ROSS KAMINSKY PLAYS SIDEKICK TODAY As I continue to recover from my vocal cord surgery. This should be a good one!
EXPECT MORE FAR RIGHT CANDIDATES FROM THE COLORADO GOP At least if their latest gambit passes. The GOP Central Committee is meeting next week to possibly make a change to the bylaws that would allow them to meet the very high standard Proposition 108 put forth when it opened the primaries in Colorado. In order to opt out of the open primaries a party would have to get 70% of their Central Committee members to vote to do so. When the idea was lofted by far right Republicans previously they vote failed to meet that standard. So the clever Trumpets have decided to try to pass a new bylaw to skirt that issue. The amendment would make a nonvote by a member of the central committee an automatic “yes” vote on any action that requires the approval of at least 75% of the committee’s support to pass. So they are going to assume you vote yes if you don't vote. That is ridiculous. But I'm not a Republican anymore so I don't have a dog in this fight. Part of me wants them to do this so they can nominate a whole slate of Tina Peters clones and get their assed kicked into infinity to reasonable Republicans can take over and rebuild the party in this state again. We need a solid opposition party and this isn't going to do it.
THIS WHILE COLORADO DEMS SUE OTHER DEMS I have to hand it to Bob Marshall, he's consistent. He filed numerous lawsuits against the DougCo School Board for skirting Open Meetings laws, and now he's done the same against Colorado Democrats at the State Legislature along with his colleague Elisabeth Epps. They are suing over the Democrats usage of encrypted messaging apps to discuss the People's business in violation of Open Meetings rules. Read more here.
MORE ABOUT WEED AND MENTAL ILLNESS This came up on yesterday's show and I wanted to provide some articles that give good data on the studies out now that are showing a connection between depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia and cannabis usage. To be clear, none of these studies show causation, they just show a connection and there is a genuine theory that people who have mental illness are more likely to use cannabis in the first place. A huge Danish study of over 6.9 million people over 50 years showed a marked increase in schizophrenia diagnoses. Read the study here or an article about the study here. A prior study from Sweden showed the same thing here. This Harvard study showed cognitive impairment, including a loss of IQ points in people who used cannabis long term. Memory and cognitive issues were sometimes pronounced and the effects were worse than those from alcohol abuse. This is a good article about how little we know about the long term effects on the Prefrontal Cortex of teenagers who use pot. From that article:
And some of THC’s effects on brain development may be limited to specific windows of vulnerability, Tseng has found. Giving rats a THC-like synthetic cannabinoid during early and mid-adolescence—but not late adolescence or adulthood—interfered with GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), a major inhibitory neurotransmitter, in the adult rat PFC. (Based on neurodevelopmental stages, the equivalent cutoff age would be about 16 or 17 years in humans, says Tseng.) As a result, the adult PFC failed to develop certain patterns of electrical activity typical of the mature brain, suggesting delayed brain development (1). “There are a lot of psychiatric disorders that happen when the brain is transitioning to maturation,” says Tseng. “Somehow, exposure to cannabinoids makes that window of maturation much longer than normal and might increase susceptibility to the onset of psychiatric disorders happening.”
At Western University in London, Canada, neuroscientist Steven Laviolette’s group has also found that exposing adolescent rats to THC impairs GABA signaling in the PFC when the animals become adults. This disinhibition of the PFC also leads to overactivity in dopamine neurons in a brain region involved in motivation and reward processing (10). Similar features have been observed in the brains of people with schizophrenia, notes Laviolette.
I'm going to work on getting Alex Berenson on the show to talk about his new book Tell Your Children, which you can find here. The long answer made short is, we don't know what pot does to developing brains for sure, but it's better to err on the side of caution and just keep it out of kids.
IS PORTUGAL'S DRUG LEGALIZATION SYSTEM COLLAPSING? This matters because advocates of drug legalization in the US point to Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs in 2001, is now seeing a big increase in open air drug encampments and overdoses that have people there questioning if this is the right thing to do. This article is behind a paywall but worth the money, but here is an article about the article that's free.
