Just don't know.

  Wow. I couldn't think about how to get started this time without things getting too difficult. But I'm back and OK for now. I had to take a Xanax.  I hate having to depend on those things just to be able to function. And I have to take the weakest ones they make or I won't be able to function well. I can take the way I can get easily distracted with cannabis for the benefits it gives but the Xanax just slows me down and makes me stupid. Nothing for the pain and doesn't make me feel good at all, or even OK. The pills last longer than the cannabis but no where near the benefits. And the cannabis will help me sleep and I wake up refreshed instead of worse than if I hadn't slept at all like happens if I take a Xanax before going to sleep. I've got an old MIG welder that I've been trying to sell and a guy across town may be interested in it and if he buys it, I'll be OK for a few weeks instead of hoping someone would happen to stop by and smoke one with me. I feel like a beggar since things have gotten tight but a mans gotta do what a mans gotta do. Cathy was giving me a hard time about going to bed last night after I had about all the pain and noise I could stand for the day, and during our argument, she said "go take you a Xanax" and I just blew up. Don't know why but someone telling me I need to take something like that just set me off. Sometimes, when I think about it, is seems funny/odd that someone that uses cannabis is dead set against drugs. I don't feel I have the right to have an opinion about other peoples drug use, or not use, unless they are messed up and think they want to mess with me, except the knowledge that the so called drug war is wrong and helps make seriously harm full divisions among the people of my country and the entire world to some extent.
  Doesn't seem right looking at a sentence stating "my country" feeling the way I do about most our government and the forces behind the way its run. I can't stand the way things turn out after candidates promise so much and they are either just greedy to start with or stupid (GWB) or turn into whores once they get into office. People don't seem to have much respect for Jimmy Carter but IMO, he was the only honest president that we have had in any memories I have of any presidents I have lived under.
  While on the subject, kinda. I have an idea of how they have managed to keep cannabis illegal. People with money and power will know how to talk to the right people in the right way to make them understand their point of view. They have to be afraid if  next week, they woke up and found instead of party hardy, beer drinking good ol boys that go along to get along, the had a population of thoughtful peaceful men and women. It would devastate the gestapo wanna-bes and the greedy corporate heads behind the heads.They would lose out on the financial ability to hold mass areas of land for cheap pulpwood when hemp grows on land even poorer than scrub trees and in a fraction of the time. The land taxes would take all the profit out of being a mass land owner if hemp were available to be grown here. They see the end of that prohibition coming and that is why most of the land holdings are turning to privatized hunting to make up the money they are soon to lose. There is one thing the drug warriors get right. Cannabis use will go up if it is made legal for adult use. Quite a few people will quit drinking or greatly slow down on the amount of alcohol they consume meaning alcohol use will go down by at least something greater than 10%. Alcohol is one of the most profitable commodities there is for corporate heads behind the heads. Especial since they passed the welfare rules making etehanol out of corn for using as a fuel for cars and trucks while they keep subsidizing the sugar cane industry by keeping quotas on the amount our farmers are allowed to plant and harvest. How do you think that whatever country in South America does so well without buying a drop of oil, unless it is used for chemicals and not fuel for the cars and trucks. I don't know if they import oil for diesel or not so I make that allowance in the factuality of my last statement. Now, beyond this, is are the first layer profits of the alcoholic beverage industry, then the second tier profit grabber like the hospitals and auto repair shops and the police and court personal prison guards and their unions and funeral industry as well as the advertising media and we can't forget big pharma that make piles of cash keeping all those accident and violence victims drugged up. This is in no way a complete listing of the first and second tiers of the income from alcohol but there are more levels that are much more sinister. People don't think well and are much easier led around by the right propaganda when presented to them at the right times, like when their minds are dulled with alcohol. Makes a man wanna be a MAN! Beat on my chest, take on anybody and anything, and laugh at them while I mash their faces. Doesn't really make for a peaceful population and when the time comes to make war, what leader wants a peaceful population. Now comes the military-industrial complexities. Now, unless your a dummy, when you get involved in something like a war, you want to be damned sure your able to win it. There is no way, in the world we live in, that we (America) can just hide out heads in the sand and not be involved in what happens around the rest of the world. Not only would it be foolish, but the heads behind the heads would lose too much money being isolated here in one country. We are all part of one Earth. Same air and water all over this world.
  Back to the real subject. Anyway, we have to capable of using power, weather it be economic or. if it comes to it, militarily. Now, there is now way we could set around peacefully for 30 to 40 years and all of a sudden, be able to take on someone like China if they suddenly decided their way of life depended on the rest of the world living the same way theydo , under their benelevant leadreship. We are important in the world and need to be. (doesn't sound like me huh!)There are also many greedy,mean and ruthless people in this world and we need to be able to prevent them from pushing themselves into a position that they can be a danger to the entire world. Adolf Hitler did it and don't think it can't be happen again. That means we have to be in a position to do whatever may have to be done. That means keeping a strong military and top of the line technology.  You can't go along for any period of time and reduce the capabilities of the military and the industrial complexities that keep them supplied and equipped with top of the line technology and equipment. You can't either take enough men and/or women and make them sudden generals and get the knowledge and experience to successfully wage war and win and keep the casualty rate low, or at least reasonably low.To keep soldiers, officers and staff ready and able to protect us, we need all of the things that put us where we are today. Now,a young, intelligent, thinking person isn't likely to be real content to take an order to set in a hole when hundreds of enemy soldiers are coming to over run that position just so his captain can have a better chance to save his own butt. Cannabis does promote thinking in intelligent people. Alcohol does not.