Monday, January 31, 2011

2: Oxy & Contin: In Line at the Pain Clinic

“The Freedom from Pain Clinic was the busiest of the city’s pill mills . . .”

An Associated Press  reporter had dubbed River City  “The Oxycontin Capital of America.” Whether or not that was an exaggeration, the city and the Freedom from Pain Clinic in particular had  become a mecca for people with legitimate aches and pains as well as those suffering from the illegitimate pain of addiction.
The kittens Oxy and Contin were so named because of the addiction they had acquired in their mother’s womb, but since their mother’s death they  had been able to  find  the drug  only in trace amounts, amounts so slight that it whetted rather than satisfied their craving. With their acute sense of smell, they had a nose for where to find it, but they had found it only in minuscule amounts. Of the half dozen pill mills in the River City, the one that became the kittens’ favorite was the Freedom from Pain Clinic because many of those who lined up outside it each day had not blood but Oxycontin on their hands. 
The Freedom from Pain Clinic was the busiest of the city’s pill mills, with  people traveling from far and near in the Appalachian region to line up with the locals outside the front door, six days a week,  before nine  o’clock, hoping to get a prescription for Oxycontin from Doctor  Phillip Gudenoff. In the three years his clinic had been in operation, the doctor had become  a  hero to those in the long lines and a maligned figure in the media, a cross between Dr. Albert Schweitzer and  Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Dr. Gudenoff's name had morphed into the more easily remembered “Dr.  Feel Good.” People advised friends and acquaintances in pain to “Go see Dr.  Feel Good. He’ll fix you up.”
The doctor’s "clients," as he referred to them, were a grim looking lot as they lined up on a  bitterly cold  but crystal clear Saturday morning, early in January. The men, cigarettes dangling from their lips. shifted from foot to foot to increase the circulation in their toes. The women stared down blankly at the sidewalk, looking like the dummies in the window of the  Salvation Army Second hand clothing store that was just a couple of empty storefronts away. The scene outside the clinic this morning was like a Movietone newsreel  from the Great Depression, only instead of a bowl of soup those in line were hoping for a prescription for the pain killer that was all the rage. 
As much to keep warm as anything, an older man in line cradled  Oxy in  his arms. In exchange for the warmth the kitten provided him, the older man allowed Oxy free rein to  lick the fingers of both his hands, which had traces of Oxycontin. Seasoned Oxycontin addicts, like the older man, took the pills home and, to defeat the  time release properties,  pulverized the pills on the kitchen table with a spoon. If they were impatient, they  broke the pills in half and ground the two halves between the thumb and index finger. That was considered the more manly method. The addicts then had the choice of swallowing the powder with a liquid or  inhaling it nasally, like cocaine. Hardcore users in ghettoes preferred inhaling smoke from burning Oxycontin, but that was a wasteful if quicker method that was not practiced in River City. Whatever method was used, traces of Oxycontin remained on the fingers. The euphoria Oxycontin produced in addicts the first hour was like the  ecstasy Appalachians had experienced in religious camp meetings and revivals in the nineteenth century.
“The pill kills the existential agony of life and makes you want to start a-singing and a-stomping like Jerry Lee Lewis,” said an older long-haired man to a chain-smoking younger man behind him who was in line for the first time. The long braided hair of the older man made him a lookalike for Willie Nelson, not  Jerry Lee Lewis. He had been a drummer in the Knocked-Up rock band in his teens and he had audited a philosophy course at the River City Community College in his twenties, which converted him to existentialism. 
In the older man’s arms, Oxy was not contaminated by traditional American addictions—caffeine, nicotine, sugar, salt, fat, sex, money, celebrities, sports, politics, and, of course, religion. Oxy was a purring purebred example of Ocycontin addiction. He licked the older man’s fingers as eagerly as a hungry bear cub would a beekeeper’s gloves.  
“What do you mean, ‘agony  of life’?” the younger man asked.  Fancy phrases made the younger man uncomfortable. A high school dropout, he felt that people who had attended the community college, looked down on him, using terms he  wouldn’t understand. Like his cousin  who was studying computers. His cousin was always in an input-output mode, using acronyms  like HTML and ASCII and words like cookies and Bluetooth that had nothing to do with cookies or teeth. Rarely awake before noon, the younger man  the night before had been up watching the Tonight Show, smoking Camels  and marijuana, coughing frequently. In line, in the cold,   everything seemed a little unreal and slightly sinister to him—the older man, the line of people, the clinic, even the kittens.  
“What do  I mean by agony of existence?” the  older man said. “I’m sixty-one. I had to declare bankruptcy in a recession twenty years ago.  Lost everything.  Felt  like shit until they came up with this stuff.”
“What stuff?” the younger man asked.
“Oxycontin,” the older man said.
