Voting for More.

I understand and support the decisions of many of my friends to vote Democrat. While I disagree, I understand the concept of voting for the better of the two main parties. Personally, I differ too much from either main party to feel good about voting for either one, although there are individuals in both parties I can support. I will examine the ballot at my polling location before the election and research everyone I vote for. Win or lose, I can sleep with my decision.

End the War On Drugs.

The war on drugs affects everybody. First, we spend over 30 billion dollars a year on the war on drugs, money which could go to any number of things that would affect everybody. For example, better teachers, schools, and educational PBS/NPR programming. Second, when parents are incarcerated their children suffer. Alcoholics go to jail when they get caught breaking the law. Marijuana users break the law just by being users. Third, people often choose legal alcohol over illegal cannabis to stay out of jail/keep jobs/stay on welfare. Alcohol use in many, many cases leads to a wide variety of negative consequences that affect families and communities. Domestic violence, for instance. Drunk driving accidents/incarcerations for another. Poverty as well, as it is easier to get high on a budget than to drink. I can easily find multiple people who would smoke me down on a daily basis, while getting drunk almost always costs money. Hell, you can get a few seeds from a friend and grow your own crop for free, it costs quite a bit to get into making your own booze. Finally, if marijuana was regulated and taxed like alcohol we would have a huge revenue source from taxes and we would have a huge job market open up which could lower the unemployment rate. The fact is that our jails are overrun with non-violent marijuana offenders, and our cities are filled with black market marijuana trade based violent crime, both things affect everybody and both could be eliminated by legalization.

Thoughts on Columbus Day.

Does ANYONE celebrate Columbus Day? Can someone explain to me the attraction. I cannot remember ever feeling right about celebrating Columbus Day. I really don't see what he did. The 'New World' had been found before, albeit not by that era of Europeans. He discovered it by accident and if he hadn't another European explorer would have. As travel based technology increased, expanding colonialism was an inevitability.