Okay, so his drunken verbal abuse targeted people like Nixon and Bush.

Good for him. It was truly great drunken verbal abuse, those people deserved to be verbally abused by a highly literate and impassioned drunk.

That was his job, that was the job we paid him to do. And he was superb at it.

But he didn't have any political power at all. Not even in Aspen.

It sounds kind of silly and paranoid to be making a conspiracy theory out of the suicide of a highly emotional man who spent his life surrounded by guns and whisky.

It's totally common in the Rocky Mountain region for aging men who like guns and booze to pop themselves in the head when they find themselves in the mood to do so.

Besides, he was facing mounting medical bills from his back surgery, hip replacement and broken leg. Sounds like he had osteoporosis, because those are a lot of bone injuries for a man who doesn't ski.

He probably wanted to leave some money for his son when he died, and not have every last penny consumed by medical bills.

There is nothing about HST's death that does not make sense. Not one thing.

Sorry about forgetting to put in his middle name. I remember going to ( don't tell anybody Jimmy Swaggart Event ) many years ago and he used his poor cousin Jerry Lee as an example of someone dieing from all his sin!

reading the first sentence I thought of the Muscular Dystrophy, dude ... Jerry Lewis and thought, yea, he is pretty messed up, but hangin'... he was probably an alcoholic for a long time ...

Then I read next sentence and realized you meant Jerry Lee ... and thought ... yea, he's getting up there, probably was an alcoholic for years also ... herein lies the link ...

:-)

WTF knows why we get to live the length we do ...

If God exists I picture him, a woman wouldn't be so cruel to her children, taking a big stick and stirring the antpile once in a while and guffawing uproarously ... then I say I'm sorry ...............................................

Jerry Lee Lewis Returns

Feb 21, 2005

Rock icon Jerry Lee Lewis is planning a new album, and is calling on loads of help to get it done.

The "Great Balls of Fire" singer, who's now 69, has plans to enter the studio for the first time in 10 years, according to Billboard.. Lewis will make his return with the aid of a cavalcade of guests, including legends such as B. B. King, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Other artists such as Kid Rock, Rod Stweart and Neil Young are also tapped to appear on the still untitled set.

http://www.upress.umn.edu/sles/Chapter5/ch5-3.html

This one's better ...

Have you seen the segments on the Daily Show where they will play edited talking points from video, all lined up in a row? For instance from a Bush speech or from Fox News talking heads all spewing out the identical talking points....again...and again.

Well, CNN was doing that this week with Bush's European speaking engagements. They edited snippets of his speeches saying the same phrase or keyword...over ...and over...again. I burst out laughing when I saw CNN was copying The Daily Show.

Seifert, Early Found Guilty on All Counts February 22, 2005 By Kathleen Sampey

NEW YORK Former Ogilvy & Mather executives Shona Seifert and Thomas Early today were found guilty of plotting to overbill the government's $1 billion Office of National Drug Control Policy account to cover a $3 million revenue shortfall on the business.

Seifert and Early were found guilty on 11 counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

The jury's verdict came on its second day of deliberations.

The pair had pled not guilty. The trial was held here in U.S. District Court.

Seifert, a former executive group director at the WPP Group agency, put her head in her hands as guilty verdicts were read for each of the counts. Early, the shop's former financial director, sat impassively.

The judge set a sentencing date of May 16.

Seifert and Early could each receive up to five years in prison. Both defendants and their lawyers declined comment as they left the courtroom today.

During testimony in court last week, both Seifert and Early insisted they did not ask Ogilvy employees to doctor timesheets to fraudulently increase the number of hours billed to the ONDCP. Early did concede that some timesheets appeared to contain inaccuracies.

Cry a little: Seifert, a former executive group director at the WPP Group agency, put her head in her hands as guilty verdicts were read for each of the counts. Early, the shop's former financial director, sat impassively.

He railed on the media and the Administration over this Jeff Gannon gay prostitute/White House correspondent scandal.

His guests were Robin Williams(who was just hilarious), Joe Biden and Tommy Thompson, and later on Don Cheadle. Joe Biden was ripping on this Jeff Gannon scandal as well, wondering how a reporter using an alias is able to clear the security checks of the FBI and CIA. Biden insinuated that when Congress reconvenes there will likely be an investigation proposed.

