"Things aren't like they used to be" is a comon saying these days. But in a lot of cases the changes aren't for the better or more healthy for society at large. Randy Rhodes points out that war coverage is not what it was forty years ago with Walter Cronkite as "The most trusted man in America" doing the news. Back then they showed troups slogging through the mud. They showed shells exploding and men dying, and they showed the caskets being loaded up. Apparently now if a photographer so much as photographs caskets being loaded up he is immediately fired. They used to say "War is Hell", but today they say "War is a yawner". Perhaps it's no coincidence that it's the democrats who are the ones pushing to reinstate the draft, even if there reasoning is a little backwards. Today's war protestors aren't emotional or fanatic or insistant. This is because the average American has no stake in the outcome in the war. If the eighties was the Me generation, then this "I Me Mine" philosophy has transferred on into adulthood. People say "It's not my kid on the front" and they go on and vote for Bush and sleep well at night. Of course the news isn't even covering war protestors and if they do it's often with a more symical slant. But there are protests going on all the time. I'll say it again. If the Roman Empire had our press the Christians would never have come to power because nobody would ever know about the martyred deaths of thousands. But people stage small protests of offices of politicians and stuff all the time and they think they are acting for posterity when in all probably the only one who sees them is God, because God sees everything.
Now there is news about the war itself. The Iraqi citizens want the US to leave their country. But the Iraqis also believe other things. They hate the nut case leader of Iran, and they don't trust the Talliban and have little or no regard for Osama Bin Laden. The choice here seems obvious. We should get out like Bush told the American people. He said, "When the Iraqis stand up we will stand down". Instead all we are hearing now is that the army is stretched thin and we just might have to make a choice between extending the Iraq war five more years and reinstituting the draft. Were I the president I would have given this Draft ultamatum before this. Experts have told us that the Armed Forces just can't keep on the way they are going, delaying leaves and extending tours of duty. If the Iraqis say they are willing and able to pick up the fighting themselves why don't we just let them? I suspect the answer to that question is that the US is not in Iraq to win, but to run up war profits for Haliburten and other Bush controled corporations. Larry Elder used to always talk about how we are "At War". But if this were the equivelant of World War II we would be about up to Christmas of 1946 by now, when the War was long over and people were moving on to other activities like getting married. Let the Iraqis do what we trained them to do. It takes twelve weeks to train a raw recruit into an efficient, square head, fast talking killing machine. Certainly there is time to have trained an entire young generation by now in Iraq to pick up arms and defend their own country. Bush will find that the Iraq War is no longer a winning political issue for him.
Certain laws as you know can get out of hand. You know how I dislike these broad smoking bans that seem to apply everywhere. In terms of environmental laws I think we have to distinguish between laws that are for the welfare of humans and those that are pot forth by nut jobs, or nearly so. They say you cant ride motorcycles in the desert because you might disturb an Indian petrogliff that's been there thousands of years. You can't go ahead with a real estate development because it might harm the kangeroo rat. Now they are taking their laws into the kitchen. In New York they want to ban all trans-fatty acids. A few years ago they wanted to ban butter and use only margerine. Now they want to ban margerin because it's a trans-fatty acid and as such is unhealthy. They now say trans-fats are worse than saturated fats. Of course I don't know if they'd be saying that if all the chefs hadn't switched from saturated fat to trans-fat to begin with. Such a trans-fat ban would cause chaos in the cooking industry. I think there are child welfare laws that probably go too far. Have they outlawed spanking yet? If we go too far with this children's rights business we will destroy the American family, and I guess that's kind of the point, isn't it. To turn your kids into empowered monsters that tattle on their parents for the vaguest of infractions, such as smoking in their presence. Sometimes it's not our own government that holds the whip but an alien religion, like the Moslems. This Van Gogh guy in Holland that was murdered by "islamo-fasciests" (there, I used the word) was an Artist who used his art to protest Islamic and women's issues. Nowdays you can't even draw an Arab with a turbin with a bomb in it without getting yourself in trouble with these Islamo-fasciests. Now there is apparently some Mozart opera they want to ban because it puts Islam and other religions in a bad light. My message to the Moslems is "Exercise your freedom of religion, but don't give restrictions on my civil liberties or freedom of action". I guess libertarians like Larry Elder have long been concernet about all the EEOC laws or whatever that agency is that insures "safe" working conditions. I'm for safe working conditions of course, but sometimes government beaurocrats can be obtrusive to employers, and I appreciate that. In terms of the environment I guess my philosophy is "If it's going to end up affecting me personally, then I want something done about it". Wetlands in Louisiana can affect the climate and buffer storms, so they are a good thing. Clear cutting forrests erodes the soil and basically detracts from my view as well as wipes out the source of what you're "harvesting". Clear cutting: BAD. I am against chemical pollution because they cause deseases and cancer and such. But I guess if you were enacting laws to preserve the monarch butterfly or the spotted moth or whatever, I guess I'd be a little less concerned. Environmental impact studies cut two ways. There is the natural environment but there is also the business environment and people to people concerns. If you're going to ban my Saturday night barbecue, you better have a pretty darn good reason.
Rush Limbaugh has pointed out that certain forms of pollution nature offends a lot worse than any human could. If you watched Nova the other night you know that there was a spike in the level of sulphur dioxide that was twenty times worse than the worst smoggy day in the most smoggy city in the world. Yes, there are things called "super valcanoes" and these things are more "super" than you can imagine. They are a thousand times more deadly than valcanoes we see today. I guess Mt. Pinotubo was one of these. Three sets of researchers each came to the independant conclusion that a gigantic valcano exploded in Southeast Asia 75 thousand years ago, and drove down the temperature of sea water world wide ten degrees and increased the incidence of Oxygen 18, an isotope of normal oxygen that occurs in colder waters. Now they say that Yellowstone National Park is a powder keg ready to blow at any moment, like say the next forty thousand years. (In palentological time that isn't much) It could be that the eruption of the whole valley of Yellowstone National park could inilate the inhabitants of this Country and have world wide consequences. They say there are fine silicate particles in the valcanic ash that have the effect of finely ground glass on your lungs, should you breathe it. I only tell you this because Rush does have a point. Nature has the potential of being more violent than man with all of his devices yet invented can be. I would tell you to have a little fear of God but whether you are afraid or not that isn't going to affect whether or not it will happen. Sometimes we humans can't see the forrest for the trees. It could be that at times we seek to micro-manage the environment, and in the process screw up a lot of people's lives and routines, when in the end something like the eruption of Yellowstone National Park, blanking the world with ash and creating a new ice age that will last far beyond when the last ash has settled- - will get us. You know the ice age will last a long time because once there's all that snow on the ground and in the air it reflects sunlight and heat back out into space, keeping the Planet super chilled for a long time. Thirty years ago people were saying it was a new ice age that would get us.
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