For December 21, 2014

When I was young and foolish many, many years ago I got a hand full of Cuban cigars.  Those of you familiar with Cuban cigars, therefore know, I got a hold of one of those big babies.  Yep, thought I was hot stuff.  Pulled out a blow torch and lit the darn thing. Showed everyone what it was to be a man. Fifteen minutes later, I was totally sick to my stomach, puking whatever it was I ate for dinner. 

So, you see, if I don’t seem excited about the President establishing normal relationships with Cuba, well, I’m not.  I thought those many years ago it was a mistake to ignore them.  Relations between countries are like relations between married people, if they can’t, or refuse to talk with one another, nothing will get done.  In the case of Cuba it almost resulted in the world going to nuclear war.  Besides that, didn’t some smart fellow say, “Hold your friends close, but hold your enemies even closer?”

In New York on Saturday, two of New York’s finest were brutally assassinated by a deranged black fellow from out of the city.  He came in from Baltimore where he had shot his girlfriend.  All three were senseless shootings by a man who should have been in a mental ward.

The news media is trying hard to tie this tragedy to the unfortunate events of Ferguson and the takedown and choking of a New York man.  In reality, the events of yesterday’s shootings can’t be connected.  The shooter was a mental case, a mad-man and if we had a decent method for getting these crazies off the street all of us would be a lot safer.

At one time we had a decent, if not perfect, system for dealing with mentally challenged people, but in 1961 the Joint Commission of Mental Health shifted the care of mentally challenged people to the local communities.  This approach was workable but the government provided very little money and as a result many of these patients ended up homeless.  An average homeless person waits ten years or more before receiving mental health evaluations and no lockup time. By the 1990’s the number of mental hospital dropped from approximately 300 to about 40. 

The fact is we have not only a lot of upset people who don’t respect the police, but we also have a lot of mentally deranged people who need to be evaluated sooner rather than later.  The facts are that 80% of the crimes committed in this country are by persons of color.  You people parading around in the name of Michael Brown need to pick someone, or something, that’s not involved in criminal activity.  We need to give people hope, a path to success, and a chance to share in the American Dream.  Demonstrate for these things, not for someone who robbed a store a few minutes before his untimely death.