Obama shows true colors--turns his back on 9/11 family member

I have been supporting Obama throughout the entire bin Laden incident, but this made me sick. I just can't belive he did this. He can't intelligently defend his own actions to a 9/11 family member? He is the President of the United States. He should be able to speak "off the cuff" to a 9/11 family member who is questioning his administration's policies. If anyone has the right to question his policies about his, it's someone who lost a loved on on 9/11.

I am really saddened by this. I thought we would be able to uplift this man for once, but it was apparently very fleeting. I'm so sad for those of us who disagree with our president about many things but want so badly to agree with him about the issues surrounding the historic capture of bin Laden. I would bet everything I own that President Bush wouldn't have turned his back on this woman: 

Debra Burlingame, the sister of Charles "Chic" Burlingame (pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon) met with President Obama today, along with other families who were victims of 9/11. Burlingame said she confronted Obama about Attorney General Eric Holder prosecuting the men who interrogated KSM, which may have produced intelligence leading us to bin Laden.

Burlingame describes the encounter with Obama: "As a former attorney I know you can't tell the Attorney General what to do, he said, 'No, I can't.' But I said 'we -- that shouldn't stop you from giving your opinion. We wouldn't be here today if they hadn't done their jobs. Can't you at least give them your opinion.' And he said 'no I won't,' and he turned around and walked away."

Burlingame After Meeting With Obama: He Turned His Back On Me

I had hoped to put my faith in our Commander-In-Chief even if I don't agree with him on most things, but it's not to be. Why am I surprised? I shouldn't be.

Damn.

Joy Behar proposes U.S. "pay off" terrorists for information

On Tuesday's episode of The View, Joy Behar, who rivals Rosie O'Donnell for liberal idiocy, proposed that instead of using enhanced interrogation techniques to get information out of terrorists, the United States should, "offer them a six million dollar book deal, or just pay them off."

That's right. Pay terrorists for information. What an idea! I'm sure we'd get extremely accurate and helpful information out of them that way. And, we'd be killing two birds with one stone by getting our "information," while simultaneously funding the very terrorist organizations who have put a target on the back of every American man, woman and child anywhere in the world. It takes a great mind to think up ideas like this.

Here's the clip:

At minute 1:14 in the video is where she spouts her innovative idea. The entire discussion is worth watching, because Elizabeth Hasselback has some good points and Sherri Shephard does as well.

But their common-sense arguments, to me, were overshadowed by Behar's comments that revealed her stupidity so well that she might as well go around with a blinking neon sign over her her head that says, "I'm stupid."

I know she's a comedian, but the way she delivered this, I don't think she was joking. Watch and tell me what you think.

Father of 9/11 Victim reacts to Bin Laden's death

"They say they buried this monster at sea. They could have buried him in the tears of the people that were shed over these ten years. There would have been enough--believe me. - Earnest Strada, Father of 9/11 Victim

If you watch nothing else about the death of Usama Bin Laden, please watch this. It's an interview with the father of a 9/11 victim. He speaks so eloquently about how this feels to him, the families, and to our nation. Please watch the whole thing. I was sobbing by the end--remembering.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4672904/father-of-911-victim-reacts-to-bin-ladens-death/?playlist_id=87937

Obama finally decides to silence Trump and "birther" movement

I thought the issues of Obama's birth certificate and proof of citizenship were gasping for their last breath. So I was really shocked--mouth-hanging-open shocked--when Donald Trump brought up the issue on The View.

So many on the left have accused birthers of using the issue of Obama's birth certificate as a way to distract from the "real" issues. You hear that accusation against the right quite often from the left, by the way. Never mind their constant obsessive need to attack Sarah Palin, which has ceased to be a "real" issue because Palin is irrelevant to any important political issue in today's world. (What does Palin have to do with rising gas prices, three wars in the Middle East, etc.?)

I do really wish, though, that Obama had released his "real" birth certificate years ago. Today he said he thinks the question of his place of birth has been going on for more than two years. Why didn't he just stop it in its tracks by releasing the original certificate? Could it be people are accusing the wrong people of trying to keep the dialogue on trivial things like this instead of really important issues?