 The younger man had been trying to ignore Oxy’s sister, Contin, who had been  rubbing against his ankle for a few minutes, meowing to get picked up. Following the example of the older man, the younger man finally reluctantly  picked Contin up, holding  her in the crook of  his left arm, holding his cigarette between the yellowed thumb and index finger of his right hand. Contin immediately began trying to lick  the fingers of his left hand. He had begun smoking cigarettes at eleven and by eighteen had smoked about sixty thousand of them. He had switched to filter cigarettes since he had developed his cough.
“You’d feel  even shittier if  you were my age,” the younger man said. 
“How old are you?” the older man asked.
“I’m twenty-one,” the younger man lied, struggling with  the squirmy Contin. Finding only  the unpleasant traces of cigarettes and  marijuana on the fingers of the younger man’s  left hand, Contin tried to get at his right  hand,  which held  the cigarette.
“It’s one thing to feel like shit when you’re sixty-one and another to feel that way when you’re twenty-one,” the younger man said, not wanting to admit he was only eighteen.
“Twenty-one, what’s wrong with  twenty-one?” the older man asked. The younger man didn't answer. He was watching  Oxy licking the older man's  fingers.
The younger man put his cigarette  in his mouth, and offered Contin his left hand since that was what she was squirming for.  She licked his fingers and thumb eagerly but because all she tasted were traces of pot and nicotine, she made a face.  She did not want to waste  time on someone  whose breath, hair, clothes and even pores reeked of tobacco and pot but whose hands didn’t have a trace of Oxycontin. She increased her squirming, wanting to be put back down on the sidewalk so she could continue her quest for Oxycontin. After he put her down, the younger man watched her walk  further down the line, wagging her little tail and mewing plaintively, trying to entice someone else to pick her up, like the drug-addicted street-walking pussies did on John Street in the heart of the red light neighborhood, which was close to the Freedom from Pain Clinic. 
Contin reminded the younger man  of   the street-walker he had picked  up on  John Street two years earlier. Driving his older brother's Dodge Dart, he had picked her up on his sixteenth birthday and drove her up and down John Street a couple of times, wondering where he was going to find a place to screw her. With her mascara and lipstick, she looked like an abused, over-the-hill kewpie doll. She had to be a least thirty. At sixteen, he was still a virgin and had no idea how to handle the situation but was trying to pretend he did.
"Whacha doin'?" the girl had asked him after he had driven  up and down the street a couple of times.  There were abandoned, boarded-up houses on John Street, and he was looking for one that they could use.
"I said whacha doin'?" she repeated.
"What do you think I'm doing. I'm looking for a place to screw you," he had said.
"Screw me?" she had asked incredulously. "What do you expect for two bucks?" Two bucks was the price they had agreed on before she got in his car, but what he didn't know was that she had been negotiating about a blow job. He  didn't know that the older guys cruised  John Street to get blown, not laid. He was so flustered and embarrassed that he finally gave her five dollars, which was the only money he had in his jeans.
Snapping out of his John St. reverie, the younger guy  said to the older guy, “If  you’re sixty you’re about to croak anyway, but  if you’re twenty-one  you’ve got to put in another fucking forty years at least, forty years with no job, no hope, no nothing. If  I couldn’t get stoned once in a while, I’d probably turn on the gas.”
“It’s those  foreign monkeys who’re willing to work  for peanuts,” the older man said. “They’re the ones. They’ve  taken our jobs. They’re ruining this country.”
“Yeah,” the younger man agreed, nodding his head. “They’re eating our lunch.”
Oxy began squirming to indicate to the older man that he’d  had enough, that he’d licked the man’s hands clean of all traces of Oxycontin, and that he wanted to be put down. But the  older man was too busy complaining about  the company he’d worked for for twenty years. “They just upped and moved the plant to Timbuktu.” He went on and on about the company, but the younger man, who had never held a job for more than a couple of months, was no longer listening to him.  He was watching Oxy struggling to get out of the older man’s arms, but the older man wouldn’t let go of him. All the kitten wanted was his freedom back, the freedom to pursue the drug he craved. He angrily turned on the older man, scratching the  back of his hand, drawing blood.
 “Hey!”  the older man yelled, dropping Oxy on the sidewalk like a hot potato. “What the hell is it with this kitten?” He stared  in disbelief at the blood trickling  from the scratches.
“You got to be careful,” the younger man warned, “it could be rabies.”
Neither the younger man or the older man understood  that it was not rabies but the Oxycontin that explained the kittens’ peculiar behavior. Only when Oxy was well down the line  did the kitten turn around to make sure  the older  man was not following him. The behavior of humans, especially the ones in pants, baffled him. Besides, he was exhausted from all his licking.  Now cold and tired, he wanted to  cuddle up with  Contin in the sun and take a catnap. He meowed for her and she meowed back, coming over to him, and they rubbed noses, reaffirming their bond each other, cuddling together in the cold, as they took a break from their search for Oxycontin.  


