Government-Supplied Marijuana Cigarettes from Miami Are Lost in the Mail

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Elvy Mussika is a former South Florida resident who uses medical marijuana -- grown and supplied directly by the federal government. As detailed in our October "Legalize It" issue, the government started a program in 1982 that supplied pre-rolled joints to patients with chronic conditions. George H.W. Bush cut all new prescriptions when he was in office, but a few legal tokers remain. We profiled Irvin Rosenfeld, a Fort Lauderdale stock trader who tokes up legally, in the open, every day.
Now Mussika -- "one of the four remaining United States citizens who still receives medical marijuana from the United States government" -- has lost her pot. Media_httpblogsbrowar_irffe

JAABlog has the scoop on this one: In a letter to the director of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the postmaster general, Mussika's lawyer, Norm Kent of Fort Lauderdale, explains the mix-up.
Mussika recently moved to Eugene, Oregon (a logical development, all things considered), and was unable to pick up her six tins of 300 marijuana cigarettes before flying out West. So she appointed Kent to make the pickup himself, and mail the 1,800-joint, six-month supply to her new home.
But apparently, Kent wrote the ZIP code wrong. Instead of "97405," he wrote "90405," which may have landed the packages in Santa Monica, California. Hence his letter to the DEA and the postmaster:
I am going public with this in the hope that the DEA recognizes it is not in the public interest to have marijuana missing in the US mails, and because we will be needing to make a record of this loss in order to procure a new prescription. This marijuana is grown by the federal government for its patients under the protocol at the University of Mississippi. This is my formal notice of its disappearance.
Either some drug-sniffing dogs are to blame, or the Santa Monica post office is suddenly full of non-disgruntled workers. No word on whether Kent inspected the packages before writing the address label.
The report, released Wednesday, predicts the medical marijuana industry will hit $1.7 billion in revenues in 2011, rivaling sales of Viagra.
I got on a conference call with the report's creators to ask the most important question: "Got any data on people who use marijuana and Viagra at the same time?"
"No," answered Ted Rose, editor of the report, as speechless as a guy who just took too big a hit off a bong.
Rose works for See Change Strategy LLC, an independent financial analysis firm based in Washington D.C. You can get his report here. But it costs $1,150. And do you know how much weed and Viagra you can buy for $1,150?
Hey, no worries if you are in the biz, man. See Change expects the market to double in the next five years.
Forget what you've heard about an industry that Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and the District of Columbia have legalized.
Most of the information is anecdotal, politically charged, or poorly researched, Rose said. Until now.
See Change sent out more than 1,500 surveys--and about 300 dope peddlers actually answered them.
"Whatever one's opinion about medical marijuana, everyone benefits by understanding how big this market is, who is making money, and how," Rose said.
I am OK with legalized reefer madness, as long as my kid doesn't catch it. I've met people in real pain who benefit from it, including some who are just suffering from the economy. But let's be honest: Medical marijuana is a shameless front for complete legalization.
The proof is that California and Colorado make up 90% of the market, according to See Change. And these are the two states where you can still spot the most Grateful Dead bumper stickers.
In Colorado, where I live, it's as easy to find a dispensary as a Walgreens. A TV reporter friend told me that whenever he walks into a dispensary unannounced to do yet another medical marijuana story, it's difficult to find cancer patients or geriatrics. Mostly, it's kids.
"The 20-somethings would tell me they have back pain while sitting in a chair," he said, "and then I'd watch them walk out of the dispensary just fine, joking with their friends."
That, of course, is anecdotal. The data suggest this highly fragmented industry could evolve from stoner boutiques toward money-grubbing corporations, even though it is currently illegal under federal law.
President Barack Obama has promised to turn a blind eye in states that have legalized medical marijuana--which has ignited the industry's growth, Rose said.
So, for now, medical marijuana entrepreneurs are making astonishing bets that the next president won't be some moralizing yahoo who shuts the whole business down and throws everyone in federal prison.
It's just like banking: Who needs risk management? Be an optimist.
Serial entrepreneur Tripp Keber took me on a tour of his beverage plant on Tuesday. It's called "Dixie Elixirs & Edibles," even though a more obvious name would be "Soda Pot."
Keber, who also develops luxury RV parks, says business at Dixie Elixirs is just bubbling over.
Why smoke when you can sip something that tastes like a popular fruit-flavored soda? The company also sells medicated biscuits, bars, chews, truffles, cakes, lozenges, topicals and tinctures.
The plant is secure, has no signage, and seems to run as smoothly inside as Pepsi Bottling. Keber pays a PhD to maintain product quality. And he talks like any CEO looking for deals.
"I truly believe that there will be an opportunity for a company in the medical marijuana space to go public in the next three to five years," he said. "But within 24 to 30 months .. somebody is going to knock on our door. "It would be a rounding error for a Philip Morris or a U.S. Tobacco," Keber said. "And if you don't think that they are eying this market, you would be foolish."

