Take a look around (from Guest Blogger Chris)

Chris comes through in the clutch! This week is a nightmare for me at work, with my boss in Vegas on vacation and me running the show as best I can...I'm not gonna have much time to write this week at all. So my former Army self gets rescued by a former Marine....*grin*

This post comes to us courtesy of my dear friend Chris, my buddy for almost 26 years now. This started as a comment on the Megrahi blog and when it got too big for Blogger to allow as a comment, it morphed into a life of its own.....

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You know, I don't have much to say about England and Scotland...hell about the whole EU for that matter. It makes me sick to my stomach really that my people would let someone like that go free, ESPECIALLY after all they went through to put the man in prison in the first place!!!

The last time I checked PRISON is not CLUB MED! You DON'T get to have fun, you DON'T get to do things like go outside when you want and see your friends and play with your kids and pet the dog...you know why?? Because PRISON is SUPPOSED to be a freaking PUNISHMENT!!!! And they let him go because he’s SICK?? BOO-FRIKKIN-HOO! If you ask me that’s just karma!!!

OK, so I lied....I did have something to say about it....maybe it's just that, like Steve, my family comes from the Isles. A full half of me is Scottish, another quarter Irish. So yes, while I think that Scotland should be its own country and NOT part of the UK, just like Ireland should be free, when things like this happen it makes me think that maybe we don't deserve to rule ourselves...this is/was a bad decision.

There was no way for this to have ended any other way than badly. On the other hand, they could have diagnosed him, KEPT him in jail, and no one would have blinked an eye. Read that again s-l-o-w-l-y people: N-O O-N-E W-O-U-L-D H-A-V-E B-L-I-N-K-E-D A-N E-Y-E...did I get my point across, Scotland the Brave????

But, that sadly brings me to my next point (and y'all thought I was done!): The good ol’ USA. I love my country, I really, really do. But it seems to me that there is a HUGE lack of common sense here...it's like those people who are geniuses that are off-the-charts smart but have ZERO common sense, and those people who are dumb as
bricks but have common sense oozing out of their pores.

The US Government in many respects is that genius. The vast majority of the people in the US are the ones with common sense. I’m not saying that the people are dumb as bricks, however. My point is, if we as a country as so smart and we’re so superior to everyone else (or so we think) that we have the balls to tell the rest of the world how to act and what to do, why can't we take care of our own affairs at home here first???

We have ZERO business feeding other people in other countries if we can't figure out how to feed our own people. We can't send aid to everyone else when we have homeless VETERANS living on the streets in EVERY city in America (you know…the land of the free and the home of the brave???). And not just veterans; whole FAMILIES living under bridge abutments and in their cars....where do WE get off telling ANYONE else how to go about governing THEIR country when we can't govern our own effectively?? (By the way, don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m saying I don't support our troops or anything like that...I’m against wasting funds on others when we can be using them here....we have many wars to be fought right here on our soil; they just aren't the profitable ones.)

But what do I know? I am just a down in the dirt, everyday citizen who goes to work, gets dirty, goes home and feeds my family. Lather, rinse,
repeat.

But just because I am who I am doesn’t mean I’m blind. The injustices are here in front of you if you simply open your eyes to them. For example: go to Washington, D.C. and tour the city. Enjoy yourselves, do the touristy things during the day...cross the river to Rosslynn and see the monuments over there at dusk...look back across the river to the Capitol of the Free World....what do you see????

Now, go BACK into DC; go to the Mall around the Capitol and walk three blocks off the Mall in any direction and tell me what you see now...

I'll tell you what I saw when I lived there: homeless people covered in rags, sleeping over Metrorail vents, or over sidewalk portholes that have steam coming out of them just because they’re warm (never mind that they have a habit of exploding 30 feet straight up in the air and will kill you if one lands on you), wrapping themselves in whatever they can find because they don't have anything else.

Stop and talk to those people and hear what they say; still feel good about all the "good" we do for the rest of the world??? When we have whole families that can't eat; vets that can't get help, can't find jobs, and have no where to turn because our government won't help them so they end up on the streets; battered women who had to run and live on the streets because it was the only way to survive and there are no programs to help them; and yet we send BILLIONS AND BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of dollars in aid to foreign countries to feed their children.

Still feel good about your country and how we take care of our own??

And that is just in the Capital of the Free World; never mind it being the Capital of the United States of America! Take a look off the beaten paths of your own town’s and city’s streets; our people are in need and they are EVERYWHERE!!! I personally am damned ashamed to see the posturing that we do on the world stage telling other countries what they have to do to ensure basic human rights when we can't even ensure basic human rights for our own people or even feed ourselves...where do we get off telling ANYONE else how to run their lives???

I love my country, yes I do. But I don't have to love my government or the people who run it. My grandfather told me a LONG time ago that even if I didn't respect the man who is President you have to respect the office. I love you dearly, grandfather, but I’m not so sure I can follow that advice anymore. We’re sinking rapidly down the rabbit hole, and I for one am not sure I want to know how deep it goes.



This goes way beyond mere Democrat or Republican battle lines....this goes to the very core of who we are as a people and who we are as a nation. My wife tells me all the time: "Mean what you say and say what you mean." It's a simple philosophy really....now we just need to get the men and women who "think" they are in charge to follow it or we need to get new people! The "leadership" of this country certainly doesn't have any CLUE as to what that mantra means. I see a lot of lips moving but I’m not hearing anything come out of their mouths that I can take to the proverbial bank...

So much for not having anything to say...don't even get me STARTED on illegal immigration!!!!! Thanks for reading....I really needed to get that off my chest!!!