La Gioconda

If you got bad news,
you wanna kick them blues; cocaine.
When your day is done
and you wanna run; cocaine
--Cocaine, J.J. Cale
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The War on Drugs comes to mind during this campaign, especially considering our last two presidents and our possible next C-in-C (Commander in Coke.)

America has been fighting phony wars as a matter of policy. Any war will do in a pinch. Our prisons are filled with drug offenders, many of them for minor offenses. And we don't like to admit it but since 1992, so has our White House. If Obama is elected, we will be batting a triple-header.

Clinton, of course, didn't swallow. Sorry, I meant inhale. I confused him with Monica for a fleeting moment. George W. Bush by most reckonings was a cocaine user (witness his perpetual smile) and Obama admits to using "blow."

So what have we got, taxpayers and citizens? A multi-billion dollar war on drugs because they are bad-bad-bad. Then we proceed to elect drug users.

Here is Ranger's reckoning: If one is white or 1/2 white, he may use drugs and become President. If one is black and uses drugs, one can become a convict and be denied the right to vote.

This black-and-white view even considers the gray.