Bill also pointed out some great statistics about high school students believing messages should be approved by the Government before the media prints them!

These lyrics are 37 years old!!! Was John Kay a prophet, or just had his eyes wide open?

The Ostrich, performed by Steppenwolf Words and music by John Kay

We'll call you when you're six years old And drag you to the factory To train your brain for eighteen years With promise of security But then you're free And forty years you waste to chase the dollar sign So you may die in Florida At the pleasant age of sixty nine

The water's getting hard to drink We've mangled up the country side The air will choke you when you breathe We're all committing suicide But it's alright It's progress folks keep pushin' till your body rots Will strip the earth of all it's green And then divide her into parking lots

But there's nothing you and I can do You and I are only two What's right and wrong is hard to say Forget about it for today We'll stick our heads into the sand Just pretend that all is grand Then hope that everything turns out ok

You're free to speak your mind my friend As long as you agree with me Don't criticize the father land Or those who shape your destiny 'Cause if you do You'll lose your job your mind and all the friends you knew We'll send out all our boys in blue They'll find a way to silence you

But there's nothing you and I can do You and I are only two What's right and wrong is hard to say Forget about it for today We'll stick our heads into the sand Just pretend that all is grand Then hope that everything turns out ok:

TO: Tennessee residents*

FROM: Ryan Grim, MPP legislative analyst

DATE: Monday, February 21, 2005

SUBJECT: Tennessee medical marijuana bill placed in subcommittee -- please take action

======================================================================

Tennessee's twin medical marijuana bills are making serious progress, and have both been placed in committees in the House and Senate. The Senate version -- S.B. 1942 -- has been assigned to the General Welfare, Health and Human Resources Committee. In the House, H.B. 968 has been sent to the Mental Health Subcommittee of the Health and Human Resources Committee.

Please take a moment to visit http://mpp.org/TN/action.html to send a letter to the subcommittee members. Our system will automatically send a pre-written letter -- which you can edit to your liking -- to every member of the subcommittee.

http://mpp.org/TN/action.html

The subcommittee -- chaired by bill-sponsor David Shepard (D-Dickinson) -- is made up of five Democrats and four Republicans. The bill -- H.B. 968 -- has a good chance of passing out of the subcommittee, but it needs a push. State legislators truly do listen to their constituents. According to former U.S. Congressman Billy Evans (D-GA), "Legislators estimate that 10 letters from constituents represent the concerns of 10,000 citizens. Anybody who will take the time to write is voicing the fears and desires of thousands more."

http://mpp.org/TN/action.html

Also, if you live in Memphis, be sure to tune in to CBS -- channel three -- at 10:00 p.m. for a feature story on medical marijuana.

In addition to contacting the subcommittee, please take a moment to use our site to send an e-mail to your specific legislators in the House and Senate.

http://mpp.org/TN/action.html

Please forward this e-mail along to everyone you know in Tennessee so that lawmakers realize that this is an issue with strong public support. Thank you for supporting the Marijuana Policy Project.

======================================================================

The Marijuana Policy Project hopes that each of the 154,000 subscribers on our national e-mail list will make at least one financial donation to MPP's work in 2005. Please visit http://www.mpp.org/MoneyForStates to donate now.

MPP will be able to tackle all of the projects in its 2005 strategic plan -- http://www.mpp.org/2005plan -- if you and other allies are generous enough to fund our work.

Friends of Thompson quoted in the AP story don't find his hobbled condition and alcoholism enough for him to commit suicide, read on, then spin the story how ever you version of reality can handle, you know he just HAD to have committed suicide, he never said anything to offend the power brokers, right!

And notice how the story glorifies his love of guns, like he's any different than any other government fearing American. Talk about feigning shock at his hobby! This man is a typical American, but who would've thunk!

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050222/ap_on_re_us/thompson_death_5

Mike Cleverly, a neighbor and longtime friend, spent Friday night watching a basketball game on TV with Thompson. He said Thompson was clearly hobbled by the broken leg. "Medically speaking, he's had a rotten year," he said.

But he added that "he's the last person in the world I would have expected to kill himself. I would have been less surprised if he had shot me."

More:

Despite the gunfire and the wild, drug-addled image he projected in his writing, Thompson was on good terms with the sheriff's department and was friends with Sheriff Bob Braudis and with DiSalvo, the sheriff's director of investigations.

