Simply Observations

To put things into prospective today.....John Edwards says he done things wrong, hurt folks, but sure didn't break the law.  This didn't help to avoid the federal prosecutors charging him up with a $925k payment to his mistress back during the 2008 Presidential race.  The sad thing is this was all campaign funds, which has a federal law or two over them.  So in effect....if convicted....it becomes a felony situation.  If you had to pick a law to do something stupid over....involving your mistress....this is number one in the book.

Jobs did grow great in May....over 54k new jobs.  Strangely enough....McDonalds creates half of the nation's jobs.  Yeah.....a bunch of burger-flipper jobs.  Yeah, that all makes sense.....you know.

Some reporters have said boldly....that as they attempted to follow the Palin bus tour....it was so unplanned....that they (the reporters) had to stop by the side of the road to relieve themselves.  Being from Bama....I kinda wondered what they meant by this as being worthy of reporting it nationally.  Around 250k Bama guys stop daily along side the road...and I doubt that this has been reported much at all since the 1920s when cars got first introduced.

Out in Texas...at the Medina Valley Independent School District....things are flipping almost daily.  Graduation is coming up and typically....there's the mention of "thank God" or "blessings" in graduation speeches.  There's some kid....who is scheduled to graduate....and his mama has gone to court to say that any religious wording at the graduation will bring "irreparable harm" to him.  So a federal judge got involved and then said there were various phrases forbidden to utter at the graduation ceremony.  I read through his orders....kinda wondering what part of the Constitution he'd failed to read.  People stood around in shock after hearing this order.  Then in the last couple of hours....an appeals court has stood up to say that the judge was all wrong, then revoking the orders.  Folks are now pausing for the Supreme Court to likely get dragged into this.  I sat and pondered over this.  First, some imaginary Vulcan guy (sadly) summed this type of situation up pretty good......"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few".  It's not one kid on graduation day....it's a bunch of kids....each with a vastly different view of blessings.  Second in my humble view....if uttering "God bless you" will bring irreparable harm to some kid....he'd best not go to any fine SEC college, work in the US Army, or read up on French history.  If you ask me.....he's already doomed for irreparable harm and had best just barricade himself in mama's house to stay safe from the rest of America.

Finally, this Tony Wiener dude from New York state....who is a representative in the US congress....has turned this entire week into a crotch battle of sorts.  He first said the underwear picture sent to some young gal's Twitter account wasn't his.  Then admitted it might be.  He won't allow the cops to get into this all. And he spent almost an entire day this week....doing interview after interview over the crotch picture.  All in all....just my humble opinion....but we didn't have this problem prior to the 1990s with representatives or senators sharing crotch pictures.  The guys from the 1930s....the worst you could say about them is heavy drinking and boozing.  The guys from the 1920?  Maybe they were hanging out in local DC salons too much.  Frankly, Tony needs to get an intern or two.....and stay active and busy in the office....or just start drinking alot.

The War

Officially, the war on drugs started on 17 June 1971.....with President Nixon.  He made a speech and coined the phrase.  So for forty-odd years....we've been at "war".  To be honest....this isn't much of a war....but the phrase sounds neat and nifty.

This week....a international group wrapped up their analysis of the war on drugs.  Their conclusion?  An utter failure and wasted money.

I'm not shocked over the analysis because I came to virtually the same belief a number of years ago.  The real bottom line on this war....is that if you were successful, then the price of drugs would escalate year after year, and it'd be awful hard to find crack, meth or cocaine on the streets of America.  The prices really aren't changing much.  Oh, you can't buy cocaine for the same price you did in 1978.....but relatively speaking you can put drugs on the same line as groceries and gasoline....and it's pretty much lined up.

This money that we give Columbia, Peru, Mexico and various other countries to fight drugs?  Totally wasted.  The millions we give various states and their law enforcement agencies?  Wasted.  The millions we give to the DEA?  Wasted.

I sat and watched a couple of news forums last night cover the topic briefly.  Few ever touch on the economic side of pricing....which I find curious.  Most simply covered the amount of funding given to foreign governments, and how it disappeared into a money pit....to be used as they see fit (you could envision all these GM SUV's being bought and driven by VIP law enforcement folks).

The White House came out and tried to defend the program....but frankly....it's hard to show success other than talking about arrests and confiscation.  If you brought up the pricing scheme staying on track....they would have been dazed by the comment and probably just grinned as they admitted that might be true.

Bottom line here?  Don't worry....we rarely give up a war....and I'm pretty sure the war on drugs will just continue on.