Jacob Sullum on Why Prosecutors Love Mandatory Minimums
When you see the stark choices that federal defendants face, you can begin to understand why an astonishing 97 percent of them decide to plead guilty. The bigger the gap between the sentence a defendant can get through a plea bargain and the one he will get if he is convicted after a trial, the stronger his incentive to “cooperate”—and the weaker the system’s claim to be doing justice.
Holder clearly is right that plea bargains do not require mandatory minimums. But from the perspective of prosecutors who are single-mindedly focused on obtaining convictions as expeditiously as possible—and terrified of what might happen if a substantial portion of defendants started asserting their Sixth Amendment rights—there is no reason to give up the enormous leverage that mandatory minimums provide.
This has led to the strange situation where the biggest opposition the Attorney General faces to reform of mandatory minimums comes from his own prosectors.
Just a reminder…
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
Now bowing three times towards IL,,make that in all directions because when we strip some of the power away from prosecutors our justice system which is broken nd corrupted will begin to seek real justice instead of railroad justice.
Remove the power of the courts to stop a defendant from mentioning medical marijuana and they ccan put the blindfold back on the bitch. The scales will need constant balencing with something other than bullshit.
Wrote this a while back…http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/how-the-drug-war-disappeared-the-jury-trial/
“Persuading” defendants to “cooperate” a.k.a. using coercion to deny individuals their constitutional right to a trial. But hey, I guess it’s silly to worry too much about the rights of “small fish.” They’re just a means to an end, right?
How the heck does someone enjoy being the object of a criminal trial? Discounting the serial confessees with a pathological desire to be punished of course.
I’m sure the inquisitors were saying the same thing when thumb screws were finally banned. “But, monsignor, you don’t understand, torture is a very important tool in persuading heretics to recant!”
True. Inquisitorial torture operated in much the same way as mandatory minimums. In the bad old days, heretics would be escorted into a room and shown nasty-looking torture instruments, whereby they would be given a detailed lecture on how the equipment worked and what they could expect by being tortured.
In cases brought by the Spanish Inquisition, about 97-percent of the alleged heretics confessed to heresy rather than “be put to the question,†a euphemism of the period equivalent to today’s “enhanced interrogationâ€. Confession eliminated the torture requirement for both the innocent and the guilty. Heretics were thus terrorized into confessing and naming accomplices, just as people facing lengthy mandatory-minimum jail sentences in modern drug cases are frightened into providing incriminating information, or pleading guilty to crimes they may not have committed.
John H. Langbein argues that the modern American system of plea bargaining is comparable to the medieval European system of torture:
“There is, of course, a difference between having your limbs crushed if you refuse to confess, or suffering some extra years of imprisonment if you refuse to confess, but the difference is of degree, not kind. Plea bargaining, like torture, is coercive. Like the medieval Europeans, the Americans are now operating a procedural system that engages in condemnation without adjudication.”
History of plea bargaining:
“The constitutionality of plea bargaining was established by Brady v. United States in 1970, although the Supreme Court warned that plea incentives which were sufficiently large or coercive as to over-rule defendants’ abilities to act freely, or used in a manner giving rise to a significant number of innocent people pleading guilty, might be prohibited or lead to concerns over constitutionality.”
http://tinyurl.com/r7b7d
http://tinyurl.com/nnsc6th
Plea bargaining in combination with the war on drugs has made a mockery of the US system of justice. My opinion is that they both need to go. These two things have destroyed the judicial system we were taught about in school.
Mandatory minimums are the ammunition for the guns of plea bargaining. Dealing with the procedures and minimun sentence problem does not go to the root of the problem: the drug war and plea bargaining.
yeah, Dwight Holton was a federal persecutor that probably thought his awesome conviction rate would propel him to a win at the ballot box. Doh!
In the bad news for you photography fans category I’ve just started photographing my girls (no longer babies) but in this first set there is some darned naked woman getting in the way… sorry ’bout that. I’ll keep trying.
Policing is always easier in a police state with mandatory minimums. In a police state, prosecutors and those who wear the badges are given a legal right to extort testimonies and guilty pleas. Police state courtrooms are mere processing centers for bodies, operating with an eye toward efficiency, not justice. In a police state, everything can go wrong, but the state is seen as doing no wrong, and if it does, the wrong gets covered up. Under police state doctrine, there is no distinction between the exercise of police power and the exercise of political power by the state. The police state is a pillar that supports totalitarianism:
You’ve been on fire lately. Keep up the awesome comments
OT… my latest:
http://cannabisnowmagazine.com/current-events/calling-all-veterans
Allan, I’m not a Vet and hope I didn’t strike the wrong tone where I might not be welcomed in your comments section.