"I would definitely call him a friend," DiSalvo said. "This was not the way I expected Hunter to die."

Wouldn't this gun-loving Sheriff have a clue as well? No, we'll depend on the AP to mold our views of this questionable suicide.

Oh, look! Venezualas' President Chavez insists the U.S. is planning to assasinate him, now you know THAT would NEVER happen!

Venezuela's Chavez Says U.S. Plotting to Kill Him by Patrick Markey CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday the United States was planning to assassinate him, but offered no evidence to support his accusation.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened to suspend oil exports to the United States if someone tries to assassinate him, adding that US President George W. Bush would be to blame. (AFP/Presidencia-HO) "I know I am condemned... I'm sure in Washington they are planning my death," Chavez said in a regular Sunday broadcast. "If anything happens to me, you can forget about Venezuela's oil Mr Bush."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0221-26.htm I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist, you know they're ALWAYS wrong according to the formerly MSM! We wouldn't want an investigation to prove it wasn't suicide, as we've already decided, well, we've been told it was suicide, end of story?

If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." See CNN transcript from 12/18/2000

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/

He was famous for being high. How could he ever go to rehab? He'd never be able to live it down.

He had enough money and fame to keep himself in drinking buddies no matter how many people he drove away with abusive drunken behavior.

I watched the news tonight on television, and saw how the media is trying to once again get on the track of effectively detracting people from facts. They go to great lengths to do so. The death of Hunter Thompson, is apparently a relief to some, as he was a journalist who told it like he saw it- he never BStd anything. Just when we need his power of the pen, he fell under the powerful spell of his illnesses. I hate alcohol, and what alcohol does to people. It destroys them from the inside, outside, and then inside again.

There is a lot of things in this nation that are just flat out wrong. Bush is a major influence, but not entirely alone. Local/state leaders have a lot of wrong in them as well. And now that we all know for fact that their beloved leader has used cannabis, they need to come forth and do something about the legality of the issue.

The Real Hippie culture (as you accurately distinguish) was a short-lived phenomenon that really only saw its full bloom from 65-67, mostly in the West Coast scene that Hunter was talking about in the quote I posted. Even by 1968 it was turning sour, and by the "Summer of Love" in '69 the Bay area was full of low-lifes, junkies, and freeloaders of all sorts. The acid scene started going bad when it was made illegal in '66, and by Woodstock you had a lot of crappy Mafia acid replacing the real Sandoz and Orange Sunshine. As in, "Don't eat the brown acid, man. It's bad stuff."

It's funny though, that the right-wingers made "hippie" into such a slur that it still is thrown around today. Look at Eric Cartman on South Park, always badmouthing those "damn hippies." Nobody that age ever saw a real hippie. Hell, even I never saw 'em when they were actually happening, I was just in diapers at the time.

Just shows you how effective stereotyping can be. I mean, we're all just a bunch of monosyllabic, amotivated potheads, right?

"What's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding?", said Elvis Costello.

Peace

On Monday, friends said they had noticed nothing out of the ordinary about the journalist -- at least nothing that was at odds with his mercurial temperament. But Thompson's health had been fading. He had been staying home more often because of painful back surgery, a hip replacement and a recently broken leg.

"I saw him last week, and he didn't look too good," Bennett said. "He seemed upbeat, but he had so many mood swings it was hard to tell. He was a larger-than-life character who will be hard to replace, and I'm not sure you'd want to."

****************************************************

He owned guns, he drank heavily, he had health problems and he had mood swings.

That pretty much spells it out for me.

Even if it were found NOT to be suicide, you'd never hear about it in todays' media. See previous post. biz as usual.

Reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas affected my life in many ways, though just in 'High' school, as a journalism student, writer, and columnist, I was heavily influenced (!!!) by his style of stream of consciousness writing, that many here practice as well. He was the epitomy of what we where experiencing in our experimenting.

So even if you aren't that familiar with him, your are familiar with the effects he has left on myself, and so many posters here as C-News. For better or for worse.

I also loved Ralph Steadmans cartoons that articulated the mood of Fear and Loathing, If the movie had that look, that would've been appreciated. The movie did not have the desired effect for me, maybe here or there, but you can still read the book!

