The times after 9/11 were ones that left our country in a brand new world.  While Pearl Harbor was the wake up call for our country in World War II we as Americans had never experienced an actual attack on the main land.  I can remember feeling that day when the different sites were being attacked a sense of what is next my town?  We did not know what the extent of the attacks would be that day.  I was at work that day and our boss was going over what needed to be done that day when his beeper went off and he looked at it and he said to us “A plane has just crashed into the world trade center.”  What came to my mind at that point was well someone had had a heart attack and a small single engine airplane had hit the building by accident.  I never thought that someone would deliberately fly a plane into a large building like that.  I was working a help desk for the ISD department of Wal-Mart that rolled out all new items to the stores.  I was on the phone a lot and while I was on hold to someone I had called at a store I would listen to Wal Mart radio and they had basically turned on the news feed about what was happening.  There were times I was interrupted from listening to this by my work and the person I needed to talk to would answer the phone.  This is one thing I will say about Wal Mart in times of disaster this company reacts in a positive manor to help the community that is affected.  Things like this also cause a rush on the stores by frightened people that are unsure of how this will effect them buying supplies for their homes.  While there are a lot of things that I do not like about Wal Mart the way that they handle these things is commendable.  They do not ever allow for gouging of customers by jacking prices in these times.  I went to my first break of the day down to the break room that had a TV in it.  Others on break were gathered there and we watched the news and as I was standing there the reporter on the station we were watching said “Oh my God there is another plane headed to the towers.”  Then we watched as the second plane hit the second tower.  Then it became clear that this was not an accident it was an attack.  Never in my mind would I feel safe on a plane.  After the work day was over I had planed in the morning to go buy gas for my truck as it was on empty.  Now everyone had gone crazy gassing their cars up even when they only need a gallon or two.  There was a police man that was on the site of the station directing people to the line and keeping order and I pulled up to him and said if I do not get gas soon I will run out.  I am sure he had a lot of people tell him this and he looked at my fuel level in the truck.  He sort of got mad at me and said that I should not have let it get that low but who could have ever thought we were going to be attacked that day.  He let me pass up the line with a warning to not do that again.  They had jacked the price of gas at the station to profit from the run.  Little did we know that this was going to be close to the prices we pay now.  Then after 9-11 the government passed The Patriot Act.  I found this government page that summarizes it. 

https://www.justice.gov/archive/ll/highlights.htm

I knew we were in for some trouble when they gave away our rights.  When things are left to be interpreted by people in the government it can be taken to an extreme that was never though to happen by those that wrote it.  Just like the bill that allowed tax exemptions for charitable groups had become abused by people.  Today is the day we are now learning that the government has taken The Patriot Act to an extreme we could not imagine.  They have given an order fro a Judge in Florida that is well know for his tough punishments and was appointed by Ronald Regan.  They went to this judge for the order because they knew he would sign it.  The order required Verizon to turn over the records of all cell phone users and their call data.  We have not yet uncovered it but I am sure that the other phone companies have been given a similar order.  This is a blanket being tossed over everyone saying we all are guilty of being involved in terrorism.  Why wouldn’t Verizon refuse and shout to the world that they were being invaded by the government?  Follow the money.  What company wants to upset their customers with this sort of information?  Both parties are responsible for The Patriot Act they both voted it in and they both voted to continue it.  While our rights slipped away.  I as an American want to have the government protect us from acts of terrorism but to me the terrorists win when they take our freedom away.

