Federal Agents Have Mistaken Osama Bin Laden for a Pot Plant

I feel safer this week than I did last. Much safer. Why? Not because the intrepid strategists of our federal government arrested Osama Bin Laden. Not because they have vanquished the Taliban in Afghanistan. And certainly not because they arrested every violent street gang member in Los Angeles and shipped back the illegal gangsters to wherever it was that they came from.

Instead of all that, Drug Enforcement Agents raided a medical marijuana dispensary in Culver City. According to the Los Angeles Times, they arrested a single employee, a disabled former Marine. This daring raid occurred the same day the Appellate State Court in San Diego ruled that federal law does not preempt California’s Medical Marijuana Laws.

Now everybody knows there are two types that visit the medical marijuana dispensaries around California. There are the people who are genuinely ill or even terminal, who use it to relieve the ailments and side effects caused by any number of diseases and their associative treatments. And then there is everyone else.

Dispensaries are not hard to find. Often the big green neon marijuana leaf in the window serves as a definite giveaway. And their patrons are not hard to spot. Drive down any major street during the weekend and you will find pot customers patiently standing outside their favorite dispensaries, waiting for the place to open its doors. And getting the card that will give you legal permission to buy marijuana, from what I have been told, is not hard to obtain. You just talk to the doctor about your ailments, fork over some money, and here’s your card.

Now Culver City has a history. Many of the great and formerly great film studios are and have been located there. The old MGM, with its two Leo Lions at the entrance graced one part of Culver City. The studio’s famous musicals were all shot there, including “The Wizard of Oz,” where the Munchkins allegedly cavorted with sexual rhapsody, not having never before seen so many of their own kind in one place at one time. This tale is part of Hollywood myth or legend, depending on which you prefer.

Now that great MGM lot is part of Sony Entertainment. The old back lots, with all of the sets, from Andy Hardy to Biblical Epics, were long ago sold of for condominiums. The old Culver Studios enjoys yet another incarnation. And the curious can see the main building, which served as the exterior for Tara in “Gone With the Wind.” That Battle of Atlanta, Daryl Zanuck style, he being the producer of “Gone With the Wind,” was fought in Culver City. The famous train station sequence, with all the Confederate wounded lying in wait for the evacuating locomotives was shot on that land. Today the wounded could slake their thirst with a quick stop at Trader Joe’s.
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Other than action films, Culver City’s history is not particularly violent. It is not a dangerous community. In fact, it is anything but, since Culver City is enjoying a comprehensive rejuvenation. It is now a destination where film studios, old and new, coexist with trendy restaurants, movies theaters, the Kirk Douglas legitimate theater, boutiques, home furnishings outlets, and, apparently, a marijuana dispensary. The biggest danger is perhaps getting run over by a stroller, or clobbered by a hand holding couple too ensconced in romance to notice you walking in front of them. You may also suffer a seizure when you read the prices at some of the more trendy restaurants, or see how long the waiting line is for anything, anywhere.

But you won’t be mugged, chances are. And you wouldn’t notice the pot dispensary and the people buying their weed to either alleviate the pain or provide entertainment. But the Feds did notice. On the day the California Appeals Court ruled that the Federal agencies should concentrate on other things, like the rampant smuggling and the incumbent violence on the border. But that may prove a challenge.

Now it has been a long time since marijuana was any kind of issue to me. Age and responsibility has a way of supplanting certain desires. But if I was truly ill, or suffered the side effects I know friends of mine have suffered from, I would be thinking about something, anything, that would ease the pain and discomfort. If you are really sick or terminal you aren’t worried about dying from marijuana. If if it’d just to enjoy yourself, then arguments can be made for against its use or, more directly, adult use.

But that is not my argument. Mine is to wonder why we are bothering with this nonsense when we have so many other challenges. When we have real crime, and, as I noted earlier, the borders are rife with killing and smuggling. Thousands have died in the Mexican Drug Wars, and that war has spilled over into the States.

And then there is a matter of money. We are broke. We are borrowing money from China. And we are using it for what, exactly? By acting this misdirected, you would think the DEA is high on grass.

