When you live in a fabulous place like Colorado there are givens. When you get up in the morning you are greeted by the sun…over 320 days a year. When you walk down the street odds are the person coming the other way is under 40, loves the outdoors and is pretty well educated. We are a purple state and unfortunately at election time we are inundated by ads from both sides. Such is our lot. And for some unknown reason we are the center of gun or bomb wielding misfits that feel it is their right to blow themselves and others apart.

I was in church Sunday. Father Mike was waxing poetically about nothing in particular and a young girl left the pew where her family was sitting. She had tears in her eyes and was distraught. She wore an Arapahoe High School sweatshirt. Headlines meet reality. I have two girls that once were that young and innocent. I have seven grandchildren who will face things like this several times in their lives. Commonplace and quickly relegated to page 12 in the second section. How sad.

If you haven’t been there, you thank your lucky stars. You gawk at the TV for a period of time partly because the ritual makes it somehow unreal and by watching maybe, just maybe it will turn out differently. Then again  the footage is in  the worst way voyeurism and you relish the fact the grisly scene is hundreds or thousands of miles away both physically and in your heart. Oh well, back to my life.

I really think it is a cultural thing and not just unique to the Rockies. Yes we are outdoorsy and adore the hunter gatherer mentality. Men are men and drive pickups. But you can see the same gig at a college or NFL game. Tailgating and screaming for blood are not only commonplace but part of our psyches. A young man named Keshown Moreno is our running back. A couple of weeks ago we were playing Kansas City and during the National Anthem there he was with tears flowing from his eyes. He was just proud and felt so lucky to be there he would state later. Many couch potatoes and commentators of the testosterone nation thought he should have been stronger and not show feelings. What a pussy!

We are enamored and obsessed with weaponry. As a kid of course I loved to blow up coffee cans with a cherry bombs. In Viet Nam you do brandish an M60 or a handheld grenade launcher and macho kicks in. Put your thumbs on the trigger of twin 50’s and as the spray of miniature missiles rakes back and forth there is a little Rambo in all of us. But that was war and we are supposedly civilized. When you see the destruction of both friend or foe the rubber meets the road. These are not good things.

We vacillate and ponder. I have a right to bear arms but does that mean an arsenal? If you can’t defend yourself with fifteen rounds should you even have a gun? We shoot down gun registration laws because you are infringing on my rights. And yet does anyone want to talk about my right to walk down the street or go into a mall without fear of having an urban warrior mow me down? Tell that mom and dad whose daughter had her head blown off about your rights. I am sure they would feel for you.

I was fascinated by the reaction of media types and solons who felt Pope Francis was over the top in his criticism of capitalism. Rush Limbaugh thought he was a Marxist but said he had really liked him up to this point. No more. Sara Palin and Forbes magazine weighed in. The former governor had not read the encyclical  but she thought it sounded pretty liberal. Despite these weighty observations no one got it that he was talking in a spiritual not political sense. We have made it a habit of politicizing everything even showing charity toward your fellow man.

I was getting a cup of coffee the other day and there was a guy bitching about all the hoopla that went with the passing of some “friggin’ South African dude.” Incredibly after 27 years of hard time he embraced his jailers. He got into government and got it to change a whole culture called apartheid. He cheered an all white rugby team and then moved on to let others take up the mantle. Why would any one want to honor this guy’s memory? We have more important things to do .

Yes I am in the Christmas spirit. I want to be charitable and give to you and others. I would love my hunter friends to have all they need to pursue their interests. Just keep it reasonable and register. We are not going to tail you any more than the NSA does now.  I would love all my rich friends to keep all their money if they see fit. Just figure out how much you really need and leave a little for others. I would also like to figure out how we can solve this immigrant situation. I would like to reach out because my grandparents were visitors to Ellis Island oh so long ago and somehow I can’t be dismissive . I would like to help someone make a decent wage. It may be a hit to profits but I think we would get used to that. It would take a week of all of us living on $7.25 an hour to maybe see the light.

I ask why us and know it is not just Coloradans. I ask why us and I know deep down you all know the answer. We can’t live in an anonymous world where the victim of a hit and run lies in a snowdrift on a busy highway in Vail for 20 minutes before some one stops to help. We can’t make it all about me. Hey, that would be wonderful in some ways but sooner or later we need each other. Or like the dinosaurs we can be made extinct by an asteroid of our own design. Why us? We better figure that out soon.

As always

Ted The Great

Factoids:

If you make $7.25 an hour and work a forty hour week you will make approximately $15,000 per annum. $10 per hour comes to $20,000. $15 per hour rounds out to around $30,000.

80% of the workforce is on hourly wage. About 4 million make the minimum or 5% of the workforce. Vast majority of those are under 25.

In the US last year there were 31,076 homicides which comes to 85 per day or a little over 3 every hour. 10,000 were by gun. By contrast Germany and Canada had 200. Spain 100. and Australia around 50.

There are 275 million guns in the US. That’s 89 per 100 citizens. Serbia is in second with 58 per and Yemen third at 54. Interestingly Canada has 30, Palestine 3.4, Syria 3.9 and Viet Nam 1.7 per 100.

Since Newtown one year ago, 194 kids under 12 have been killed by guns. 127 of these were in their own homes.

There are 11.5 million undocumented(we used to call them illegal) immigrants in the US. 59% of those are of Mexican origin. There has been no new  net migration in the last two years. At least we have a number we can work with but unfortunately the problem is not going away.

Just for Fun:  Pour a drink and enjoy these two.

Google:……  Bob Hope Christmas | Big Geek Daddy

Put in your address line……http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3fgRV5N_qQ