I have been watching the IRS hearings on CSPAN and if you have never been to this channel it is a direct video of what is going on in the Senate or House.  They have no filter of the news to blur what is going on so you may pretty much make up your own mind on what you think of what is going on.  This is perfect for me because I like to be able to go on my own gut what to think rather then taking sides.  The witnesses that they have assembled are all from groups that were delayed or not yet approved for the tax exemption status.  To me there is no doubt about the political leanings of these groups.  One is about stopping gay people from getting married and they claim to be in the business of educating people about how wrong it is to have gay people get married.  I find this group to be a very offensive and political group that is not working as a charity at all and does not deserve to be given a tax exempt status but they got it any way it was just slow in coming.  There are two others that have Tea Party in their names and we know that they are a political group and that they are not serving as a charity serving tea to the poor.  There is another group that had Liberty in their name and they were claiming to be “educating” people about the constitution.  For me if this is your goal your best bet would be to ask to speak at the schools and “educate” the children there about your truth on the constitution.  The woman that was representing this group was more then happy to respond to questions from the members of the GOP but did not want to be as forth coming with her answers when questioned by a Democrat.  The specific question that was asked her that she completely avoided answering was “Tell me what you think is a political group and what is a charity group. “  She started fumbling and said we are in the business of educating people on the constitution and when asked to answer the question for a second time she could not answer and then the GOP chair cut him off in questioning her saying his time was up something I did not ever see when there was someone from the GOP asking the questions.  I was outraged so very much by the fact that these groups were allowed to not have to pay taxes.  They are in the political game and nothing they are doing to me could be considered charitable.  There was one senator there that said that this hearing was only pointing out the fact that there is a much needed change in the tax code that to me should be wiped completely and they need to start over.  Making all the forms very simple and ones that a third grader could fill out.  These representative groups that were involved in this “scandal” none out of the 6 that were there deserved to be exempt from taxes and only two were still pending.  There political agenda oozed out of them like a thick syrup.  The original intention of the law was that there not to be a political agenda.   This intention has been twisted to allow anyone no matter how political they are to get this exempt status.  The law was made back in the 1950’s and I am sure that the makers of the bill could never foresee that people would try to turn there law into something else completely.  I guess that if this is not going to change then the office that has been swamped with requests for exemption status can only expect even more of these groups from asking to have this status.  I could see individuals forming a group and donating all their money they earn to their own group and avoiding taxes on everything.  One of the representatives at the hearing said that much of the money that the group he represented was his own money so it must be starting already.  This he claimed in the open hearing.  Our tax code is so messed up and unfair to those that do not know how to or have the funds to work it, is almost unbelievable to me.  For those that pay taxes this process is completely offensive and disgusting.  Our law makers have failed us in so many ways but this to me is really the government at its worst.

The problems of the world are many and what is going on in the Middle East is both scary and exciting at the same time.  Scary because we do not know what is going to happen as a result of the revolutions going on all over and exciting that it may turn out for the good of these people that they become a democracy that elects the people in charge and can control their countries as partners not slaves.  We take for granted out freedom we have every day.  You only need to step outside this country to visit others to see how good we have things here.  We may have slipped in education and math and science in the standings of the world but we can get this back because as Americans we can find a way to succeed.  In our country we have the most creative people in the world that are able to make things happen that once seemed impossible.  I am thinking of all this because it was about this time of year when I was asked while going to Colorado State University to help to show a group of Russian Gymnasts around our town.  They had come to our school to put on a display of their skills and you must know that they were some amazing people and highly skilled athletes.  We took them in a car around town and they were escorted by what I am sure was KGB.  Those men did not speak to us ever.  We talked to them about the sights we were seeing in our town and they spoke broken English but of course it was way better then I could speak Russian.  We showed them the nearby lake and other things around and we stopped at the King Soopers the local grocery store.  We did not think much of it I think we were stopping to get something to cook for dinner.  King Soopers is a very nice chain in Colorado and my favorite to go to when shopping.   While we were in the store two of the girls asked us if we had set this up just for them to see.  I was confused as to why they would ask us this never having to ever struggle to get food.  They said this was a whole lot of food and that they really did not believe us when we said this was not a set up.  So we proceeded to take them to other grocery stores from other chains in the area in a way proving that this was normal.  There eyes said it all because they were in awe of a grocery store.  They said in there country they had to stand in line for food and there were little or no choices to make.  They said if they just had one store like that in there country it would be swamped with people wanting to shop.  This interaction with these gymnasts made me realize how lucky I was to have been born in the USA.  We live in a land where for now it is pretty good.  We of course can always strive to make things better.  While we are doing this let’s always remember how good things are now and that other countries would love to have it as good as we do.

