The Top 40

In other “new sweeping policies” -

•We will no longer be sending guns to Mexico

•The IRS, EPA or any other gov. agency with NOT be weaponized against political opponents

•Our immigration policies will be…wait for it…enforced

•Our ambassadors will not be allowed to be slaughtered

•Terrorist prisoners will no longer be traded for deserters

•Billions will not be sent to the leading state sponsor of terror – Iran

•The Defense Dept's budget will be increased so our armed forces no longer resemble a Third World military

•Our president will bow to no one

I heard some were outraged regarding the strong penalties for drug dealing. "But it's not violent most of the time!" "Mandatory Minimums are horrible and remove 'justice' from the system!"

Well, let's just go back to basics: Don't do the crime if you can't do the time, and if you don't like the law (or feel it is unjust) get it changed or repealed. That goes triple for legislators and/or Congresscritters complaining about this policy of *following the law*.

Yeah lets keep dumping millions of dollars into a rathole and pretend its a war on drugs. Lets see--we have been doing it for 50 years and what do we have? Cheaper drugs, higher quality drugs, easier to get, and they cost less!!
Millions of lives have been ruined by cops running wild and their corruption. Some people are going to ruin their lives on drugs even if they are illegal. Nothing stops them so let'em.
Something like 84% of Americans believe marijuana should be legal, many states have decriminalized and some states its legal so the feds are going to crack down with antiquated laws? Brilliant. Great ideas.

My daughter-in-law is in prison on drug related crimes. She was "mostly" a user but the nature of the culture is you do whatever you are told to get your drugs. She did do whatever she was told for a couple hundred guys over the 3-4 years she was "lost" and she did some things which surprisingly the courts were willing to go easy on her. But eventually she exceeded the limit of crimes and she is in jail now. Her children lived with us for two years but my health issues became a problem and after that they have been two years with the other grand parents. We have taken the kids to visit her, I was unable to stop tearing up the first visit. She is a pretty, young, intelligent young girl and 3 of her children don't even know her.

Wait a minute. What was the argument in favor of drugs now? I can't seem to remember anything that would justify her abandoning her children. Who was it who said using drugs isn't violent? I cannot possibly tell you everything she did (that I know of) including shooting at her husband with the children in the same room. Would decriminalization have made all of this OK???

Ironically we are sitting here waiting for our dear grandchildren to be dropped off for the weekend. It's a happy time having them here. They never talk about mom, they know they have one and they kow she's in prison but it's just not something a 7, 9 and 11 year old think about. Imagine, Mother's day Sunday and unless we bring it up they won't think of their mom. So sad.

Forget it, Jake; it's WaPoland.

"Forget it, Jake; it's WaPoland." -- all that needs to be said.

"drug related crimes"
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So, if drugs were not illegal she would not be in jail? Or was her behavior illegal regardless?

Guaranteed that the denizens of WaPoLand have a fine array of pharmacopeia,legal,and otherwise. Guaranteed they suffer far less painful results for use,mis-use,abuse. The Cloud is a much less reality-based existence.

"Forget it, Jake. It's WaPoLand."

ghost: So, if drugs were not illegal and she was not in jail, she probably would be dead, or well on the way.

"drug related crimes"

Crimes she committed while on drugs or to get drugs or because she was told to because drugs would be withheld. As you know and most people know the state doesn't typically waste time and money prosecuting you simply because you used drugs they prosecute you because of what you did and the excuse is "well I was high at the time".

One of her drug buddies killed someone while she was present. She took drugs one time and went into a coma but luckily she was sitting in her minivan outside the house and a neighbor found her and called the ambulance. Her three children were in the house at the time with the youngest only 10 months old. Numerous accidents and dui's, so many she has no idea if it was 10, 20 or 30 or more. Shooting at here estranged husband and endangering the children. welfare fraud, check fraud; not once or twice but again so many times she doesn't know haw many. Shoplifting. How do you support a $100 a day drug habit with zero income?? Her most common way was to fuck for it. Sorry if that is too brazen to say. In fact by her own words her drug friends preferred oral sex. Often though she had to do the whole room before she could get her drugs. She sold drugs and carried drugs for the Mexican gangs. She drove a get away car in an armed robbery. What brought her down was after being given many breaks in the legal system she simply would not show up to talk with her po and had numerous warrants. I don't think they ever would have jailed her even for crimes that would put you or me in prison except that the system is automatic. That is once you get probation and miss your appointments the system gives you few breaks. I suspect that if the judge had any other choice he would have let her go again.

GWTW,

I'm really sorry for your pain, bud. I've lived, as a shrink friend puts it, most of my life "close to the ground" (orphaned, a bad divorce, lost my daughter, kept on keepin on) and I've seen more of this kind of bullshit than I ever intended to. I've done some drugs - for 40 years - but Grace has led me home.

People who minimize this madness on the grounds of their "libertarianism" are either in denial or have led, by my standards, a ridiculously sheltered existence. Of course there have always been choosers of The World's Oldest Profession, but to believe that drugs haven't been the pimp's best friend in enslaving the weak is to believe in fairy tales.

I know you've seen (are seeing) the worst of the truth. You tell these tales about your daughter-in-law. Is your son out of the picture? Getting shot at would be a powerful inducement to leave, but still.

Prayers, and Good Luck.

Yeah "son" has his own troubles. For awhile he did the single dad thing which is the only reason "mom" ever showed up. He was having a heart to heart with her and she was thinking of taking the kids (to live in the drug house with her I guess) and he put his foot down. So she knew where his gun was stashed (don't approve of carelessness with guns around children) and grabbed it in a fit of anger and shot at him but killed the refrigerator.

