Please (pleadings from the nearly overwhelmed)

A meteor came within 7,500 miles of the Atlantic Ocean today. It takes way more frequent flier miles than that to get anywhere for free. I think I felt the whoosh mess up my hair.

But I know!. . . . Let's close down the space shuttle program.  A damn waste of money if you ask me.  I mean, we could be buying lots and and lots of bombs for the cost of one space mission.  And Lord knows it's more fun to blow up our neighbors than to save the Earth from a cosmic collision that could easily reduce all of us to the equivalent of dinosaur bones in some future-world museum.

Seriously, I'm pulling out my hair here!  Bump, my grandbaby, is about to make his grand entrance and I'm afraid he may be getting here late.  We need his brilliance to help us out of this mess, but give the boy a break.  He isn't even 0 years old  yet!

A big tree from my front yard gave it's life falling in exactly the only space it possibly could have landed in order to do the least amount of damage.  It clipped the corner of our garage.  Some damage there.  But it also landed on my husband's new car.  However, when he moved his car the tree held the limb up so that the car was only actually hit by leaves.  No damage.  A very kind tree's dieing gestured.  I loved that tree.

(By the way, those commercials where the insurance adjuster is there holding your hand while the storm is still blowing . . . . yeah, well in our case that was a whole lot of blowing!  We finally got a voice mail saying, "Your agent will be in the office on Monday morning."  Yeah, well the tree fell Friday afternoon.  Thanks.  I don't feel your good hands at all.  But that's another blog.)

So evidently the insurance God says we can hire someone to cut up the tree, but that person can only schlepp the tree to the dump.  He can't sell it to people who need it to heat their homes this winter.  And the tree cutter guy as  sure as heck fire isn't going to give it away. This is immoral.  Why do the insurance companies care?  Can you convince me that they are making so little money that they have to control things like that?  If I could split wood, I'd do it myself and give it away.

The problem with this culture is that it's totally insane.  We've been so conditioned to believe that politicians doing business by making deals is the way it must be done. The common citizen is just too stupid to understand politics.  We've been led to believe that making money makes the world go round.  That there is NOTHING that money can't solve.

Well excuse me and kiss my plump white derriere, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee picked by peasants in some far-off country you don't have to think about.  Just try to remember what you learned in Sunday school.  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 

It's not all that complicated.  When it comes to greed, just stop.  Let all of us who have some glimmer of morality left in us, all stop at once.  I'll have the tree-cutting guy cut up the grand tree and leave  it here.  I'll find something to do with it, even if it is to let it become homes for the little beings in the back yard.

Let's all go out on the limb (pardon that obvious pun) together.  Let's just have some increasingly uncommon common sense.  Let's don't waste.  Let's don't buy plastic bottles of water when we could just filter water and save a gazillion plastic bottles.  Let's all grow as much of our own food as possible.  Why should the average American meal travel 1,500 miles to get to our table when much of the world would love to have just our leftovers? 

Until we can switch to non-fossil fueled cars, let's all fill our tires to the pressure they are supposed to be filled and avoid jack rabbit starts.  Maybe car pool or take the bus or the train. 

Let's turn that thermostat to 76 or higher in the summer and 70 or lower in the winter.  Let's insulate.  Let's all water our gardens, if not flush our toilets, with water from rainbarrels.  Let's just stop acting crazy.

Please. I'm sincerely asking you, please.

Something to Offend Everyone

Yay!  It's show and tell time in America's politics.  Between the debating and the sexting, I'm not sure which disgusts me more.  I just have a few questions. 

First of all, if you dump a man in an eight year old pile of manure and he digs out of four years worth in  three years, how can you blame him for not getting rid of the whole pile? Is it possible to campaign without focusing on trashing ones opponent?

How will deepening the chasm between the haves and have-nots improve America?  Will decreasing taxes for the wealthy really create jobs?  How does that work again?  And what about making sure that only the haves get health care?  Just exactly how does that keep America great?  And what about the commercials that talk about how increasing taxes on fossil fuel will just devastate the economy?  Huh?

And guess what?  I have some answers.

It seems to me that anything that pushes us to use sustainable energy is a good idea.  Let's give companies that create clean, renewable energy a tax break.  Let's stop pretending that blowing the tops off mountains for coal and forcing chemicals into the planet to squeeze out some natural gas are good ideas.  Any second grader can tell you that they're horrible ideas.

A country full of healthy people is always stronger than a country two-thirds full of healthy people.  That's just common sense.  So let's make health care for everyone a priority. 

And instead of pretending that we are the world's police force and that we know best how other cultures should run their countries, why don't we bring our well-trained military home and put them to work here.  We've got plenty for them to do.  Our bridges are falling down.  Our roads, electricity grid, and sewage systems need lots of fixing. We have hurricanes, we have tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes.  We could send some Navy Seals into crime-ridden urban neighborhoods and get rid of gangs that poison lives.  Put some U.S. Army drill sergeants in charge of physical education in our public schools and we'd not have to worry about childhood obesity. 

The way I see it, if we stopped spending gazillions of dollars and the lives of our troops on blowing up countries and then paying to rebuild them, we could just have our troops rebuild our country.  It would be much less dangerous for them and much less expensive.  We could still have the best military defense in the world without having the biggest, most costly offense in the world. 

If we want to save money on Social Security, let's start by finding the people who get disability income who actually just don't know how or don't want to work.  There's another job for our military.  Let them investigate that.  I don't think someone should get their "gubment check" just cause their daddy  did.  Those scammers make me especially crazy when I learn of someone who really can't work, but can't seem to get disability income.

And why pay to jail non-violent criminals?  Whom does it help when we put deadbeat dads in jail?  Make the suckers work!  They should be picking up garbage and recycling or patching pot holes or detassling seed corn with the money going to their children and paying their way, while they live in dorms that need few guards.

Speaking of non-violent criminals, have you ever thought that the only reason organized crime is into drugs is because drugs are criminal?  If we spent money on detox and treatment instead of prison, I think our money would be better spent.  Let's save incarceration for the really nasty people.  God knows there are enough of them.  Of course if they burglarize or mug to buy drugs, then they are nasty criminals who need to be incarcerated.

And while we're on the topic of drugs, I'm subject to random drug tests at work.  That makes sense to me.  I think everyone should be.  Including people who collect any sort of income that comes from tax dollars.  If you are spending your disability or SSI check (aka my tax dollars) on drugs, I think your check should be immediately stopped.  Talk about savings!

The way it is now, if someone has been in prison for 10 years or more, they are probably broken when they are released regardless of what they were incarcerated for.  If we worried less about making the experience miserable and more about kicking their behinds to learn how to live on the outside, perhaps we'd have fewer offenders.  That would save a bundle and leave room in the nasty prisons for people who are truly wicked.

I think our government has a lot to do.  Why on earth do they waste time on worrying about who marries whom or someone smoking an occasional joint or even the sexual escapades of politicians?  If my plumber does a good job on Monday and leaves my house better than it was, I'll happily pay her and hire her again when I  need her, even if she if she gets stupid and smokes pot and sexts strangers on Saturday.  But these days finding a good, honest plumber or politician is getting more rare than hen's teeth.