Yesterday Governor Kristi Noem retweeted one of the biggest baloney lines from her State of the State Address, Trumpily claiming that South Dakota has a meth problem because we won’t build the border wall:
Meth destroys people. It’s ravaging our communities and families. But meth is rarely made in South Dakota anymore. The vast majority is coming from Mexico. Our meth epidemic is the price we are paying for our nation’s failure to adequately secure our southern border. pic.twitter.com/ZXdCTL1Djm
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) January 10, 2019
Bunk. The meth epidemic is the price we pay for the despair we create by failing to support education, raise wages, and promote opportunity for all South Dakotans here at home.
My friend and EMT Cully Williams seconds that notion, saying that every patient on meth or booze that he’s picked up “has used it as an escape, an antidepressant. Fix the situation, break away the substance, then life is good.”
A Twitter correspondent claims that supply creates demand, but really? If I sneak into your house and put a bag of dog turds in your fridge with a note saying “Yum Yum!”, are you going to eat those dog turds for breakfast and then blame your wife for not locking the door?
Supply is not the problem, not in drug addiction, or sex trafficking, or any other similar problem. The problem is demand… and that’s a harder problem to solve, because we don’t get to blame someone else; we have to acknowledge that we are responsible for our own problems.
Using drugs is a choice and I say again, using drugs is a choice.Instead of admitting to the choice, American politicians choose to blame Mexico because it helps promote the fear of brown people coming to get you.
Portugal got it right 20+ years ago. Decriminalizing the possession and use of small quantities of drugs reduces crime, reduces drug-related crime, reduces drug use, and reduces drug dependency. Treat the problem, not the symptom.
The CIA created, certainly amplified the drug lord Pablo Escobar, using him to smuggle guns to Central American rightwing rebels. For a witty based-on-historical-fact, watch, American Made: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Made_(film)
There is rich irony watching rightwing zealots like NOem, Nelson, etc., champion the federal government seizing private land. https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2019-01-09/texas-landowners-dig-in-to-fight-trumps-border-wall
Lettuce killed more Americans last year than did illegal immigrants. Yet, the zealots shut down food inspections. Let them tell us how much they care about ‘protecting Americans’.
Mending Wall
BY ROBERT FROST
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
More analysis of the Trump campaign is coming out to show that “the wall” was never intended to be a physical structure — it was shorthand to keep candidate Trump on message. Well, when a simple messenger is left a simple message, the concrete expectation forms (literally). Maybe that says something about President Trump; maybe that says something about his supporters. Now the President is stuck defending a policy that relies on the all-to-real physical structure of a wall, and I’m not so sure even he gets that a wall will not do all the things he wants. The Trump supporters now rally for a physical monument of their President for little more than it is the idea of their President. The wall will keep “them” out; save “your” jobs, reduce crime, stop drugs, ANY societal ill will be alleviated with the wall. The wall is Trump’s Mt. Rushmore/Statue of Liberty/. In the words of the great philosopher White Goodman, “It’s a metaphor. But that actually happened though.”
Much like GOP economic policy, facts don’t matter — BELIEF matters. Belief in the wall drives message; “facts” are only used as window dressing – they do not really matter (so counter facts do not matter either).
Closing air terminal in Miami due to TSA not getting paid. “Transportation Security Administration officials have tried to downplay the impact of airport security screening officers calling out sick during the government shutdown, but this one will be hard to wave off: Miami International Airport will be closing a terminal early for three days.
According to an airport official, “Due to an increased number of TSA screeners not reporting to work, we have decided to take this precautionary step and relocate about 12 flights to adjoining concourses in the afternoons.” Twice as many TSA screeners are calling out sick as usual at Miami, forcing this drastic move.” https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/10/politics/miami-airport-terminal-shutdown/index.html
If Mexico is so bad, why do we vacation there…unarmed? Why would the Treasury Secretary vacation is such a horrible dangerous place? Spring Break Rules is coming soon, how do we tell our college kids that they need to vacation in Polo for the Break cause it’s so much safer? Surf’s up! Wax your board for some soybean breaking high jinks!
