Have you seen my sanity?

 I seemed to have lost it on the way to work. Or did I leave it around the house and will run across it again? Maybe it fell out of the car when I was running errands the other day. Or was it when we were out of town? I cannot remember the last time I saw it, so hard to say where it might be.

And along the way I have picked up a pocket full or more of anxiety. It just keeps spilling out. I try to put it back, but it overflows and is all over me. 

Or is it something else? Or a combination? Does angst and anxiety mix well? Or is that a dangerous cocktail? Could be I have a pocket full of both. Something is wrecking havoc on my daily life. 

I remember bad days. The ones where you can’t find your keys in the morning and end up late to work on staff meeting day where you arrive half way through someone reciting a monstrous to do list they want done by Friday causing you to work till 9 two or three nights that week and the better half is PO because she wanted to shop for something that for some reason she needs you to go along and she never told you to begin with and then you have to find someone to coach one of the practices for one of the kids’s teams because well there is a big game on Saturday so you cannot cancel practice and then it rains on Saturday. Yeah, super huge first world bad days, but hey then there is Sunday and you rest up to do it again. Remember when those were bad days? Now I dream of those.Maybe not a good dream, but hey I still had my sanity.

Now though, it has disappeared and too much of stuff I never asked for has taken its place. I am not sure what it looks like anymore or I would describe it so you might help me look for it. Right now everything I see is gray, not the solid gray of a good suit, but the muddied gray of clouds when they are pouring rain and the dreariness seeps into your soul like the rain seeps under your back door because it has gone on for days and you forgot to clean the porch the Saturday before so there is junk lying around preventing the rain from draining off and you realize you needed to replace the weather stripping that same Saturday you forgot to clean the porch. It is that kind of dreary gray.

I plan on continuing to look for my sanity. Maybe I will get lucky. Who knows? It has to be around here somewhere. Does sanity run off? I don’t think so. Maybe my sanity found a better person, one more cheerful than I have been these last few months. Or is my sanity hiding? From me? From the world? I thought I treated it well. Sure there were those days when I was younger and treated it like I would always have it no matter what I put it through. Did I take it for granted and now it is punishing me? 

If I remember what it looks like, I will let you know in case you have the time to look around for a moment. Any help is appreciated. 

And sorry, I have been a bit self absorbed today. I hope you still have yours. I would hate for you to be stuck trying to find it. It isn’t fun. And if you find the angst or the anxiety building up in your pockets, empty them quickly and do not let them become stuck in them like somebody played a bad joke and put in chewed gum and you cannot clean it out. If it gets that bad, just throw away the pants with all the angst and anxiety. Trash it immediately. It tends to cling so might as well save everything else and get rid of it.

And all this weighs on you like when the temperature outside is 93, but there is so much humidity the heat index is 105. How do people function in that environment? 

So hold onto your sanity. Keep it close, don’t share, even with me because all of a sudden I realize how valuable it is nowadays. I would hate for what would happen if too many people starting losing their sanity. Might be a bit much for the world to handle. Or is that what just happened? We all just friggin lost it?

And be careful, I learned a long time ago, sanity is never at the bottom of a bottle of tequila. ha ha ha

Cheers

And a few side notes.

The Mavs future looks bright. There is work to do, but outside of a cold start to the third quarter yesterday they competed well. 

I hope the Finals are between the Clippers and the Bucks. I could live with that. 

The pretentious left keeps writing stories like Trump and his base care about any semblance of rationality or our Constitution. They don’t (sad and scary and Putin is the enemy) and it is making it harder by the day to deal with the coming madness. The Democrats need to go full tilt trying to convince 60+% of this country they need to vote for them without spending any more time bashing Trump. We all know he doesn’t care about this country, show you care. Come up with something the rest of us respect. 

Cheers again

Mr. President, I am a bit confused.

 What exactly do you mean by great?

I always thought a great country is when everyone is treated equally and has opportunity for not just prosperity, but for growth as a person and all share in the country’s prosperity; education is a key component of everyone’s lives; culture is a commodity and the appreciation of it is shared by all; the people have good health; the government works for the whole of the country first and does not discriminate; the infrastructure is something to be proud; disagreements on policy are addressed with decorum; people receive help when needed, the measure of a person is based on what they contribute to their fellow man; and most importantly people are respected and respect each other. These are just a few attributes of what I thought greatness meant.

