Solving problems one at a time

Working and retired cops don’t sit around during their free time constantly thinking about solving crimes. Sometimes we sit around grousing about things that bug or confuse us, not related to law enforcement.

Although I am of moderate intelligence, many things confuse me. I am bewildered whether to support the “Stamp Out Obesity” program, or the “Stamp Out Hunger” program? Are kids too hungry, or too fat?

Heart-tugging commercials talk of kids going to school without breakfast. During vacation, when kids aren’t in school, they probably have their usual breakfast of Twinkies and Doritos, followed by a can of pop (Not soda. I’m from Michigan.) Where are the parents of the fat and hungry kids? Growing up, if I were hungry, my parents would get me food somehow, even if they didn’t eat. If I were fat, they would have done something to make me lose weight. There would be no need for government intervention.

I am a registered political Independent. I vote both sides of the slate, but my outlook leans toward the conservative or Libertarian. This means I am usually at odds with Democrats who want to rule our lives. We have enough problems in California without Ben Hueso whining about a state game official participating in a legal hunt in another state, which hunt is not allowed in California.

Get busy, Ben, and get that stupid bullet-train-money-drain off the tracks instead of worrying about something that’s none of your business.

Then there’s that hand-wringing Richard Bloom, a Santa Monica Democrat, worried about what happens at Sea World in San Diego with the whales. Isn’t that a topic for some other entity? People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have enough nut cases working for them to handle this without a lawmaker becoming involved. I’m happy the politicians saw this useless thing for what it was and wouldn’t pass the bill.

Another topic, this one without apparent political affiliation, is vegetarianism. An “enthusiast” writes to The Star-News regularly espousing why we should eat plants instead of animals. My statement to him is: “Mind your own business.” I don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses at my door trying to change my religious beliefs by knocking my religion and I don’t like vegans and born-again vegetarians telling me what to eat. My daughter-in-law is a vegetarian and we get along respectfully and nicely.

Some vegetarians cite beef cattle grazing and cows farting as a major cause for global warming. If the do-gooders want to convince someone to change, they should go to China and tell them to stop polluting the earth. The Chinese are among the more prolific polluters in the world.

Of course that practice would land them in a Chinese prison where they could eat seaweed and rice for as long as they were there. They could look out their cell window and watch the smokestacks emitting tons of horrible garbage into the air that would never be allowed in the United States.

Then, there’s the former mayor of New York who wanted to limit the size of the soft drinks you could purchase. Get out of my life, you clown.

During medical screening interviews it is now commonplace for new doctors to ask if you have firearms in your home. When I was a fake patient at the UCSD School of Medicine (I’ll write about that fun acting job adventure one of these days), the student doctors interviewing me about my “illness” would routinely ask the firearm question. Being an actor, I would answer as scripted. If it were real life I would have said, “None of your business. I came here to get treated for abdominal pain, not to be grilled on my private life. Forget guns. What’s causing my stomach ache?” (The fake problem was Diverticulitis.)

Maybe I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Tomorrow I’ll try the other side.