Sure, declare a faux emergency to build the wall.
Then hold your breathe when the next democratic president Karmala Harris declares emergencies to attack global warming;
MEDICARE for all;
economic inequality;
one person one vote;
free tuition and student loan forgiveness;
etc.
Bring it on.
Could the next mass-shooting tip us into “national emergency” mode?
I don’t hear Democrats talking much about securing our southern border. We are a nation, and we have laws, and we need to enforce those laws. We do need to secure our border so let’s participate in that conversation about how to do that.
Maybe there are some areas where there is not currently a border fence and there should be one. I don’t know because nobody on either side has said, “here is a specific area where a fence would really help.”
Likely there are some areas where high-tech surveillance is the best way to go. I’m sure that Democrats are on board with that so let’s get it done.
Do we need more money to house and process asylum seekers at the border? Absolutely. Let’s get it done.
And let’s talk about comprehensive immigration reform that deals with people here illegally and that sets an immigration policy which serves our national interests in finding workers for the jobs that Americans don’t want. There are millions of people working those jobs already using fake identity documents, and we are making liars out of them and their employers. They are clearly needed here, so we should let them – and their employers – come out of the shadows.
We can all agree that meth is bad, but border agents just showed Trump some tunnels under existing border walls. Walls don’t stop drug smugglers.
Only in GOP-Trump land could the act of voting to allocate $25 billion to border security be considered in favor of “open boarders,” or “against border security.”
Trump shut the government down over a spending agreement that a GOP house and GOP Senate brought to a GOP President.
Rorschach, the discussion you asked for HAPPENED. Then the President shut down the government because he did not get his promised wall.
Hey, Kristi, to be safe, just build a wall around SD. Let ND pay for it. If they refuse, we can put a tariff on those taters from the Red River Valley. We all will actually be paying for it with the increased price of spuds, but your followers won’t notice. Just sell ’em a corn cap with Make SD Great Again… and you can probably pocket some of the excess $$$ yourself, too. Bonus! !#@%&*!
A lot of human religion, culture, society has often been about slowing our impulses or fighting against them. Total bans on impulsive actions don’t work. If pot was legal in SD meth use would dwindle.
Following legalization, the rate of adolescent marijuana use in Colorado has fallen to its lowest level in nearly a decade, according to new federal survey data.
With the sharp drop in this year’s data, Colorado has fallen to No. 7 in the national ranking of teen marijuana use, behind Alaska, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont.
And it’s not just marijuana: Rates of teen alcohol, tobacco and heroin use are down sharply in the state, as well.
Yeah, the tweet of a twit.
She says meth is “ravaging” communities and families, yet why hasn’t SHE declared an emergency in South Dakota. How is meth getting into South Dakota? Is it flying in all by itself or is it coming across South Dakota’s borders from adjacent states. And, if that’s the case, why hasn’t Noem called for a wall on the border of South Dakota, and why isn’t she having the highway patrol check all cars coming in from bordering states. Oh, wait. It ain’t THAT big of an emergency. Got it.
I heard New Mexico’s Governor, who governs a state right on the border, say there is no emergency. New Mexico’s Governor would take the same exact action as Noem. She would not build a wall and close off her state from bordering jurisdictions.
Please, Governor Noem. There is no emergency. Your own actions prove it.
Where’s Johnson, the new Waldo of Washington? That boy is AWOL or just doesn’t understand that he’s from a rural state that depends on agriculture. Must’ve slipped his mind that he should be thinking of his constituents in South Dakota and not for the Russian. No, not the red head spy, the orange headed Russian.
Kind of appropriate that Dirty Johnson refuses pay during the trump/republican shutdown. He isn’t working for South Dakota as shown below, so why should he be paid.
“There were two new Republicans in this group, including Rep. Steve Stivers (R-OH), who until just weeks ago was chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the person in charge of the GOP’s campaign efforts. Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL) was the other new member of the list.
