Occupation of Wall Street

I had to hear about this from my daughter in Iceland?

As I watch the stream from New York, Susan Sarandon is there :

http://t.co/F7QGu7n

By time this comes out, she will be long gone but they are streaming now as I write this for eleven days so far.
I was using Skype video to talk with my daughter, as I said, in Iceland. She's leaving for Berlin tomorrow. But she was concerned about what she was seeing on the news and hearing from people where she is. She said that people from New York were leaving Iceland and headed back home because of the "occupation" that is going on. People are living in the park and there is support for them for living there.

I find it interesting that this is the first time I've heard about it. I live near Seattle and all I've heard about on the news lately is about Boeing.



A guy talking to Sarandon just said that it's difficult for them to put their message in one sentence. She said, "I know, that's why you're not on the news."
But she said, you have to find a way.

She has experience of her own for this kind of thing, protesting, getting arrested, etc., and was telling them what they should do, how to go about things, why you may want to get permits for marching.

They said in response they don't want to let the government know what and when they are doing things, but they are marching on the sidewalks and staying legal. That the reason they got in the news a week or so ago in the cops beating them up was that the cops just lost it.

Sarandon was asked by a CNBC reporter if she thinks there are problems with Wall Street. Trying not to laugh, she responded asking if he thought he couldn't ask that of anyone in America and get any other answer than, Yes. But that being said, she didn't think all companies were bad, she just couldn't think of any to hold up as a good example, then gave a smile.

This group also seem to be tied via internet to other groups in other places around the world. It would be nice if we could move past the "Arab Spring" and go further into the "Human Spring".

We live in interesting times.

What is, Attorney Misconduct and what do you do about it when it happens?

What is, Attorney Misconduct and what do you do about it when it happens... to you?

Justice truly is blind sometimes

I know someone, in some town. They have a business. Next to them is a food bank. The food bank sounds like a great thing, but for some reason, the local merchants put up a fight about it coming to that location. At first it sounded like a mean thing to do. But then things became more clear why they were concerned. It seems the food bank is supported by a local Attorney, and this Attorney has a questionable history of dealing with people. This attorney is a multiple property owner. They are apparently doing well enough to own more than their practice as they can support running a food bank.

No one has claimed that the Attorney is in any way making any money off of this project. And that is not here, what is at issue. Next to the food bank is a business. This business has been at that location for many decades. And that, is what is at issue.

The owner recently died and passed the business on to his sons. One of the sons has taken full ownership. His son is working on the business now with him. They have been putting their own money into getting the business up to speed. It seems in the previous owner's end of his life, he let things get a little run down and was having problems coordinating his business and his thoughts.

But now it is all shiney and ready to go. Except for the Attorney, who is setting up a new food bank.

 The business in on the corner and owns the empty lot behind it. And that, is where the whole issue started with the Attorney. The food bank kept putting their garbage on the property of the business next door. What seemed like a nice person, in having a food bank, started immediately to be unreasonable when the business owner asked that they not put their garbage on his property. It seemed like a reasonable request, until the Attorney started being irate and irrational and refusing to follow the law. Who knew that an Attorney, an officer of the court, would be so into breaking laws just to make things easier and cheaper on them. It paints an ugly picture of the individual.

 It got bad. The Attorney was acting irrational and wanted access that wasn't theirs to have, but told their people to go ahead and ignore the wishes of the business and property owner next door. The business owner repeatedly asked that the food bank use their own garbage cans (and put garbage IN the cans) and then keep them on their own property. But this was unreasonable to the Attorney.

So the business owner called the City and had a manager of the local Garbage company come by. He explained the situation and the Manager agreed. In fact, he moved the garbage cans himself to where they should be and told the food bank people what the law was.

 Later, the Attorney found out and was incensed. Then the Attorney filed an injunction for a restraining order against the business owner making wild claims which, when the business owner heard about them, was stunned, as he hadn't done any other things claimed by the Attorney. The Attorney had lied to the court.

And it has since only escalated with the Attorney trying, aparrently, to squash the business owner for contesting their poor manners. It seems others are scared of the Attorney. But this isn't a push over of a business owner. This business was the owner's fathers business for most of his life. This new owner was a construction worker all his life, a hard working man who has his own small farm/garden on his property of several acres in a rural location. His only desire now is to make his father's old business a working concern and maybe pass it on to his son one day.

