(Something I wrote two years ago, that I thought I would share on this day with my fellow Kossacks.

Jim)

Here in the Midwest there is a real and significant problem with meth - to the point of paranoia on the part of both the population and government.  This has led to laws restricting access to certain precursor drugs and chemicals, reports of environmental damage (meth labs tend to produce some really nasty chemical contamination), and the development of special task forces of local, state and federal police agencies to target meth production and distribution.  It is the War on (Some) Drugs on steroids.

I first ran this about 18 months ago. In one of the 2nd Amendment discussions this week following the SCOTUS decision on Wednesday, I'd mentioned it - and was encouraged to update and repost it.  So, here it is, updated and expanded.

Jim

Someone is watching you:

Friends, this is what our war has brought:

My 10 year-old niece got me a calendar for Christmas.  Kid's smart, and knows me well.  She got me the 2008 George W. Bush Out of Office Countdown Calendar.  It's filled with date-specific quotes from our dipshit-in-chief, as well as photos showing him mugging for the camera at inappropriate times and just being bewildered by situations completely beyond his understanding.  It also has each day marked with how many days are left in office for this bozo.

(Cross posted here from Communion of Dreams.  Because while it has nothing to do with the details of the current election, it has everything to do with what this site is about: participation in our democracy.  I thought a long Sunday meditation might be welcome.

JD)

(This is an adaptation of something I posted at Communion of Dreams yesterday.  For those who may not have seen my other posts about caring for my Mother-in-Law, Martha Sr, for the past five years, she passed away on Feb. 6th.  This is something of a follow-up to that series.  I am tentatively planning on adapting those diaries into a book about the experience, in no small part due to the response I received here at dKos.  Yes, you guys helped - and you have my gratitude.)

Sorry, folks - this has nothing to do with Hil & Obama, or McCain, or even really much at all with politics.  So, if that is what you are looking for, move along, and please accept my apologies for interrupting the regular stream of things here for you.

SPRINGDALE - Hour after hour, for four full days, Adriana Torres-Flores was locked away and forgotten in 8 1/2-by-9 1/2-foot cell in the Washington County Courthouse, with only a metal table, two benches and a light bulb that never went out. She had nothing to eat or drink. There was no toilet. Thursday passed. Then Friday, Saturday and Sunday - although Torres-Flores had no watch to tell the time. She slept on the floor with her head on a shoe.

She drank her own urine, she said.

Panicked and afraid she would die, Torres-Flores pounded on the steel door with her hands and feet, and yelled. No one heard her. The threat of snow had thinned the courthouse staff Friday.

The building was closed all weekend.

It was Monday morning before the bailiff who had put her in the holding cell, intending to have her taken to jail, opened the door and realized his mistake.

Teen Says TSA Screener Opened Sterile Equipment, Put Life In Danger

James Hoyne, 14, has a feeding tube in his stomach and carries a back-up in a sealed clear plastic bag. Hoyne said two weeks ago a TSA officer insisted on opening the sterile equipment, contaminating his back-up feeding up tube which he later needed.

"I said 'Please don't open it' and she said 'I have to open it whether you like it or not. If I can't open it, I can't let you on the plane,'" Hoyne said of his conversation with the TSA screener.

TSA officials apologized to James and said they're looking into the incident to see what corrective steps need to be taken.

(This is an adaptation of something I posted at Communion of Dreams a couple of days ago.  For those who may not have seen my other posts about caring for my Mother-in-Law for the past five years, she passed away on Feb. 6th.  This is something of a follow-up to that series.  I am tentatively planning on adapting those diaries into a book about the experience, in no small part due to the response I received here at dKos.  Yes, you guys helped - and you have my gratitude.

Another note - following my MIL's death and the subsequent memorial service a couple of days later, my wife and I both collapsed from exhaustion and then came down with the nasty flu bug going around.  We were both basically in bed for the next two weeks, only emerging back into the daylight last weekend, and starting to pick up the pieces of our life.)

This will be brief, barely qualifying as a diary.  And as it does not pertain to either yesterday's election or today's news, I hope you will forgive the indulgence.

"What's wrong, Mother-In-Law?"

She'd been restless most of the afternoon, but each time she called or squirmed enough to prompt me to investigate, the most she had been able to tell me was that she was "uncomfortable."  I tried to tweak her meds a bit, but I suspected that the duragesic patches which are supposed to be good for 72 hours were running dry half a day early.

She took a sip of water from the straw I held to her lips.  She swallowed, then said: "I was just worried."

"Worried?  What are you worried about - maybe I can help?"

"Well, I think I need to go shopping."

"Shopping?"

"For clothes.  For when I take the train back to college this fall.  I won't have time to shop once I am there."

Lisa, our regular hospice nurse, arrived while we were getting my MIL dressed this morning.  She sat and watched, observing my MIL, seeing how she interacted with us, how she moved, how she looked.  Then she went through her usual examination, checking vital signs, listening to heart, lungs, intestines, asking the usual questions about sleep, and appetite, and signs of pain.  She sat back, looked at my MIL, and said pleasantly to her: "you always have such a beautiful smile."

Try to wrap your head around this:

NYPD Seeks an Air Monitor Crackdown for New Yorkers

Damn you, Osama bin Laden! Here's another rotten thing you've done to us: After 9/11, untold thousands of New Yorkers bought machines that detect traces of biological, chemical, and radiological weapons. But a lot of these machines didn't work right, and when they registered false alarms, the police had to spend millions of dollars chasing bad leads and throwing the public into a state of raw panic.

I sat, my back to the fireplace, feeling the heat from the fire, listening to the pop and crackle of the fresh log I had just placed there.  Across the room, the hospice nurse and my wife were sitting at my MIL's feet, the nurse doing her routine examination for the second time in a week.

This is new.  Previously, we'd only been on weekly visits.  But as it is clear that we're in the final days of my MIL's life, we decided to schedule an additional time.  And, thanks to how hospice works, we've the option of calling for additional visits as needed, or adding in more regular scheduled visits each week.  Just knowing this resource is available is comforting.

Lisa, our regular nurse,  listens, touches, looks.  I am struck by just how much good medicine is still based on these simple techniques, when it all comes down to it.

As it does when you are dying.

With all the dignity and presence of a southern lady, my MIL held her self erect, looked at me and said "I've had a very nice time this evening. And dinner was lovely. And your performance, though I'm a little ashamed to admit that I can't remember exactly what you did."

"Well, thank you!" I answered. Then I helped her finish up on the commode next to her bed, and carefully laid her down for a nap.

It was 12:45 in the afternoon. She had just finished lunch consisting of a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, Pringles, and some chopped pears. Needless to say, there had been no 'performance' by me or anyone else.