This weekend I visited my son John at his new place in Roseburg and he is doing extremely well after contending with the effects of a combined fourteen months in Iraq with seven months of heavy combat in Ramadi. Today, six years after his honorable discharge from the Marine Corps, and after months of group therapy with other combat veterans and more than a year of sobriety he is a much happier and healthier young man (benching 330 lbs) and has started paying attention to the world around him again. He told me that he had registered as a Republican because he wasn’t happy with Barack Obama and then burst out laughing because after learning about the GOP candidates he realized he didn’t want any of them either. “What a bunch of clowns”, he said. “I can’t imagine any of them as my commander in chief”.

So I encouraged him to vote for Rocky Anderson but he will have none of my “goofy” candidates, instead he will vote for Obama who has a better record on veterans benefits than anyone in the GOP field. It is great to see him engaging in the political process that sent him to war in the first place and left him permanently disabled. Whomever he votes for, hopefully Rocky, he has clawed his way back from hell and I am so proud of him.