Denial of the fact that we are experiencing climate change in our country is unthinkable.  We have had the most severe storms coming through since Katrina hit the gulf.  A tornado becomes a hurricane when it is over water.  A tornado is caused by the mixing of cool air and warm air.  We have seen the devastation left and the lives lost from the results of these torrid winds.  No one can say for absolute certainty what the exact cause is but global warming does look like a very strong possibility.  The reason for global warming in my opinion would be given to the use of fossil fuel.  There may be also some evidence that this may be a cycle that the earth just goes through but to me we have added to the issue with the use of fossil fuels.  When I was a kid we felt that we would be using flying cars by now by watching the cartoon The Jetsons or at least the space age looking cars of the future we saw at auto shows.  When I was in school in the early 70’s my geology teacher made us aware of the fact that  oil was a product that was limited in nature and that we would need to be moving away from it’s use in order to maintain the energy production of our country.  He also talked about New Orleans and told us about how it was a basin next to the ocean that was being eroded and that it was going to take some heroic work to hold the ocean back from that city.  He felt that they needed to move the people of New Orleans out and start them a new city in another location.  We have seemed to be able to ignore what science is telling us as a fact that cannot be denied by any one lets forget about how the exhaust that comes from our cars is causing global warming the fact that there is only so much oil in the world is a fact we are not making more oil any time soon.  We have had the knowledge for years to better the mileage that cars get from gas and to me unless government demands better from car makers we will continue to see what I consider a conspiracy of the oil companies and car makers to keep oil in place as the fuel for our cars.  There has been over the years people that have developed better engines that use much less oil or no oil at all and some how the people that have made them have been paid off to keep them out of use.  I believe we should be driving cars that get a hundred or more miles per gallon in fuel efficiency by now but it is not happening.  The government plays its part in this in a much bigger way then any of us realize.  Our congress is in the pockets of big oil and the auto manufacturers.  We give money to oil companies when they are making record profits.  We require nothing but what Detroit wants to give us in the form of better gas mileage.  This is where our government has failed us.  We should be the leaders of the world in this matter instead of following what these companies want to give us.  Must we completely run out of oil before we wake up and demand better?  Once again as I see things the lobby system in DC is making things bad for us while the pockets of our congress is being lined with the oil and auto money.  This process needs to end so that our government is responsive to the needs of the one and only world that we all live in.  China cannot continue on its course of ignoring the environment either.  The pollution of the ground and air over there is the same air that we all breathe and a part of our world.  The issue of global warming is not just on us it is what it says global.    We can look at what happened to the people of Easter Island as a model for the over use of our world.  These people being ignorant of ecology stripped their island of trees until there were none to make boats to travel elsewhere or out to fish.  This caused the people of the island to not have any food and they in the end days turned to eating each other.  Are we going to with open eyes drive off this cliff?  The earth is a unique planet that is in what is called the range from the sun that is just right not too hot not too cold.  We do not have the technology to even take let’s say ten people to Mars let alone everyone to a planet that is in another planetary system that has all the features of earth.  So we must take great care with how we treat the earth.  The American Indians had it right in this regard and they used resources very carefully.  When they killed an animal they used every part of it and thanked their God that it was provided for their use.  We must adopt this attitude of respect for the earth and not treat the earth as our trash dump. 

There is not a more helpless feeling then when a loved one is in pain and there is nothing you can do about it.  You can try to comfort them but that does not ease the pain that they suffer from.  With all the advances in medicine that have been made still the best they can do is give you an addictive drug that only blocks the pain for a while.  Nerve damage has got to be the worst of it all.  There is no open wound to heal and yet the pain signals continue to be sent.  When this kind of wound exists it is hard for people to understand what is going on sometimes unless they have had the experience themselves.  Now with the issues of people stealing drugs from someone that has been prescribed these powerful drugs the medical community has had to fight back by withholding giving more drugs to the person who has had them stolen from them.  This is to prevent someone that has another reason like selling these powerful drugs from having an endless supply to sell.  Then there is the third choice of the person that is prescribed is taking too much medicine.  This makes for the multi sided problem of what to prescribe to someone in pain.  The drug companies have little or no incentive to see an end to pain because then their billion dollar business would fail.  Who is going to pay for research to end pain when the major players do not want to change the status quo? This leaves us with the only choice is for our collective need to be filled by the government.  The problem with that is the lobbyists for the drug companies will fund big dollars to keep things the way they are.  The party that to me seems to be the ones that are taking this kind of big money is the GOP but trust me I feel that the Democrats are taking it too.  What chance does much needed research stand if there is so much big money against it.  We need to get rid of the system that allows for lobbyists to control the government.  I say throw the whole bunch out of Washington.  There is another seedy side of the lobby that maybe others do not see but a lot of times people will get elected to congress and then after their term is up they either quit or are not elected again and then they go to work as a lobbyists.  I do not want to deny these people a job after they have served in the government but it just feels slimy for them to turn around and get paid big bucks to work in the favor of one company.  It’s almost like they are using their position in the government to learn the ins and outs of it and then turn to the dark side and use this information against us.  I feel this also about stocks and congress being able to profit from knowing things that the average person does not know and making a huge profit from it.  It is another issue that feels slimy.  I want to see the people take back the government out of the hands of those that just want to profit from us.   Medical research is one area that is easy enough to cut out of the budget because it is not going to directly kill someone.  The reverse is true lives may be saved by research.  Are we going to be a country that uses greed to drive anything that gets done or are we going to see a greater good in doing things that in the long run could benefit many?

