Good Morning.

We're off for a busy Saturday in a few minutes. It's "Town Day" here in Waltham, so we'll have a Common full of crafts, food, activities, politicians...and Cub Scout recruiting. Later this afternoon, Javi has a road game, so we'll be travelling to nearby Reading to watch him kick a ball around the pitch.

But before I head for all that, I wanted to take a brief run through a couple of vexing problems facing our nation and the world today. As it turns out, I've been listening to some right-wing talk radio recently, and I accidentally read parts of the Boston Herald earlier this week whilst lining a small mammal's cage with it. But I digress.



I'll start with what's on everyone's mind these days; Gun Violence. It's unfortunate that every time we turn around, another mass shooting seems to have occurred in places as diverse as Connecticut, Washington, or Chicago. I know it's an epidemic of national proportions. Given that the NRA gives vast sums of cash to the Republicans in the house, I think they should probably ban abortions and see if that helps.

Of course, the economy is still in the shitter, and despite all of Congress's best efforts, job creation and economic growth remain stagnant and sluggish at best. The President has been doing all he can, but since Congress is purely interested in doing what's best for the downtrodden and the desperate, repealing Obamacare is probably going to do wonders for these folks.

We've still got the global situation in Syria facing us, and there's still the unresolved matter of a workable Middle East Peace Plan. Restricting voting rights of students across vast swatches of the South will move both processes forward, to be sure.

Another thing that needs fixing is our immigration policy. There's probably hundreds of thousands of kids out there that were brought to the US at an age before they knew anything else...they should be given an easier path to citizenship, given that it was their parents that did the deed, and the poor kids just don't know any other way except the American Way. Grandstanding on the budget and forcing a government shutdown over the debt ceiling is going to be a creative fix for this that I think everyone can support.

This is just the hard stuff. But even among the lesser tasks that we face, there are clear solutions. I wonder about our infrastructure. You've probably been caught in traffic jams or airway jams due to our outdated and overstressed existing systems, and I bet you don't even consider rail to be a viable alternative for a journey of more than 200 miles. Congress could probably fix all that by cutting SNAP benefits for our veterans.

That's just a handful of the things that really need attention. I'm proud of the way Congress has come together to work on these things. It brings a tear to my eye to see such a unified front on all these issues. Isn't America grand??