But the Attorney is repeatedly filing false claims and 911 calls. And it would seem that the Police Officers who show up, know this Attorney quite well and for the most part, they want no part of her either. So, they pressure the business owner. Threatened him with Jail even. And that was wrong. But their hands are tied, because the Attorney is, an Attorney and knows the Law. And isn't afraid to abuse it. That makes the Attorney, dangerous.

I was told many years ago that if you like your freedom, where ever you are, learn the rules because the better you know the rules, the better you know how to abuse them and turn them to your own devices. And this is exactly what the Attorney is doing. Except, this time, they have come up against someone who will not lie down when someone acts crazy or breaks social conventions, or laws. He will fight back.

This is someone who has gone up against the State Government in trying to make clear to them, the laws they are supposed to uphold, and in some cases, have not. More importantly, he is retired. This Attorney is in dire straights and doesn't even know it. But that happens frequently with delusional people.

Someone asked if this Attorney, in how they have been acting, is on drugs, or has gone off their meds. They are pushing their luck. Things have happened like the other day, the owner was on his way in to town. He got a call from his business that the Attorney came into his business with a demand and a worker rightfully said "No."

Then when he got to his business he found out she had called 911 for the Police, again. When they got there she said he had come into her place with a video cam (which her restraining order says he isn't allowed to do, I mean, why would she want anyone to be able to video her so they could prove she is lying?) and said he was yelling and scaring her people and she feared for her life. But the business owners were able to testify to the police that the owner wasn't even there.

This is a horrible situation. What will happen, how it will turn out, is yet unknown. This could end up costing the poor business owner tens of thousands of dollars, all because of a low life Attorney who doesn't like to be questioned or made to follow the laws that make her life harder.

Needless to say, this is a horrible person, possibly a borderline personality, which I strongly think is the case. These are the hardest people to go up against because typically they are intelligent and make you look like you are always that troublemaker. They are professionals at this kind of behavior, to get their own way. They will throw tantrums, be bullies, pressure, cajole, lie, cheat or steal to get their own way. Then turn around and try to look like angels.

I had to work with a woman for five years who was borderline. She made life a nightmare and it always looked like you were the problem. She would go right to HR and complain, claim anything, sexual harassment, minority abuse, ethnic cleansing if it got her what she wanted. Then finally one smart manager gave her a job so she would fail. For years people would clean up the woman's mess. But not this time, not after years of her treating people like crap. Finally, she was fired for incompetence.

But it takes someone with guts to go up against these people. They really need medical, psychological help, but they use the law to fight for their freedom; freedom to abuse those around them. I went through this for years with my mother. We couldn't get her the psychological help she needed because she was just sane enough that no one could claim she needed to be force to get the help she so desperately needed. There are scores of these people who need help but can claim they don't, so they don't get it. They just make everyone else (and themselves if they can be honest about it, but they can't), miserable.

Anyway, the business owner is in a tough situation. But he now has his own Attorney who thinks they can not only beat the Attorney, but get legal fees and $10,000.

Let's hope so, Small business owners have enough grief without well off Attorney's trying to play at charity while damaging the reputation and income of a lawful business owner who himself, has always done what he could for the local community.

Where IS The Equalizer, when you need him?

Is Religion necessary?

What is it about Religion that does us any good? IS it really necessary? Is it, would it be, possible, to achieve it's aims without it?

Aside from the considerations of reward or punishment (Heaven or Hell), just what does it do for Humans? If you are religious, you may not be able to understand this construct. But that is okay. Maybe it's not for you to stand on your own, to be vincible without a need of being fearful or so many things that religions absolve us of. Do we really need that absolution?

The religious side of this argument will typically take a side supporting religion (reasonable in a religion vs no religion argument). However, their argument will always go through a format that includes religion having always existed, or from a basis of God theory. I won't go into this here, as that isn't the point, here. I only bring this up because to argue against what is stated below, pretty much requires taking the point of view of "God is, therefore living with no God is isn't", or some sort of prevarication on that order. But that doesn't fit in this argument, although that has never stopped a deist from using it and typically doing very well with it as no one knows how to argue against it, because you are trapped within the Möbius strip ("loop") of religions argument.

So, moving along....

Belief in an outside force, a "Higher Power" as it were, gives Humans something they can't seem to find anywhere else. But actually, they can. You see, it's really just the easiest, lowest common denominator kind of thing to want and nature has solved that issue for us. It's been around forever it would seem, because it was the easiest, most obvious, and so our evolutionary history was such that it either fell easily into it, or it was designed to fit it. But it allows us to go beyond our own concerns. Naturally. Without need to turn to a superficial extreme.

