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Rant: Are you sick of political polling, too?
As we finally, mercifully arrive at the last few days before Election 2012, the pollsters are in full swing, tracking races nationally and state by state and giving us up-to-the-minute info on…absolutely nothing. A current sampling of the most <cough> reputable <cough> polls show that President Obama leads Mitt Romney by as many as two points nationally. Or he’s losing by five. Or any number in between.
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The point is, political polls, as a group, are essentially useless because they may or may not be biased against one guy or the other, and this [rhymes with blusterduck] is all fed by a mainstream media too lazy and corrupt to set the record straight. (This last part might actually be true.)
So our advice, as always, is to do your best to ignore the noise, educate yourself on the issues, and exercise the greatest right any democratic cictizen has: the right to vote.
Rave: Colorado is getting educated about marijuana—it is about time.
Part of said self-education—at least in Colorado—should involve reading up on marijuana legalization to decide whether or not you support Amendment 64. This week, a pro-64 group published a report that found, among other things, that marijuana arrests in Colorado over the past 25 years have disproportionately targeted young, Latino, and African-American offenders. The report convincingly outlines how unjust these disparities are and suggests that, whether or not Amendment 64 passes on November 6th, we desperately need a drastic overhaul that begins to correct the utter failure that the “War on Drugs” has proven to be.
—Image courtesy of Shutterstock