France, Britain and Germany want EU and UN to replace US as 'peace talks' facilitator

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France, Britain and Germany have called on the United Nations and the European Union to present a 'peace plan' for the Middle East, and to effectively replace the Untied States as the facilitator of 'negotiations.'
Putting the job in the hands of the EU and the UN would sideline the United States, Israel's closest ally which has tried unsuccessfully for months to get face-to-face negotiations going, as well as Russia, an ally of the Palestinians.
The big question mark is whether the United States would allow the Europeans and UN to take the lead in trying to resolve the standoff, and that is likely to depend on whether the Israelis give a green light, the diplomats said.
The Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to President Barack Obama's target date of September 2011 for an agreement, but negotiations collapsed weeks after they restarted last September.
The Palestinians insist they will not resume peace talks until Israel halts settlement building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War which the Palestinians want for their future state.
And that is one reason why negotiations aren't likely to resume despite the fact that the Europeans promise
The diplomats said the three European countries have delivered the message in key capitals - including Washington and Jerusalem - that if the parameters of a final settlement are endorsed, the Palestinians will return to the negotiating table.
YNet adds:
The diplomat said the United States will almost certainly never accept a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence, or any other measure that does not include a negotiated peace agreement.
That's why the three Europeans are pressing for the parameters of a settlement which would hopefully lead to a resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the diplomat said.
The good news here is that the Europeans' votes in the Security Council are apparently not wrapped up yet.
Would letting the EU and the UN run the show for a while be a good idea? Well, maybe, if it means that the US will stop playing neutral and get out on our side like most Americans want to do.
no outside power can decide the borders within the Mandate set by Great Britain. Europe is going to have to talk to itself.

Geraldine Ferraro, US Political Pioneer, Dies at 75

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Geraldine Ferraro, the first American woman to run for national office on a major political party's ticket, died Saturday at 75.
Ferraro was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 1984.  Her family said she died at Massachusetts General Hospital in the eastern city of Boston of complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that she had battled for 12 years.
Ferraro was the running mate of presidential nominee Walter Mondale on the Democratic Party's ticket in 1984, when former president Ronald Reagan was running for a second term in the White House. more>>

The Future of Syria

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The Syrians have finally realised that their "young, charismatic, UK-educated and open minded" president is following in the footsteps of his late father, Hafez el Assad.
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Hating Israel isn't enough
Hafez el Assad

On Friday, protests spread from Daraa to other towns and cities,
including the capital, Damascus,
in the biggest threat to the 45-year-old president
since he assumed power in 2000.
Security forces fired tear gas and in some places
live ammunition into the crowds,
killing at least 14 people,
according to witnesses and activists.
In yet another Arab country it becomes apparent that

hating Israel isn't the only thing that's important.

