We have wasted enough time and effort on marijuana.  Making laws against a plant that grows wild is the same as banning the stink in the air when you drive past a cattle ranch.  The lives that have been ruined over these stupid laws is incredible.  We have to pay for judges, clerks, prison space and guards, food for the prisoners and probation officers.  Then there is the unseen damage of families that have the main bread winner jailed and it forces the family into public assistance/food stamps.  Not to mention lawyers on both sides.  Then you go to the enforcement side and the DEA and the drug wars at the border that is being fought with the lives of both drug runners and patrol men.  Then the chain of command that leads all the way up to the ATF/DEA/FBI/INS and local Police.  We must rejoice in a voice of sanity that says enough.  I am so glad to see that most of the GOP does not want to get their dog in this fight.  Thanks Mr. Eric Holder for being included in the voice of  reason.

 When we think about immigration most of us may have in mind a person that is crossing the southern border from Mexico and entering the country without the correct paperwork in an illegal manor.  We have made great strides in the matter of these people that in the past were able to cross unchallenged.  Now the boarders a pretty much closed and the boarder patrol has gotten the southern boarder under control.  Not only that but the stereotype of the Mexican citizen should be changing as they are now putting out a great number of engineers as graduates from their universities.  The uneducated stereotype of the migrant worker is no longer true for the Mexican people.  When stereotypes are firmly set in our minds it makes a form of prejudice that is difficult to overcome.  I try to have an open mind when I meet someone and make my judgment on how they act and speak.  How people speak may also be a deceptive stereotype as well because just as I would sound like I was dumb in Spanish they my not sound educated in English.  So even there we must be careful to our reactions.  We all pretty much are either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants unless we are Native American Indians.  Our history is a violent one that we took this country from a less educated but very spiritual collective of people.  Our technology even in the 1700’s overwhelmed the indigenous people with our guns and cannons.  We should be mindful of the actions our ancestors took to take possession of this country and maybe have a more welcoming heart towards others that only want the American dream for themselves and their children.  There is a part of me that wants to slam the door shut because of population issues that plague other countries and I do not want to see the United States become a third world country.  Then I stop and think who am I to be the one to close the door now.  We need a sensible and doable immigration policy for those that are already here and let them stand in line with the others that want to have entrance to this country.  The day that people start to leave our country and want to go somewhere else is the day we need to worry about more then anything.  When we have allowed things to get so bad that people want to exit and go somewhere else is possible if we allow the rich business to run and make the decisions for us all.  I feel that we need to fight for the greatness of our country every day to make sure that we leave this place with others having the same desire to come here because we are the best in every way to our people.  That is the big draw for our country and I pray that remains the way things are.

Today the Supreme Court handed down a decision about the ownership of human genes.  Their decision that it cannot be owned is a two sided sword.  On the one hand it will open up research on the genes that cause breast cancer to look for a cure.  On the other hand the big businesses that require a whole lot of money to isolate what the gene does my not be willing to do the research needed to isolate a diseased gene.  This leaves the people that are sick stuck in the middle.  When there is a conflict of interest like this then is when we need the government to step in to help fix this by finding maybe some compromise or other solution for this problem.  There are two ways that this could be handled.  The first would be to allow a sort of temporary patient to the ones who isolate the gene and what it does first.  This would make sort of a race happen to find the genes and could be a good solution for all to solve this problem.  The other solution is that the government provides the money for the research and this does not motivate the market to finish the research quickly.  Why find the gene when it will put you out of a job.  Not to mention that the Tea Party will go crazy to be funding something else.  For me I would much rather see my money go this way then to the war machine that looks for new ways to kill people.  We could use both ways to allow for the fastest research and the government would hold the patients on the genes that were discovered by their people.  This of course would force business to hire the best people for the most money in order to get the most isolated genes.  This process could have the best results for the people in the long run due to moving the process along faster.  Basic research that needs to happen for the good of all people is a way that the government can make jobs for those with a high skill level and education.  Perhaps we could drop a note to the leaders of our country and have them start to make a bill to fund this much needed research and create these jobs.