Sportsmanship is a value learned by playing sports in a fair way with out being boastful at a win or getting mad at a loss. It is a concept that would seem to be somewhat lost at times to days gone by.  While I enjoy a great win by my football team there is the flip side to that win in that there are losers.   They cannot enjoy your win at their expense.  In the non sporting world the same concept can be extended to other things that people do either in their work, social settings and politics.  There is a certain honor in being a good sport and the flipside is true of dishonor to the poor sport.  We were taught that to celebrate with your team after a win was ok but there is a line that is hard to describe to anyone when that celebration becomes poor sportsmanship.  We have all seen it in sporting events but it may be a little harder to discern in other areas.  My feelings right now about the political realm are that we have some very poor sportsmanship going on and it to me is pretty easy to see.  I feel that the GOP is acting as a child throwing a fit after losing a little league game and it is not pretty.  When President Obama first took office we had the people that were trying to claim he was not an American citizen and they still do even after the President produced a full birth certificate.  It is pure nonsense.  They also try to put him in the box as a socialist.  Like it is a dirty word.  When it is ok for the GOP to take money from the people for things that they see as being ok.  Like it is ok to take money from us to give to oil companies.  It is ok to let corporations not pay any taxes through endless deductions that the regular person does not know about or have the money to pay a high dollar accountant to find.  These things are just fine but don’t give food to the poor or healthcare.  No No No.  Why do these beggars feel that they should get something for nothing?  To me it is just a matter of do you care about people or corporations.  We also have the endless blaming of the president for every wrong in the world.  Trying to make him out as a bad person.  While I did not like President Bush and his policies I think in his own way he thought that he was doing the right thing and still deludes himself that he was doing the right thing but he was way off course but I still would show him the respect that the President should have.  Of either party.  I never saw the Democrats behaving like this and saying that they would not do anything but try to block whatever the President wants to do.  If that is where we have gotten in the political world then our country is in for a lot of trouble unless we can get just one party in charge at a time.  Cheating is not being a good sport and I feel that the GOP has tried to do just that with rigging voting and making it harder for minorities to vote.  I also feel that they have gerrymandered the district lines to make it very difficult for the Democrats to win in many cases.  That is to me another form of cheating.  They should work on making people want to see things would be better if we did things their way.  They have in my opinion a long way to go with that cause.  Bob Dole said it perfectly that they need to be “Closed for Renovations”.  With the hatred they spew towards Gay people and the way they want to force women to make health decisions that should be private matters between the Dr. and the woman they will never get my vote as long as that is what they want to do.  I wish that the GOP would be better losers and be good sports and help our country to improve.