That country is Syria





.....in Syria, which have seen unarmed demonstrators gunned down by government forces, prove conclusively that when push comes to shove, Bashar is actually not all that different from his late father. As some of his critic comment, "The apple does not fall far from the tree."
His handling of pro-democracy protests that have erupted in several Syrian cities since March 15 is a reminder that Bashar is a dictator who, like Colonel Gaddafi and Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, will not surrender power gracefully.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal several weeks ago, Bashar boasted that the Tunisian and Egyptian models did not apply to his country and that there was no fear for the survival of his regime. He was right in the first part of his analysis: both neither the Egyptian nor Tunisian presidents chose to fight their people to the last drop of their blood.
But the second part of his analysis is faulty: Syria is far from immune from the political tsunami of popular uprisings currently sweeping through the Arab world.
Syrian human rights organizations have expressed deep concern over the Syrian authorities' ruthless and brutal crackdown. They note how in many instances children under the ages of 15 were arrested by the notorious "mukhabarat" secret service for allegedly painting anti-government graffiti on city walls.
In another incident that took place in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, Bashar unleashed his commandos against peaceful worshippers who were staging a sit-in strike in a mosque; he killed dozens and wounded many others.
Syrians are asking: Will the son go as far as his father in stamping down on all protests? The public has not forgotten the terrible events of 20 years ago in the city of Hama, when government forces using artillery and air power killed an estimated 20,000 civilians.
Syrians are also asking who will replace their dictator. Some fear that in the absence of an alternative, Iran and Hizbollah could end up controlling Syria.
But the collapse now of Bashar el Assad's regime would be a severe blow to Iran, Hamas, Hizbollah and other radical powers in the region.
Reports indicate that Hizbollah militiamen have been brought to Syria to help suppress the wave of anti-government protests. Other reports have claimed that members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard were flown into Syria to help Bashar's regime.
As international criticism mounts, Bashar has suddenly started talking about the need for financial and political reforms. His critics shout that he is a liar who had 11 years to implement necessary changes, but chose instead to run his country as the leader of a mafia.

Egyptian army forces women protesters to take "virginity tests"

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Fatwas and Flogging on Fake hymens in Egypt?

Media_httpyourjewishn_ppkcqFrom Amnesty International: Ain't Arab democracy wonderful? Amnesty International has today called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate serious allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters arrested in Tahrir Square earlier this month. After army officers violently cleared the square of protesters on 9 March, at least 18 women were held in military detention. Amnesty International has been told by women protesters that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to ‘virginity checks’ and threatened with prostitution charges.
‘Virginity tests’ are a form of torture when they are forced or coerced.
"Forcing women to have ‘virginity tests’ is utterly unacceptable. Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women," said Amnesty International. "All members of the medical profession must refuse to take part in such so-called 'tests'."

20-year-old Salwa Hosseini told Amnesty International that after she was arrested and taken to a military prison in Heikstep, she was made, with the other women, to take off all her clothes to be searched by a female prison guard, in a room with two open doors and a window. During the strip search, Salwa Hosseini said male soldiers were looking into the room and taking pictures of the naked women.
The women were then subjected to ‘virginity tests’ in a different room by a man in a white coat. They were threatened that “those not found to be virgins” would be charged with prostitution.
According to information received by Amnesty International, one woman who said she was a virgin but whose test supposedly proved otherwise was beaten and given electric shocks.
(h/t Silke)

Hating Israel isn't enough

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Syria's first couple, Asma and Bashar al-Assad, at their private office overlooking Damascus.









In yet another Arab country it becomes apparent that
hating Israel isn't the only thing that's important.


That country is Syria.

Asma and Bashar al-Assad


.....To Paris Match she was "the element of light in a country full of shadow zones"; to French Elle, the most stylish woman in world politics. Even the Sun was moved to coo over "the sexy Brit bringing Syria in from the cold".  But when American Vogue last month published a glittering profile of Asma al-Assad, calling her "a rose in the desert … glamorous, young and very chic", it seemed the world's patience with fawning paeans to Syria's British-born first lady was beginning to wear thin. The former banker, 35, who grew up in Acton, west London, has been married for more than a decade to the country's president, Bashar al-Assad, with whom she has three children. She is, said Vogue, "the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies," who combines her passion for Christian Louboutin shoes with a mission "to create a beacon of culture and secularism in a powder-keg region".

