The Goat Pen

hedge wrote:"but when you decide you have to steal my stuff to support your habit then I am perfectly fine with forcing my will onto other via the legislative process."

Then why not use the legislative process to legalize it, which would bring the cost down dramatically so people wouldn't have to steal in order to afford it? That would also have the added benefit of making it safer, which I know hardly anybody gives a damn about (after all, it's just dirty heroin addicts, so who cares if they're made safer?), but you would at least get the satisfaction of cost savings if there were less OD's. The bottom line is, prohibition doesn't work. Never has, never will, but people are so damn invested in having a bad guy to point the finger at, they don't want to try something different that would be far more likely to achieve the result they give lip service to preferring...

because you keep operating under the assumption that legalizing it would result in responsible use. It will not.

What was the reason it was banned in the first place?

we hated Chinese people

That's actually true, which doesn't sound like much of a good reason to me to make a law...

I really can't see much difference b/w the hysteria of people today who are so convinced that heroin or cocaine are some kind of evil substances and some hoop-skirted Baptist matron of the temperance movement decrying the evils of alcohol. All the arguments were the same (alcoholism, fambly violence, the whole nine yards) and yet when they finally got their way and Prohibition became law, organized crime immediately moved in and took over the industry. We all know how that worked out. I guess all the folks so adamant that heroin shouldn't be legalized can take comfort in the fact that they are of the exact same opinion as every drug lord from Columbia to Afghanistan. Strange bedfellows indeed...

Just to be clear, I don't think heroin is a good thing (far from it), I just think government meddling (and all that comes with it, not simply that somebody isn't getting to do something they might want to do) in what should be individual decisions in matters like this is worse...

another side of it the societal cost beyond just the obvious addiction. Our foster care system is overwhelmed right now. You don't lose your kids for being a 2 pack a day smoker or drinking a 6 pack of beer.

hedge wrote:I really can't see much difference b/w the hysteria of people today who are so convinced that heroin or cocaine are some kind of evil substances and some hoop-skirted Baptist matron of the temperance movement decrying the evils of alcohol. All the arguments were the same (alcoholism, fambly violence, the whole nine yards) and yet when they finally got their way and Prohibition became law, organized crime immediately moved in and took over the industry. We all know how that worked out. I guess all the folks so adamant that heroin shouldn't be legalized can take comfort in the fact that they are of the exact same opinion as every drug lord from Columbia to Afghanistan. Strange bedfellows indeed...

Just to be clear, I don't think heroin is a good thing (far from it), I just think government meddling (and all that comes with it, not simply that somebody isn't getting to do something they might want to do) in what should be individual decisions in matters like this is worse...

they hysteria around heroin (and the massive opioid epidemic) is a matter of lifespan

• cigarettes don't kill you until you are at least 60, and you worked your whole (shortened) life
• alcohol, again, unless you go full bender and drink yourself to death, an alcoholic can hang in until 60+, but you can usually work
• marijuana can't kill you but it can kill your career. I would never hire a pot addict
• but heroin? You could be dead at 20
• cocaine, you could be dead at 20
• crack, dead at 20
• meth, dead at 20

It is a matter of lifespan and career. Cigarettes don't usually end your life that early. They merely shorten your life. Same with alcohol. So that shit is legal. The other shit? NFW! No parent wants to bury their children.

I bet your parents wish they'd had the chance to bury you.

BAM!

And there is no such thing as a "pot addict"

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-jr-m ... 1499646830

Meeting denied, then meeting misrepresented, then WH leaker reveals all and forces true confession. Wash, rinse; repeat.

Then comes more reminders that collusion is not necessarily illegal.

More Trump Derangement Syndrome. More Trump-Russia hysteria.

Nobody (except TDS sufferers) cares if Trump's son and son in law met with a Russian lawyer a year ago. Obsession is not just a perfume.

How's that impeachment plan coming along?

bluetick wrote:https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-jr-m ... 1499646830

Meeting denied, then meeting misrepresented, then WH leaker reveals all and forces true confession. Wash, rinse; repeat.

Then comes more reminders that collusion is not necessarily illegal.

You lost, your predictions were wrong, your polls were wrong, you publicly turned your back on the middle class, your bubble burst, reap the reward of an 8 year narcissist bender...sit down and stfu.

No no no! The Russians stole the election. The smoking gun of Trump's collusion with the Russians will be revealed any day now. He will be impeached by Labor Day. Book it!

Meanwhile dem rigging of elections continues....

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-gov ... 44799.html

The Hill is reporting that Comey's memo's that were leaked to the press contained classified information

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More than half of the memos former FBI chief James Comey wrote as personal recollections of his conversations with President Trump about the Russia investigation have been determined to contain classified information, according to interviews with officials familiar with the documents.