Birthers, who were considered by most to be laughable, obsessive conspiracy theorists, were clamoring for the long form of the birth certificate. Short-form birth certificates are not historical documents; my husband's is filled with false information, which is common for adoptees. It's true Trump nearly resurrected the whole issue with dozens of interviews on the subject, but the question was always there, hanging, considered by birthers to be insufficiently answered.

The indisputable truth is that the power to shut up the birthers was always in Obama's hands. Now his detractors can't dispute his birth certificate because it's the original long form (unless they go down the road of calling it a forgery).

One note to remember: This whole issue was started by Hillary Clinton, who asked for his birth certificate and questioned his place of birth when they were running against each other for the Democratic endorsement. He chose not to produce it then; so this begs the question, "Why now?"

I think Obama liked having the focus be on something so trivial and stupid as to distract from the real issues. Why else would he wait until now to produce the document that could have ended more than two years of din in America? He had to produce it now to stop Trump from talking and stop the new bandwagon he was driving through the whole of America on which loads of people were beginning to jump. He's trying to be re-elected. He's in campaign mode again, and he wants the focus to be on, well, how great he is, which he usually tries to illustrate by talking about how awful Republicans are.

The fact remains that the public was manipulated by Obama on this issue and the birthers played right into his hands. Nevertheless, I do believe it's time to move on (which I thought we had until Trump's appearance on The View), and hopefully see MUCH less of Donald Trump.

The Manufacturing Gap

I know I've been absent for quite a while, and I'm truly sorry about that. But tonight I stumbled across something I just had to comment on.

I'd finished watching American Idol and started doing dishes when a too-loud, smoothly southern voice began to emanate from my T.V. It was the voice of Erskine Bowles, Former Co-Chairman (D) of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and the former president of the University of North Carolina. He had a lot to say.

He was talking about the Democrats' proposed budget. He thinks America shouldn't be spending as much as it is on its military/national defense budget, and that we must spend more on education and research because, after all, we live in an intellectually driven global economy. Of course, I'm paraphrasing, since I had to pull my hands out of soapy water, take a few notes, and run up to my office to write this.

I beg to differ with Mr. Bowles and his take on the global economy. He stated that it's driven by intellect, based on education and research. I believe our global economy is soundly based on one thing: manufacturing.

We have outsourced too many of our manufacturing plants. For that matter, we have outsourced far too many of our I.T. resources as well, e.g. Dell returned its help desk to the U.S. from its outsourced India location after a few years of abysmal reviews from customers telling people not to buy Dell due to extremely poor customer support.

Our global economy still runs on "who makes the most stuff." By outsourcing America's "making stuff" to China, Japan, India, etc., and rarely manufacturing goods in America, we're sending our economic superiority to other countries and taking an inferior role in the global economy. 

We don't make much of anything anymore, and it is a conundrum. It's much, much cheaper to manufacture goods in other countries because those countries don't have to worry about pesky things like human rights, anti-child labor laws, and OSHA regulations. But when nearly everything we buy is made in another country, it takes money out of the pockets of ordinary Americans.

Americans have been spoon fed the idea that we are inferior to other countries because their children spend more time in school than ours or they study more difficult subjects at earlier ages. Don't get me wrong--I strongly believe in a rigorous academic curriculum for American students. But I believe the bottomless bowl of American educational and intellectual inferiority is intentionally fed to us by the teacher's unions and their supporters to garner more of our tax money for their pockets. If there are continuous problems with education, they can keep asking for more money "for the children."

The education gap that may or may not exist between our country and others (one can argue that our summer vacations and weekends off give American children the time and opportunity for creativity and ingenuity that other countries lack) is not the problem with our economy. It's the Manufacturing Gap.

How to solve this is the subject of a much longer post and one that wasn't written during the five minutes my husband was waiting for me to finish so we could watch "Dexter." But I had to say something in the face of this seemingly powerful man spouting the rhetoric that education is what drives the world economy.