Pamela Wilbe’s blog and her collection of letters of doctors who killed themselves and/or want to kill themselves is the most important thing I’ve read in a long time.
Her Family Practice clinic in Eugene, Oregon was developed through several PUBLIC meetings. The residents of Eugene who were asked by Dr. Wilbe to “DESIGN THEIR IDEAL” health care clinic. She listened to her community and opened her single-practice office in one month following community input.
The suicide letters are a MUST READ for anyone trying to understand the American Health Care system.
Anyone interested needs to go to KevinMD and check out Dr. Wilbe’s article. When you’re done check out her blog.
I’m not a Vet and hope I didn’t strike the wrong tone where I might not be welcomed in your comments section
I doubt that…
I’ll havta check Pamela Wilbe out, thanks for the heads up as I will continue to write on veterans, pot and the drug war.
It’s Pamela WIBLE…
Whoops, sorry about that. I keep wondering when the couch is going to kick my ass out of here for not learning to link.
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We got the eviction order a couple of months ago but just haven’t gotten around to serving it. Amotivational syndrome and all that rot. You know how it is.
≤ a href = ” http : // www . link . com”> linky ≤/ a >
Change both ≤ to less than symbol, eliminate all spaces except between “a” and “href” and you get linky
Wow, I didn’t expect it to produce a working link but that’s even better as an example.. You can substitute whatever text you like for the word linky to name your link. WTF? goes to the same page.
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Jiminy Duncan, you sent me to an L3 page. Those bastards made up all the rules for my job while I was in Iraq (not the Army or DoD or Pentagon, but L3). L3 was the one who told me I could not have my weapon at my work station where I babysat underpaid slaves from India, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Nepal and Pakistan. L3 told me that to keep my weapon on me would be offensive for the workers and create an environment of fear, even though I was responsible for their safety and yet had to do security checks to make sure nobody put explosives in the food or other poisons. L3 forced me to hand over my weapon to them before going to work everyday. This ‘no weapons policy’ during war was created by L3. You know, I can be cool with L3 offering us help when it comes to technology, but for a civilian contractor to have more authority than my own captain or Sgt. Major makes me hate them with a passion.
The legal system is a mirror of our economy: a victim of its own ‘success’.
Or, maybe, ‘excess’ is more appropriate.
Those behind the right-ward turn in drug prohibition in the very early 1980’s had already made up their minds that the culture war had to be waged in the courts as well as the airwaves and print. What better way to do that than what Nixon’s henchman Erlichman elucidated:
“”Look, we understood we couldn’t make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue…that we couldn’t resist it.” (Emphasis mine – k.)
And so it came to pass. The perception of many in the US back then was that criminals were gaming the system and and thus no real justice could be achieved for ‘good people’ until ‘loopholes’ could be closed…and, of course, true to authoritarian nature, punishments were made even more harsh and Draconian, the ‘thinking’ being (again, in true two-dimensional, only-black-and-white authoritarian ‘cogitation’) that the punishments must be so severe to act as an automatic, self-regulating deterrent.
(This kind of rather sophomoric, machine-like rationalizing is indicative of the entire thrust of the DrugWar from its inception a century ago…and was behind alcohol Prohibition as well.)
But as we all know from both hindsight and sheer simple Human nature, the opposite, as always, happened. The system became a victim of its own ‘success/excess’ and cannot maintain itself because its assembly-line efficiency on the mouth end has caused its rear-end plumbing to back up. And the only way to free the blockage is re-legalization and clemency (and reparations, dammit!) for the non-violent incarcerated under the prohibition regime.
Anything else only delays the inevitable explosion, and how much of one experienced will be determined by how long this country thinks it can afford a champagne-and-caviar DrugWar on an increasingly low-end beer budget.
OT: looks like the relegalization debate in Alaska is making waves: Debate on marijuana legalization draws huge crowd
How do you know when you’re winning? When your opponents are laughed at by the audience they seek to sway.
All the usual types of prohib players are there, and for those old enough to recall the hoary old ‘thousand joints from one ounce’ nonsense waaaaay back in the day, a variation of the theme is once more raised as a boogeyman to frighten the gullible.