Contin and Oxy cuddling in the cold




.


Sunday, January 16, 2011

"Portsmouth Boy": James R. Saddler, II


Frank Lewis of  the  Portsmouth Daily Times (PDT)  has already written  two fawning stories about James R. “Rich” Saddler, II, the “Portsmouth Boy,” as he has been dubbed since taking the oath of office (shown at left). To me, “Portsmouth Boy” sounds a lot like  “Good ol’ boy.” The biggest stigma anyone can have in Portsmouth, where Southern Hospitality Begins, is not to be a “Good ol’ boy,” born and bred. To be part of the Ol’ Boy network means you have connections you can count on to promote and, when necessary, protect you. In the words of Waylon Jennings’ “Good Ole Boys”:
Just the good ol’ boys,
Never meanin’ no harm.
Beats all you ever saw,
Getting in trouble with the law
                                                    Since the day they was born.         

Though he had previously shown no interest or involvement in city government, not even in attending city council meetings, Saddler was given the Ward Two council seat previously occupied by Rev. David Malone, the serial adulterer, who became mayor of Portsmouth by default, having been previously twice rejected soundly by voters in mayoral primaries. Malone’s are the soulless shoes Saddler will be attempting to fill as Ward Two councilman.  In  Portsmouth politics, if at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again until  you eventually get the office you want without being elected to it. We’ve all seen this movie before: How to Succeed in Portsmouth Politics without Really Running for Office.
 How different Frank Lewis’  fawning treatment of James R. Saddler, the “Portsmouth Boy,” is from his   treatment of Mayor Jane Murray, the “Portsmouth  girl,”  whose recall from office was as much the result of Lewis’  biased and slanted reporting  as anything else. The facts  in this post about Saddler are just the kind that the PDT pays Lewis not to report.  These facts are a matter of public record and Lewis could have easily found them, if he didn’t already know about them. He could have found them on  his computer without leaving his office. But of course if he had done any  investigative reporting on Saddler or any of the other puppets who have been appointed to city council in the past, he would not keep his job at the PDT for  long.  He would have been fired,  just as Jeff Barron and Mike Deaterla, two able and honest reporters, were fired.
One for the Road