The above-mentioned educational differences have existed for a long time in many countries. Yet the economies of the countries to which America has outsourced manufacturing are skyrocketing. It's common sense to see that losing this valuable manufacturing commodity is going to, in turn, drain America's economy.

Good Grief! It's a Charlie Brown Christmas!

I'm putting politics aside for for a moment to post a Christmas essay I wrote long ago. Merry Christmas.

As I prepare for the holidays, I’m reminded of a Christmas many years past when I learned an important lesson: a great Christmas doesn’t necessarily come in a perfect package.

That year I had lofty plans. It would be a Martha Stewart Christmas.

My expertly decorated house would be fit to be photographed for a magazine. I would bake awe-inspiring cookies from scratch. My husband and I would stroll through the malls taking in the splendor of the season instead of rushing to get our shopping done in a few child-free hours. Every gift would be wrapped with beautiful ribbons. Our Christmas cards would be hand calligraphed (never mind that I don’t know how to do calligraphy). Everything would have a special touch.

I thought I would have time to do it all because I was newly self employed. I could set my own hours! Time would be abundant! (Those who are self employed can pause now to chuckle at my naiveté.)

Instead, I found myself working around the clock on a client’s project. The countdown to Christmas was moving fast, and I hadn’t done anything. So one Saturday, I took a break to put up the Christmas tree.

We had bought a beautiful artificial tree at an after-Christmas sale the previous year. We sold our old tree at our garage sale. Or so we thought.

As we began to put the contents of two boxes together to form a tree, it soon became clear that we were dealing with the makings of two different trees. My husband and I exchanged wide-eyed looks of horror as we realized we had sold some poor, unsuspecting soul the bottom of our new tree and the top of our old one.

Because “self employed” is not a euphemism for “rolling in dough,” there was no way we could afford a new tree and still have presents to put under it. Life was grim.

“Kids, we can’t put up the tree,” I said. “There’s only half a tree.”

“Half a tree!” my daughter said with delight (inexplicably), and she and her brother started sticking branches into the tree’s post. It looked like a malformed bush.

Then, a Christmas miracle happened. My husband, Ebenezer, whose laments of “Why did I marry someone who is allergic to Christmas trees,” and “Do we really have to put up the tree yet,” are more common during the holidays than poinsettias, said, “We can make this work,” and started fashioning a tree from the mismatched parts.

With his help, the discordant mess was transformed into a small Christmas tree. Granted it was only about three feet tall and winged out on the bottom like Farrah Fawcett’s hair, but it was a tree nonetheless.

My son, blankie in hand, gingerly touched a branch and said, “Look at our beautiful, beautiful tree.” It reminded me of the scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas, in which Charlie buys a stick with some pine needles on it from a tree lot, and Linus, armed with a similar blankie, says, “All it needs is a little love.” Then the children transform the pitiful stick into a beautiful Christmas tree.

So we put our tree on a box to make it taller, wrapped the base with my mother’s homemade tree skirt and decorated it. I’ll always remember the four of us standing together in the soft glow of the twinkle lights to admire our handiwork.

My father called that night after hearing the news about our tree. “I’ll lend you the money to buy a new one,” he offered.

“No thanks, Dad,” I said. “We have a tree.”

I’m sure somewhere there is a family with a similar Christmas memory:

Remember when we bought that stupid tree at a garage sale, and when we tried to put it together we had parts from two different trees?

I wonder if those people were able to squelch their inner Martha and accept imperfection like we did. Or did their warm, fuzzy feelings of holiday cheer turn to cold, hard, homicidal rage? We’ll never know.

The countdown to Christmas continued, and my husband and I completed our shopping in a four-hour marathon. The presents had stick-on bows on them. The cookies came courtesy of the Pillsbury Dough Boy. I never sent my Christmas cards. Still, one of my most cherished holiday memories is of our Charlie Brown Christmas.

It’s a good thing.

Why did you vote for Mark Dayton?