Only…this time, the intended marks in the con game are wise to the con, as you’ll see. This time, the control freaks are receiving their just due, for laughter can slay more fools than any machinegun ever could.
When they say something ridiculous, ridicule them. The ‘for’ speaker who said the ‘anti’ speaker’s comments were ‘ridiculous’ was correct. We must always call them what they are–ridiculous.
Medical Marijuana, Physicians, and State Law
George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMp1408965
As Massachusetts prepares to implement its new medical-marijuana law, agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have reportedly visited at least seven Massachusetts physicians at their homes or offices and told them they must either give up their DEA registration or sever formal ties with proposed medical-marijuana dispensaries. These encounters were meant to intimidate the physicians and to discourage them from taking an active role in medical-marijuana dispensaries, and they have apparently succeeded.
Prohibition is one of the Symptoms.
the Disease is Neocon Corporatism.
Profits on Misery, they Create.
OT… a great timeline on veterans and the “care” they receive:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/23/politics/va-scandals-timeline/
Forgive me if I am repeating this one, going along with the “corruption” theme, I think there was someone here on the couch that earlier reported on this story, but here is how things are looking now for Officer Jakela in Settle…….waiting for the “gross over-reaction” to be rectified…..waiting for more fall out, love a good show, especially when it sheds a light on a prejudice, testosterone high, extremely pissed off marijuana hating cop! Hey gang, please share if there are any more news on this guy, laughter is the best medicine! (Well, almost!)
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/08/07/city-attorney-hopes-people-who-got-pot-tickets-do-not-pay-them
It’s symptomatic of what happens when the ‘vessels of power’ think they are the power.
Some leash-tugging is in order, and if that doesn’t get the message across, choke collars will. The kind with spikes pointing inwards…
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Wow, I’ve seen a lot of ads for extra tough security door/windows that are allegedly guaranteed to keep your home from getting burgled or invaded. But I’ve never before seen one which includes a picture of the advertised security measure repulsing a jack booted thug with a badge and a battering ram.
(Link to advertisement provided for the sole purpose of illustration and amusement. Gibraltdoor did not pay any fees for inclusion in this post. At first blush the product vendor appears to me to be engaged in puffery and selling the sizzle not the steak. Caveat emptor.)
Seems like a good investment (with a heavy duty compost grinder connected to the sewage)
@Duncan, thanks for the help.
Two reasons why I won’t learn to link. I don’t need em, and I used to make a living transcribing and then formatting medical documents and I have this weird resistance to learning shit I’m not being paid for.
What I do need is the basic facts of the story. I have blood-hound investigative instincts and the ease of links (you kids these days!) is lost on me most of the time.
I guess I could change my screen name from NorCalNative to DumbfuckfromCal if that’d help.
As a touch typist I actually prefer the long-lists of similar links from a TEXT-based search, mainly because it helps bring the inherent bias of a link into view very quickly. Too me, one-link is a “bias” trap.
I was reading Plato’s Republic lately and one of the first characters introduced into the action is an asshole that demands payment for his opinion of Plato’s query and discussion. I’ve got history on my side dude!
such is the nature of an anarchic cooperative such as Pete’s couch… it takes all kinds. pfffffffft… ‘ere…
Allan, thanks for your comment I appreciate it.
I think it’s part of getting older where you know better but just don’t give a shit. However, a better term might be one I just picked up from my new favorite physician Dr. Pamela Wible.
VOLUNTARY SIMPLICTY.
I don’t own a car or a cellphone because that shit tends to OWN you instead and places you on this treadmill of always thinking you need the “NEXT NEW THING.”
I don’t like the way that translates into serious environmental degradation. We’re nearing a tipping point where if we don’t change we’re going to be history.
How does that fit with not linking? It probably doesn’t but to me, learning to link has the same feel as running out to buy the latest gadget.
not that I even disagree, each to their own after all, but for me it’s both courtesy and teaching opportunity when providing info I want others to see. It takes an extra 10 seconds (30 for me on my stone qwerty). Plus I only do it on long URLs. It also looks waay cooler than unlinked black type.
re technology… I’m pretty much down w/ that. Few understand a big part of why we are iin the middle east at all is because of the massive amts of precious metals all those mountains contain. Precious metals req’d to keep the technology “advancing.” I’m a closet Luddite and a firm believer we need to “get ourselves back to the garden.”
