There are some things we all can agree on. Like war is never the best option. But now, we are back at war on two fronts, just like we were in 2008. Damned if I know why the Libyan people are worth bombing to death in order to make them free, while the Egyptians had to muddle their own way to democracy. Maybe it has something to do with oil. I’m sure all the western governments are eager to see gasoline prices go back down. Just not sure that war in Libya is the best way to achieve that goal. Look what the Iraq war did for the cost of gas.
In retrospect, building nuclear reactors on the world’s most active fault line probably was not such a good idea, no matter how many carbon emission credits they generate. There is a phrase that goes “Never again.” It applies to genocide and it applies to nuclear weapon’s strike. I always assumed it applied to Chernobyl, too.
Oil is flowing again in the Gulf. Too bad it’s flowing onto beaches and not into tankers. The cost of food is rising, while more of us sink into debt and poverty. A well funded, independent public broadcast system is key to a healthy democracy, so we are slashing the budget of our poorly funded public radio because someone had the nerve to speak his mind. As more jobs get outsourced by companies that are on the government dole, our right to collective bargain is being chipped away. As the world’s ocean temperatures rise and coral reefs die, our Congress has declared greenhouse gases an endangered species. Social Security was supposed to keep our elderly from dying on the streets when times got bad. But as soon as a second Great Depression hits, they want to dissolve our publicly funded pension plan. School integration was supposed to give all kids an equal chance. So now they want to abolish the public school system and make affordable, decent education a privilege not a right. Over one hundred fifty years ago, they freed the slaves and made them citizens. Now, our government wants to create a new race of born in the USA noncitizen residents whose labor will be cheap and easily exploited.
“Health care reform” was passed two years ago, but everyday I see people who are too sick to buy private insurance but not (yet) poor enough to qualify for government funded health care. One of them is dying at this moment. There goes another. And another. I wonder what the souls of newly born babies think as they pass the spirits of the recently departed. Life seemed so much simpler when I was a child. Getting a man on the moon was supposed to solve all our problems.
“An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.”
Charles Darwin