It's a simple question. Those of us who didn't vote for him would like to know, now that we've been saddled with Dayton as our governor for the next four years. We didn't want this. We didn't ask for this. But, this is our reality. We lost. You won.

Why did you do it?

Did you really think he was the most qualified person to run the state? Were you voting against Emmer or voting for Dayton? Did you believe in Dayton's promises of raising taxes on the rich and how that will solve all our problems? Why?

I remember after Jesse Ventura was elected, so many people were shocked that he won. A lot of people admitted afterwards that they voted for Ventura because they thought it was funny. They thought he would never win, so why did it matter if they voted for him? They thought it was a joke. Except it wasn't funny. The choices those people made in the voting booth stuck us with Jesse the Governor Ventura and Minnesota's reputation for being the laughing stock of a country that couldn't understand what we had just done. (We still hold that reputation today for electing a washed-up comedian as our senator, and Keith Ellison, a left-wing nut job who just a few days ago called for the government to wreck America's entire economy if the legislature didn't extend unemployment benefits. People think Minnesotans are nuts.)

Anyway, this is a serious question. I'd really like feedback from those of you who voted for Dayton. I'd like serious answers, please. I think it would be good for those of us who think having Dayton for a governor is one of the worst things that could happen to our state. We have to live with the consequences of your actions, so please enlighten us. Maybe you'll say something that will make it not seem so bad. At least we might begin to understand each other a little better.

So please, comment on this article and tell me why you voted for Dayton. You don't have to identify yourself, though if you're not ashamed of your vote I don't know why you'd need to remain anonymous. I may just post them as comments, or if there is enough feedback, I'll compile it into an article.

I promise to treat your comments with respect.

Thankful for the Gift of Unemployment

The Gift of Unemployment

When it first came, we hardly noticed it. It was hidden among the jumble of personal effects in the cardboard box my husband carried the day he was laid off.  I remember it in an out-of-body sort of way, like a flashback in a movie: the two of us, on a hot July day, sitting together on our front steps while he quietly told me the worst had happened.

The environment at his workplace had become so toxic even workers in their 20’s were quitting for health reasons. I remember thinking this could actually be a good thing, because if he had continued working there, it might have killed him. Still, the gift of his health lay buried in the cardboard box he wouldn’t unpack for more than two interminable years.

Several months into his unemployment, the small severance had run out, and our savings were gone. This time the gift came not in a box, but in a paper grocery bag. It was left in front of our garage door. There was a card signed in stamped letters that said simply, “You are loved.” The bag was full of food. I wept.

Food had begun to be a problem.  We are a family of six.  It was time to go to our local food shelf. I’d been there to donate.  I never thought I’d be in need of their services. We were greeted by smiling volunteers and counseled for intake by a true gentlewoman.  Though it was so hard to take this huge step no one who donates to food shelves thinks they’ll take, we left with the gift of our dignity, wrapped in brown paper bags full of food and sundries. Our grocery bills were just too big to keep up with.  Hell, all our bills were big.  Electricity, water, garbage…

COBRA.  For those of you who’ve never needed it, it is a law requiring all employers to extend health benefits to laid-off employees for 18 months, but at full cost to the former employee.  For us that meant our healthcare costs were almost equal to our house payment.  But we had to do it. We couldn’t let anyone in our family go uninsured.  We loathed and scoffed at it at the time because it was so expensive. But then it ran out. Our gift was wrapped in the 18 enormous checks we had written for our healthcare.  Inside was gratitude for those 18 months of healthcare and the wisdom to recognize our naiveté at our insistence that we would never be able to do without it.  Because we did.

My husband and I are still uninsured. All of the children are now covered.  We found ways to cut some of our medical expenses by switching to cheaper prescription drugs, which in some cases was no small sacrifice. We carefully thought through every doctor visit, every medical test. We used minute clinics for acute illnesses. We shopped around for the cheapest pharmacy. We were gifted with self sufficiency and control at a time when those things seemed to have vanished from our lives. We now have a different outlook on health care in our nation, and no, we do not believe in ObamaCare or any form of national socialized medicine programs for the general population. But we do see how each of us plays a role in the enormous cost of medical care in America.