His drug induced ranting and raving in the book is hilariously tongue in cheek and if you read it you can see the sarcasm and the depth of feeling behind it.

He wrote books instead of films because he was rebelling against what passed for journalism in those days.

He wasn't rebelling against what passed for films in those days.

So his work has a layer of meaning in print that is pretty much lost in the film.

Having been a long time fan of HS Thompson, another good book is his report on his rides with the hells angels. I am not from the hippie culture, but the generation that I experienced just after the hippie culture was some of the most vile people one could ever encounter- they were hells angels wannabe's for the most part, though they did not have the money to afford a bike-lol. There was a time when kids, teens, and young adults idolized these kind of people, and to some extent - many still do. I am talking about the outlaw.

You wanna talk about scum- talk about people who I knew who idolized cruelty, the outlaw image, and the bikes- and yes, they did consume cannabis. But they also consumed drugs that made them meaner than hell as well- including lots of alcohol, opiates, and other weird designer drugs.

Where are these people now? Most likely in prison- for they put the very colors in the paint that would be used to color the word evil. The hippies were viewed for the most part peacful people with idealistic views of a better world as a utopia of kindness, love, and compassion. But in my part of the nation, they were viewed as wimps, trouble makers, low life- the ones that were in my area were basically long haired freaks who didn't bathe, lived in communes (wild imaginations saw them as an excuse for orgies), and made their livings either burgularizing peoples homes or buisnesses, or they sold lots of drugs.

The REAL hippie culture may have worked for several people, but it did nothing but to give a large population in my area excuses for bad behaviour. They basically gave hippies a bad name. As it was then, to say a man with long hair and ragged clothing made him a hippie is akin to saying a man with short hair in a buisness suit is a professional. In other words- in my area of the world- being a hippie meant nothing more than simply a fashion statement.

The TRUE hippies had their ideals, principles, and visions for a better world- but they were badly timed. I hate to bring reality check into place- for this world is anything but- ANYTHING BUT - a world of love, peace, and compassion. And the hippies are now middle aged persons, frequently with grand-children of their own. The word "hippie" for most part is central to degrading, even in modern comedy- it is still very degrading- Dharma & Greg for instance, the parent's of Dharma are viewed as being social misfits- and they are hippies to the audience.

Still, the local news was in part responsible for the glorification of the biker in my area. I know that it would be vastly incompetent to group everyone who rides as being part of a roving gang of mongrels, but the memories I have of them fit the model very closely to what a hippie was. I was only a child, but still not too young to remember how many people who would be wearing flowers in their hair were very incognito in their commision to acts of violence.

I have a clear memory of a young woman in a hippie outfit trying to coax me to go outside of a large store in my town with her to meet her parents, when I was around six years old. She was sweet, she was kind- but there was definitely a motive- as I saw her cast a look at two older people that could only be described as intent of something less than noble. I may have just escaped child abduction/kidnapping by knowing a few things about the world at that age. Just as she was telling me that these two people were her parents, my mom appeared- wondering where I was, and so I naturally turned around to introduce her to my knew "friend" and her parents- they were literally running to their car. The girl was dressed like a hippie, the "parents" looked like average people.

I liked his writing, especially back when it was new, but it was sad to see the effects of long term alcoholism on his face and in his demeanor.

He was once banned from the WCT for opening the door and throwing in a stink bomb. He had to apologize in writing before he was allowed back in. They nailed his apology next to the door, it was there for several years.

I know know why he committed suicide, but I'm betting that alcohol played a role.

It's sad but it is a fate that opften befalls writers, especially those who feel so deeply that they have to put on some huge outrageous act of not being able to feel at all.

The two blogger/journalists' that broke the story are gay for that matter. David Brock, and John Aravosis! Once John Stewart got ahold of the story, it went mainstream, yet promises to be only a tip of any every rising iceberg, as Buzzflashes headline proclaims.

Credible Evidence Emerges That Jeff Gannon/Guckert, a Gay Prostitute, Coordinated With the G.O.P. to Bring Down Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) in 2004 Election. Illegal Gay Prostitute by Night; Karl Rove Shill by Day.

buzzflash.com

More:

http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/02/conservative-bloggers-blow-gaskets.html

More:

http://www.mcall.com/news/opinion/oped/all-columnfeb19,0,4042766.column

We all know this, and it is sooo predictable how Carl Rove is using this to put the real scandal on the back pages. That a non-reporter had access to the President, for TWO years, without anyone noticing,

Ain't gonna happen. Trot out a 'bush smoked Pot story, the media will be ALL OVER IT, when he is a former cokehead and alcoholic, who has smoked pot, but had his obvious preferences. This story was released to take your attention span off of the hugest story to hit the Internet FIRST, and made Blogs a household word in one week.