When people that are historically important reach the end of their lives depending on why they grew to become important will matter of course in how we react to this time.  For the man that is known as Nelson Mandela it will be a very sad time for the people of his country and the world.  Mandela joined the African National Congress in1942.  This was the beginnings of the Anti-Apartheid movement.  For 20 years, Mandela directed peaceful, nonviolent acts of defiance against the South African government and its racist policies, including the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He founded the law firm Mandela and Tambo, partnering with Oliver Tambo, a brilliant student he'd met while attending Fort Hare. The law firm provided free and low-cost legal counsel to unrepresented blacks.  Mandela helped to free his people from the oppression of the British/white culture that had held them back for so very long.  With the freedom that we on the most part take for granted in this day and age it is almost hard to relate to what these people suffered through.  Nelson Mandela was put in prison for 20 years. And released in February of 1990 and then elected president of the National African Congress in 1991.  He continued to negotiate with President FW De Klerk and in 1993 they were both awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their parts in dismantling apartheid.     On April 27, 1994 South Africa held its first ever democratic elections.  At the age of 77 Nelson Mandela was elected as the first Black President of his country on May 10, 1994.  It is hard in our country to believe that within our lifetimes that any country would have its first democratic election.  We have seen a lot more do just this now in the Middle East and the people of their countries in somewhat peaceful ways move to democracy and elections that allow the people to have their say about who they want in office and running their countries.  Then we come to Syria.  A war torn country that has the Soviet Union backing them and providing them with the materials of war.  The Soviet Union could make things easier on the world if they were to ask that the leader step down and allow for a peaceful transition to democratic state and allow for the people to elect their leader.  I wish for those people to have the freedom that we are allowed in the United States and the peaceful lives we get to live.  When elections are held in these countries we cannot control what kinds of parties these people represent just as the party that wins is up to the voters here.  We can only hope that if the people do not like whom they elected that there will be a peaceful transition of power to the next choice.  Our lives here have been able to be peaceful for some time and the growth we have had has been good for the most part.  People in other countries that have bombs and wars going on every day would love to come and live in our peaceful nation.   I cannot understand how a people that love peace as very much as we do could enter into war so easily.  It would seem that we think it is ok for it to happen as long as it is somewhere else.  We should not accept this behavior for ourselves or other countries.  Peace should be what we want for the entire world.  Maybe if we could stay out of wars for a while we just might learn how to live without the war machine that costs us so very much in money and human lives.  This world needs more men like Nelson Mandela not less. 

I live my life pretty much without fear of anything happening that is bad because of where I live.  It is a calm peaceful neighborhood that does not have problems with theft or noisy neighbors.  We do watch out for each other so that if one or the other is out of town that we know who should be in our homes or not.  It’s nice and I have made a point of knowing my neighbors because this is how my folks lived and I want that for myself.  I only have three families that are in this “Neighborhood” so with just the three houses it is not too hard to do this.  In this area we also wave at our neighbors when they are out for a walk and if I saw you walking in part of this area I might just stop and see if you need a ride.  It’s different in my home in Colorado and also in Indiana where I was born. These areas have grown to the point that it would be a scary thing to pick up a person walking along the road.   When I was young this was very different.  Both of these places were ideal places for a young family with children to live and not worry about letting the children go outside to play.  Children stay inside now on a regular basis and leaving the house to play outside is rare.  The opposite is true for my childhood pretty much our lips had to be turning blue to get to play inside.  TV was allowed only on the weekends and during the summer on weekdays and only in the evenings except Saturday morning cartoons.  Sunday night at ten o’clock was the cut off time and only on special events did we get to watch on a school night.  We lived to watch the Friday night creature features and get scared by the movies.  Our clock to let us know when it was time to come in the house was the sun and when it was down we were to be in the house.  No exceptions.  I feel sorry in a way for the kids of today because they will never know the freedom of going and playing any where they want to go in either biking or walking distance.  Some days we would bike to some area as far as the road would take us and then hike to where we wanted to go.  I was a sting bean with skinny legs from all the exercise that I had in the time.  This to me is the difference in this generation’s weight problem and mine now too.  They are stuck on either a TV or a computer playing a game or watching a video and the parents are scared to let them go outside on their own.  