We are the only creatures as far as we know that can comprehend our own demise or our own death and existence. Either that, or we are the only ones that care about it, or fear it. Perhaps some animals have the same capacity to, but just figure, "Oh, Hell, so what?" Rather than celebrating living life, most people seem to want to pray about living it or to avoid losing it. Belief in an outside force gives us license to exceed our expectations of our capabilities, to go beyond simply caring for our own survival, which is a primal instinct if ever there was one.

Add to that a fear of reprisal if we act wrong, go against strictures, break commandments, and/or, the pleasurable consideration of Just or excessive and eternal rewards after we leave this physical form, and you have the makings of what is supposed to be "amazing" behaviors. Such as heroics. A mother lifting a car to save a child, a husband saving his wife in some "super" Human way, so that it must have been undo-able, a "miracle". I love magic as much as the next guy, but sometimes we can just exceed expectations.

 Many amazing things have been done and explained through religion.

But also many horrific things, I don't really think I need to make a list of them all, but the major ones come to mind easily: The Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition, Nazi concentration camps (Nazis weren't Godless Communists, they hated them, much of what they did came out of a Christian based fear and a hatred of Jews, and Blacks), Genocide, torture, Missionaries, Fascism, Neo-Nazis, and... 9/11.

And many smaller ones:  sexual abuse of women and children by religious authorities, Catholic indulgences in the Middle Ages, ritual mutilations, and simply cutting people out of their religion or religious rites for abusing or breaking the rules, or sometimes and not infrequently, for very poor reasons based solely upon the religious authority's emotions or greed at that time. Or sometimes, simply sexually based as in jealousy. Even between God and an unknown object of dislike (think of Salieri in the movie, Amedeus).

Trying to stamp out natural Human functions such as sexuality, one of our most basic functions, in point of fact, what we were designed for, is defective thought, founded in theory, untenable in practice. In denying sexual expression or restrictions of Priests and Nuns from marriage, has lead to enough sexual abuse on it's own to fill a book in its various ways.

But do we need religion to achieve the depravities of Humanity? No, we can figure out how to abuse one another without an organization telling how to do it professionally and at an organizational level, which mechanizes abuse. Nor do we need religion to raise us up to the heights of what we can achieve. Because we have naturally built in, most of what religion gives us anyway. Religion is just the sugar on the crust of Life for many people. But sugar does give people diabetes or hypoglycemia when it is abused, and religion, has quite obviously supplied the same enhancements around the world and throughout history.

Religion simply institutionalizes and attempts to restrict the unrestrictable, those things we find natural, in a sad attempt to guarantee how we act. And that really doesn't work so well, especially when you consider that if you take away the all powerful aspects of it and replace it with logic and compassion, you eliminate much of the bad and enhance much of the good. Where in Christianity, Judaism, Islam (any of the desert religions (as opposed to jungle religions, some of which are worse only in different ways)) we are told that these are the rules and you don't break them. But immediately, if only in your mind, you are lean toward breaking them; albeit it, that feeling is hidden in the darker departments of your personality; yet, it is still there.

In one of the few more rational forms of philosophy, Buddhism for instance doesn't give adherents codified rules such as "you never do" this or that, but rather that you try to "walk the middle way" or try to stay on the "Path of the Middle Way". These are not absolutes but guides. They are also instructed that when you are told something that doesn't make sense, you should use your own mind and think about it and make your own decisions. Which is where the Zen thought came from, "If you see the Buddha on the Path of Life, kill him." Not something you would hear a Christian ever say about Jesus. But strangely, I would have to assume Jesus would understand it, and smile knowingly. Yet, many of his followers would be tempted to become irate or dangerous.

These two things, using critical thought and a lack of supreme "commandments", are of major importance in managing Human behavior. This is why critical thought is a major component of training with Buddhist Monks and should be a major element in all Human education above and beyond the way disciplines through which it is taught.

Often in the education of our children, we completely forget why we teach "reading, writing and arithmetic". It is to of course to teach those important things, but more so, far more so (and understand and let me repeat this), MORE SO, it is to teach critical thinking. We have far too much of a lack of critical thought around the world.