I have a car and a cellphone. My car is a Prius and provides me a sort of freedom nothing else can (and gets about 48 mpg around town, and better on the highway). Hubby, otoh, has 4 vehicles, a jeep (for general use), a Harley, a quad (ORV), and his other car is a Corvette Z06 (why not?). And together we have a 34′ RV (suits us perfectly, not too big and not so small we feel cramped on a month long vacation), behind which we tow the jeep.
My cellphone is not a smart phone, it can access the internet but I opted out of paying for that feature, I also opted out of receiving or sending texts (why text when a real live voice conversation is easier? unless of course one person is in a situation where being vocal is out of the question but the conversation must take place, anyway; not something that is ever a problem with me, but for some people it could be a necessity). I use my cell phone, at most, 3 or 4 times a day,usually once with my daughter and/or one of my grandchildren or a girlfriend and, at most, 2 times with hubby when he’s off on his Harley (a nearly everyday occurrence), some days I don’t use it at all. But then I don’t use the landline much more than that, either.
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You know, sometimes I wonder if the sycophants of prohibition are willing to tell bald faced lies to promote their agenda. Then there are times like right now where there’s no question in my mind that they’re not only willing, but actively doing so.
Marijuana’s Buzzkill DNA: Biotech Researcher Finds Medical Pot Laced With Feces
For some unfathomable reason I was expecting either the word feces or a synonym to be included in the body of the article linked. Instead I found that it was “the fecal bacteria Enterobacter asburiae.” OK, I’ll rate it close enough if Enterobacter asburiae is only found in poop. Unfortunately it appears that’s just not the case. I’m going to file this in the “why does prohibitionist rhetoric make me feel like I need to take a long hot shower?” category. “Big Fat Lies” strikes again.
Yeah. Saw that. No comments.
They also claim that they found that Bluebery kush isn’t consistent from dispensary to dispensary. They just left out the bit about blueberry kush not being a strain, but a cross of two different strains. Each strain, blueberry and kush is different from seed seller to seed seller. DJ’s blueberry is a different strain from Greenhouses, and different still from the BB sold by Jordan of the Islands. So its unlikely that any two Kush BB crosses will be the same.
And harlequin is sold with a caveat from the breeders that only about 30- 40 percent will have the high CBD trait. In this case they left out all the information you would need to dismiss that nonsense complaint for what it really is…fear mongering.
Darkcycle, in issue 151 of “The New Settler Interview” a cannabis-based newspaper of NorCal, cannabis physician William Courtney who is a huge proponent of juicing cannabis was given some seeds of a HIGH-CBD variety called ACDC.
He had his nursing aid grow the seeds out. They were either HIGH in CBD OR high in THC. Significantly they got a 30% THC plant from a CBD-dominant variety.
Now, most readers here probably know anything over 20% THC is amazing. the idea you’d get a “stoner’s heirloom” variety is one of those quirks of genetics.
Here’s how the doc describes it…”THC and CBD COMPETE for the same allele, a single site of a chromosome so effectively you can have pure THC or pure CBD or some ratio in between. Fifty percent of the plants had 12% or higher CBD-acid and fifty percent had less than 1%; there were NO plants that had 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11%. It went from nothing to everything.” Whereas THC-acid was continuously incremental. It went from 1%-to-30%—1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 16, 17, 20, 26, 27, and 30%
Now, keep in mind that out of the twenty seeds that made it to harvest from a CBD-strain, 1/5 had THC content at 20% or higher!
If folks are interested in high-THC varieties maybe the best way to get there is through growing CBD stuff and then having your plants tested by a reputable lab. I thought 30% THC was the cannabis version of Big Foot.
As you pointed out, buying seeds from ANY vendor is a crapshoot based on genetics. The fewer seeds you grow out the less chance you actually have of getting something that resembles what you thought you purchased in the first place.
Meanwhile, here is the real government concern over shit in our food:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/11-totally-disgusting-things-the-fda-allows-in-your-food/
OT.
Cannabis addiction? As the years rolled by I had considered it some kind of badge-of-honor that I was using cannabis EVERY day. However, as the years turned into 14 I began to ask myself: Am I an addict? Could I quit if I wanted to?
Well, I recently had my first 7-day “drug holiday” from cannabis to end my streak. Once I learned through PubMed studies that “tolerance” was the internalization of cannabinoid receptors away from their normal positions at the cell surfaces, it was a done deal. I’m able to use a lot less of the full extract oil I’ve been using and will save some money.