The parents also have issues with both parents working causing them to have to work at home to do the things that used to be done by a “housewife” like laundry, cleaning the house and fixing the daily meals.  Soda was a treat and my mother only gave us one bottle for the three of us to share together.  One of us would split the soda and the other two got to pick first so trust me there is no better way to get the split even.    With these duties being left for after work it is hard for the average parent to spend the time until dark outside watching the kids and I understand just how hard it would be to make this time happen.  I am going to put out an idea that maybe might solve a couple of problems.  Have a sort of play gang for a few hours after school that involved the scheduling of the neighbors time with yours.  We played the games in season and with minimal equipment.   The basketball hoop and ball were the most expensive ones.  We played kick the can a lot and tag or even with a box and sometimes played with toys like trucks and horses.  They may even have a favorite from school that they want to play.  It will require you getting to know your neighbors and organizing the times that each parent would watch the kids so their play would be safe but the health of our children would improve so very much and you might also find that once they had played outside that they could concentrate on their studies better.  The release of pent up energy these kids have could also change behavior problems too.  There are organized leagues for play right now but to me it is just not the same as choosing what you want to do each day.  We lose that creative thought process when we do not have to imagine what we want to do.  I know times have changed and what I am asking would require some teamwork on the parts of the parents but the health and social skills kids learn from cooperative play is a valuable tool that they can take the rest of their lives. 

The way we have to deal with dealers when we go to buy a car is about the same now as buying a house.  There is so very much paperwork that to me is a whole lot of redundant information worded in just a little different way.  How did something so simple in theory become so difficult?  Sure you need the price of the car and how much you are going to pay for it.  They need a copy of the insurance to make sure it is covered and your driver’s license to know that you’re legal to drive it.  They may need your credit report to make sure you will pay for it but after that the rest of the paperwork is all about what some other paper pusher decided that they needed to make sure that you could not sue them.  We have become a litigious country and most would say it is about lawyers and the generation of business they do for themselves.  I want to tell you about a lawyer that helped to save my life and never charged me 10 cents.  I was sick with cancer and I needed a bone marrow transplant to stay alive.  My insurance did not want to pay and neither did the company I worked for but this is about Mark.  Mark Macy was the name that was on the bottom of a list of lawyers that the hospital where I was trying to get the transplant at that might be able to help me fight the huge company I worked for and also had insurance with.  I had called the lawyers above him and they all wanted money just to talk to them.  Big money that I did not have.  The top end guy wanted $1,200.00 and the bottom buy wanted $400.00.  Both were out of my price range as I was sick and not working.  Then I made the call to Mark.  He had told the hospital that if someone needed help to get the treatment that they needed then they should call him because they had also saved the life of his wife and he was in their debt morally he felt.  I called him as the last hope and he was so very nice to me.  I explained my situation to him and he said that I should come in to his office to talk.  I was worried that I would be wasting my time as well as his and I said I did not have any money to give him for my service.  He said not to worry about that just get over to see him.  I went and was taken into this very nice office.  Then I got to meet Mark.  If someone were to play his part in the movie of my life I would pick a young Robert Redford look alike to play him because that is just what he was blonde hair with blue eyes.  Any way we sat down to talk and he asked about me and how I had gotten to this point in my life to come to see him.  I am sure that he was concerned at the size of the companies that we were up against but he had assured me that we would do our best to get it done.  The company I worked for was the local phone company and at the time was a huge corporation.  The same for the insurance that they carried with another big company.  The company I worked for had assembled eight New York lawyers to fight me in court and I am not so sure of the number of men that the insurance had as well but needless we were outnumbered.   I left his office and felt better because I was assured we would get this done.   After my union meeting Mark was the one that had called me to let me know that I was going to get the treatment that I needed and he had stayed up late to make sure that I knew what was happening because my Union had threatened to go on strike.  I was never so happy to hear someone’s voice to say those words because now I could just concentrate on getting well and trust me it was not fun working that treatment.  I thought that one day I would get a bill in the mail for the payment of the lawyer fees but it never came.  Mark Macy never charged me a thing and just helped me because it was the right thing to do.  I can never have a harsh word for lawyers or make jokes at their expense because of all this.  If our world was filled with more people like him then we might just have a little better place to live in. 