What Lewis did not mention in his puff pieces  about Saddler is that from 1992 to 2008, a period of sixteen years,  he  committed  twenty-one traffic violations, most of them involving  speeding and not wearing a seatbelt, and in 2008 he was arrested for drunken driving, had his license suspended, and was put on probation for a year. 
On 1 December 2008, Saddler appeared in Portsmouth’s Municipal Court, where Judge Russell D. Kegley was presiding. Saddler was charged with driving erratically and  under the influence  (Municipal Court Case Number  0808118).  At this court appearance, Saddler’s  lawyer Justin Blume, a former law partner of Steve Mowery, managed to negotiate limited driving privileges for him. Under this tentative agreement, Saddler was permitted to drive back and forth from his job with the Ohio Department of Transportation, in Chillicothe; he was permitted to drive to stores to buy family necessities; he was permitted to drive to the doctor’s office; and he was permitted  to drive to the municipal court for appearances related to his case. Had Saddler attended the twice a month City Council meetings, perhaps his lawyer could have gotten him permission to attend those too. Saddler’s limited driving privileges were to run from 17 December 2008 to 27 November 2009.
However, in  a subsequent court appearance, on 16 February 2009, after pleading no contest,  Saddler  received a 15-day jail sentence and he lost the limited driver privileges that he had been previously granted. His license was suspended for a year, effective from 27 November 2008 to 27 November  2009. In addition, he was  required to complete a driver intervention program by  5 May 2009. On 3 April 2009, a month before that deadline, Saddler completed the driver intervention program. That was apparently an important achievement, because  Judge Kegley vacated the previous serious DUI charge, which was amended to the somewhat  euphemistic “Physical Control,” which is what the Municipal Court  records now state he was guilty of. But “Physical Control” is defined in ORC 4511 as, “Operating [a] vehicle under the influence of alcohol or drugs.”  Judge Kegley suspended  Saddler’s 15-day jail sentence but he did not excuse him from the   $425.00 fine, plus court costs. Saddler was put on probation for one year, which would have ended in April 2010.


Seeing the Light

It is  odd that Saddler, in the sixteen years between 1992 and 2008, when he was living and driving in Portsmouth, had twenty-one traffic  violations but not one of them was from a  Portsmouth police officer.  Every one of the  twenty-one citations was from the Ohio State Police. Was  it only on the highways between Portsmouth and Chillicothe, where he worked for the Ohio Department of Transportation for twenty years, that Saddler imbibed, unbuckled his seatbelt, and put his foot on the gas?  It is at least remotely possible there were no citations from Portsmouth police because Saddler, as a “Portsmouth Boy,”  enjoyed some of the Ol’ Boy privileges that former Police Chief Tom “Hell-on-Wheels” Bihl apparently had. In 1992, Bihl totaled two parked cars on Offnere Street, but  he was not asked to take a breathalyzer test  and only belatedly, after a public outcry, was he cited for “Failure to Control,” that is failure to control his vehicle, which sounds like the understatement of all understatements. It is possible, though very unlikely, that Saddler had no problems in Portsmouth because he was restrained by its many traffic lights, lights that Chief Horner has waged a campaign to reduce in number, even at some of the city’s most dangerous intersections. But Saddler is just the kind of driver who is all the more dangerous the fewer traffic lights there are in the city.