Ten other Republicans had voted to fund at least one other government agency in recent days, though not all of them had voted for all of the bills. Reps. Will Hurd (R-TX), Greg Walden (R-OR), Fred Upton (R-MI), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), John Katko (R-NY) and Brian Fitpatrick (R-PA) have been consistent in their support to reopen the government, while Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) joined the efforts on Wednesday. Reps. Peter King (R-NY) and Chris Smith (R-NJ) voted for this latest bill as well, having supported one earlier bill. That entire group — but not Stivers and Davis — also voted to fund Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration programs Thursday afternoon.”
So Kristi wants to blame the drug problem on Mexico. What happened to personal responsibility? Americans choose to take drugs they know are very addicting. So easy to blame it on those darn Mexicans!
Maybe Americans need to stop using the worlds majority (by far) of illegal drugs and that would turn around the illegal drug smuggling very fast. Blame it on big pharma for prescribing opioids left and right the past two decades .
Republican politicians like Kristi Noem and her supporters need to stop blaming Americas drug problem on Mexicans.
Blaming Mexico for America’s drug problems is so typically wingnuttish and wingnutty. Not having any answers or solutions is so wingnuttish and wingnutty.
Paying lip service to a problem and offering no intelligent solutions is so wingnuttish and wingnutty.
You have met the enemy and it is 40 years of wingnuttery.
ps- cry me a river, Grudzilla. I hurt your widdle feelers, again,
Chief Gilbertson also misspoke in effect:
“Meth-my experience: jail, release, return to jail, release—over and over until they die. We need drug courts-or now I guess we call them mental health courts”.
On the bench for decades and he can’t take the time to learn addiction is a medical problem?
Governor, Chief Justice, CIVET still wrong thinking. Billie would have changed things.
The headline is false. Noem didn’t say there would be no more Meth if a wall was built.
You are getting as bad as the New York Times.
Here is an actual reporter who tells the truth.
https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/350217-americans-support-a-border-wall-more-than-the-media-wants-to-believe
Not that long ago,the goons wanted to build a wall around the capital building in Pierre. So, there is always that state of mind for the medieval thinkers of the SDGOP. Of course, the Pierre Wall would depend on federal money to do that construction so you know there would be the usual suspects in the corruption scheme.
Great link jason..from 16 months ago. Worth the read to see how convoluted trump has now become. Dude is a mental case and that ain’t no lie. Drugs can be dangerous when you do to much Adderall or it’s illegal cousin, meth, you become addlebrained. Those drugs are powerful. https://www.addictioncenter.com/stimulants/adderall/symptoms-signs/ See if you can pick out the signs.
https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/418259-americans-divided-on-whether-trumps-border-wall-should-be
Trump’s proposed border wall is not popular among voters, but bundling it with a mandatory spending bill will likely increase public support for the barrier, said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, during Monday’s broadcast of Hill.TV’s “What America’s Thinking.”
“People are very inclined to say, ‘Well, shoot, we don’t want a shutdown, so maybe I’m OK with that.’ But if you look at other data about whether people favor the wall or not, it’s like 2-to-1 against,” he said. “So I don’t think it’s very likely the Democrats are going to cave on this one.”
An April survey commissioned by The Associated Press found that 58 percent of U.S. adults opposed a border wall, while 28 percent supported it. A March survey conducted for CBS News found that 60 percent of adults surveyed were against the proposal, while 38 percent favored it.
“Pollsters have been asking questions about the wall ever since Trump mentioned it the first time and you very rarely see more than 40 percent support for a wall,” Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute told Joe Concha, host of “What America’s Thinking.”
Having worked in the chemical dependency field there is one part of the discussion missing.
Most of the clients I worked with were low income and naturally went for the cheap high.
As a result most of them became “chefs” at cooking their own meth regardless of the contamination it caused to their homes or the health risks it caused to their children.