Being around a strong believer in the GOP for the last few days with someone that should have a pretty good vocabulary and skill set to express what they think about the Democrats I have come to realize that there is something that is weird going on to me.  Their complete argument with me is that the President is liar.  I never got them to tell me on thing that the President has lied about he just is a liar.  I was also not allowed to finish anything I would start to say.  Just interrupted with stories about how he was sleeping while Benghazi was going on and how they were going to move out of this country because the people that want something for nothing voted for the President.  When asked rather then how horrible that the President is what the GOP has done to make their party more attractive to the voters there was no response.  This to me is part of why the GOP is not going to change their thinking.  The people that make up the GOP think that they are right and nothing we have done to make changes in our government has made any difference.  When asked why the economy is getting better the response is nothing that the President has done is responsible for that.  I am sure that if a Republican were in charge then that recovery would be all owned by what the Republicans have done.  He wanted to see the government deregulate everything for business and get out of the way.  I can only respond by saying that the lack of regulation is what caused the economy to crash in the first place.  The out of control bankers that were allowed to give out loans to people that can not afford the home that they were buying because they did not do a good enough search on their income is because they were not  given any limits by the  government.  They in fact had been almost invited by the lack of regulation to do the opposite.  My feeling on all of this is that when people cannot make a real and backed up with facts argument they resort to name calling and generalizations that any one could make about a one.  I have a feeling that they have been listening to Rush because of the rhetoric they were using.  Hate filled I am leaving the country because I cannot get my way sort of behavior with complete disrespect and contempt for the President.  I also saw a side of the prejudice that is given in the GOP a black eye by the voters.  They said that Treyvon Martin was a hood and that the man that killed him had every right to follow and kill him in self defense.  In other words Treyvon was guilty of being black.  They were saying that what they were supposed to do wait for Treyvon to rape someone.  This young black man was walking home from the local quick stop store with candy and a drink.  If that man would have never left his truck and followed the directions of the 911 operator this young man that did not have a weapon would be alive today.  Claiming that Treyvon had jumped him.  Where is Treyvon’s right to stand his ground?  Protect himself?  When does it become a violation of his rights to protect himself?  The person that is dead may not have been a perfect angel as most of us were not perfect at that age.  What had he done to warrant the behavior of the man that killed him?  Walking down the street (no matter what the time of day) is not a crime.  This man did not know if Treyvon was the class fool or valedictorian.  So what is left is that he was walking around being black and that is now being put to the level of a crime.  I thought that those kinds of days may have gone but seem to be alive and well in Florida.  I feel that I have no way of trying to convince them that a lot of what they are thinking is wrong and it makes me sad to think that people cannot be given the respect that any human life should have.  It also makes me sad that base arguments with no factual back up for them have no content that I could respect.   