According to many observers, Assad was supposed to be immune to this kind of popular movement. His anti-American policies and enmity toward Israel were thought to boost his legitimacy in the eyes of his people. Compared the advanced age of Egypt’s former president, 82-year-old Hosni Mubarak, and Tunisia’s ex-president, 74-year-old Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Assad’s relative youth at 45 was also thought to be an asset. One Syria specialist, Joshua Landis, noted that unlike the aging Mubarak, the young Assad was “popular among young people” who “tend to blame [corruption] on . . . the ‘old guard.’” An unfortunately timed puff piece on Asma al-Assad, the president’s glamorous wife, in the current issue of Vogue, spoke of the “first lady’s central mission . . . to change the mind-set of six million Syrians under eighteen [and] encourage them to engage in what she calls ‘active citizenship.’” It gave plausibility to the claim that the Assads are a fresh breeze blowing through a decrepit house.
Ironically, the basis for such arguments was Assad’s own public relations strategy. When Assad inherited power from his father in 2000, he adopted the “old versus new guard” theme to cultivate his image as a reformer and bolster his legitimacy at home and abroad. For a brief period, he allowed dissidents to criticize corruption openly. But this so-called Damascus Spring was a cynical mirage. In the past decade, Syria has not seen a single meaningful act of reform.

Hafez el Assad
The truth is that Assad could not have pursued such reform even if he had wanted to, as this would have meant taking on the corruption of his immediate family. Assad’s cousin, the billionaire Makhlouf, is widely considered to be the second-most powerful man in the country, even though he holds no official title. He is essentially the economic arm of the regime, using his business empire to co-opt the Sunni merchant class. (Makhlouf, Assad, and most of the ruling elite and high-ranking officers are Alawites, a minority sect.) When the people of Deraa set fire to the Syriatel office, they were not targeting the old guard; they were targeting the very heart of the current regime, or, as one Syrian activist in Deraa told Reuters, the very symbols of oppression and corruption.
The idea that Assad’s anti-Western ideology is popular enough to shield him from public discontent comes from him as well: in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in late January, he explained that the Mubarak regime was unpopular due to its alliance with the United States and its peace treaty with Israel. By contrast, he suggested, the Syrian regime was ideologically united with the people. As Assad put it, Syrians “do not go into an uprising,” because “it is not only about [their] needs and not only about the reform. It is about the ideology.” Assad’s foreign policy and ideology of “resistance” may indeed be popular in Syria. But the protests are driven by concerns over domestic issues. The idea that ideology and foreign policy trump concerns about lack of freedom, economic opportunity, and political participation has proved wrong.
Unfortunately, that does not mean that the Assad regime is likely to fall.
Other commentators who dismissed the likelihood of the Assad regime falling pointed to solidarity among the Alawite elite. Unlike the Egyptian army, which functioned independently of Mubarak and broke with him at a key moment, the Syrian brass, as part of a small religious minority, views its fate and safety as inextricably linked to Assad’s and therefore will not fail to crack down on protests.

I can't see the 'international community' getting involved in Syria the way it has in Libya. First, they can't get involved with every country in the Arab world. And second, Assad is considered more 'one of the club' than Gadhafi (who is widely regarded as a lunatic) and even Ahmadinejad.
...which means the hypocrisy of the Clinton foreign police continues














Obama’s U.N. Debacle: The Obama administration’s big hopes of reforming the Human Rights Council from within are in shreds