However, it’s NOT really cannabis addiction I want to talk about, I’m ADDICTED TO SUGAR, as in buying 80lbs. per month in the summer to feed my growing collection of hummingbirds.
What started out as one feeder thirty years ago turned into five feeders and approximately 80 or more hummingbirds coming into my yard daily. I keep the feeders up year-round because the Anna’s Hummingbird native to California doesn’t migrate.
I have the feeders outside my kitchen window and it makes doing dishes much less of a chore when I got HUMMINGBIRD vision right in front of me.
And then, we also get the HOODED ORIOLE coming to the feeders during the summer months (I call them “flying poppies because of their bright yellow coloring).
Between the Orioles and the hummers the sky above my house often looks like something out of Star Wars. It’s awesome to see and more-surprising to hear. People don’t think of hummingbirds being loud or making noise, but when you’ve got dozens and dozens fighting for a feeder spot they’re pretty loud.
Probably the reason I’m writing about this today is that yesterday, one of migrant hummers (an Allan’s) sat on the ground for several hours and then died. I’m pretty sure that my house is part of the Allan’s and Rufous hummingbirds migratory route-pattern based on observations over the years and I’m scratching my head, both wondering and worrying if “Climate Change” might have had a role in this birds death.
With the flowers developing different blooming times due to warming, did this little guy run out of travelling options? I’ll never know, but I do keep the feeders up a maintained because our wildlife and birdies need help. I added a water source for our local deer this year as well.
So, it looks like my wondering about cannabis-addiction was just that, curiosity and nothing more. I allowed the NIDA-based research model into scaring my ass into thinking it’d be a much bigger deal than it was.
I didn’t sleep at all the first night of abstinence and then was able to sleep okay after that, not great but okay. And, my ONLY symptoms of NOT-using cannabis was that brief insomnia.
I did experience an actual real dream for the first time in a very long time. It was freaking awesome! And, that makes me wonder that while that feature is probably why cannabis is such good medication for PTSD, is the lack of dreaming from daily cannabis use a threat to good mental health? That is, is it BAD for one not to dream?
I know that I did have dreams over the years it’s just that I usually had zero recall of them in the morning. I’m sure people here are familiar with that. Is that an additional reason to take more frequent breaks from cannabis?
I too have feeders at my house. Unfortunately, I think what may have happened to your little friend has happened to several over the years at mine.
Hummers are fast, and one of the traits they have is extremely sharp color perception. They can see a tiny red flower at a range of over a mile. And they will pursue that color, even if it’s behind a pane of glass. I’ve had several dash themselves to death against my picture window, going after some red thing inside. Sometimes, they get stunned and fly away later. Sometimes they die from internal injuries. That can take a while. Sorry about your little friend.
I don’t often dream, but when I do, it has more to do with how long I’ve been sleeping. PTSD gets me up every hour, on the hour. Been like this now since 1978.
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I take a megadose of lecithin daily to mitigate that problem. 9.6 grams of the1200 mg or 3.2 grams of the concentrated 400 mg version. It did give me back my dreams. You can find the 400 mg variety at Walmart for about $8 for a month’s supply.
I have flowers all over my yard that attract hummingbirds, honeysuckle is one of their favorites and I have four big plants of it, along with petunias and verbena, phlox and many others they visit so I have no need to put up feeders. When I have, in the past, they go unused and the “nectar” spoils so I just don’t any longer.
But outside my kitchen window I have a large bird feeder, three squirrel feeders, a suet cake feeder, and a large water container which is used by all, as well as the deer and occasional raccoon that come to clean up what’s left on the ground each evening. I really enjoy watching both the birds and the squirrels, some of the squirrels will come up and take a peanut from my or hubby’s hand; and the variety of birds that visit those feeders (many of them take food from the squirrel feeders, too) is amazing, I’ve even had redwing blackbirds visit in the spring. Out back, in view of the deck and the outdoor living room I have a feeder specifically for goldfinches, and we have quite a flock of them. We used to get a lot of barn and mud swallows but the last couple years, we do not have any, suspect it is because these have been warmer and drier than normal and all the standing water around the area dries up too soon for the mosquitoes.