When I think about what happened to Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona the day that when she went out doing her job as a political figure by trying to reach out to the people that both voted for her and those that did not vote for her it makes my blood boil.  She was born 43 years ago today and to me is still a young woman that had great potential taken away from her.  When that gunman came to that meet and greets and opened fire on her and the other people that were killed and injured by the bullets in his gun it was far beyond a criminal act.  Loughner was very much a disturbed man to me that was egged on by the ranting of Sarah Palin.  Palin put cross hairs on an electoral map and marked her for killing by the disturbed man.  When speaking to a national audience the use of this kind of ideas in association with a public figure as a target to me rises to the level of being a criminal act.  If you stand in a crowded room and shout fire when there is no fire and in the panic of people trying to escape the non existent fire are injured or even killed to me the speaker with the frightening untrue words is a murderer.  We have had a discussion nationally about this and there are those that say that this disturbed man hated all politicians not just Democrats.  To this I say fine but when you speak to an audience you must take into consideration the possible condition of the mental state of the people that you’re talking to.  Let’s just say that maybe Sarah Palin just planted the thought that Gabby Giffords needed to be a target.  We all know what a cross hair is from childhood cartoons that used them to point ant their cartoon foes.  To me a cross hair is only used as a gun shooting device to make sure that what you’re trying to hit is going to have the bullet reach its mark.  Once this foul disturbed man had done the deed of shooting all those people and we knew the results of the target shooting that Sarah Palin wanted to see her people complete we saw a whole lot of back peddling on the part of Sarah Palin.  Claiming that she never intended for Gabby to be shot at all.  Problem is when you do not think about consequences of your actions until it is too late to change things it’s just too late to make it good.  I think that even a child would tell you that if you put a symbol of a target on something it means that you want that animal or thing or person to be shot at.  If I would have been one of her advisors I would have been able to see the potential for this problem to occur but I was not asked to advise her.  Politicians in general surround themselves with yes people and only tell them just exactly what they want to hear.  Similar to what happened in the last election when Mitt Romney was stunned by the huge loss he took.  Fox news was in a way being his yes man by telling people the lies that the poles were wrong and that Mitt was ahead.  The half hearted apology that Sarah Palin gave to the victims of the shootings was not heart felt in my opinion and there was to me this underlying feeling that she was glad that this had happened and did not regret it at all.  When we resort to the use of guns to resolve our political differences you have to know that we are in very big trouble in our country.  We have herd from the far right that they want a war to resolve our conflict with each other.  They have no idea of the terror of war and the reality of fighting one on our own land.  If this were to happen today with the weapons that we have available to us now verses what we had in the civil war we would make the civil war look like a picnic.  People that speak in public to me need to be held accountable for what they say and what happens after they say it.  To me freedom of your speech ends where my rights start.  It is a line that may be hard to determine at times but I feel that Sarah Palin more then crossed over that line when she put a target on Gabby Giffords.

Some days in your life are what I call red letter days.  This day for me is one of them.  I know where I was when JFK died.  I was in school.  I know where I was when I found out that John Lennon had died.  I was at home in front of the TV.  I know where I was when Bobby Kennedy died.  At my best friend’s house.  I know where I was when MLK died once again at home in front of the TV.  I know where I was when man landed on the moon for the first time.  Same thing at home.  I know where I was when the Challenger blew up.  Ditto at home. I know where I was when Denny proposed to me. I know where I was when I found out my Brother had died.  At work in Denver.  I know where I was when I found out my best girlfriend died.  In my apt. in Colorado.  I know where I was when the first plane crashed into the world trade center.  At work in Bentonville.  I know where I was when OJ was found not guilty.  Home in Ft. Collins.   I know where I was when I found out Michael Jackson died.  Home in Arkansas.  Funny how most of these are negative things that have stuck in my memory it’s too bad.  Today is a red letter day that is positive and I want this one to stick out among all of these because when we look back we need to try and make the positive stand out.  I am going to go and get a new car and it has been almost 20 years since this has happened.  I want to say a fond farewell to my Ford Ranger.  If they still made them I would get another.  I am not going to say what the new one is to be because I am going shopping with my brother from Orlando and I am still not sure exactly what I am getting.  It is so good to have his advice on this and the help with the purchase because I think that they take advantage of women.  I am making notes on how this goes down so that I can learn from his car sales experience.  Wish me luck and I will update the site with photos.