[MD] A President's blog

[Dan Glover]

Hello everyone

>From: Khaled Alkotob <khaledsa at juno.com>
>Reply-To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
>Subject: Re: [MD] A President's blog
>Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:43:08 -0800
>
>Hello Dan
>
>Well, peace does not sell. The war machine has to go on.

Hi Khaled

It's all part of the Giant that feeds off humanity.

>
>The dollar is sliding against the world currency, inflation is catching
>up, education is left behind, no universal health care and the list go
>on.

The world is full of change. It's good to remember that times are never 
quite as bleak as they seem nor as good as they seem.

>
>I live in  town of about 500,000 people. according to the numbers
>released by the local PD, we have close to 4,000 gang members of ONE
>particular gang, with a support group behind them of 6,000 people.
>
>Well if my math is right that's 2% of the population for one gang, add in
>the other gangs and the numbers can be from 3% to 5% of the total
>population.
>
>If this average holds nationally, that's 6,000,000 ( six million) gang
>members in the US.

Sounds kind of scary and perhaps we need to ask what are all those gang 
members seeking?

I am unsure if there's any gang activity in my area or not. Of course I live 
in a small town of 300 people way out in the hills so I doubt there's much 
activity to sustain a gang.

I buy houses and fix them up to resell and I live in the house while I am 
doing the work. The last house I bought, fixed up, and sold was in the city 
of Chicago, in a mixed neighborhood with lots of traffic and music and all 
the attendant sounds and smells of a large number of people clumped together 
in one area. There were daily gang shootings and a person had to be 
constantly on the lookout for trouble. I disliked it intensely and worked 
very hard on that house in order to get it ready to sell. I had an offer in 
three days when I put it on the market and I was out of there.

I bought the house where I live now with the same intentions but that was 
over 2 years ago. I like it here so much that I've decided to stay a while. 
Maybe the rest of my life. I have a large yard and a big house of 3200 
square feet and I paid less than eighty thousand dollars for it. And no one 
bothers me. One afternoon I was working in my garden and pausing from my 
labor I heard a sound I had never before heard. It was an ant scratching its 
way across a leaf. That's how quiet it is here.

The sky is a different color of blue here than in the city and the stars are 
much brighter at night. So bright they sometimes startle my visitors and the 
sight of a clear night sky never fails to take away my breath.

>
>According to the story on ABC last year, 50,000 young women get kidnapped
>and broken in to serve the prostitution industry in this country, each
>year. That's a million over a 20 years period. Talk about terror.

Right.

>
>Of course such issues do not get you elected, so no one talks about them.

Yes there's that, and also I think many people who are taken advantage of 
have no one looking out for them in the first place for whatever reason. No 
family, no friends, no one they can trust. There's no saftey net for those 
people who for whatever reason happen to fall through the cracks. What kind 
of answers do you see to this problem?

>
>It's a lot easier to rule by fear than by asking the citizens to think
>for themselves.

Well... I don't know that anyone should have to be asked to think for 
themselves. That is a right that we have to reach out and take. Would you 
agree?

Thank you for your comments

Dan