Troubling Question

I conclude with a  troubling question. What will happen when and if Saddler ever gets a traffic citation for driving under the influence in Portsmouth? Will he go to court to appeal it, instead of pleading no contest, now that as a councilman he might have more political influence? And suppose, if he appeals the violation, that Steve Mowery is  the presiding judge at the municipal court. Mowery and Saddler are friends and possibly close friends. Prior to being elected municipal judge, Mowery represented Saddler in his divorce.  Mowery is also one of the “friends” on Saddler’s Facebook site, where there is a photo of him  (shown at left). When Mowery campaigned  for municipal judge he said that the Municipal Building should be torn down and the city government, including the municipal court, should be moved to the Marting building. Mowery’s opponent in the contest for municipal judge correctly pointed out at a campaign debate that whether the Municipal Building should be torn down and whether the city government should move to the Marting building is something the voters, not a municipal judge, should decide. The  proposal to renovate the Marting building and move city offices there has already been defeated twice by the voters of Portsmouth. But the recall of Mayor Murray and the installation of David Malone as her replacement, and the “giving” of the Ward Two council seat to Saddler could be the prelude to the completion of the Marting Scam. David Malone, the Uncle Tom of Portsmouth politics, has already indicated he is in favor of spending millions of dollars that the city doesn’t have to renovate the Marting building, and we know how Albrecht, Haas, and Basham would vote on the question. Saddler boasted to Lewis that he’s going to be his own man and that he’s not going to be dictated to by others. Let’s hope that’s the case and that he has finally seen the light and has the backbone to back up his boast, becoming  one of the best council members ever. But if he turns out to be no  better as a councilman than he’s been as a driver, we’re in for  a hell of a ride. 

* * *

Traffic Violations of James R. Saddler, II

1
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 02/24/1992
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 9201332
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: SEAT BELT-DRIV
Case Type: Traffic

2
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 01/06/1997
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 9700112
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: 64/45 SPEED
Case Type: Traffic
           
3
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 09/19/1997
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 9705887
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: 67/55 SPEED
Case Type: Traffic

4
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 06/15/2000
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0004500
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: 70/55 SPEED
Case Type: Traffic

5
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 06/15/2000
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0004500
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: SEAT BELT-DRIV
Case Type: Traffic

6
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 04/17/2001
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0102442
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: FOLLOW TOO CLOS
Case Type: Traffic

7
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 04/17/2001
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0102442
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: SEAT BELT-DRIV
Case Type: Traffic

8
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 10/12/2001
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0107630
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: 66/55 SPEED
Case Type: Traffic

9
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 10/12/2001
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0107630
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: SEAT BELT-DRIV
Case Type: Traffic

10
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 05/17/2002
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0202903
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: 65/55 SPEED
Case Type: Traffic

11
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 05/17/2002
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0202903
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: SEAT BELT-DRIV
Case Type: Traffic

12
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Case #: 9705887
Docket Entry: Click
Filed: 09/19/1997
Arr. Agency: OSP
Charge: SEAT BELT-DRIV
Case Type: Traffic

13
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 09/19/1997
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 9705900
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: 67/55 SPEED
Case Type: Traffic

14
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 07/09/2002
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0204754
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: 50/40 SPEED
Case Type: Traffic

15
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 07/09/2002
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0204754
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: SEAT BELT-DRIV
Case Type: Traffic

16
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 10/18/2006
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0606781
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: 75/55 SPEED
Case Type: Traffic

17
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 05/08/2007
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0702581
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: 58/35 SPEED
Case Type: Traffic

18
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 05/08/2007
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0702581
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: SEAT BELT-DRIV
Case Type: Traffic

19
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 01/04/2008
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0800067
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: 70/55 SPEED
Case Type: Traffic

20
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 12/01/2008
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0808118
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: PHYSICAL CONTRO
Case Type: Traffic

21
Concerning: Saddler, James R II
D.B.A./A.K.A.:
Filed: 12/01/2008
Arr. Agency: OSP
Case #: 0808118
Docket Entry: Click
Charge: MARKED LANES
Case Type: Traffic









Sunday, January 09, 2011

Victims of Vitriol



Nine-year-old Christina Green, Congresswoman Garbrielle Giffords, and U.S. Judge John Roll