Lest you think I’m some kind of freaky, bubble-minded saint, I will freely admit we weren’t discovering a gift around every corner. Sometimes the discovery came months later.  Someone told us after about 18 months of unemployment that the depression in our house was so great it was palpable when coming through our front door. That’s hard to hear. But it was true. All of us were affected in different ways, and all of us are changed.  We each went through our private hell, a hell that some of us are still clawing our way out of. Except for the baby.

She loved having my husband home full time for most of her life. If I needed a break from care giving, he would take over for a while.  If she wanted to see him, she would yell, “Papa, I need you!” in her sweet baby voice, dragging him from his never-ending computer search for work. Her gift was Papa’s always available lap, ready for her to snuggle in to learn about coins or watch country music videos. Our gift was, and is, simply her.

The next gift was enormous. We managed to hang onto our home. I would often have nightmares my family was living somewhere else, and we would drive by and watch from our car windows while another family moved in.  The nightmare reoccurred in many forms during those two years.

We didn’t hate the empty space made by the deck we tore off our house just prior to my husband’s lay off only to have to spend the savings for our new deck to survive. The back of our beloved home is ramshackle at best, and the front isn’t doing much better. When you have no money to spare, home ownership becomes a whole different animal. Our paint is peeling, our front deck is rotting, and our lawn is full of weeds because weed killers and fertilizers are not necessities. Our concrete steps are cracked and our driveway needs to be seal coated. And that’s just the outside. But we love our home more than ever. We don’t look at it and see its flaws anymore; instead we see the place where our family has grown for the past 11 years, our dream home we fought so hard to get in the first place and then to keep, though the things we had to do to keep it sometimes hurt our hearts and our dignity. But we learned sometimes a gift can come along with dents in your armor and scars you’ll bear forever.

Because behind the scars is the biggest gift of all.  It’s a gift we’ve always had, but sometimes it seemed invisible. We took it for granted many times when we did see it, because it was there all the time.  We are forever humbled by its enormity, its continuity, its loyalty.

The greatest gift is, of course, family. If not for them we would have lost our home. If not for them we would have gone hungry. If not for them we would have no electricity, heat, water, gas for our cars. If not for them, I believe our little family may have fallen apart.

They were there after friends got tired of our chronic miserable state and the invitations for dinner, drinks or just to socialize dried up just when a free meal or a break from the monotony would have been so welcome. We couldn’t afford to be “fun” anymore, I guess, so friends just stopped calling. But our family rallied around us and not only kept us financially afloat with their generous gifts—the ones that were so hard to accept, the ones that left the scars on our dignity—but they held me above water while I cried for my children, my husband, myself.

They held us up through the deaths of our two beloved dogs who died unexpectedly three months apart from each other after having been in our family for more than a decade. They held us up through the lost of my husband’s father, about whom I have written more than once on these pages. During that time we almost lost my father as well, and we lost our church home. There were times I cried out to God asking what we weren’t learning, what weren’t we getting, why was it taking so long and why was there so much loss along the way?

And there are so many answers. When I said we have changed forever, I meant it. We can divide our lives into Before Unemployment, and, mercifully, After.  Before unemployment we were wasteful. We saw the flaws in our lives, not the gifts. We dwelt more on what we didn’t have than on what we did. Though we said grace before dinner, we weren’t truly thankful for the food on our table. Things we would have complained about before don’t bother us (my husband came home after the first week of his new job and said that very thing because he’s so grateful to be working that none of the little annoyances—the ones those who feel their state of employment is untouchable see everywhere—faze him).

Unemployment and the gifts it brought taught us so much. So, this Thanksgiving, I am most grateful simply for the ability to be truly thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Oh, no, not again...

Congratulations to all of last night's winners. I am bowled over (in a good way) by the Republican take-over of the state legislature and the U.S. House. A special congrats to Erik Paulsen, David Hann, Jennifer Loon, and Kirk Stensrud. I know everybody worked so hard, and they have the results to show for it. Special kudos to Stensrud for unseating Maria Ruud, which was no small task for a new guy. All the best to all of our conservative winners, and a prayer for clarity for the other ones.