This revelation raises the possibility that Comey broke his own agency’s rules and ignored the same security protocol that he publicly criticized Hillary Clinton for in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election.

Comey testified last month he considered the memos to be personal documents and that he shared at least one of them with a Columbia University lawyer friend. He asked that lawyer to leak information from one memo to the news media in hopes of increasing pressure to get a special prosecutor named in the Russia case after Comey was fired as FBI director.

“So you didn’t consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document?,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) asked Comey on June 8. “You considered it to be, somehow, your own personal document that you could share to the media as you wanted through a friend?”

“Correct,” Comey answered. “I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I thought it important to get it out.”

Toemeesleather wrote:

bluetick wrote:https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-jr-m ... 1499646830

Meeting denied, then meeting misrepresented, then WH leaker reveals all and forces true confession. Wash, rinse; repeat.

Then comes more reminders that collusion is not necessarily illegal.

You lost, your predictions were wrong, your polls were wrong, you publicly turned your back on the middle class, your bubble burst, reap the reward of an 8 year narcissist bender...sit down and stfu.

Wall Street Journal article. Take it up with them.

eCat wrote:The Hill is reporting that Comey's memo's that were leaked to the press contained classified information

---------------

More than half of the memos former FBI chief James Comey wrote as personal recollections of his conversations with President Trump about the Russia investigation have been determined to contain classified information, according to interviews with officials familiar with the documents.

This revelation raises the possibility that Comey broke his own agency’s rules and ignored the same security protocol that he publicly criticized Hillary Clinton for in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election.

Comey testified last month he considered the memos to be personal documents and that he shared at least one of them with a Columbia University lawyer friend. He asked that lawyer to leak information from one memo to the news media in hopes of increasing pressure to get a special prosecutor named in the Russia case after Comey was fired as FBI director.

“So you didn’t consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document?,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) asked Comey on June 8. “You considered it to be, somehow, your own personal document that you could share to the media as you wanted through a friend?”

“Correct,” Comey answered. “I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I thought it important to get it out.”

I liked Trumps tweet about it. What is he, 12?

president

Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the head of the ruling Democratic Party (PD), said on Friday Italy did not have any moral duty to take in migrants, sharply toughening his stance over surging numbers of asylum seekers.

Critics accused Renzi of adopting the language of rightist opponents less than a year before national elections, where the growing migration crisis is likely to dominate campaigning.

"We need to free ourselves from a sense of guilt. We do not have the moral duty to welcome into Italy people who are worse off than ourselves," Renzi wrote in new book, excerpts of which were released ahead of publication on the PD website.

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Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the head of the ruling Democratic Party (PD), said on Friday Italy did not have any moral duty to take in migrants, sharply toughening his stance over surging numbers of asylum seekers.

Critics accused Renzi of adopting the language of rightist opponents less than a year before national elections, where the growing migration crisis is likely to dominate campaigning.

"We need to free ourselves from a sense of guilt. We do not have the moral duty to welcome into Italy people who are worse off than ourselves," Renzi wrote in new book, excerpts of which were released ahead of publication on the PD website.
-----------------------------------------------

and if you're wondering why Trump was so popular in Poland?.......................

Terrorism is not happening in Poland, either.

Nor is it happening in Slovenia or Hungary.

All of these countries keep Islamic migrants out, and Hungary recently punctuated its policy by erecting a razor-wire fence along its southern border.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has scolded Japan repeatedly over the years, trying to get the country to accept refugees, mostly Muslim, from various countries. The Japanese have steadfastly refused.

In 2016, Japan granted refugee status to only 28 people out of 10,901 applicants. In other words, 99 percent of applications were rejected.

Of the few refugees that Japan has taken in, most are non-Muslims from Burma, and, even then, Japan requires them to go through an extensive, months-long training on Japanese culture.

Poland’s prime minister, Beata Szydlo, has also refused the constant pressure from the European Union for her country to accept its “quota” Muslim refugees from the Middle East and Africa.

“Poland will not submit to any blackmail on the part of the European Union,” Szydło stated during a parliamentary debate, adding that her Central European nation would not be participating in the “madness of the Brussels elites.”

Referencing the Islamic suicide bombing that killed 22, mainly children, and injured dozens more at a pop concert in Manchester this week, the Catholic prime minister said she had the courage to call out the EU’s political elites on their “folly.”

Two Polish citizens were among those killed in Monday night’s atrocity in Manchester.

“Where are you going, Europe? Get up off your knees. Get out of your lethargy. Otherwise you will be crying every day for your children,” she warned, stating that Poland had no intention of accepting Brussels-imposed migrants.