When you add in religion to a lack of critical thought; or worse, add critical thought into a damaged religious orientation, only bad seems to come of it. But if we teach children critical thought, with a good basis in philosophy without religion attached and all the dysfunctional fantasy that comes along with it, I believe we would have a far more stable society, world wide.

Still, its not just critical thought that we need to grow and properly and fully develop. Critical thought leads to creativity, which leads to thinking "outside the box". Yes, one could argue that religion is thinking outside of the box, but the trouble there is that it is not, definitely not, based on fact or critical thought processes. Just the opposite, which is why "faith" is so important. In fact, you have to discipline yourself to believe regardless of what proves to you to be incorrect in the course of things. Discipline is good, but to apply it to not being rational or evolving, is simply dangerous. As we have seen.

So now you have to ask yourself, what good does religion really do for us in the end?

Carpe Diem!

Weekend Wise Words

Be Smart! Be Brilliant!

“One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of close attention; and the world therefore swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied, but to be read.” Dr. Johnson

“I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.” Robert Frost

“Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.” Aldous Huxley

“Writers don't write, they read and transcribe.” William S. Burroughs

“Good writers are in the business of leaving signposts saying, Tour my world, see and feel it through my eyes; I am your guide.” Larry King

"Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol. Sure, a writer can get stuck for a while, but when that happens to a real author -- say, a Socrates or a Rodman -- he goes out and gets an "as told to." The alternative is to hire yourself out as an "as heard from," thus taking all the credit. The other trick I use when I have a momentary stoppage is virtually foolproof, and I'm happy to pass it along. Go to an already published novel and find a sentence that you absolutely adore. Copy it down in your manuscript. Usually, that sentence will lead you to another sentence, and pretty soon your own ideas will start to flow. If they don't, copy down the next sentence in the novel. You can safely use up to three sentences of someone else's work -- unless you're friends, then two. The odds of being found out are very slim, and even if you are there's usually no jail time." Steve Martin

“Some people have a way with words....some people....not have way.” ― Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

"Trauma" in the work place and the Affect of Fascism on Artists

Last week I did a blog about a great little movie called, "The Lives of Others".

Ooookay, Adolf, calm down... Fascists are Fascists

In that film, it described how two Stasi Officers are talking about interrogation techniques. As usual, in a Fascist State, those in control are demonizing those with no control. And one of the most delicate of those groups are those of the Artists. Artists are the soul of a group. I would argue, even more so than those of religious thought or possibly of Philosophical diciplines. Stalin once said: "As comrade Olesha aptly expressed himself, writers are engineers of human souls." That is incorrectly and frequently attributed to "Uncle Joe", The Brute, himself.

In the film, one Stasi Officer tells the other how, when they finished interrogating artists, one of the benefits of their interrogation technique is that the artist never produces his Art again. Chalk one up for the Evil Empire.

What is it that fascists are always so fearful about art? Well, it questions and calls attention to, their actions and orientation, those things that once brought to light, are easily seen as foolish, as simply ridiculous and they rapidly begin to whilt and dissapate.

Along with that, let me say that I have never believed in a thing called a "Writer's Block". It always seemed to me that it was pure laziness of mind, a lack of discipline, a way an amateur can avoid writing, and so on. I have had periods when I didn't write but I never attributed it to Writer's Block.

When this Summer began, I was told at my day job where I support internet technologies, that there was a certain situation about to happen due a lack of funds for infrastructure support. I work at a large Health Insurance Company and current events in Healthcare in the government, as everyone knows, have severly affected companies like this with layoffs, restructuring and grief all around. We have needed something to be done, I've agreed with the need for changes the government has been working on in health insurance and healthcare in general, and I'm glad I work for one of the better health insurance companies. But it's been painful for those people (like myself) in the "trenches".

What I read in that statement about funding was that my Summer was going to be pure Hell and I could easily, later, be seen to blame for much of it if I wasn't careful. And it was. Pure Hell. I didn't realize just how "traumatic" that Summer was going to become. And please note that I use the word "trauma" accurately but it is a far lesser use of the world than I'm sure many people have gone through. It doesn't refer to being in a car accident, a bad relationship (though similar) or torture or war. Alas, it is trauma, nonetheless.

I haven't taken off more than a week of vacation at a time in decades, but this Summer, I did. At the end of August, I felt I had to take off two weeks due to being emotionally drained. My nerves, I've been saying, were "frayed". I was ready to quit my job two or three times.

So I did take the time off and last Monday started back at work again.

