Please Legalize Drugs And Stop The Violence

As the drug cartels terrorize Mexico and various border towns, they are bringing drugs by the truckload to the streets of the U.S.

An article in today's Texas Observer talks about the border towns of El Paso/Juarez, as the embattled citizens of that area cope with the violence and kidnappings.

...While El Pasoans argue over semantics and statistics, residents in Juarez fight for their lives as innocent bystanders in a battle over who will sell cocaine and marijuana to the world’s biggest drug consumer. The Obama administration appears to be looking at the problem from a fresh perspective, shifting U.S. policy to focus more on the promotion of substance-abuse treatment and prevention, and less on the drug war. During her March visit to Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that battling cartel violence should be a shared responsibility and emphasized that America needs to curb its demand for illegal drugs. That’s a decidedly different political tack from the Bush years, when all the talk was about bigger walls, increased firepower, and Mexico’s responsibility for the problem. Other high-level administration officials have been dispatched to Mexico with messages similar to Clinton's, including Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder...

Let's get real. The only solution to this problem is to legalize drugs and burst the money bubble that is fueling this frenzy. When cartel bosses can make millions, and illiterate street punks can be rolling in dough dealing drugs, there is no "war" that will ever stop the tide of drugs flowing into the U.S.

Another small matter is that the lax gun laws in the U.S. allows unscrupulous gun dealers here to supply these cartels with the weapons they use to enforce the terror they bestow. Guns and drugs flow across the border like water.

So, the bottom line is to legalize drugs, and sell them at low cost to all adults who want them. Put the money used in this futile war into prevention, education and treatment of drug users.

Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea

Bobby Jindal's statements yesterday in support of President Obama, came as a surprise in a recent flurry of Republican teabaggers and naysayers. It was a start, but the GOP have a long way to go before they become a party that makes sense.

Commenter Osage replying on the Huffington Post says it eloquently:


BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA

In order to gain the political control they've enjoyed over the last ten years, Republican moderates and fiscal conservatives made a pact with the devil (faux Christians, bigots and misanthropes) to achieve the numbers they needed to defeat Democrats. They made a strategic decision to manipulate and exploit the ignorance, fears and hatreds of dysfunctional and vulnerable voters in order to win elections rather than lose them by being intellectually and morally honest.

Today, those who conspired with the devil are caught between wanting to disassociate themselves with and or casting out the devil they empowered and the karmic reality that they don't have the numbers to hold on to or regain power without continuing to accept and "advocate" the immoral values, hypocrisies and corruptions that are dividing and destroying their party.

The survival of today's shrinking Republican Party has become so dependent on extremism that they have no significant power left WITH or WITHOUT the support of America's increasingly pernicious lunatic fringe.

The idiom "caught between the devil and the deep blue sea" is certainly appropriate as Republicans are facing the dilemma of choosing between two equally undesirable alternatives that both result in Republican impotence in mainstream American politics. They are suffering the consequences of their treachery.

Their irresponsible propping up of George W. Bush cost them their credibility, and their disgraceful and shameless licking of Rush Limbaugh's storm trooper boots is costing them their viability.