I have a bit to say today about the insurance industry.  Some forms of insurance are fine for what they do but health insurance is not working for our country.  If it were what it originally intended that they make a living from selling you this insurance and taking the risk that you are going to be sick and they will have to pay.  It has now become a cash cow that is taking in 400% in profit while people go broke and lose their homes all while on insurance.  The original intention of insurance was to prevent this from happening.  Something is dreadfully wrong with this system when it works the way it is working now.  We need a change.  Everyone is complaining about “Obama” care.  They have been given a lot of what I call lobbyist talk from the insurance industry that is wanting to maintain their profits no matter what it costs real people in their health.  I may not have the answer completely worked out but it’s an idea.  I say we put an end to the health insurance industry.  A lot of people that work in this industry are not going to like these changes so I would expect a whole lot of push back and cries of you will never see a Dr. or people will die.  People are dying right now and people will always die it’s just a matter of what level of care we want to give them to keep them alive.  To replace the cash cow of the insurance industry I say that we take the level of money that is being spent today for insurance and put that money into a pool.  Now knowing that there are some people that will want to over use the doctor because of hypochondria I would be just fine with everyone paying a ten dollar co pay to see the doctor.  Not only that a doctor that saw some patient with hypochondria could refer them to see a psychiatrist for that issue.  The money in the pool could not be used for anything but health care as just like social security the congress has found ways to take money from that fund for other foolish things.  No one seems to understand that social security would be just fine if they had not taken our money saved for other things.  We would need an airtight law that congress could not touch this money.  There would be money for research and for long term care when needed and we could also look at other methods of caring for older people that would keep them from nursing care until there was no other way.  Why a few people should be allowed to profit from our need for healthcare and then when we need it the most be able to walk away from us.  It makes no sense.  The people that would lose their jobs that helped to run the insurance machine could be used to be in jobs in the health industry and a small number that would be needed to run the payments for Dr.’s and nurses.  We could cut the middle man out and take the huge profits to get our health care up to the highest standard.  No one should live in fear of getting sick. 

The telling of a lie causes damage.  This damage may not be noticed right away and may not be understood as coming from the lies.  This to me is true in our lives as well as in the public realm.  In our lives when a lie is told it can be noticed in the loss of a family life and a home.  Lies can range from the white lie that is about how a pair of pants makes you look to the major lie of I am pay the bills in our personal life.  In a public life the lies can range from saying that baby is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen to saying this country has weapons of mass destruction.  The former causes no harm the latter great harm.  When people on a public platform speak they need to be aware of the fact that making a statement may cause great harm.  Standing and telling people to take arms to fight for what they think is right can cause people to die.  When you speak in a public forum you really have no clue of the state of mind of the people you are speaking to and what you say to someone may be the last straw that they needed to push them off the cliff.  Our country prides itself in the freedom of speech.  This is why I am able to write these words today without fear of repression.   What we forget is my freedom stops where your freedom starts sort of like little bubbles that should not be popped.  We saw this the other day when the President was speaking about the drones and a woman saw fit to interrupt him.  His freedom of speech was being stomped on by this woman and the President had to point this out to her.  She could be free to get a soap box and go speak in a public square to any who wanted to listen but the President had arranged to speak in this place to the people that wanted to listen to him.  We have been able to see how inflaming people to take action with guns by shooting the people they disagree with.  This happened to Gabby Gifford when she was out to speak to the people of her district.  The young man that shot her was mentally disturbed and the words of Sarah Palin to take aim at the people that do no believe her way may have been just enough to put someone in this mental state over the edge.  The edge he was driven off left several dead and many injured.  This was something that Sarah Palin felt was maybe a funny way to make her point but the consequence of her words were deadly.  Take this up a notch.  When President Bush lied to us about the weapons of mass destruction and used this to take us to war there have been thousands of lives lost.  Families that will never see loved ones again.  I am not so sure of the motive of this lie.  It may have been because President Bush wanted to take revenge for a war that his father did not finish or it may be even more sinister then that.  I am going to at this point make my own assumption that may have merit or not.  Dick Cheney just happened to own a lot of stock in a company called Halliburton and they provide weapons to the army.  Dick Cheney was a key figure in the telling of the lie about weapons of mass destruction and when asked even now he says he would still recommend that we go to war.  To me a profound statement that he shows a lack of the ability to realize that his actions were wrong.  What if this war was made just to increase the amount of weapons that Halliburton sold to our country and therefore make their stocks rise causing profit for their stockholders?  The thought makes me sick.   We need such sweeping change in how our political system works.  With this thought in mind I would like to see a law that says that all politicians cannot hold any stocks.  This would prevent actions from being made for their own personal profit.  The lies that are told in a political venue should have a punishment class all their own.  This would limit what both sides say about the other and end a whole lot of rhetoric coming from both sides.  Perhaps if a politician were to be faced with fines and or jail depending on the level of the lie they might think twice about what they say and do.  I am personally sick of the lies we are told and find a person like Governor Christy very refreshing.  While I do not like his political views when he speaks it is from a point of the truth comes out of his mouth like when he was confronted about where his kids went to school.  I also feel that Joe Biden also holds this ability to speak his mind and it sometimes gets him into trouble but it is refreshing.  I wish to see more of the truth being spoken to the public and a whole lot less of the lies that we are fed.