You promised to make America great again, yet we seem to be missing something.

Sorry Mr. President I am just not seeing “great” right now. Care to explain?

And on a side note Mr. President, some reading of history might be beneficial for you.

So here is the confession

 Growing up I was pretty sheltered in respect to racism. We actually said bigotry and many people were affected by the Archie Bunker racism where it didn’t seem so bad. And again I was pretty sheltered. 

It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I came across my first full blown case of someone who was racist unabashedly. This person said things without remorse and denigrated people solely based on their race. Just would not accept that Black people were people. Flat out racist. So I did what I thought was the right thing. I slowly disengaged myself from going to this person’s house and stopped calling this person a friend. 

I think many people growing up made this same mistake. It was easier to avoid racism than confront it. As a teenager I was still learning, when I became an adult and moved into my 20′s and 30′s I was well rounded enough to know that ignoring problems do not make them go away. I say many people behaved similar to me based on what I see other people write. There are other articles etc now posted or whatever that deal with this same topic. I do not think this “confession” is earth shattering right now. Yet it still leaves the gap between saying something and doing something.

Which leads us to the real confession. We just do not know what to say. Do we just walk up to all the people we quit hanging out with over the years and say, hey you racist POS, stop being that way. 

That won’t go far. 

So the internal conflict now is how do we approach others that we not just deem racist, but they make painfully aware they are racist. 

There are only racists. Some people will try to make an argument there is a sliding scale. There isn’t. There are racists and there are ugly racists. The only difference is ugly racists act out on their racism and it is anywhere from snide comments to job discrimination to shooting someone in the back. This just shows the ugly, but it doesn’t make the people not acting out, less racist. Overall people that have problems with other races have to admit to themselves they think others are inferior to overcome their own inadequacies. Yeah so easy to post in a blog, how do you constructively tell someone that? And this is barely a start.

Hate and ignorance are tools of evil and racism is one of the by products of these problems. This runs deep in people and then they start teaching their children the hate and keeping them ignorant. And now we have centuries of this ingrained into large segments of our country. 

So a rational person can understand where racism comes from, it still doesn’t help the rational person to confront the evil of it all. People who are racist, aren’t changing overnight no matter what anyone says, but we have waited too long to say anything. It is way past time to “need” to have a conversation. Now we are stuck with our own reflection staring back at us from the mirror shouting that the ugly is on us also. That is the real confession.

And no one knows what to say. Seriously, can anyone think of a way to start this conversation that can make a person stop and think for that one second so a door can open? We desperately need that answer right now.

Lets go into the hornet’s nest

 We know there is a problem, but what are the solutions.

First lets deal with something I rarely hear about and am wondering if we need to change the approach.

Everyday you hear the Mayors and the Police Chiefs get up in front of crowds and say we are working to solve the problem of black people being shot disproportionately to everyone else. That is all well and good, but behind these people are the police officers. These are the people on the front line of our problem right now. And what has caught my attention is of how some police unions do not seem to be as in step as city leaders. Or the rank in file in general or certain aspects of the rank and file. 

I think sooner or later the police, meaning the actual people who make up the police force and black community leaders need to have the sit down of all sit downs. I understand there is a fraternity to being a police officer and most officers serve with good intentions. The problem is not addressing the officers who are not addressing the problem of bad cops and the actual bad cops. And the best way to confront this is to bring it into the light. Have both groups sit in the same room (maybe post Covid19) and look each other in the eye and say what needs to be said. I do not want to put words in either side’s mouth, but I am sure there will be talk that may need mediators around and some controlled circumstances because we cannot have any sugar coating of the depth of the problem. And everyone needs to realize there are two sides to every sit down. It may be a hornet’s nest at first, yet sooner or later the nest needs to be removed. 

This is a small step, yet until we all realize this is life and death we cannot overcome the obstacles to solving the problem.

And on a note to help the above idea going forward I have to do some more research, but the little I did made me think about some more ideas. I reviewed the minimum qualifications to becoming a police office. I researched five states and only one required a full college degree. Two required at least 60 hours of post high school education and two required High School diploma or GED.

Now, education isn’t the only requirement. All states had significant other steps to complete, such as exams, physicals, background checks, psychological screenings and more. And I do not think requiring much more education upfront is an immediate answer. What I am curious about is how much more is required of officers as they advance in their tenure. I know they have certain requirements and have to requalify in certain areas, but what civic training beyond a couple of classes in Community College do police officers go through. I know if you want promotions you have go back to school for certain jobs, yet what about the rank and file?