The internet hosts a whole range of sites where you can get recipes, etc. Walmart and other retailers no longer make cold medications easily available because of their use in cooking meth.
Before Noem starts blaming Mexico for South Dakota’s meth problem, I suggest she start looking at the homes of meth users.
Photo op Noem and trump both abused their office publically speaking before the state seal, and presidential seal respectively (1.10.19 MSNBC pictured AR-15 posed in front of President as he spoke from lectern in McAllen TX) while Kristie stood in the Dias in Pierre speaking of pipelines WITHOUT PROTEST (threat to 1st Amend of protesters) together with her militia style ball cap with attachable III%er style slogans, all over her official statements.
Militias are used to intimidate protesters.
the president did want a physical wall across the entire border of mexico and beyond. Your recent comments about a wall perhaps stopping the influx of meth into this country is ridiculous. I believe we need to maintain and in some situations extend our physical barrier on the border, but most of our tax dollars should be going to help at our ports of entry and on ground enforcement to stop drugs from tunnels and provide more equipment to stop illicit items through our entry points.When you quote our Supreme Leader and show support for his ignorant rantings to grow fear and further divide our nation it does not serve you well, and certainly does not help the citizens of our great state.
Is anyone really that surprised that we have our own Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman clone as our governor? This is really going to get embarrassing before it ends.
Curtis Koball, who are you directing your comment to?
kristi noem and whoever will listen to reason
This could get real interesting in Texass. When dumbass dubya wanted his eminent domain wall, Hunt Bros (billionaires all) refused to allow the government access to their property to build it.
Other Texans are saying the same thing today. Maybe Drumpf should hand the project off the Trash-Canada and they can steal land and build the wall in South Dakota.
Interesting aside, when dumbass dubya was president of the Texass Rangers he used the government of Texas to take 13 acres of land from the Curtis Mathes (tee vee makers) family for the new tax payer subsidized stadium. As Guv, dubya decided taking property was wrong, but it worked in his favor. His 600k investment in the Rangers netted him 15 million when he sold out a few years later. No word on the mental state of the Mathes family who had the silly notion they should be able to sell their land for what they figure was a fair price.
The experts, the smugglers, tell us the drugs do not come into the US the arduous routes, cross-country born by human mules with thighs the size of cantaloupes – the drugs come in through the ports of entry – land and sea, tunnels near the land ports, and air.
A 4th century wall will not change that.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/12/us/drug-traffickers-el-chapo-trial-drugs-across-border/index.html
The product being manufactured in Mexico and referred to as “methamphetamine” has contained little to none of that substance for a number of years now.
People have been wasting their money on counterfeit drugs for years, and continue to be incarcerated and killed over something that won’t get anybody high no matter how much they ingest.
The basically inert substance they is used to dilute (or cut) the “meth” made in so called Mexican superlabs is most likely Isopropylbenzelamine, and it accounts for nearly all of the weight in each bag of methamphetamine sold these days.
The Mexican cartels cut their product to contain barely any active substances at all. There might be enough to show a positive in a reagent test, but that’s it. They’ve become billionaires by selling fake meth to Americans for a long time now.
The placebo effect can be stronger than most people care to admit, especially a person that just spent a lot of money on something that doesn’t produce the buzz that was expected. Nobody wants to believe they’ve been duped.
I work with meth users, and have noticed they’ve all gained weight and it seems they sleep every night these days. That would not be possible if they were regularly using meth.
The strange thing is only some of the users care to admit their suspicions that he meth is bogus. Most of them don’t want the ride to end, and convince themselves that they’re getting as high as they did a long time ago- even though they’re yawning immediately after smoking “meth”. Again, this would be impossible if the stuff were real.
Why, then, do we hear of nothing but “high purity” meth saturating the country?
Because keeping the populace in fear of something helps in creating more penalties against using those things, which results in more fines- and these create revenue for the US government. They just don’t care that it also ruins people’s lives, and they never will.
It’s always about money.
What else could it possibly be?