The National Report breathlessly…well, you know, reports:
As of January 1st, 2014, Colorado became the first state in the nation to allow adults aged 21 or older to purchase and use marijuana for recreational use. The decision has led to excessively large lines at pot shops across the state and store owners reportedly surpassed $1 million in sales statewide on just the first day according to Denver’s 9News.
In all, 136 licenses have been approved by the state of Colorado for retail operations for the purposes of selling marijuana. A majority of those licenses were issued to businesses in Denver with just eighteen city stores completing the process in time for opening day. One of those shops, Rite Greens, located on E. Colfax Ave in Denver, has taken the steps needed to accept food stamps (now called EBT cards) for the purposes of purchasing marijuana effectively leading to taxpayer funded marijuana for welfare recipients.
“If you are a tax payer in Colorado, you get to pay for welfare recipients, a majority of whom are Democrats of course, to smoke pot now,” stated Denver resident Paul Horner. ”Where will this all end? First it was Obamaphones, then Obamacare, now Obamaweed? Will we be paying for tattoos, manicures, body piercings, gay marriages and porn next?” [Pols emphasis]
Store owner JC Franco defended his decision to accept EBT cards in an interview with National Report: “Everyone should have access to marijuana. If a user is not able to afford their buds on a limited budget then having taxpayers help cover the shortage is only fair. This isn’t a right only for the wealthy.”
If a little red warning light came on in your head sometime while you were reading this story, making you think that maybe this isn't a legitimate report, congratulations! You have better critical thinking skills than the Douglas County, Colorado Republican Party.
Colorado Pot Shop to Accept Food Stamps – Taxpayer Funded Marijuana for Welfare Recipients http://t.co/S2SF6QuPjP #copolitics #coleg
— Douglas County GOP (@DougCOGOP) January 7, 2014
You see, folks, the Douglas County GOP Tweeted this same story, but not from the National Report. The story was picked up and reproduced on a conservative website, GOPdailydose.com, without any reference we can find to the original National Report version. GOPdailydose.com appears to have lifted the story from another conservative website, Conservative Frontline, which also omits the original link. As for the National Report itself? Well, their website does include this handy disclaimer:
National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news. [Pols emphasis] Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental.
For the record, you cannot legally buy marijuana, in Colorado or anywhere else, with food stamps. Anyone who knows anything about food stamps already knows this. The "news story" that claims this is happening is fake. The only people who didn't get that are conservatives who reprinted the story without checking to see if it's a spoof. Hopefully we've cleared this up before the story appears an a Douglas County GOP newsletter.
More likely, though, you'll be debunking this nonsense with your conservative friends for years to come…
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To paraphrase Mark Twain, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Republican.
But I repeat myself.
Were Twain around today I've no doubt you'd not need to paraphrase. I've often wished either Mencken or Will Rogers were still with us to add their views to the genius of Stewart and Colbert.
Biut I wonder what else one could expect from a political party that has to send out a memo to remind its member to exhibit empathy even while voting to not extend unemployment benefits. I used to think that accusations of sociopathology or psychopathy were overboard,now I'm not too sure.
I miss Molly Ivins–the one who came up with the nickname, Congresscritters.
Remember to pity the people you screw. Repubs.
'cause that's never happened before…
That's what happens when you become so reactionary that this kind of article sounds rational to you.
The comments to this story on the two conservative web sites are priceless. Their readers continue to argue the verasity of the story, and denounce Snopes as left wing tripe.
There is no force on earth as powerful and pervasive as determined ignorance.
Obvious DougCo newbies . . .
. . . anyone who's lived in these parts for any length of time KNOWS that there's only two places down here that accept EBT cards — grocery stores and gun shops!!
Shows how out of touch I am. When I saw EBT, I thought Earnings Before Taxes, you know like a Health Savings Account, which would make some sort of sense, especially for purchasing medical marijuana.
Oh well, carry on.
I am now firmly convinced that, in order to count oneself as a member of the Republican Party in 2014, one must be one of the folowing, or some combination thereof:
1. Clinically, certifiably mentally ill and in need of immedaite mental health intervention due to uncontrolled anger and outward-projected self hatred
2. Tragically stupid, dimwitted, moronic and imbecilic
3. Pure hate-filled evil (very much including racism, overt and covert), and/or
4. Criminally selfish/self-centered and amorally greedy
There are simply no other reasons to be a Republican in 2014. You either want all the perks, privileges, welfare dollars and other assorted government goodies reserved just for yourself, with none for anyone else, or you want to destroy/annihilate/eviscerate anyone and everyone who doesn't look, think, act, believe, behave, sexualize guns, and worship as you do. Or both.
Think about it…
You obviously don't live in Mesa County, DawnPatrol. In Mesa County, to count one's self as a member of the Republican party, one would just need to be average.
Okay, I admit it, I was taken in for a moment, sort of. My first thought was, "For edibles maybe, I could see that". But I'm glad it was all a hoax. We would never hear th end of it, and still may not. Earlier today someone was quoting Mark Twain. Here's another of his gems.