How much does law enforcement study more than their job? I do not know. Are they regularly attending classes on social studies, civics, maybe first year psychology, social services etc? Or about requiring some social services work as part of ongoing training? The point is police officers are human beings and we, as human beings, tend to want to be accepted in our crowd. So what kind of crowd is developing or letting to be developed. If we changed the mindset of the majority to include much more empathetic responses, will that create a better culture for police officers? 

And I know there are some programs in cities that do the above, I just do not know how strong they are or how much is followed up. Nothing is perfect so we need to fight the urge to ignore doing more just because we do not like it. Any programs you develop constantly need re-evaluation and improvement. And if it doesn’t work, you need to know why because we cannot sit idly by and watch people get shot, officers in trouble, cities burning and say we are a law and order country. Right now, we are not and our government leaders are doing exactly the opposite of what is needed. The hate and the negativity have got to go.

Secondarily there are some programs throughout the land that touch on bringing different groups together to work into the neighborhoods including combining police with social workers. These are the ideas that should move forward combining a higher level of ongoing education and interaction with the community. The goal is to change the mindset of the rank and file to a more proactive mode of protecting and serving, not reacting because the more serving we do the less protecting we need.

We need our police officers for so many reasons so we need to find a way to make the police and the community allies for the safety of us all. 

Cheers

Something is seriously amiss

 There is heavy negative/evil attacks on our country. All the hate and antagonism isn’t natural. The disrespect, the lies, people doing things they know better, the brandishment of unnecessary force, the public attacks of people just doing their job, the continuation of racism, the violence etc. There is something or someone behind the scenes causing this destruction of our country. Nothing falls this fast without some cause.

The vast majority of this country seems to be frozen in action by all this hate by such few people. We somehow need to overcome this influence and bring our country back from this abyss. 

Maybe Snoop Dog and Dolly Parton should to get together and rewrite the song working 9-5 to create some levity and also make a point about we are all working together, why can’t we respect each other.

Cheers

short and maybe sweet comments

 Good evening all,

Maybe Snoop Dog should have run for President instead of Kanye West. If there is anybody that is chill enough to enjoy the run, it would be him. Come on over Snoop Dog and I will share a cold one with you. The better half will enjoy the beer you are advertising with you while I partake in a Pacifico or Dos Equis or maybe a Corona Familiar. Anyway, I’ll cut the limes, open the tequila and all in all we can sit on the patio and solve the world’s problems. It is an open invitation. 

Luka just made mudville happy. It is one game, it is one shot, but to quote the 80′s the future looks bright so I gotta wear shades or some such nonsense as that. Just happy to see actual quality play coming from the Mavs. And I didn’t see last night’s game, but overall the Stars are making their own news. It has been awhile since the lights are signing bright in Dallas with this much luminosity. 

I really believe in team play, but when you have the player who is suppose to take over games it is fantastic to watch that player achieve those heights. They will still need the whole team to continue, and the whole team is stepping up. Just trying to let it all sink in.

And on a weird side note, the entire NBA’s payroll is increasing every time Luka does something special. His heroics only add to the audience day in and day out from around the world. The NBA was already the smartest professional sports league in the USA, Luka is just making those efforts come to fruition.  

Now for the normal madness. ALL the Republicans are conservative in name only (CINOs), some because they are only Trump supporters; some because they lost their courage in addressing the failure of conservative policy by Trump and his single philosophy; and some because they caved into the one percent two decades ago and only support their policies, none are for any true conservative policy  for the country. 

The Democrats are just plain clueless. They may win, but long term we have a long way to go to claw are way back to respectability in the world. And we cannot afford the Democrat dreams right now. We need hard decisions that will hurt all. No one believes me, but hey, think about it.  

Two things though; the Dems can steal Donald’s thunder with an excellent and well managed infra structure program to help with jobs, but they have to manage the costs extremely well. And second they need to get creative to support Social Security besides more taxes even on the wealthy.  I have espoused ideas for that before, so maybe I will bring them back up with some creative rehash. 