Johnny Edwards, We Hardly Knew Ya

Okay, so by now unless you were living in a cave in Mynamar you would have read or heard about how the National Enquirer, cornered former Presidential Hopeful and Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, John Edwards in the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Apparently, the media gang from the Enquirer chased poor Johnny around the hotel in some modern version of an old Marx Brothers movie. From the different reports, the very bemused hotel guests watched the impromptu floor show.

John Edwards ran for his life, or, rather, for his career, while the Enquirer gang gave chase. They cornered him in a bathroom, where reports are the ever intimidating hotel security guards–you have seen them–allegedly threatened to break heads and cameras. The Enquirer reporters are said to have filed a criminal complaint with the Beverly Hills Police.

I mean you have to admit this is pretty funny. No matter what side of the aisle you rest your laurels, if you don’t look at this with humor and irony, mixed with the usual disgust and admonition, then you are lulling on the ice floes with respect to the cultural and political zeitgeist of the early 21st Century. When you are worth hundreds of millions and your are a very public figure, in fact one that is being considered for the Vice Presidential role, again, or as a cabinet member, you have to feel pretty stupid when you are cornered in the hotel bathroom by a horde of reporters. The only thing worse would be that while you held the door against the narrow shoulders of the reporters, you discover Senator Larry Craig is tapping his lascivious foot at you from inside a bathroom stall.

You have to be an idiot. I’m sorry, but whether or not you want to wax moral on this, and there is plenty of wax on this one to make enough candles to light a sensual sex scene, the morality to me is not the major issue. The issues is whether you are smart enough to run this country. If you can’t take care of your extramarital affairs without getting caught by the media, then how are you going to outfox the Russians, the Iranians the the lineup of “evil doers” you will be dealing with on a daily basis? I mean, how cool can you be.

All right, so up comes the name of one William Clinton. But with Clinton it was different. The women in one form or another ratted him out. He wasn’t caught near in flagrante as was John Edwards. His girlfriend of the moment either talked to the press or talked to her girlfriend who talked to the press, depending on what girl of the moment we were talking about.
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Look, I’m sure there are good qualities about John Edwards. And I’m sure with his wife, Elizabeth, being so ill, there are pressures most of us can’t imagine. He has had his share of tragedy in his life. It is the kind of tragedy that no money nor political or social status will ever fully surmount. You can’t have a child die and a wife that is dying and not be in the need of some relief. Anywhere.

But not here. Not now. That is, if you really want to be considered for Vice President or  a cabinet position. If Edwards is on a secret self-destructive bent for one reason or another, then he is certainly in the groove. But I don’t think that’s the case with Edwards. He is far too ambitious to dwell in the world of secret self-denial and self-destruction.

Look, he is definitely an intelligent man, although I don’t care all that much for his personal style. Between the newscaster’s haircut, circa 1980, and the ersatz folksy, populists jingo he spouts from time to time, He is hard to embrace. I see him more as the calculating “Goober Boy,” than as a viable Presidential candidate. I made up my mind on this when asked during one of the oh so scintillating presidential debates what he considers his personal flaw. In fairness, Barack Obama was the only one who gave an ingenuous answer. The rest decided to shuck and jive. But in Edward’s case he “aw shucks” it for a moment and then announced his flaw was that he cared about America “too much.”

I would rather he would have told us he was haunted by unseen and indeterminate demons who, despite what I believe is his genuine love and concern for his wife, he is forced to go seeking solace in the arms of a Santa Barbara MILF where, together they have produced a love child as a result of their passions. Then I would have thought, okay, it’s an imperfect world and it least he isn’t trying to feed me the kind of line you feed the last drunk at closing time.

It least he wouldn’t be living in denial and forcing us to do the same.   He wouldn’t sound like Larry Craig.

Does This Painting Remind You of Anybody?

Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Besides conducting background checks and corporate research, I am still an author and am fairly versed in the arts. I had the fortune of seeing this painting on display in the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts, known as LACMA around these parts. It is a most compelling work. It attracts your eye from way across the gallery. This piece was painted in the twenties by German Expressionist, Magnus Zeller. Germany was experiencing a few speed bumps at the time, following the debacle of the First World War, or “The War to End All Wars,” as it was called then. It is a term we view today with more than its share of irony, if not dark humor. But I digress.
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Cast your eyes on the painting and think your thoughts. History does repeat itself, or as the French have been rumored to say, “The More Things Change, the More They Stay They Same.”