He has: 1 Military disability, can hardly walk now. 2 Broken vertabraes due to work related accident. 3 Hit by a car resulting in loss of one eye and injury to his leg that requires a cane. 4 And last he has become an alcoholic. Don't get me wrong, I'm not making excuses for him. His lifestyle and choices are as bad as hers are. But the bottom line is he can't be trusted with the kids and can't hold a job.

Ironically we really hope that "Mom" will be able to stay off drugs when she gets out and become a parent to the kids. I just don't know if that will happen. I assume within a few months of her release from the halfway house that she will go back to drugs. So I just don't know what will happen.

GWTW: I appreciate your candor and I'm not unsympathetic. You seem to be doing the best that you can with a situation that you have little to no control over.

When you hear of someone like your DIL seldom do you hear about the affect they have on their family's.

My brother, 2 years younger than I, died about 15 years ago directly from meth use - a world I never knew. From the age of about 9 til the day he died he had been the black sheep of the family and by the age of 18 had been in the local jail system some 35 times, he told me. His crimes were mostly drug oriented and mostly petty but after 100+ times of being caught by the authorities the penalty's became steep - once doing 7 years in the state pen. All of us kids helped him out numerous times, bailing him out, loaning money, giving a couch to sleep on etc and he was never truthfully appreciative. He once got out of jail on his own RoR by using my good name and never went back for the court appearance - why should he, I was the one the authorities thought did the crime. A bench warrant was processed on me and I was arrested at my office while sitting at the conference table with clients. It cost me $10k cash right up front to get out of that mess.

His meth and other hard drug use caused him to have to have a pacemaker installed and he kept on keeping on until finally cashing that final check on my sisters door step in El Cajon, Calif. Dead from a massive heart attack.

I had pondered him many times over the years and never came to any conclusions as to why he chose to live the lifestyle he did. He had some good points and was a remarkable artists in many areas but never seemed to have the fortitude to stay with and make something of himself.

In the end I still have no ideas about why he was like that other than the strong possibility that there was something wrong in his brain and though he had been to many state sponsored programs that supposedly deal with that sort of thing no progress was ever made.

Though he never harmed anyone physically I can't help but wonder what the purpose is of people like this? In all things I try to find any good at all to attempt to balance the bad and though it may be fleeting I cling to the notion that my brothers behavior was a catalyst that caused his brothers and sisters to not bring the same pain to our parents and society at large that he did.

Whether intended or not, that was his legacy.

A lot of serious drug users are bi-polar. By "serious" I simply mean hard users of hard drugs or long time users who recidivate multiple times. Not the occasional pot smoker or the "lucky" ones who use serious drugs and somehow quit on their own. Some call it "self-medicating" but whatever it is it seems to be beyond their ability to control. Most of us know someone who is bi-polar and most of us would expect to see the same symptoms in most people who are bi-polar. But it doesn't work that way. Some can be quite normal while others simply cannot function in life. And it is different in men than it is in women. A bi-polar woman can usually get help; medical/mental help, welfare, marry some guy who will take care of them, etc. A bi-polar man often is just different; always in trouble, alcoholic, violent, unpredictable and they generally don't get any help other than jail.

I suppose it isn't all really quite that simple. I'm sure that there are some bi-polar individuals who don't do drugs and alcohol and there are also people who are not bi-polar who do use drugs or alcohol. But I suspect that those who are bi-polar simply cannot help/stop themselves. I don't know why and (not to denigrate the mental health community) I don't think the doctors and psychiatrists know why either.

My drug of choice is chocolate. Usually after dinner I want some. It's out there in the kitchen cabinet. I can hear it call to me. Once I start thinking about it my mouth waters and I am gonna go git it. After 4-8 ounces of it I'm happy. But if it had been drugs or alcohol driving me I suppose I wouldn't have made it to 73. I have great sympathy to someone who is addicted but I don't know how to fix them. I know they will lie to me and steal from me and I cannot trust them, ever. I have watched good people destroy their own lives trying to help a loved one or a friend. I will not allow that to happen to me. By the same token I will not allow it to happen to these children; my grand children. But I worry about them and their future.

I have seen exactly what GTWTW describes here, although not quite so closely: people from seemingly fine backgrounds who are hell bent for lowlife and crime despite anything anyone does. I don't know if the heroin and meth are the cause or the symptom. They certainly aggravate whatever problems are locked up in the psyche of the users. But absent heroin and meth they'd do alcohol. And if the only intoxicants available on the planet were cough medicine or airplane glue, they be all over that until it killed them.

JWM

Curb side justice for the dealers; catch them, put a bullet in their head. Users, they need to blame the turkey that stuck the gun in their ear and said,"Take the pill or I'll kill you." There has to be someone who said this, right? Or did they just up and decide to fuck up their lives on a whim.

Either way, who is responsible? Point the finger, look at your thumb. Somebody had to make a choice, that's who is to blame, no one else.

"Somebody had to make a choice, that's who is to blame, no one else."
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Absolutely right veedub. "Somebody" Not some thing. But you rarely hear that. Individuals in the society, now, absolve themselves of the responsibility of their behavior choices and blame inanimate objects, except in the case of abortionists that blame people (animate objects) that are unable to defend themselves.

Like little kids lying to mom about sneaking a cookie out of the jar but much more serious ramifications.

I wonder if this will all bottom out in my lifetime? I suspect not.