Jodie Emery â€@JodieEmery
The news is out: “@theprovince: Marc Emery is leaving U.S. jail, returning to Canada on Tuesday” http://www.theprovince.com/Prince+leaving+jail+returning+Canada+Tuesday/10102292/story.html … #bcpoli #cdnpoli
OT, but important. The WaPo has done it again:
Why marijuana won’t become another Big Tobacco
Kevvie and Co. getting bitch-slapped:
“”I think most Americans would be surprised to learn how quickly this industry has matured,” Kevin Sabet, co-founder of Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana) and an outspoken legalization critic, told me. “Big Tobacco ignored major scientific findings about cigarettes, deceived the public, funded their own research, and devoted every ounce of their energy to one thing: increasing use for profit.” He says the marijuana industry is doing the same today.
Even if there is some truth to this, legalization opponents are on shaky ground when it comes to ignoring scientific findings and misleading the public. After all, the federal case for marijuana prohibition continues to be built on half-truths and the occasional deception. Grass Is Not Greener’s Web site repeats many of these same talking points in a breakdown of “Facts” and “Myths” that takes considerable liberties with the definition of both.
The damn Comments section keeps jerking me around with a BS dead-end registration process that has prevented me from adding something the author and readership needs to know about, and that is what ThinkingClearly learned about Gitlow being a director of Project SAM, the ASAM and also being on the board of Big Pharma company Orexo.
The iron is white-hot, folks. It’s begging for a hammer. Somebody, please go there and start pounding away with that information. This opportunity to very publicly to rub the prohib’s faces raw in their self-serving hypocrisy must not be passed up.
(Chuckling) For once, the Universe was accommodating.
I switched browsers from Firefox to Chrome and managed to get through. Toke up and grab some popcorn; I believe the fireworks are about to start.
Don’t be shy about adding your own virtual projectiles, either; like my late Naval uncles used to tell me about the Battle of the Philippine Sea, this could be one Hell of a ‘Turkey Shoot’.
And the prohibs have lots of turkeys…
Hmmm…maybe just one turkey, for now. But like the domestic version of the wild bird, this one is too dumb to realize it’s entered a murderous rhetorical crossfire.
It’s being shot to pieces, and the stupid frakker just keeps making noises. I almost feel guilty.
Oh, boy, the suckers took the bait! Time to have some fun! (Sharpening carving knife) I haven’t dined on a real prohib in ages.
But it’s not the US branch of SAM that’s making an appearance, but the Canadian one!
Well, as the old saying goes, “Fools rush in…” Stupidity respects no national boundaries.
OT.
DUCK AND COVER!
Back in 1964 as a ten-year-old I was taught to duck-and-cover in case of a nuclear attack. When I got to be in my mid-teens when I became aware of the idea that drugs might result in some personal pleasure it appealed to me.
I decided that I wanted to TRY EVERYTHING at least once, and over the years I kept that promise to myself. Probably the NUMBER ONE reason my teenage mind decided that a “career” of drug abuse made sense was because I didn’t think I’d be around to live a full life. I figured nuclear war was in my future, and so WHY NOT experience with drugs since what I expected would be a normal existence was threatened?
I guess my point is that if you fill a child’s mind with fear there’s going to consequences for society down-the-road.
Anyone else of the older posters here that grew up in the 60’s every have similar thoughts? Just curious, because if I felt that way I’m sure other kids of my era did as well. How much of the flower-child era with cannabis and LSD might have been based on the idea of a SHORT interrupted LIFE?
Or, Is it just me?
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“Duck and cover” really wasn’t a well thought out plan. Everybody knows that if you’re 5 miles from ground zero that the concussion will hit you like a car with a sheet of 2″ thick plywood secured to the car’s front end and traveling at 72 miles per hour. Smart people understand that a desk would offer you little protection from such an impact. The best way to survive would be to build up your tolerance a little bit at a time. So a smart person would securely attach a 2″ piece of plywood to the front end of their vehicle. Then on the first day he’d get a friend to hit him square on with the contraption at perhaps 5 MPH. The next day move it up to 6 MPH and so on and so forth. In less than 3 months he’ll be ready for the impact and the commies will be soundly thrashed.
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Great news people! Linda Taylor has gotten her parole from prison for her last felony ugly in public conviction!! Gosh, I’ve missed insulting her. She didn’t waste any time bringing out the big guns, cannabis causes autism now! Well, stuff that people spray on cannabis but that’s just about the same thing, isn’t it?
I hope she doesn’t go out in public without her burqa again…another ugly in public conviction might land her a life sentence. She’s a three time loser you know.