Puff the Magic Obama

Mendocino County growers are excited by prospects of an economic turn-around based on a strain being grown this year: Obama Magic Puff. First grown in small quantities in 2008, and marketed in some quantity in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles after the fall harvest of 2009, it was a favorite strain to plant this spring.

"We've actually been hurt by medical marijuana and the recession; there is too much supply, and prices are down. Mendocino County is known for its organic farming and banning genetically modified organisms. We are building that brand recognition, but Obama Magic Puff is our bridge to the future," said Ten Miles Ted.

"What distinguishes Obama Magic Puff from other high-quality, Mendocino grown bud?"

"It makes you really, really hopeful. You imagine all sorts of great things are going to happen. Then you come down from the high, and nothing has changed. But you really want the high again," said Ted. "Users don't like the world they come back to, so they light up again. It really sells, and at a premium to other strains."

Which reminds me that this is One Thousand Day. The day over 1000 American soldiers have died fighting in Afghanistan. Note that we don't count our dead allied foreign mercenaries, or the dead police and soldiers of the Afghan war lord Karzai, or dead Taliban, or civilians. That is 100% pure All-American 1000 dead gunmen. Almost half of them have been killed since President Barack Obama took office, even though the U.S. war of aggression against Afghanistan started back in 2002 under now largely forgotten former President George W. Bush.

But there is Hope. President Obama is going to solve the problem by sending even more troops to prop up war lords Karzai & Co. Hopefully all those U.S. troops will force the Taliban (or perhaps we should call them Afghan nationalists) to negotiate. Or to realize that Apple Pie, Christianity and iPhones are superior to their inferior way of life, lay down their weapons, and open Burger King franchises.

I went to a party Saturday which included a sizeable bunch of former Obama supporters. They avoided the topic of politics. They still hate the Republican Party. If George W. Bush were doing the exact same things Obama is doing now — funding nuclear reactors, allowing new areas for drilling for oil offshore, sending more troops to Afghanistan — they would be frothing at the mouth and organizing lame demonstrations at the local post office.

Barack Obama is supposed to be a brilliant politician, and of course he knows if you are going to take hits you want to take them early in your term of office. He doubtless knows that he can get away with almost anything because the economy is bound to improve between now and the 2012 Presidential election.

The one thing he cannot do, politically, is lose a war. Even though most Americans are sick of the war in Afghanistan, there will be a stigma to losing it. If Obama had pulled out the first month he was President, the situation might not be so pregnant with disaster. He would have taken a hit on the right, but would have gained on the left by ending an unpopular war. Now he is married to the war; a divorce would be ugly.

Thus history repeats himself, as I predicted it would in Barack Obama: Will He Dick Nixon Us? [July 8, 2008].

Cultural notes

Puff the Magic Dragon [song released in 1963]

Barack, the Magic Negro [right wing parody, allegedly racist]