In your life you can remember where you were at certain times in it that had great meaning.  The day that JFK was shot and killed I was in school at Walt Whitman Elementary and the Principal came over the loud speaker and told us that he had died.  His life had been cut short by a man who had decided that he was going to make his point with a bullet not words.  We lost a great man that day that had a great vision for our country and he would have gone on to do many great things had he been allowed to live.  I do not want to dive into the conspiracy of the whole thing but I have my feelings on it and that is just what they are unproven feelings.  I feel that Lyndon Johnson may have been responsible for what happened in Dallas that day.  I think this because I feel that he would have never been voted to the office of the President on his own and was worried that after John had his way then Bobby (Who Johnson hated) would be elected as president.  This is beside the point.  The vision for our country to put a man on the moon was in my eyes the greatest triumph of our country.  We used our brains and science to make it happen.  It created an industry that was not war related and put lots of people to work.  He also had the President’s council on Physical Fitness and he had a vision of how important fitness would be to our country.  It really is a security issue that we all are fit because if your fat and out of shape you cannot pass the physical necessary to enter the military.  I fear for our future in this matter because when I was a child I was the picture of fitness.  There was maybe one child that was a little chubby in our school but most all of us were fit and slim.  Now the children in school are out of shape and PE is only 30 minutes three times a week if the program exists at all.  They have children that are in such poor shape that social services feels they have to step in and remove them from these parents who are allowing them to overeat and never exercise.  I also blame part of this on the fact that parents are scared to let their children play outside and set them in front of a TV with video games.   We used to go outside to play war and march around and roll on the ground and imagine we were shot and fall on the ground.  This fear is fueled by the scary person that takes children and the parents do not make the time to go out and watch them play.  Single moms are busy making dinner and doing laundry and dishes and housework after a busy day at work and by the time they are ready to sit down it is either too late for the kids to be outside or the Mom is too tired to do anything but flop on the couch next to them for a few minutes and then send them to bed for another day.  We do not know our neighbors well enough to make watch/play groups and that is a shame.  I wish for these kids that we could return to simpler times. 

I am rightfully concerned about our future in our country due to a lack of competition.  We allow for competition in sports and have rules that need to be followed to make things fair to everyone.  There are ref’s that oversee things to be the on field judges of the rules that everyone has agreed to.  Everyone agrees at least to some extent that competition with rules makes for ever stronger athletes that have to strive to break records and win.  I have seen in my lifetime a watering down of what it means to compete.  In sports there is an ultimate winner and with that comes a loser.  I know that it stinks to be the loser but it also instills in the loser a drive that makes them want to do better.  To get the chance to be the winner.  You see this natural drive in children of all mental capabilities.  If you have never watched the Special Olympics then you should some time because they come to the field with a sheer joy in the hope of being the winner.  We now seem to have a need to make sure that we reward all children that just show up for competition.  All getting a ribbon or trophy.  There is a soft part of me that say well ok give them that ribbon or trophy but it really has no meaning.  This lack of competition is making our children weak in many more ways then we realize.  The meaning comes with the winning.  When you remove the winning from sports there really is no reason to compete.  Even if the win is just with yourself.   To do that one more sit up or one more minute on the treadmill. If I am competing with myself it is to get a better time or make one more shot or to do something above what is the every day.  What reason can there be for me to work out if there is no reward? I also feel that the pass/fail method of giving grades is also another way we are removing competition from our children’s lives.  Why worry about getting an A when all you need to do is D level work to pass. Take this to the business world.  We now have companies that profit just for showing up because they are so big that no other company can compete with them.  So they have no reason to do better for consumers because just doing the minimum still makes them a huge profit. 
They remind me of Jaba the Hut from Star Wars all fat and in charge while those under him do all the work in a life of fear.  After the banking industry made our economy crash we should be taking a look at these huge companies and say is there really any competition here?  I for one say no.  There is no health competition any more.  If that were true we would have cars that got 120 mpg by now and we would have bankers that would be trying to give better interest rates and better services but I see the opposite going on.    The ref’s in this case have dropped the ball because what was done with our money was fraud and people should be jailed for what they did to all of us.  I throw the flag on them but my voice alone is not going to make a difference.  We all need to be shopping for better bankers and businesses that give better service and if they don’t we need to take our money and put it under a mattress until things change.