There are unfortunately in almost every community in the United States, and not just in Arizona, paranoid, drug-addicted individuals who are potential killers, capable of gunning down innocent people, such as a Federal judge, a nine-year-old girl, and an Arizona Congresswoman. They gun down the innocent in the name of god, country, family, race, the Constitution—you name it. The easy availability of guns enabled a mentally ill person like Jared Lee Loughner to fatally act out his paranoid delusions of persecution, revenge, and redemption. In a statement likely to be long remembered, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said in Tucson yesterday, “When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous.” Judging by his ramblings on the internet, among the vitriolic items that sent Loughner over the edge was the ignorant rantings of the Republicans about the Constitution. The Republicans have turned the Constitution into a sacred document that infidel Democrats violate at their peril. In America, the line between politics and religion has been virtually erased, as has the Constitutional separation between church and state, and, as Loughner illustrates, between the states of sanity and insanity.
     
In Portsmouth, not too long ago, I had occasion to criticize the local so-called  “Irish Mafia” and a self-proclaimed “underground” Portsmouth website for allowing people to anonymously and electronically intimidate and threaten “concerned citizens” and so-called “C.A.V.E. People” with guns. C.A.V.E. People” is WNXT’s Steve Hayes’ acronym for Citizens Against Virtually Everything. (To read that posting, click here.) Did Portsmouth's Chief of Police Charles Horner express concern about this underground website? No, he expressed concern about "domestic terrorists," i.e., the Concerned Citizens, a group of aging community activists, and expressed concern about Bob and Teresa Mollette's websites, because Horner was one of the public officials whose incompetence and crookedness the Mollette websites documented. 

Portsmouth is  the city, remember, where the pothead mayor James Kalb, smoking whatever he was smoking,  in an official Saturday night special email to me, written at about 2 AM on September 27, 2009, vilified me so vitriolically that in the 48 hours after I posted his email (click here) on my website River Vices I got well over four hundred thousand  hits from incredulous readers both in this country and abroad. Was this the way an American mayor responds to a constituent’s formal request for a public document under Ohio’s open records law?  I was reminded of Kalb’s vitriolic  email just the other day when a woman who has been stalking me for several years drove up near Front Street, where I was walking, rolled down her window, and soon began accusing me of telling stories about her and that I was a worthless scumbag just as Mayor  Kalb had accused me of being.

It occurred to me more than once in the  recent vitriolic campaign to recall Portsmouth’s Mayor Jane Murray that some putatively pious patriot, or some Facebook Appalachian he-man, or some unbalanced biker might shoot her. Instead of take back America, the recall campaign urged voters to take back Portsmouth, take it back from the outsiders, the strangers, the crazy ones, who threaten our values and way of life. Murray was often referred to as “Crazy Jane.” Talk about the kettle calling the pot black! When she was finally recalled, it also occurred to me she was better off out of office and perhaps out of politics altogether. Portsmouth’s Mayor could have ended up as Arizona’s Congresswoman, and not just because Murray, like Giffords, is a female, is intelligent, and is a Democrat. Although she is Appalachian  born and bred, Murray was cast in the recall campaign as an outsider, a bitch, and a witch. She was one of  the C.A.V.E. people WNXT's Steve Hayes targeted. She was vilified as a menacing candidate, one of those "strangers" that the tongue-in-cheek campaign lawn sign (shown above) warned were trying to "screw" us. 

With the complicity of the National Rifle Association, the politically, religiously, ethnically, sexually, and culturally unorthodox are in the crosshairs of both the totally and marginally insane not just in Arizona but everywhere in this country every day of the year, and this Sunday, January 9th provides those of us in Portsmouth, dubbed the Oxycontin Capital  of America, with a tragic reminder of that cruel fact of life. As Sheriff  Dupnik warned, vitriol, in the minds of the mentally disturbed, is potentially lethal.