Asset forfeiture is, of course, the governmeng presuming guilt: if you're carrying $10,000 in cash of course you are planning (or did) something nefarious, so they'll just take it from you. Since taking the money from you is the goal of the program, they don't need to arrest you, and the unconstitutional law which enables this kind of thuggery does not require that any charges be filed against the person. (You do get idiocy in the records like "Cook County vs. $250,000 cash", of course, but that's just to keep the records straight and The Law Is An Ass.)
So you have a situation where a law abiding citizen who just happens to be carrying a large sum of money ends up being fined for...nothing. Remember, he's not been found guilty of a crime, nor even charged with one; most of the time the victims of asset forfeiture aren't even arrested, let alone booked or arraigned. Yet whatever amount of cash they had on hand is taken by the government on the presumption that a crime has occurred.
But we were born free.
This law is another reason the war on (some) drugs is an abject failure.
* * *
I can only conclude that Obama is bound and determined to help Iran get nuclear weapons.
Of course, Obama hates Netanyahu and Israel because they're telling him he's doing something egregiously stupid. Israel is continually reminding Obam and the State Department that if Iran has nukes it will use them and it will use them on both Israel and the United States.
Obama is, of course, teh Smrtest Man EVAH and since everyone else is stupid he gets angry when they tell him he's wrong. But Netanyahu is not going to back down and decide to give in because All Opposition To Obama Is Just Racism--Netanyahu doesn't give a wet fart about Obama's skin color, as far as I know, and has absolutely no white guilt because slavery--and Obama cannot make him shut up about threats to Israel.
The President needs something he can point to as a success; the agreement with Iran is nothing more than legacy building, and he wants to have a foreign policy issue that he can claim is a success even if it only works out on the level of "we did everything we set out to do".
Part of the problem is that he's got John F'in Kerry as his Sec'y of State, and he basically embodies Dumb and Dumber. But that is only part of the problem; the other part is that it's bleeding obvious to anyone who's not a D.C. insider that Iran isn't going to keep their word and they're going to go right on doing whatever they want.
The only way to civilize Iran is to nuke it and start over. No one wants to do that, so the second best option is to isolate them and do everything possible to keep them from developing nukes on their own. Ordinarily that would include allowing Israel its own head with regard to strikes on Iran, but of course Obama wants the deal and Iran has probably said they'll walk if Israel hits Iran--so Obama tells Israel to back off, and makes it stick with the threat of economic sanctions against Israel.
Israel is an ally of the US. Iran is an enemy--they say so themselves--placating our enemies at the expense of our allies is a surefire way to make sure that we end up eating a bucket of dicks.
* * *
Lately, at work, I have been noticing something. I don't know if it's new, or if I've just been oblivious, but of late there's been a definite uptick in the "obvious marajuana user" category.
I mean, there's one guy who comes in every once in a while who has relatives in Mexico and I'm pretty sure he loves him some ganja, but he was one guy. Last week this other dude came in and his laptop reeked of pot. I mean, as soon as I opened the thing, I'm pretty sure my pupils dialated--that's how much it stank.
I didn't say what I wanted to say: "Why are you bringing this in? Did you spill bong water on it?" But fuck, I had to work for it.
This past week, then, I've had some three or four people who were obvious users. One guy was so toasted he couldn't understand the concept of us reinstalling his operating system. I had to explain it about five times. This other guy came in--eyes red--and he was kind of out of it, too, and his odor was pretty spliffy. Then I got buttonholed by a guy in the camera department, and it was obvious he'd been smoking the stuff, and yesterday this woman came in and I could barely stand to be in the same area as her, because whatever sort of ditch weed she'd been smoking was probably only anecdotally pot.
Well, whatever--I don't really care all that much what people smoke, but it'd be nice if I didn't have to smell it. Regular cigarette smoke smell is bad enough, but pot just smells bad.
* * *
Today is a day off, and I can spend it with my honey. She's just as happy about this as I am, which is a miracle.
Like any couple, we have arguments from time to time, and as usual it was my fault. But there is always a silver lining in every cloud, and in the case of a marital argument it's the "making up" part. I think we scared the cats, and I had to search for my underwear, but it's all good.