How Do You Know They're For Real?

I went Downtown today for the purposes of people-watching and relaxation.  I could have taken a drive to Goldfield or St. George or someplace, but I'm on the road next weekend so I wasn't going to do that today.  Sometimes I enjoy Downtown and other times I don't.  I guess I didn't want to get "apartment fever" today, so I made the drive.

I have been there often enough to where I recognize the regular weirdos and street performers.  I've seen several of the same panhandlers over and over.......one notable one being a lady who had stage 4 cancer when I saw her there last year, and who now has stage 3 cancer according to her sign that she updated three months ago.  I can pick out the hucksters and scam artists who are hawking time-shares.  King Solomon wrote some several centuries ago that "there is nothing new under the sun" and that would certainly apply to the Fremont Street Experience.

Yet today, I saw something that wasn't there before.  There were three young men standing at a table, holding signs that were asking for donations to fight child sex-trafficking in Las Vegas.  While I was sipping a Dos Equis at the outside bar in front of the Golden Nugget, I observed several tourists donating money to these men.  No doubt that the tourists felt good about doing "something" to fight this problem, although as a regular reader of the Las Vegas Review-Journal I haven't seen any articles about the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department cracking down on the illegal sex trade.....until two days ago.  I know those young man weren't out there last Saturday because I met a good friend of mine at that very same bar.  And as I'm watching these tourists hand over money to these young men, I couldn't help but ask myself a question:  how do I know that these guys are for real?

My experience along Fremont Street is that no one who is trying to get money away from you is your friend.  No one is using honest means to get that money from you.  This would of course, exclude those kiosks selling souvenirs, but all up and down that corridor are people holding cardboard signs claiming to be victims of circumstance of one kind or another.  I have seen them there for eight months running now.  And now I'm seeing what purports to be a legitimate operation.  But again, the question remains, how do I know that these guys are for real?

I'm going to make one thing clear here.  No one who is in their right mind is in favor of child trafficking.  Those who traffic and those who use the children are very sick people who belong chained together in a correctional facility and using sledgehammers to convert boulders into talcum powder with no hope of parole.

However...........in case you haven't heard me say this, or read this previously, I'm going to repeat an observation that I frequently make about Las Vegas:

Half this town is out to cheat the other half of town!

And odds are, no pun intended, the percentage of people who are not visitors to Fremont Street who are out to cheat you is significantly higher than 50%.  I'd venture to say that it's somewhere up around 85%.  It's very possible that these guys I saw for the first time are part of that 15%, but how do I know that?

They are soliciting donations in a public area.  Although solicitations of this kind in and of itself are legal, you don't know what happens to that money once you part with it.  There is no way of verifying that your donations are going to the cause you want to help.  They could be passing out literature and not accepting donations, but what they're doing here is asking for donations and then giving you the literature.  The literature itself may or may not be 100% true, and I'm not even sure that is possible to quantify the dollar amount or number of people involved in child trafficking in the first place.  Those who do it don't file reports to the government or collect sales tax.  Those who are victims are intimidated into remaining victims.  And those sick people who use the victims don't go around telling their friends and neighbors what they really like to do on their time off.

I really hate to be skeptical about these guys. 

Sadly I am, and more so, considering where I am currently living.

Another Sunday Evening in Las Vegas

I haven't been posting a whole lot since I haven't felt like I had anything worthwhile to say.  And now I'm realizing that I ought to get those Rhyolite and Goldfield pictures up here sometime, which would need a block of time on a weekend to do it.  Yes, I could have done it this weekend, but yesterday morning was spent on an important matter and yesterday afternoon I found myself wanting to relax and take stock of things.

Today's been pretty quiet.  I did go for a short drive after church, after which I stopped off at a supermarket to get things for the evening meal.  I haven't decided exactly what to have but I'll make my mind up shortly after logging off.

I have been catching up on a lot of reading.  A friend of mine at work loaned me a Clive Cussler novel, and I finished it yesterday.  It took a while for the story to get going, and some of the dialog got a little cheesy, but I found myself entertained, and what surprised me was that he was able to get a good story across without any profanity.  Not even a "hell" or a "damn".  I'm now thinking of looking for more of his titles at the thrift store.  Right now I've returned to reading the James Bond novels that Ian Fleming wrote.  Or rather, re-reading them.  I think Fleming was one gifted writer.

On the home front, I'll be in Tucson, via road, for Labor Day weekend, and I'll be flying down later in September.  The flights haven't been booked yet but I'm looking forward to going.  I'm not sure if we'll be catching The Smithereens in Sahuarita.  I should write Jim Babjak to let him know what's happening.

Work-wise, it's a bit on the dynamic side right now.  We've had some turnover in personnel so assignments have changed.  I'm picking up work on satellite ground stations in addition to my work on life support systems.  It's good experience.  I can't complain about what they're giving me to do. 

As for Las Vegas......there are times when I don't like being inside of an apartment.  Come to think of it, that's most of the time these days.  A friend of mine here is in the same boat as I am in:  wife, house and family are in a different state.  We went out to dinner Thursday night at a locals casino here, and we were hanging around Downtown yesterday for part of the afternoon.  It actually turned out to be a decent Downtown visit:  the panhandlers were leaving the tourists alone!  The people watching was good too.

So it's a quiet Sunday evening here, and time for reflection.  I figure on doing some light reading after supper, which I think will be home made chili.  Chili is therapeutic and I like making it, but the high point will be talking to Sheila before going to bed.

I miss her, and it's hard at times.

But we'll survive.

Fast Food and Politics

You have no doubt seen tantalizing photos from the fast food industry promoting their products.  The hamburgers are always plump and juicy.  The hamburger is perfectly stacked.  The ingredients are obvious in the picture:  the tomatoes are red, the pickles can be seen, and the sauce never drips over the side.  Everything is perfect; all is well with the world.

But when you buy that hamburger, what you get isn't what they advertised.  The product is unbelievably sloppy.  The sauce drips over the side.  The bun has been manhandled and often the imprint of a hand can be seen in the surface.  The onions are falling out of the center.  The meat patties are not stacked; sometimes they appear to have smashed together so that the slice of cheese between them can be forced to ooze out.

Not clear yet?  Take a look at this.

This is analogous to a political campaign.  The candidate is much like the advertised image of a fast food product.  Once elected, the candidate transforms into the reality of a fast food product. 

Last I heard, we have 23 candidates for President between the two parties.  It's possible that out of the 23 we have two, maybe three of them, that do not fit this fast food analogy.  But will even one of those two or three survive the primary process?

Odds are, it's going to be a contest between the two parties to give us a choice between two nominees who the are most unqualified.  There might not even be half a dime's worth of difference between the nominees.

I'm tired of this "lesser of two evils" decision that I'm asked to make every four years.

I wish I was wrong about this.

More so than my wishing I was wrong about what half the people in Las Vegas are up to.