Mexico @ MindSay

Cleaning up my office, I found a Dec 2002 copy of Astronomy magazine. I am an amateur astronomer - built my own telescope years ago - so I pick up the magazine now and then.

The 8" Meade LX90 telescope was featured for $1495.
The 8" LX200GPS was $1999.

So I decide to check out Meade today and find that comparable telescopes now cost $1799 and $2599. Not only that, Meade moved its manufacturing facility from California to Mexico last year.

http://www.meade.com/factorytour/index.html

Higher prices, cheaper labour, and less quality. And lets not forget - unemployed Americans who used to work for Meade.

Shame on Meade. I will not be buying their products.

do you bring back little remembrances of special places you have been? sometimes it's a postcard, certainly a photo, maybe a little tchotchke bought in a store. maybe a very portable  bit of art. For years I have been marking these special places with an  item that fits in a pocket. in the southwest I started a very small container or pot collection in which I would hide things found on trails. smooth rocks. a eucalyptus button, a feather. something precious that spoke of the place we had been.  tonight when I could sleep not and got up for a short massage in the hot tub.... I decided to try another you tube video with clean but uncombed hair.  I found myself in front of a shelf of zuni fetishes we have collected over the past 30 years. and one particular place came flooding back at 2 am. i shall fall asleep again thinking of the magic that is Acoma New Mexico. Night all.

It has been reported that all the people who have died from this Swine Flu lived in Mexico. Everyone else that has been infected so far has got over it, and was not seriously ill.

Strange stuff. A lot of fear out there, just the same. I would not be surprised if the border becomes quite restricted if many more people die down there. Definately a negative for drug smugglers. But its bringing down the price of oil, as travel is negatively affected.

Interesting comments about my gun control blog. People are always passionate about their guns. Guns are part of American culture, and will be for a very long time. I am going to get out this summer and do some shooting at the range.

I own guns. Yep, I have a 9mm pistol, and a few hunting rifles. The rifles were given to me by my father, who died last year.  I bought the pistol a long time ago, and only used it once....for target practice. The pistol is quite small, holds 13 rounds. I have small hands, so this is perfect.  It is a beautiful weapon, Italian made.

I keep them locked up. No gun in my car, under my pillow, or in the bedroom drawer.

I believe that in a free society, law abiding people should be able to own firearms. But I believe in some form of sensible gun control for public safety. These are deadly devices, and the possession of them must be restricted to law abiding citizens without mental health issues. I think all handguns must being registered. I also think that only the police and military should be allowed to have assault weapons. I would like anyone to tell me why they need an assault weapon or automatic weapon. They have no sporting use, and are extremely dangerous in the hands of a criminal if they are stolen. Or imagine another Columbine when a teenager takes daddy's AK47 to school.

This business of assault weapons smuggled to Mexico for the drug cartels is very serious. It'll be interesting to see if Obama will do anything about it. He has been incredibly soft on this matter. In fact, he's acting like a republican when it comes to assault weapons.

Unless you live in a cave, you're probably aware that Mexico is disintegrating due to many powerful drug cartels that are seizing control of that country. This is a big deal that should concern us all, as this has the potential to create a huge crime problem in this country. I have a couple of brief things to say about this.

First, these cartels would not be there if it were not for the huge and profitable drug trade in the USA. Americans provide the cash and weapons for these people. It is not a made-in-Mexico problem. What can we do about it? We can legalize drugs. Or we can go the other way - throw anyone involved in the drug trade into prison (including users), build a big wall along the entire border, station thousands of troops along it, and physically check every damn vehicle with a fine tooth comb coming from, or going to Mexico. Yes, that is a lot of work, but it has to be done.

Second, we should be helping the Mexican government as much as we can to destroy these cartels. Instead of spending hundreds of billions on unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we should bring our troops home, station some of them on the border for security duties there, and assist the Mexican government (within reason).