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(NRO) President Obama’s decision to place the United Nations at the center of his foreign policy took another hit Friday as the U.N. Human Rights Council ended its latest session in Geneva. One of the president’s primary justifications for joining the notorious council shortly after he assumed office was its mandatory five-year review process; if the U.S. was a member, the administration claimed, it could influence this process. The process, which quietly unfolded in back rooms in Geneva over the past six months, has been exposed to be a total fraud, taking the administration’s cover down with it.
Starting last fall, the Obama team was a very active participant in a working group of the council that had been set up to tackle reform. At the end of February, the working group produced a document summarizing its decisions, and on Friday the council passed a resolution adopting that document by consensus — that is, without a vote. Regardless of the fact that every serious recommendation of the United States was rejected, Obama’s diplomats refused to call for a vote on the resolution so that they could vote against it.
They did play a little game intended to fool uninformed listeners by claiming to “dissociate” the administration from the resolution. However, since the resolution has been adopted by consensus, it will proceed unimpeded to the General Assembly, where it will be rubber-stamped. The U.S. could not have stopped the resolution, but an American vote against the measure would have been a major blow to the credibility of the Human Rights Council. It also would have set up the U.S. to leave the council as a logical consequence of the failure to reform it.
The slap in the face to President Obama is painfully clear from a short list of American demands for reform and the council’s responses.
The council has an official, permanent agenda that governs all its meetings and consists of only ten items. One of those items is reserved for condemning Israel, and another is assigned to human rights in the other 191 U.N. member states. This session, for instance, produced six resolutions condemning Israel, one resolution each on four other states, and nothing at all on the remaining 187 countries. The American delegation huffed and puffed that this obvious discrimination — which characterizes every meeting of the council — must come to an end, and proposed that the two agenda items be rolled into one. The proposal was rejected.
The American delegation proposed creating easier trigger mechanisms for convening special sessions on specific countries when serious human-rights concerns arise. The proposal was rejected.
The American delegation proposed abolishing the council’s make-work “Advisory Committee.” It is currently populated by such human-rights luminaries as former Sandinista leader and suspended priest Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. (Brockmann once served as president of the U.N. General Assembly and is best remembered for a series of anti-Semitic outbursts and for coming down off his podium to hug Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.) The proposal was rejected.
The American delegation proposed making public pre-screened complaints of gross and systematic violations of human rights that are received by the council. Specific cases, which have poured into the U.N. for over half a century from poor souls around the world, have never been revealed. The proposal was rejected.
The American delegation proposed expanding the time allocated to discussions of abuses in specific countries. The proposal was rejected.
The American delegation proposed that states running for a seat on the council should engage in a public dialogue with General Assembly members on their human-rights record, as measured by specific criteria. The proposal was rejected.
In all, the U.N. reports that 42 proposals were put forward by the American delegation orally and in writing. Only three were accepted. Those three addressed minutiae. For instance, the Obama team proposed allowing all states that wish to speak during the council’s “universal periodic review” (UPR) to be permitted to do so. The UPR is the procedure in which the council considers the human-rights record of every state, but the council tightly controls the time spent on each country. Council members are allotted three minutes’ and non-members two minutes’ worth of comments, regardless of the scope of the issues. Since the total time is fixed, would-be commentators are frequently silenced by ending up too low on the speakers’ list. The “reform” that was proposed and accepted? Keep the total time the same and reduce the allotted time per speaker. Thirty-second critiques of human-rights abuses, here we come.
Instead of admitting their complete inability to accomplish their mission of reforming the council, however, Obama’s representatives are scrambling to sweep the disaster under the rug. Admitting their error would no doubt strike at the heart of the president’s U.N. chorus line.

Guardian approved anti-Semitic cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, graces the halls of UN Human Rights Council

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At a recent session of the UN Human Rights Council a UN-accredited NGO with terrorist affiliations (IHH) distributed a publication containing the following picture:

This image (published during the flotilla incident in June) – of a demonic Israel, with the swastika substituted for the star of David on the Israeli flag, as an octopus strangling freedom-loving innocents – was created by the notorious anti-Semitic cartoonist Carlos Latuff.
Latuff is an extreme left-wing political activist who won second place in the notorious Iranian Holocaust Cartoon Competition, and is one of the more prolific anti-Israel cartoonists on the web, with a staggering amount of work dedicated to advancing explicitly anti-Semitic political imagery  - and frequently illustrates comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany.
(Also, of note, a regular blogger at the site, Mondoweiss, posted, in early June, the very same “Octopus” cartoon shown above.)
As we noted previously, Latuff’s work has been posted on various radical left websites and blogs, as well as several terrorist affiliated websites such as ‘The Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance’ (JAMI) magazine.
So Latuff’s hateful depictions have been employed by quite a wide range of extremists: the anti-Zionist Jewish left, radical Islamist NGOs, and even publications of Islamist terrorist movements.
Latuff is also the same “artist” published by the Guardian during their “Palestine Papers” series to depict Mahmoud Abbas as a gun-toting sinister-looking Orthodox Jewish “settler”, to advance the view that Abbas was a traitor for allegedly showing a willingness to make concessions with Israel – a cartoon which reinforced the abhorrent pejorative depictions of Orthodox Jews used frequently in anti-Semitic caricatures throughout the Middle East.