It's funny watching the the formerly MSM catch up. It parralels FOM and the newshounds here at C-News, where readers are writers and posters and lead journalists to their next story.

Prohibition is unraveling, as PropaGannon unravels, and the media chokes on its message of blantant non-objectivity.

Mr. Thompson's suicide is really sad though. He was quite a character.

I try not to watch any movie for the first time from anywhere other than the beginning.

I know how crazy that one must have seemed, picking up on it in the middle.

The book is better, but the movie is pretty much a romp.

Terry Gilliam's movie Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas was at the best a shrine to HST which we could all experience together. Reading a book is a very solitary experience, even a book which blows minds such as F&L. Where The Buffalo Roam is a far worse attempt at a HST film. And the Criterion F&L DVD disc 2 makes the whole thing worthwhile - that and the HST commentary track. But any movie is not going to do his writing style justice.

Seriously, read the man's writing. He's unbelievably good, like a legal high, at his best. Ten years ago, a friend of mine sent a copy of F&LiLV to a friend of his in prison, and the response came back, "I read that book FOUR TIMES! That book was NOT LONG ENOUGH!"

Dear Readers:

I loved Hunter Thompson, and while I also admire Terry Gilliam very much, I thought the movie version of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" that he made a few years ago was just about unwatchable.

I know that you appreciate old hippies, FOM. I think the following passage from Fear and Loathing, written in 1971, about the sixties is some of Hunter's finest writing.

******************

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main era - the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it MEANT SOMETHING. Maybe not in the long run...but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of "history" it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time - and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights - or very early mornings - when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles and hour wearing L.L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket...booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)...but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: not doubt at all about that...

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda...You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic sense that whatever we were doing was RIGHT, that we were winning...

And that, I think was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost SEE the high water mark - that place where the wave finally broke..and rolled back.

******************************

Let's all be part of a NEW wave.

and it is absolutely riddled with ONDCP ads...only of course they don't say they are...but they are.

The first page of this article is surrounded with anti mj ads and the second page is even worse with flash ads, which have to be expensive. On the second page there is a flash setup to search a teen’s room for signs of drug use. Nasty wiggling into the minds of fearful parents. It’s disgusting.

Is US News and World Report doing this because they know I'm looking at Cannabis News, through spyware, or does everyone get all that ONDCP stuff on every page?

with meth and other harder drugs abounding it boggles the mind that police would invest so much energy on growers ...

smoke Cannabis as a young rich man and you can be president ...

smoke Cannabis as a poor man and you can be ruined for life ...

"Fear and loathing in Las Vegas" is a great book, and a fairly good movie, in spite of the outrageous ending of the movie ...

The movie ended in a total Freakout ... ala an acid trip gone bad ... something many of us remember ... with less than happy ken.

After reading you article re:

Medical pot user seeking payment for dope seizure

Marijuana, pot and dope are derogatory names used in an effort to demonize the cannabis plant. As a journalist I'm sure you'd want to use the proper terminology rather than further perpetrate this myth and costly prohibition.

'Truth is weirder than any fiction I've seen ... '

my old man said, "see! look who's doing it! that means you shouldn't do it, if even bush has done it!"

er, I wasn't sure what to say, I admit.

"President Bush indicated in secretly taped interviews he once used marijuana but would not admit it for fear of setting a bad example for children."

Lying about everything sets a better example. Serve your master.

SCOTT RITTER SAYS U.S. PLANS JUNE ATTACK ON IRAN, ‘COOKED’ JAN. 30 IRAQI ELECTION RESULTS: http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2295/

Avoid the coming draft: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0838/is_128/ai_n8692158/print

‘Gonzo’ godfather Hunter S. Thompson kills himself: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/4323caee-83f4-11d9-ad81-00000e2511c8.html

Hunter S. Thompson Dead At 67: http://rense.com/general63/hunt.htm

”When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

- Hunter S. Thompson

IF cannabis is good enough for the leader of a people, shouldn't it be good enough for the people?

