[Vision2020] New Rules from "Real time With Bill Maher" (March 30, 2007)

[Tom Hansen]

New Rules from "Real time With Bill Maher" (March 30, 2007)

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New Rule: Iran and Tom Cruise must swap hostages. Those 15 British sailors
for Katie Holmes and her space baby. It's a Shiite-Scientologist match made
in heaven. The Iranians get something they've always wanted, the chick from
"Dawson's Creek," and Tom gets something he's always wanted: 15 British
sailors.

New Rule: No more ski slope weddings. Let's remember what a ski slope
wedding or a skydiving wedding or an underwater wedding really says: "My
love for you is so strong, it doesn't warrant a day off from my hobby." On
second thought, what better way to celebrate marriage: heading downhill and
feeling frigid.

New Rule: If you have to eat crap, at least eat humane crap. This week,
Burger King announced that it would begin buying eggs and pork from
suppliers that don't keep animals in cages, which is such a rare act of
corporate responsibility. I'm waiting from them to say, "April Fools." Hey,
you keep this up and I'll put one of your crowns on, Burger King. And, now
it won't because it's three in the morning, you're the only place open and
I'm high. Not to be outdone, Taco Bell says they're going to start being
nicer to their rats. 

And finally, New Rule: Stop pretending your drugs are morally superior to my
drugs, because you get yours at a store. This week, they released the
autopsy report on Anna Nicole Smith, and the cause of death was what I
always thought it was. Mad Cow. 

No, it turns out she had nine different prescription drugs in her. Which, in
the medical field, is known as the "Full Limbaugh." 

They opened her up and a Walgreen's jumped out. Anti-depressants,
anti-anxiety pills, sleeping pills, sedatives, Valium, methadone. This woman
was killed by her doctor, who is a glorified bartender. And I'm not going to
say his name, but only because, a) I don't want to get sued, and b) my back
is killing me. 

Now, this month marks the 35th anniversary of a famous government report. I
was 16 in 1972, and I remember how excited we were when Nixon's much
ballyhooed national commission on drug abuse came out and said pot should be
legalized! It was a moment of great hope for common sense. And then, just
like Bush did last year with the Iraq Study Group, Nixon took the report and
threw it in the garbage. And from there, the '70s went right into disco and
colored underpants. 

When are we going to get it? That America's most dangerous drugs are the
legal ones in our medicine cabinets, while some of the most benign ones are
growing under a heat lamp in my dressing room. I joke! I joke, of course.
But, 40% of the U.S. population has tried pot. That's 94 million Americans.
Or, as I call them, "my base." 

Are we all criminals? No. We're not. But it is criminal when a certain
person borrows and doesn't return another person's diamond-encrusted bong,
Woody! 

Now, this week, in The American Scientist - a magazine George Bush wouldn't
read if he got food poisoning in Mexico and it was the only thing he could
reach from the toilet --described a study done in England that measured the
lethality of various drugs, and found tobacco and alcohol far worse than
pot, LSD or Ecstasy, which pretty much mirrors my own experiments in this
same area. 

The Beatles took LSD and wrote "Sgt. Pepper." Anna Nicole Smith took legal
drugs and couldn't remember the number for "911." That is a number. 

In conclusion, I wish I had more time to go into the fact that the drug war
has always been about keeping black men from voting by finding out what
they're addicted to and making it illegal. It's a miracle our government
hasn't outlawed fat, white women.  
But...it's about 8:55 here in California, and it's almost time for me to
take my "medicine." I leave with one request: would someone please just make
a bumper sticker that says, "I'm a stoner, and I vote"?

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Seeya at the polls, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college
students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."

- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)