Now I had seen the hardest part, the first third of the situation done and completed, before I took that time off. And a few other things have happened so that now that I am back, the pressure from before is mostly gone. Still, of course, I have that feeling that I am doing the same old thing. But my nerves are no longer now frayed, I don't have people hovering over me about those things now and I have had the support of the management staff above me. And that is very important.

But, that is my day job; my job that pays my expenses, my bills, my mortgage. The job that allows me to follow my artistic writing pursuits without question of doing what I want to do. I have this blog to do to see it available on a daily basis. I have an anthology of short stories currently at the publisher, but I've been thinking of rewriting it, having more clarity now on how I would like to change it. I have a screenplay adaptation being actively marketed. I have another original screenplay nearly done and another screenplay in treatment form that I am working on with a Producer in California.

That last screenplay needs to be completed by end of September, at leats the Treatment does in the worst case. The trouble is that I had planned to work on it during my vacation. No, that didn't work, because I was busy trying to unwind and heal up by traveling, visiting, basically wearing myself out so that when I returned to my job, I would feel like it was a longer vacation.

I also had my nineteen year old daughter living with me this summer, saving up money for her trip to Europe for nine  or more months. Last Monday she landed in Iceland to begin her journey and is having a grand time of it. But it took a toll on us both while she was here, her now trying to live her life as an adult, feeling out who she is, and doing some of it around Dad; trying to mesh our somewhat unmeshable lifestyles considering our age and experience differences at this point in her life, isn't the most easy or fun thing to do for any teen. So that was a little stressful but we also had fun and I enjoyed seeing one of my two kids back around the house again for a while. Still, trying to live with your adult children (or as one of them, trying to live with your parent), is... problematic at times.

Once the vacation was over and I was back to work, I tried to start working the script again, and that hadn't worked too well. See, I was still burned out from the Summer's work, then from my vacation (though now more mentally at ease), and from my daughter staying here over the Summer, and then from her leaving (yeah, there's just no pleasing some people), which has left me with a need to readjust to living alone again (my German Shepherd is taking it even harder than I am that one of the kids has yet again, moved out).

I worked on the script a touch here and there, but nothing like I was doing before. I am getting my energy and desire to work on my writings again however. By holding back and not forcing myself, I've had a feeling of "come on, let's go, I wanna writing again", but then holding off and continuing to take it easy and do no work. It left me feeling guilty at times that I wasn't working on it (I profess to being Buddhist now, but I was, rasied Catholic, thus the guilt). But what that did was motivate me, building up the artistic energies.

So that begs the question... do I have "Writer's Block"? That thing I don't believe in? This brings me back to that film I mentioned at the beginning.

In traumatizing artists, in an artist getting traumatized, can you cut off their artistic pursuits? Was I therefore, traumatized by my job over this Summer? Do you cut off their talent, or their desire to pursue them?
I knew I could write (thus, no writer's block) but I also knew, that I should give myself a break and I felt I knew I would know when that break was or should be, over. Basically it was a feeling of, "I just don't want to do this". But I knew when that passed, I could be 100% back into working.

Again, I knew I could write. I just didn't push myself.
Then suddenly today, I felt like something, "clicked", inside me and I knew I would be able to write again and feel cohesive about it, my integrity regained. Finally, I felt I had "healed" enough and could go back to my normal mode of operations.
I want to get to work full speed on my script that I'm working on with my Producer. I also want to work on my original script. I want to work on my anthology of short stories (and that is a lot of work).

That is all a lot of focus, a lot of energy, and requires perserverance. It does me little good if I were to have started, then ended up stopping again for a period of time, probably counted in days. I knew that I needed to heal, to gather my energies, to get up to full speed again so that I could get back into the trenches and get to work; and not stop the work once I started again.

I look at it like a downhill skier.

Even if you're tired, or exhausted, you can start down from the top of the hill. But whether your run will be quality, whether you will be able to make it to the bottom or not, whether you will travel safely, is really the question. It's better to get rested, then be ready to do the run, and go for it, all the way down, and in every way. You're speed and style will be far better in the end, and you will make it to the bottom safely, ready to immediately go back to the top and start all over again.

When writing a novel, a screenplay, or any large piece of work, that's exactly what you need: to fly over the pages, producing quality, and then start again at the beginning and do it over and over until it's perfect.

And I'm getting there....

Gays terrify Catholic mom at public pool?