I believe we will ultimately wind up with Governor Dayton. I can't quite believe people voted for him, but I think he'll hold on to the win even after any recounts. I know there was voter fraud on many levels and in many ways, but I don't think it will matter.

A couple of questions, though. My Dad noticed last year when voting that the woman in front of him in line to put ballots in the counting machine had filled out the ballot with check marks instead of filling in the little bullets. The machine rejected her ballot, of course, so the volunteer directed her to the table to receive a new one and fill it out correctly. The volunteer then took her incorrectly-filled-out ballot and put it in a pile to the side of the counting machine. My Dad asked why the ballot wasn't being shredded or destroyed in some way, and he said that was what he was instructed to do with them.

Then we saw the recount in the Coleman/Franken debacle, and low and behold, our T.V. screens were filled with images of ballots with check marks, circles, smiley faces, you name it. Then the persons charged with the task of recounting the ballots would have to discern voter intent ("they put a smiley face next to Norm's name because they think he's laughable and wanted their vote to go to Franken," etc.) . Now, if those voters' ballots were rejected due to being improperly filled out, and they were given new ballots and instructed how to properly fill them out, and took the new ballots and put them in the counting machine, that should be their vote, right? So there would be no reason to ever count ballots improperly marked with circles, check marks and arrows, right? If someone knows why this isn't the case, fill me in.

Dad asked the same question of the volunteer last night. The volunteer said he was just following instructions, and that he didn't make the rules. Dad asked who he would have to talk to to get this looked into, and the volunteer told him he didn't know, maybe the legislature. Well, that's wrong, it's the Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, who allowed vote counting to stop as soon as state embarrassment, Al Franken, had enough votes to win, among other very questionable tactics. Well, Ritchie was re-elected last night (does anyone read anything in this state?), so I don't think anything will change with this recount. But I would like Dad's, and now my, question addressed. Feedback, please.

One more thing before I collapse. I have read reports and viewed video tape about bus loads of mentally challenged people being taken to the polls for early voting and being instructed whom to vote for, (democrats) or in some cases, had their ballots filled out for them. There are also some reports coming in about bus loads of impaired individuals from nursing homes in the same vein. There are certainly rules about assisting disabled individuals to vote, but isn't there some rule that the person at least needs to have the mental ability to freely vote for whom they wish to vote? I would never want a disabled person to be disenfranchised, but what those people did, especially with the mentally impaired people, was, well, evil.

(Three part video about the Crow Wing County early voting fraud. Worth watching.)

And I mean EVIL. What special kind of demon do you have to be to fill a bus full of mentally handicapped individuals who, from eyewitness reports, didn't even know what they were there for or what voting was or what a polling place was, and use them as literal pawns and puppets for the democrats to get more votes for their candidates? Isn't it bad enough that four out of five dead people vote democrat? This is much worse than that.

I would guess people who would do such things may be headed for that very, very special bad place they reserve for mean nurses and bad teachers. Because they all do the same thing: take advantage of or abuse helpless people. They make me sick.

So, we have a lot to be frightened of. Mark Dayton being our governor, for one. Sick, evil people who'll use the elderly and mentally challenged to swing an election their way.

But we have a great deal to celebrate as well. All that hard work really panned out (a special nod to Chip Cravaack, who unseated the damn-near unseatable Jim Oberstar.) Now, the newly elected need to take their mandate and run with it when they are officially seated in their new jobs.

They all need our positive thoughts and prayers, especially those with whom we disagree.

BREAKING NEWS: Is Mark Dayton Really Sober?

I was doing research for this series of articles when I stumbled upon something, a word actually, that made me change direction from asking the question, "Is Mark Dayton stable," to:

Is Mark Dayton sober?

Dayton is a self-identified alcoholic who has been through treatment twice, most recently about three years ago for one full week after relapsing near the end of his senate career. Records show Dayton has only been sober for about three years. Or has he?