A WOMAN IS SHOT AFTER TRACKING DOWN HER STOLEN CAR And I'm not sure approaching your stolen vehicle when people are in it is a good idea. After the woman's Kia was stolen, she tracked it down using an Apple Air tag. When she walked up to the car, she got shot in the hand The car was later found abandoned after a police chase couldn't stop it. Be careful out there, people.
COLORADO SPRINGS VOTERS WILL DECIDE IF THEY WANT TO GIVE THEIR TABOR REFUNDS TO TRAIN COPS This is a smart play by the Police Chief and the Mayor. They need more space to train officers but rather than just shove something down the throats of taxpayers they are offering to let them decide. Read more here. I'm always in favor of letting the voters decide if the referendum is clear and honest, unlike the scummy Proposition HH.
A STUDENT EXCHANGE PROGRAM BASED ON POLITICS This is really, really cool. There is an exchange program that sends kids from blue states to red states and vice versa in an effort to expose them to people they have negative assumptions about. Very cool, read it here.
AND NOW A STORY ABOUT A TINY OCTOPUS
WIRED SAYS YOUR RING CAMERA IS RACIST That's the implication of this article which takes Ring to task because they make it too easy to share your Ring images with police. They maintain that police should have to get a warrant to get your camera footage, whereas I am more likely to believe that this is the same as a witness giving a statement as it's voluntarily given to police or not. Read more here.
TURKEY EXTORTS IT'S WAY INTO THE EUROPEAN UNION And who didn't see this coming. Sweden wants to be in NATO, but Turkey has been holding things up. Until now that is, as they got a promise from President Biden that he would help them buy F-16s and that Sweden would help them get into the EU. Well played, Erdogan, well played.
THE KIFFNESS AND THE LONELY CAT These do not get old for me.
YOU CAN GO TO COSTCO, BUT YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE
GOOD NEWS IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A USED CAR The crazy high prices are falling back down to earth. Prices are down over 10% since last June, which may help bring down the overall inflation numbers. Read more here.
THIS IS UNEXPECTED BY A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE And though I think Vivek Ramaswamy is the longest shot of long shots for the GOP nomination, he handled this really, really well.
THE GAY MAFIA GOES AFTER A CHRISTIAN COFFEE SHOP Because the coffee shop has a message on its website declaring the following:
A section titled "Homosexuality" reads: "This organization holds that a homosexual lifestyle is contrary to God’s Word and purpose for humanity and is sin (I Timothy 1:10). ... Moreover, this organization is instructed to Love those living such lifestyles. 1 Cor. 6:9 We Believe that showing hate towards people in these communities is not the way Jesus would respond. Therefor [sic], although disagreeing with the lifestyle, we must show love."
So Denver Communists have been protesting outside the coffee shop and have declared they want nothing less than to shut down the shop. The coffee shop is part of an outreach organization and they hire people who are homeless so they can transition to better careers. This is why I hate the Gay Mafia. Because they don't want the freedom to be who they are and love who they are, they want everyone else to worship and love them too, and that's just not a realistic proposition for anyone or any group. Except Mr. Rogers, everyone loved him.
I WONDER IF I CAN GET THIS PLATE HERE A clever Nevadan got a custom license plate that said "GOBK2CA" before it was revoked by Nevada's DMV. I'm not sure why they would revoke it but I want to know if I can get this one here!
MAKING DRESS SUGGESTIONS EVEN MORE CONFUSING FOR WEDDINGS I feel like there is enough confusion about what suggested dress codes mean already without adding "Dive Bar Semiformal" to the mix but here we are. Read more in case you get a "Space Disco Cowboy" invite anytime soon. And know this, you CAN be too clever and then it just gets annoying.
THIS LAWSUIT SHOWS HOW OUR COURTS ARE VIEWED IN COLORADO There is a racket out there whose goal it to get human rights for animals. They have filed lawsuits in New York, Connecticut, and California to do so and they have all failed. Now they are coming to Colorado and filing suit on behalf of the elephants at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, and a Federal judge here just gave the go ahead to let them do it. We all know the courts in NY, CA and CT are super liberal, but this just goes to show that our courts are now viewed as just as whackadoodle. They don't just randomly choose zoos, they choose zoos in states where they think the judiciary is stupid enough to buy the crap they are selling. If I were on the Colorado bench I'd be pretty embarrassed about this.