Have you seen this article about the Christian woman afraid to take her children outside because of Gays?

Stacy Trasancos is a scientist-turned-Catholic-homemaker in Massachusetts with seven kids who suffers from agorahomophobia. In what another article calls "a wrenching blog post", she describes how the "gruesome spectacle of gay families hanging out at a local public pool has made her afraid to venture outdoors."

On her blog she says:

"I find myself unable to even leave the house anymore without worrying about what in tarnation we are going to encounter. We are responsible citizens. We live by the rules, we pay our taxes, we take care of our things. I'm supposed to be able to influence what goes on in my community, and as a voter I do exercise that right. But I'm outnumbered. I can't even go to normal places without having to sit silently and tolerate immorality. We all know what would happen if I asked two men or two women to stop displaying, right in front of me and my children, that they live in sodomy."

How do her kids know these people "live in sodomy"?

I'm sorry but this is really pathetic. And I would like to point out, she does have a personality condition, a rather severe mental aberration.

Of course, especially in dealing with children, I fully agree about inappropriate PDA.

But I didn't see any mentioned related to that article. Huggng and "elbow touching" simply isn't inappropriate in public. I expected she was upset that there was fellatio going on at her pool, which would be a jailing offense. Showing affection for another human being may be uncomfortable for some, but deal with it: Life, it's a growing experience.

This is just another sad example of yet another "psuedo Christian" whining about reality, and how ancient, and especially the desert religions, need to be updated, regardless of their tenets. It may have been great fun in the old days for adherents to their religions to stone people for PDA (as the Taliban likes to do now, they also do that for women shopping at a mall or diving a car btw), or for homosexuality, or other behaviors and ways of life their religions find unwholesome, but that is not reality.

 Any true religion created by an omnipotent being will have designed a way for that religion's people to be able to continue on with their religion in a productive manner, which is yet another indicator of the inherent failure of the originators of these religions to have designed a religion that had anything to do with a God that is real, or who even exits. It is unreal to expect to live in the modern world and hide from what is all around you.

If your religion does not give you the strength and intelligence to practice your beliefs within the experiences that you run into on a daily basis in trying to live your life and praise, worship or commune with your God, to raise your children and maintain your faith, with all that goes on around you, then I would argue... it's a pretty poor excuse for a religion.

Religion should elevate your thinking, not run it into the mud. It should teach, be instructive, useful. It should give you the mindset to be able to maintain your beliefs while living in the world. If you have to live in hiding from reality, or in a sequestered, walled in environment, that's not a religion. It's a mental prison.

Or more appropriately, insane asylum.

Next major Gulf Oil Spill: Cuba?

Can anyone tell me, why we are continuing any longer to embargo Cuba? We started this with Pres. Kennedy's government in the early 60s. Are we really still worried about Cuban Communism (or cigars) infecting America?

This has bothered me for years, actually since the movie, "Scarface" came out. In recent years, with Castro's decline in health and advanced age, I really don't understand why we don't just open Cuba up to Americans and American companies and government. Before we have to, that is.

The only reason I've heard in recent decades about why we don't reestablish relations with Cuba was, number one, Castro is still in charge (he's not now) and two, the Cuban emmigrants are strongly opposed to it. Okay, too bad. The argument goes that they want their relatives to have a better life and supporting Castro's communist regime will only give sustainability to the status quo.

But this has been proven wrong time and again and by establishing trade and commerce again with Cuba the Cuban people will only benefit from it. Not only that, but if you want to bring down a communist country, introduce capitalism and product. They practically jump the ship to go American at that point.

So, what's holding us up? Stupidity? Simply not caring?

There is a good reason, beyond just doing it. Oil. After the recent Gulf oil spill, as concerned as we are about our environment, we have to consider now, opening channels to this small country off our shores in the Caribbean.

Why? Because. I said so.

Okay, I'll even give you a reason.

As reported on the Global Post web site, preparations made for six wells to be drilled off the Florida coast, with aid from China. U.S. experts estimate the wells could contain five billion barrels of oil. China built the massive drilling rig, and Hugo Chavez' Venezuela, is providing drilling and production expertise. The Spanish firm, Repsol, with partners in Norway's Statoil and Italy's Saipem, will oversee the operation.

If they have a spill, it could be potentially catastrophic. Yet, with the spill so close to our shores, we are legally bound by law not to interfere.

How, in the world, does that make any sense at all?