I ran across an article from the StarTribune, published July 4 2010, which led me down a path that questions Mark Dayton’s sobriety. The article was titled, "Mark Dayton: a topsy-turvey ride." In the second paragraph, something caught my eye. It said, "Sipping from a bottle of kombucha, a fermented tea that has become a campaign trail staple, this former U.S. senator is trying to revive an up-and-down political career at age 63."

Fermented tea? Doesn't "fermented" usually mean something has turned to alcohol? There began my research on kombucha, the official drink of the Dayton campaign.

What I found was a treasure trove of reasons why an alcoholic shouldn't be downing kombucha tea, and if he is, he is no longer sober as defined by Alcoholics Anonymous. Here's an article on Relapse Prevention, which may apply to this situation, because this tea is well known for its varying alcohol content.

A website called, "Organic-Kombucha.com. contains this heading: "Who should avoid drinking kombucha tea?" The a sub-head reads: "We strongly suggest not to use kombucha under the following circumstances:"

Alcoholics in recovery - Many recovering alcoholics have found it helpful to drink Kombucha during their recovery period. It is said to remove the desire for alcohol. But be warned though, Kombucha does contain a small quantity of alcohol, normally less that 1% by volume. Any recovering alcoholic knows that even a small quantity of alcohol can have a negative effect on them, so be careful.

Kombucha, in fact, may contain much more alcohol than mentioned above. On June 28, 2010, the New York Times reported Whole Foods pulled the product from their shelves because, "the alcohol content might be high enough to attract the attention of the federal government."

Well, they were right.

Two days later, the Treasury Department issued a warning stating kombucha may be subject to the same taxes and regulations as other beverages containing alcohol. The agency said it “is coordinating with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ensure kombucha products currently on the market comply with Federal laws..."

Analysts said some kombucha teas sold under brand names like Synergy can ferment after shipment, raising the alcohol content from a legal 0.5 percent or less to as high as 3 percent, similar to some beers.

Kombucha tea seems to be well known for its "buzz." In fact a lot of people flipped out when their kombucha was taken away. The way people talk about it, it’s as if they need it, not want it. There’s even a facebook site devoted to the lamentations of kombucha users deprived of their favorite drink: “Dude, Where’s my Kombucha?” You can track “bucha” sightings around the country, including a supply in Vista, CA, to be sold only to those over 21.

GT Dave, owner of Synergy Drinks, announced a recall after reports of elevated alcohol levels in Kombucha products. More publicly, Linsday Lohan blamed Kombucha for setting off her SCRAM bracelet due to its alcohol content. GT Dave believes the elevated levels may be occurring after the product has been bottled and left their facility.

If that is the case, the bottles would need new labels marking the alcohol content. Kombucha is said to increase metabolism, reduce cholesterol, and even fight the effects of aging. Oddly enough, Kombucha has been said to cure alcoholism. This seems rather bizarre being that Kombucha contains alcohol.

One could argue, “Well, Dayton might not know it contains alcohol. So it’s not his fault.” I argue that it doesn’t matter. I once knew a recovering alcoholic who was given a glass of spiked punch at a party, which led almost immediately to heavy drinking and the destruction of his family. It doesn’t matter why an alcoholic drinks, it just matters that an alcoholic in recovery should not drink at all.

We don't know how many of these drinks he has per day. Is kombucha the reason Dayton often appears befuddled? Is it the reason he seems to slur his words at times?

There is a saying made famous by the movie, "28 Days," starring Sandra Bullock. It addresses when an addict should try to have a serious relationship. It is, in a nutshell: after an addict has become sober he should buy a potted plant. If after one year the plant is still alive, he should buy a pet. If after the second year the pet is alive, then in the third year the addict may begin to consider having a serious relationship with another person.

We don’t know exactly where Dayton falls on that sobriety spectrum. But either way it’s too soon for him to be entering into the very important relationship of governor of an entire state with responsibility for roughly five million souls.