We will still need better education, much better in fact fast. We will still need an overhaul of tax policy, we will still need better management of the ecology and the economy, we will still need to put the working and middle class first, we will still need to fix social security and medicare, we still need a better health care plan, and now we need to find a way to end the discord, hate and especially the racism in this country. We are 150 years behind on this front. There are way too many people who are benefiting from the discord so we have a tough road ahead. If most of this sounds like a broken record by me, then think about it. This country is a broken record and it needs fixin’.

And it is late on a Sunday. I had personal events this afternoon so the Mavs game was taped so watched late and then I have spent the last couple hours overwhelming myself with all the articles etc. Time to face reality and Monday. I am excited for Tuesday, but so far no matter what happens, the shades are on the top of the head. 

Good night all

couple comments on this ho hum evening

 

Sorry folks the Democrat convention and next week’s Republican convention are not interesting to this rank and file independent. This week is boring and next week is scary.

Ironic though that Sarah Sanders actually gave some good advice to the Democrats and as per their usual pretentious selves they jumped all over her for being her. Granted she is knee deep in the muck since I do not think she ever truly crawled out of Trump’s special swamp, but she did make a good point. Hopefully for the Democrats Joe Biden has that in his speech tonight. They do need to stop this constant Trump bashing and start talking about what they can do for this country. Yeah Trump is screwing up, but at some point Americans want to hear some good news and we can make it happen news. Plus they are just playing into his wheel house by making him the center of attention.

He’d better have a much better plan that H Clinton, too. Of course her platform was the most exhaustive list of pandering to special interests there could have been. Keep it simple and on point Joe.  

Lets talk about masks or as the better half said the other day, your rights were not taken away with wearing a mask. You gave them up when you signed onto the internet and bought smart phones. Our devices are so full of people taking away our protections, spying on us, selling our personal information, we are giving our rights away for less than pennies on the dollar. Shoot we are paying them to abuse us. And people think wearing a mask is an infringement upon them. No wonder Putin is smiling all the time, we are shooting ourselves down at a rapid rate. Yea, people seem to forget Putin has stated he wants to see us and Western Democracy fail. He just uses our own devices against us and people can’t see this from underneath their own built in blinders. Curious how he will respond to the ISS UFO sighting. 

Well another day, another arrest. Thanks S. Bannon for reinforcing my belief in Trump’s continual debacle of ethics. 

Less than three months to go before we find out how Trump will try and stay in office. Way too many people in this country have just lost it. And the current infamous conspiracy group is proof positive. 

And I do have a twitter account. The user name is dallasareaopin in case you are ever interested in my once every few month tweet.

And finally I may post the blog I wrote that I hesitated on last week. It probably isn’t that Earth shattering. And if I do, it will be before Trump speaks next week.

Cheers

A self created quandary

 I just spent a bit working on a post that in my younger days I would have long since hit the post button. Now with children and grandchildren in this world with some as the kids say haters, I had to save the draft and think about it.

If you read me regularly you know I never hit hard, and try to play cutesy sometimes even when I go after something or someone or some entity. Sometimes I am sarcastic and sometimes I think I am funny. Every now and then I do try to come up with at least an idea, only others will tell you if it is a good one or not.

Yet, today I went to town and even with trying to make it light it was an extreme hard attack or accusation. I do not take it lightly and again in my younger days this current post would not be written. 

Back in the day I didn’t care and I would just spew out stuff and it didn’t matter my target. Now more mature or maybe just older and tired, I still see the world the same way, but I am much more mellow so to speak. I love my family so I would hate for me to go to town and for it to stick and my family receive the flap or worse. Yes, I know I do not have a monstrous following where I should probably have to worry about it, but I do. No need for them to feel the hate for the sins of the father madness.

So it bugs me I haven’t posted what I wrote, but I cannot rectify in my head if it would matter if I did. 

So I feel like I may have wasted time, but what I was calling out definitely needs to be called out and probably even harder than I did. I saved it as a draft so who knows it still may get posted. It may not. 

Anyway just some hazy rumblings left in the brain after writing it all. And the funny thing is, along with many other things I write it could be said in one straight forward sentence. Hmmmmmmmmmmm, yet it is more fun to try and add humor and attempt to make a point or create a story or entertaining reading. I did make the effort for entertaining reading. Who knows?

Another of life’s quandaries. Do you go for it? Or play it safe? It needs to be said though. Tough choices in life at all ages.

Cheers

It’s not politics, it is math

 The economy is not politics, it is math. 

The pandemic is not politics, it is math

The stimulus is not politics, it is math.

