Thirty-three years ago when visiting my fiancée I met Brian.  He was a month old and the son of my fiancée’s brother.  A month later I would have a wife and Brian would be my nephew.

We raised our family in Minnesota and Deb’s brother and wife raised their two boys in Colorado, so we got together infrequently.  The “cousins” would occasionally come up to Minnesota in the summer for some boating and swimming and we went to Colorado once in a while, but geographical distance kept us from getting as close as might have been the case under better circumstances.  While I didn’t know Brian and his brother as well as I would have liked, I was sure of one thing; both of my brother-in-law’s sons grew up to be young men of good character.  They were, without a doubt, good kids.

After his kids were grown, Deb’s brother took a managing director position with an American firm in Delhi, India.  He and his wife have been there for nine years and enjoy the Indian culture and people immensely.  Brian went into the military after college and serves as a military officer with the US Army in Kentucky.

In the ever-changing course of cultures, peoples, and places, Brian returns to Winona this weekend.  This will be a much different trip than before.  This time Brian will honor us with the presence of his parents, his friends, and his fiancée from India, the beautiful and charming Rajalakshmi.  They will be wed on a bluff overlooking the river our Native Americans called the Messipi, the “Great Water.”  Raja’s parents will come, along with other friends from India.

Welcome back to Winona my nephew, Brian!  Just as it happened to your uncle thirty-three years ago, you will have a wife this weekend.  And you will bless us with some wonderful new family members that will enhance our love and understanding of each other as family.  But more important, you will continue to bless me with your decency, your honesty, and just by being the fine person you are.

Your Uncle Don

Now that the “not guilty” verdict has been rendered in the Michael Jackson case it is time for the entertainment superstar to restructure his life and his business.  Although he is in financial trouble, Jackson remains one of the most talented entertainers ever.  While the trial disclosures have undoubtedly damaged his reputation among many, he still has millions of admirers throughout the world.

Jackson is not unlike a corporation that is experiencing financial difficulty.  He needs to trim the fat and start doing the things that “got him there” in the first place.  My advice is as follows:

·    Recuperate for six months and stay out of public.  You need the media off your back for a while, so get healthy and regain your strength for your “comeback”.

·    Create Music.  Spend time in the studio working on new material and brush up on old material.  You still have loads of talent.

·    Sell Neverland.  The disposal of this ranch will accomplish two things.  First, it will generate much-needed funds for the Jackson treasury.  Giraffe food isn’t cheap.  Second, Neverland is associated with child molestation charges.  Selling the ranch will distance Jackson from those charges.

·    Cull the herd.  You are surrounded staff and employees, many of whom have not served you well.  Trim expenses by getting rid of excess staff.  Cut back on non-staff expenses as well.

·    Fire Jesse Jackson as your spiritual advisor.  Jesse is a loser and an extortionist.  He thrives on victimization.  Don’t hang around him any more or you will be even a bigger loser.  By the way, this advice applies to anyone.  Even Shaun Hannity turned into a loser when he snuggled up to Jesse Jackson during the Terri Schiavo debacle.

·    Go on Tour.  Within a year go on a 30-city tour.  If you don’t have any new material just go with your old material.  People will flock to buy your tickets no matter what material you perform.  Your financial recovery will be assured.

Last but not least, quit sleeping with little boys and stop carving on your face.  One more facial surgery and you will have to audition for space alien movies.  Finally, your skin is probably whiter than Queen Elizabeth’s posterior, so it probably doesn’t need another bleach job.

You’re weird, Michael.  But you’re also a heck of a talent.  When jogging I listen to your stuff on my I-Pod almost every day.  Take my above advice and you’ll be back on top in no time!

Amnesty International recently made headlines world wide when it characterized the US base in Guantanamo the “Gulag of our Time”.  If Amnesty was looking for headlines, the “Gulag” word certainly achieved it’s objective.

The Soviet Union implemented a series of “Gulags”, or forced labor camps, in 1919.  By the mid 1930’s, under the rule of Joseph Stalin, the population of prisoners in these camps reached it’s peak.  Murderers and thieves, along with religious and political dissenters, made up the primary prisoner population. Gulag camps were located in the far north regions of Siberia.  Prisoners constructed roads, canals, railroads, and power stations as well as engaging in the mining and lumber industries.  Food was scarce and prisoners were sometimes worked to death.  Prisoners had little no legal recourse once put into these camps.

