These dark and twisted times leave us with a Historic President facing a world in flux. The nation is torn by ideology. Our economy is burning, and the rest of the global market place is starting to smolder. We are embroiled in wars in two countries. Our national networks of energy, transportation, communication, and information all need serious modernization if we are to maintain our standing in the world. The previous administration may have left a legacy so criminal that its stain will mark our nation far longer and more darkly then Nixon. Dead-Man-Dick had the good taste to never admit, much less brag openly, about committing War Crimes as a policy. As an American in these unsettling days of the year Twenty Oh Nine I feel the need to give my advice to our Commander in Chief: the time has come to get Weird.

As the this first decade closes the inaugural of the new Millennium we are clearly now in an age of chaos; an era of weirdness. We must be ready to throw out established notions without regard if we're going to survive the eddies and breakers that seek to drag us under. My muse called the last Century; the American Century, and called this decade the end of it. If he could have taken the ride for a few more years he might have seen, that his nation was not ready to call it quits, so quietly. I don't hold him in shame, for his choice, as I would want no shame, if I should reach a point in my life that I had seen too much, of the same cruelty and stupidity, forced down the throats of my brothers and sisters. He screamed alone for so long that his life and death, like the shattering of some great sun, has spread his energy to a million other voices. We are now the Chorus of the Weird sounding out from every edge of the map. Mister President it is always the chorus that tries to steer the protagonist away from tragedy. Learn from the Greeks; they too were pretty weird and they created democracy and a lot of other great things our society is built upon.

I am not just preaching the usual legalize pot screeds, hell I am so poor I am smoking banana peels just to keep perspective. Legalizing it now would be a kick in the teeth, to me, because I wouldn't be able to afford it. That is not to say that isn't the kind of thinking I am endorsing but it doesn't end there dammit. A strong diet of weird thinking will keep you on edge ready to evaluate and respond to the multitude of problems. You can't fight the heads of a hydra but you can fuck it in the ass. In these challenging times we must consider the inconsiderable and think the unthinkable. You should be ready to accept ideas with which you would never agree. For instance; The Dangerous Substance Refocusing Act would fund increased DEA and Border Patrol for the purpose of cracking down on methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and human trafficking by decriminalizing marijuana for a two year trial period, at which point in time, if no new legislation is enacted, it would return to controlled substance status. The increased focus, on border security and police funding, will make it hard for certain border state and anti-immigration legislators on the right to keep it from passing. If they did imagine the political chaos of a Democratic candidate being able to call the Republican soft on immigration. During the decriminalization period the impact of refocusing on more dangerous substances would be monitored. If the net effect is positive then by that time there should be a plan in place to legalize, regulate, and tax recreational Cannabis.

With the edge of history ready to loom up out of the fog at any moment and swallow this great experiment whole we must embrace the Weird. Only by throwing overboard all the old thinking and spent ideas and preconceived notions can we hope to lighten our ideological load enough so that when the edge comes up we do not sail off of it but launch ourselves from it.