The census is not politics, it is math. 

The budge is not politics, it is math that puts policy into action.

People will say everything is politics, those people do not want to be held accountable for making the effort to make the math right.

Math needs balance. Both sides of the equation need to be equal, if not then the math is wrong. 

Right now the equation is out of balance and our country (especially the vast majority of our people)is suffering because the equations are unbalanced. As long as the stock market and the elitists get the more than the rest of the country then we will be out of balance for a long time. 

The economy needs to be spread out where all benefit, otherwise the equation is unbalanced.

The pandemic is affected by the math of the spread. More people not following common sense and courtesy then the formula for the spread increases.

The stimulus is a way to help balance the economy math.

The census is basic appropriation of resources. If those resources are unbalanced the equation is unbalanced and people suffer.

The budget needs to be balanced so we can balance how public policy is managed. The budget represents how public policy is balanced so there is even distribution of resources. The balance is the back and forth of the country’s needs and priorities for the whole of the country. If this equation changes over time as priorities shift then the equation balances in the long run. 

Politics are throwing the math off. As long as people play politics with our lives the equation will be unbalanced. Time for people to realize this is a failure of our politicians to govern this country. 

Get ready to play some opera, that lady is about to sing

 

Yes friends the Republicans are working hard each and every day to destroy social security.

And now Trump has cut the payroll tax, but if you read the fine print you will have to payback what is being cut for now. So it really isn’t a cut, it is loan to you that our future cannot afford.

It doesn’t even sound good on the surface, but along with everything else the Republicans are doing, the death of the working and middle class is their aim.

We definitely need social security reform to make it better. We do not need games played with it by people who do not give a damn about the people of this country. When will the majority realize they are being screwed?

And the Democrats can’t figure out how to stop being bullied by the Republicans. And quite frankly Biden doesn’t have any new ideas so even if he wins, we haven’t. 

Well, what say you Christianity

 

As a Christian I am awestruck at modern evangelicals. And more so at the so called leadership than actual evangelicals. Yes, this is about Falwell. 

As a Christian I have to admit on the saint to sinner scale I tend to fall much farther on the sinner side than the saint side so not trying to throw stones from a glass house I still have to comment on Jerry Falwell Jr.’s recent fall from grace. If we can call it that. And really I do not want to even begin to say his name to give him credit. Yet the hypocrisy of the leadership of Evangelicals makes me worried about the future of Christianity in this country.

And I stress the leadership of evangelicals being the problem, not the people who practice their faith. And yes there is a big gap between the leaders and the people in regards to actually living a Christian life. I say this because I know many. I am not, nor claim to be an Evangelical, yet the people I do know amaze me sometimes at the dedication to their faith.

One issue I have with many Christians not just evangelicals is the over use of quoting Biblical scripture. Yes you need to know it, but I know people who just beat you up with it, completely forgetting your are suppose to live the teachings, not become obsessed with the words. To my point though as with many Christians I know Evangelicals that not only know their scripture so much more than I, but also live it as I believe we all should. And this causes me to become even more upset with people like Jerry Falwell. I cannot even call him Reverend because his public life is so far removed from Christianity it is a sin. And I am very serious in choosing the word sin because he is lying to the world when his actions say one thing and his words say another thing. I am not going to go into details but any study of what he does and what he says will make you nauseous to your core. 

Going back to the rank and file evangelicals, I have witnessed many who truly live the life of Christianity so I wonder why people like Falwell become their leaders. What disconnect is going on that people do not throw back the curtain and find leaders that better represent their faith. I use to work with someone who would wear me out quoting scripture. Every conversation was peppered with scripture references, yet I was his supervisor and saw first hand he applied being a Christian into his work. So I never said anything about these references. I would discuss/debate application of teachings and our conversations on this level was very fruitful and enjoyable. Yet he would not flinch to support people that I thought were a living contradiction to who he is and what he did as a Christian. Drove me even more mad than the scripture quotes all the time. Again I do not understand this disconnect with supporting leadership that literally goes against the actual teachings of Jesus Christ.

This is one of the reasons I understand why so many people aren’t attracted to Christianity when they see these displays of hypocrisy in the media and in public action all the time. 

Anyway we all fall and I have fallen more times than I can count, so I do not want to celebrate Jerry Falwell’s removal from his job in a vengeful way, just point out he does not represent Christianity in its truest form or even come close. 

Cheers