If Amnesty International wants to maintain it’s credibility it should point out that virtually none of the above descriptions of “Gulag” is relevant at Gitmo, except for the part about legal recourse.  Detainees at Gitmo don’t work at all.  They receive plenty of food along with free copies of the Koran, courtesy of the US government.  They may be in Gitmo for a long time, perhaps for the rest of their lives.  They haven’t been convicted of a crime.  Most have been jailed without charges.  They were, however, somehow curiously in Afghanistan, with rifles in their hands, fighting for the Talaban.  Strange coincidence.

Sorry my Gitmo friends.  In this lifetime you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing.  You and your ilk might think about that in the future.  Under normal circumstances, guilt by association represents shaky and indefensible grounds on which to imprison people, but that changed on 911.  That was the day when you went too far.  It was the day when the United States decided to quit accommodating you and your twelfth-century mentality, to stand above the world’s weak and indecisive nations, and to battle you head on.  In the brave new world of terrorism that you fools have created, mere association may be your undoing, so be careful with whom you associate.  Be careful what you advocate.  You might have to wait until the your next reincarnation to see freedom again.

The unfortunate and unjust legal environment that victimizes prisoners at Gitmo is a direct result of the actions of extremist brutes that will stop at nothing to kill their enemies.  Prudent Americans, who insist on defending freedom, whether they are Christians, Muslims, or Jews, aren’t going to free terrorists from prison so they can continue their ways, no matter what Amnesty International says or writes.  This is precisely the message that the Bush administration is giving to anyone who plans to kill innocent people under the guise of religious extremism or dissatisfaction with American foreign policy.

The first day of June 2005 brought a massive mudslide to Laguna Beach, California destroying seventeen homes and damaging eleven others.  Several homes buckled as they slid down a hill and others were left dangling in the air.  Fortunately, no one was killed in the 7:00 a.m. disaster.

Laguna Beach is a beautiful Oceanside community in southern California.  The place bustles with boutique cafés, art galleries and fancy restaurants.  The ocean view from the Laguna Beach hills makes housing lots worth over $2 million.  In a state where the median priced home now exceeds $500,000, most of the destroyed homes were worth several million dollars.  Above average precipitation over the past few months has softened the hillsides, creating the environment ideal for landslides.  Such disasters have regularly occurred before on heavily developed southern Orange county slopes and they are certain to continue.  There is no insurance for mudslides.

The unfortunate homeless in Laguna Beach are much like people who have built expensive homes on hurricane-prone Florida beaches or along inland rivers that flood regularly.  There are two reasons that the average American has little sympathy for the folks that lose their homes in this manner.  First, the “victims” own multi-million dollar homes, so we figure that they have adequate resources to come back from these disasters.  Second, unlike villagers in cyclone-prone Bangladesh who have no choice where to live, southern Californians voluntarily choose to build homes where hill fires, tides, and seismic faults regularly occur.  Presumably, intelligent people with resources should be wiser than to build where hurricanes blow, rivers flood, and hills collapse.

The Laguna Beach millionaires will go to FEMA and other Federal and State government agencies to ask for a taxpayer bailout, just as their Florida beachcomber friends have done.  We will bail them out.  They will take the proceeds and find another hill to build on, or another beachfront location where they will tempt fate a second, or third time.

Should the government bail out Laguna Beach millionaires?  If a cocaine addict becomes pregnant with her fourth child, the government will bear the expense of placing her other three children in foster care.  If an uninsured motorcycle rider refuses to wear a helmet and sustains massive head injuries, he is hospitalized at taxpayer expense.  If corporate officers steal millions from an employee pension program, leaving pensioners only 40% of their stated proceeds, they will serve only a couple of years in some white collar “tennis court” prison.  If it is the job of  Government to protect people from the results of their stupid actions, shouldn’t we help the folks in Laguna Beach?

I think not.  A hundred years ago our government had neither the tax base nor the desire to protect people from foolish actions.  Many would say this was a cruel time, but letting people suffer the consequences of their actions also fostered a more rational and responsible society.  There is no better teacher than bitter experience.  When government softens the “bitterness” of the lesson, common sense will not prevail.