Here’s Latuff’s Tweet of the cartoon:

The Guardian sure keeps very interesting company.

Hoax of the Russian Consulate

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Five months later, in May 1982, the police happened to mention the consulate duty in a report. “What booth?” asked a bewildered intelligence official. It turned out that Officer Cowans and Inspector Whitmore did not exist; the police had been guarding an empty building around the clock for five months, right through Christmas, for no reason.
Media_httpfarm3static_bcjudFor several years during the Cold War, New York police guarded the Soviet consulate at 9 East 91st Street in Manhattan. Officers manned a pale blue guard post 24 hours a day. “It’s like being a prisoner of war stuck in a telephone booth,” one said.
The Soviets left in 1980, and the police department accordingly canceled the guard, but two months later the 23rd precinct received a call from an Officer Cowans who said that Inspector Whitmore of police intelligence had ordered the guard to be reactivated. So the police resumed their vigil over the now-disused building.
They closed up shop and removed the booth. “Whoever did this was someone who wanted to break chops or who stood to gain from it,” Lt. Robert McEntire told the New York Times. “We’re not sure which, and we probably never will be.”
Police taking away pickets from Soviet consulate. via images.google.com

and consulate today image via andrei deev

FAT JIHAD: Palestine has an obesity problem?

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Media made a Whopper of a lie... of course the blockade was just manufactured vitriol... but it is amusing to see how off their accusations were. this data is coming from the Economist... not exactly a Pro Zionist rag

The graph above is from The Economist in 2004. Gaza and the Westabank rank #8 and #3 for obesity. Now a lot can happen over six years so in terms of nutrition the situation in Gaza might very well be different today. Yet the table above gives us an indication that living conditions were less dire, in 2004 at least, than some people would have us believe.
One thing is for certain, if obesity levels in Gaza turn out to have decreased since 2004, the Norwegian media will blame it on Israel. Unless obesity levels have increased, that is.
In which case the Norwegian media will blame it on Israel.

Is Gaza Starving?

The international community recently claimed the Israeli government was not supplying the Gazan population with aid.
The diagrams above show that Israel supplies Gaza with so much food that if aid were distributed equally there would be enough for each Gazan to receive 5547% more than the average Bangladeshi.
And while Gaza receives more aid than the other nation, they actually top the rich list of these 10 nations with a GDP per Capita of $2,900.

Calculations

1 loaf of bread is equivalent to 675g of food aid
All food aid statistics were collected from the UN World Food Programme
All population estimates were from CIA World Factbook
All GDP per capita estimates were from CIA World Factbook - 2008

Update

In the first quarter of 2010 Israel allowed 48,000 tons of food aid into Gaza, lifting the monthly average from 12,000 to 16,000 tons of aid.
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/About+the+Ministry/Behind+the+Headlines/Israeli_humanitarian_lifeline_Gaza_25-May-2010.htm

Chicks in Ads….Can You Dig It?

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Media_httpfarm6static_pjguk
Today’s ads show the woman as the sensible strong type; however in these three ads, they’re used as sex objects and are just plain inept. See them in their hysterical glory here, here and lastly & lustily (for you guys) here.
So, when are the naggy girl’s groups going to go gaga over this, and start squawking about it?
Seen at YouTube via themadjewess.wordpress.com
image via BILL RANDALL via Anne T. Boleyn

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