The new Arizona Tea - now with more over-processed white sugar

What a Seattle morning.  Gray as Glenn Beck's heart outside, but the energy where I've been indoors is off the charts.  I had to visit REI's flagship store to get a new exercise BPA-free hydration system (translation: plastic water jug on a belt).  Every dood or doodette there was AMPED! at 9:15am.  This came after dropping Maya into the friendly din of Friday activity that is her pre-school (ah, the excitement of the sabbath's cup runeth overeth).  And before sticking my head into the Espresso Vivace across from REI where the crowd was lined up out the door although no one waiting for a fix seemed to mind.  Our society has so many squeaky wheel moments.  Waiting for coffee can surely be one of them.  But when you see a group of people being this tolerant and kind to one another (while buying drugs, no less) it gives me hope that we CAN all get along.  At least until that second jolt starts tipping the collective attitude a bit more toward Happy Hour and thoughts of the weekend and...well, I'll just try to enjoy the moment.

I'd be an incomplete version of myself if I didn't at least weigh in on Arizona's immigration bill.  It would surely be easy to scoff at the stupidity of that bill's timing and intent.  It is, after all, one of the stupidest bits of legislation I've ever seen come down the pike.  I can't see how it isn't undercut or gutted entirely by the lawsuits already mounting.  But for me, one aspect remains largely forgotten in the discussion.  In a best case scenario, who wins?  Did the bill's sponsors envision a reduction in Arizona's budget for services that are somehow available to illegal immigrants?  Did someone expect an atmosphere of intolerance would scare immigrants away, sending them to the other border states and erecting a metaphorical border the length of not only Arizona's southern desert, but those American borders to the east, west and north?  I don't have anything to base this on other than gut instinct and way too much time spent listening to the blather on all sides, but I do have a best case scenario theory.  Arizona wanted to draw the population of Tea Partiers there, to buy the overbuilt suburbs of Phoenix (one of the worst real estate markets in the country).  They wanted to draw the Tea Party to hold an anti-Burning Man and similar caravan events for Euro-America.  The problem is that summer's basically here.  Arizona sucks this time of year.  Maybe some of their more short-sighted residents wanted to make that a year-round thing.  That, after all, would make about as much sense as anything I've heard.

Hope your own questions are answered in the asking today.  Rock on.