1605 Our Thoughts and Prayers

1605 Our Thoughts and Prayers Are with...

--The Scalia family.

--The wounded of war.

--The un-wounded at war.

--The bunnies in the cages of testing laboratories.

--Our Team.

--Those hospitalized after an auto wreck we saw.

--Those hospitalized after an auto wreck we didn’t see.

--Black lives.

--All lives.

--The unemployed.

--The underemployed.

--Aunt Margaret’s chance of winning the lottery.

--The poor starving children of ________ (insert locale of choice.)

Wow, that’s some spreading of thoughts and prayers.  And that’s a good thing.  Takes the pressure off thinking about your favorite subject, yourself.  Makes you feel better.  Sometimes much better.  Sometimes some of these prayers and thoughts actually appear to work.  

Mostly not.

--Scalia is still dead and his family still grieving.

--The wounded remain wounded.  Some are getting better, others not.

--The unwounded are still at war.  And they will be for the foreseeable future.

--The lab bunnies are still going blind so you can have better mascara.

--The lives that appear to matter but don’t still don’t.

You get the idea.

Jack Blatz of Sioux Falls, diagnosed with terminal cancer, doesn’t need your prayers or thoughts.  He needs hospice care.

Bonita Suarez, legal immigrant with green card,  four kids and no husband needs a job.

We interrupt this post to bring you the quote of the day:

“You can’t solve a problem just by throwing money at it.” -- Anon.

Well, guess what?  Sometimes you can.  And time. And effort.  And sustainability.

This is a powered, tilting wheelchair a quadriplegic might use to ambulate:

These are expensive, even to rent. Fortyish grand.  Lot of bucks for a piece of ugly furniture.

But if you need one, you need one. And money, not prayer is the answer.  Money, but not “positive thoughts” or “positive energy”

We have an old friend who needs one.  And other old friends have started a crowdfunding effort hoping to come up with 40 grand to buy one.

A perfect example of how throwing money at a problem will solve it.

Notice, you are not being asked to kick in.  That would be gauche.  It also might boost the amount collected above the 10% or so that has come in so far.

The problem belongs to a woman in Washington DC who took a nasty fall at home about a year ago and has now gone through enough rehab to be faintly optimistic about some kind of recovery, though certainly not full use of her arms and legs.

No fault here.  Just a bad happenstance followed by a fundraiser for the benefit of the kind of person who’d be appalled to know it’s going on. And the kind of person who would be the first to contribute, probably overcontribute if the patient were someone else.

But that’s not the point here.  

Shrapnel:

--Prosecutor Juan Martinez’ book about his role in the case against murderer Jodi Arias is out today. Let’s hope his talk show tour appearances improve. In her interview the other night, Nancy Grace managed to turn one of the most interesting public figures into someone pointless and boring, which in reality he is far from.

--Okay, conspiracy theorists, here’s real red meat. No autopsy for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. So we’ll never know for sure whether he died of natural causes or was the victim of a murder plot hatched by the socialist Muslim destroyer of America from his headquarters in the White House.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016