ALL of the government agencies that state mairjuana is bad for people- and then state that there is a place for a DRUG that can and HAS killed people, but its OKAY to be sold because there is a need for it. IT seems that we live in a nation of hypocrites.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050221/ap_on_re_us/obit_thompson

Prepackaged News Gets GAO Rebuke Walker: PR Must Be Clearly Labeled By Christopher Lee Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, February 21, 2005; Page A25

The Government Accountability Office warned federal departments last week against using a popular public relations tool that already has landed two agencies in hot water for breaking federal anti-propaganda laws.

In a Feb. 17 memo, Comptroller General David M. Walker reminded department and agency heads that prepackaged news stories that do not identify the government as their source violate provisions in annual appropriations laws that ban covert propaganda.

"It is not enough that the contents of an agency's communication may be unobjectionable," Walker wrote. "Neither is it enough for an agency to identify itself to the broadcasting organization as the source of the prepackaged news story."

Prepackaged news stories, sometimes known as video news releases, have become an increasingly common public relations tool among government agencies and in industry. They are designed to resemble broadcast news stories, complete with narrators who can be easily mistaken for reporters and suggested introductory language for TV anchors to read. Some news organizations have run them without changes and without identifying them as government-produced.

Within the last year, the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, has rapped the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of Health and Human Services for distributing prepackaged news stories that do not disclose within the story that the government is the source of the material.

"[T]elevision-viewing audiences did not know that stories they watched on television news programs about the government were, in fact, prepared by the government," Walker wrote. "We concluded that those prepackaged news stories violated the publicity or propaganda prohibition."

Walker noted that agencies may legally distribute prepackaged stories "so long as there is clear disclosure to the television viewing audience" that the material was prepared by the government or its contractors.

"Agency officials should scrutinize any proposed prepackaged news stories to ensure appropriate disclosures," he wrote, adding that GAO officials were available to answer questions in particular cases.

Last month, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform, said the GAO was wrong in ruling against the drug control office because the agency's mission is to produce media campaigns to prevent and reduce drug abuse. Davis and Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.) sent Walker a letter urging him to withdraw the ruling and reconsider the law. They wrote that it was the news organizations, not the agency, that had a duty to disclose the source of the video news release.

FoM- I'm curious as to the title of the book about Bush's cocaine use? -also didn't the author of it mysteriously die? ... if so, folks should get ahold of the book (wish I knew the title; I think it was withdrawn by the publisher?) and see what else is in there - looks like much the book may have been true afterall.

Monday, February 21, 2005

Private discussions held by George W Bush before he became president suggest he used marijuana but would not admit it for fear of setting a bad example.

***

Bush tells Europe 'No Power on Earth Will Ever Divide Us'

BRUSSELS

February 20, 2004

(AP) — President Bush sought to repair rocky relations with Europe on Sunday, saying "no power on earth will ever divide us."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-02-20-bush-europe-speech_x.htm

***

Belgium Relaxes Cannabis Legislation: http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15806.shtml

because then I would have to be accountable for my actions.

"But you got to understand, I want to be president"

so if I can lie and spin all my wrong doings more power for me.

I wish america would wake up already

He did refer to the recorder as Weadkin or some other familial handle, not sure if it was weedman or something to do with the wead..

One has to wonder what this guy was smoking, or at the very least, what was he reading and believing.

I, for one, still believe, that this president, of these United States, is in a great position of power, and he has surrounded himself with many people who similarly embrace much power and substance.

I do not want to use any old sayings like, the rich get richer and poor get poorer, but, with all this power, and the fact that George smoked the weed, does it not seem that all his wisdom might have been borne from a "pipe dream", I know, God manifests in many diverse and strange ways, but, if this man is serious, how can he continue this war on people? How can he read any scripture and walk away thinking, that he has found any salvation?

"America and Europe are the pillars of the free world. We share the same belief in freedom and the rights of every individual, and we are working together across the globe to advance our common interest and common values," Bush said in his weekly radio address on Saturday.

With such a large media entourage following the tour, Bush is bound to face questions over tapes aired on Sunday in which he indicated he used marijuana before he became president but did not admit it for fear of setting a bad example for children.