Slowing down in my old age, two minutes at a time.

As The Guitarman makes his undeniable creep towards the Big-Five-Oh, the inevitable slowly sets in. Stiffer joints (and not the good kind), cantankerousness, and the ability to focus on any one topic longer than 30 seconds. However he does have the abilty to be realistic. Hence, 7 Topics in 7 Minutes might be a little too much for the average reader to swallow, not to mention my fingers getting stiff for typing longer than it takes to watch one episode of Phineas and Ferb. So today marks the Grand Opening of my latest invention, a name that took me hours of hand wringing to decide upon, 5 Topics in 5 minutes. Okay, you got me, I am short on time this morning.

Hermain Cain
I have already decided who I am going to vote for in the Republican primary. Scratch that, it's actually who I am not going to vote for, and that includes anyone so right of center that they have to make plunging a knife into Roe vs. Wade a central issue. When I read that this representative of the Republican wing of the Republican party is actually leading opinion polls right now, it makes me wonder what in the hell ever happened to Ross Perot? Remember him? Short little wisp of a man with a shrill voice and lots of big ideas? We need another Ross Perot right now. You know, someone without any massive party affiliation dragging him back two centuries, someone to thumb his nose at the 2-party America, intent on driving America as far right or left of center as they can before they get voted out of office.

The American Candidate
Catchy, no? And a nice little segue into what could possible be the best idea ever to come out of The G-Man's head. I'm talking reality TV people. The kind that grips a nation and won't let go. You take 20 independent candidates for president, 20 Ross Perot's, people with idea's that aren't beholding to one party or the other. You stick 'em on television, where they debate each other, talk to the public, get in peoples faces, and get voted off the show one by one. In the end, you have a candidate that the entire country would know better than there own mother. If half of this country can obsess about a snotty, self-centered, drama queen named Snooki, just think about the kind of power a candidate for president can wield with that much might behind him.

Dope
Let's do some math on marijuana. What if it were legal? If you let every person out of prison currently serving a sentence on pot related charges, 178,315 people would go free, instantly saving US taxpayers $23,002,635. EVERY SINGLE DAY. That's almost $8.4 billion a year. But we're not done. If you assume that 1% of the population are daily users, and 10% are casual users, that could be around 100 million ounces consumed a year. Averaging $200 per ounce, that's nearly $20 billion in annual sales. Tax it what you want, that's a new industry, creating taxes and creating jobs. Still not done. It was estimated that we spend around $9 billion a year fighting the war on pot. Those are police man hours that could be redirected to fight real crime. And we would be putting gangs from Chicago to Mexico out of business. US prohibition on Alcohol was a massive failure, eventually putting the likes of Al Capone on ice. History proves If you don't learn from failure, you are doomed to repeat it. You can govern a people, but you can't tell them how to run their own lives. I'm just sayin'.

Scumbags
If you are a loyal reader (bored blog reader), then you remember the topic of Death from last week. A young life snuffed out in an instant by a remorseless ghoul. Well they caught the guy. John L. Wilson, who spent 17 of his last 20 years in prison, managed to spend some of his recent un-incarcerated days rehabbing (upgrading) his rap sheet by stabbing to death a 14 year girl in her own home. But stupid is as stupid does, as the crime genius (fucking idiot) stole the young girls phone, and kept texting the dead girls mom with taunts. (I know I sound like a broken record, but how the hell do we keep breeding these soul-less monsters?) All while his own phone was in his pocket. Yes, modern technology can track your cell phone anywhere, which means it can track two phones anywhere, which means that when the FBI saw the two phones curiously navigating the same path, they were able to nab the guy. One of those cases where you wish public be-heading was an option.

China
They sell us anything and everything from clothes to electronics. They refuse to import our products. They steal our manufacturing. They employ slave like labor to make their wares. And now, and most probably for years, have spies stealing our ideas too. Two cases in Chicago involving economic espionage are coming to fruition. In both cases, a Chinese national, working for an American company, are charged with stealing technical information with the intent on selling them to companies in China. One was actually at the airport with the documents in hand. And don't tell me the Chinese government isn't culpable here. They make it their business to know everyone elses business. So can someone please tell me what this country is going to do about it? And I ain't talking about throwing these 2 in the hoosegow. I am talking about our leaders being so damn cozy with the Chinese. About hitting them where it hurts. About ending the trade imbalance, and ending the pilgrimage of our jobs to a foreign land, one intent on seeing us go under. Big government America and it's current leaders don't have the will or the guts to stand up to China. But I bet the winner of The American Candidate might have something to say about that.