"A lie can travel halfway 'round the world before the truth can get its shoes on."
On the other hand, I wonder if one could use a health savings account for this expense? It sure isn't covered by insurance.
Only if you have a prescription – and even then I would check with the IRS first.
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p502/index.html
OTC drugs are a allowed expense for an HSA.
In other words, you have no idea, and you're too lazy to check.
shocking, huh?
Exactly why righties believe so many things that are demonstrably not true.
I suppose you can use EBT to buy marijuana laced brownies and the store will throw in a free joint as a bonus.
GOP and fact checking are antonyms. This story would make the Onion proud.
I am surprised by the reactions of my fellow Republicans (GOP – The Party of Hate®) to this Food Stamp story.
They should focus on results:
1. Use Food Stamps to buy dope. Sounds bad, but wait…
2. Marijuana killed 39 people in Denver the first day it became legal, so…
3. Those 47%ers buying dope will soon be dead and no longer taking from the makers.
Gosh, I hope you're being facetious.
davebarnes is really good at this, isn't he. He really does want the sane republicans to reemerge. And so do I. I think most of us do. Some of them are wondering where are we going and why are we in this hand basket.
Been gone a while ajb? Nice to see you. And facetious is dave's middlename.
Not true.
I have 2 middle names: sarcastic and nitpicker.
So I was close.
2 weeks in Montezuma (one of the oldest and highest towns in CO). No cell, no internet, not much oxygen, but lots of snow.
Bet it felt good. Except for the zillions of e-mails awaiting you?
Not so bad. We popped into the Frisco Nordic Center a couple times to skate ski and they have great wifi. Put out a couple fires between episodes of busting my lungs.
Sounds pretty cool.
Great place, Montezuma…
There are no rules above 10,000 ft.
And no politics like small-town politics…
+100
Anything that makes Sweden's prohibitionist Justice Minister look like a fool, I'm in favor of.
What part of the "55% of Coloradans voted to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana" a year ago with the passage of Amendment 64 don't they get? Why do they hate democracy?
They fell for that one and you fell for you can keep your plan if you want to keep it. Not sure if that is a roughly even split?
Apples and oranges.The one was a promise from a legit source that turned out not to be entirely true. Shouldn't have been made. Big mistake. However the other is something that no legit source ever claimed was true but came off a satiric site and was circulated without the simplest level of easy fact checking. it would only be comparable if the Onion and not Obama had made the promise about keeping coverage.
This, of course is leaving aside the reality that most of those policies that couldn't be kept were quickly replaced with compliant policies and that others never offered legitimate coverage in the first place so if you wanted to keep them because they were cheap you would have found yourself with no significant coverage if you actually got sick. If you couldn't pay all but the tiny amount covered the rest of us would have to. Even leaving all that aside? Apples and oranges.
That was way more effort than it deserved, BC.
But well worth it. The logical maze BC created with her sentence structure probably has Elliot's mind thoroughly twisted into knots 🙂
A decidedly left handed compliment but I'll take it. Left ain't so bad.
More like tangerines and oranges. Both involved falling for something that was obviously false.
And here I thought you were going to say, " . . . tangerines and oranges, because it always seems to be Republicans who have the biggest trouble with reality and comprehension . . . "
First, most who supported and still support ACA didn't do so because of that particular promise. Many who suspected that it might not work out exactly that way in practice supported ACA anyway and so were not "falling for" anything in supporting it.
The number affected by that particular aspect (most of them actually positively affected, by the way) is nothing compared to the numbers benefiting tremendously, even potentially having their lives saved, by being able to buy health insurance even with pre-existing conditions, the numbers who can no longer be dropped if they get sick, the numbers of young people between 21 and 26 able to be covered on parents' plans and the numbers who can now afford policies that offer real coverage as opposed to the cheap policies that they were roped into before and mistakenly thought were providing them with coverage but actually were not. That kind of phony coverage accounts for the lion's share of truly lost policies, no real loss at all.
Accepting, with no fact checking, a joke story as factual… that's really "falling" for something. Just like buying the whole tissue of easily refuted birther lies was falling for something. Just like falling for the many lies told about gun control legislation that are so easily checked and refuted s falling for something. Righties rarely check when they think something that confirms their prejudices and tin hat conspiracy theories is coming down from the Borg.
For the record, I never thought it was possible for anyone to make promises based on the behavior of the private insurers. I still supported ACA even though it doesn't go nearly far enough and my first choice would be a civilized 21st century single payer system. Still, even small steps in the right direction are preferable to the steps in wrong direction which are the only ones offered by the right.
Ban shitty parody.
Put it on the legislative agenda, please.
Unfortunately, the Right will repeat this story — once (dare I say twice or three times) more without attribution to the National Report, or mentioning that it is satire. The end result being that no amount of "proof" will dissuade the faithful that the story is untrue. The Right has developed an uncanny ability to turn satire and outright lies into the "honest to God Truth." How do we fight this if readers cannot or will not accept information from anyone not paid by the Koch brothers?