2 issues

I am going to write about 2 subjects in this post. One touches on humor, and the other subject is definitely not funny at all and relates to the woman pictured above.

First issue

I'm really upset that Benazir Bhutto died. I'm not one of those stereotypical Americans that are notoriously bad in geography and are unable to point to Russia on a map. Why I even know the capital of Finland and know that it hosted a very important Superpower Summit between the US and the Soviet Union back in 1974. They called it the Helsinki Accords.


Yet, since 9/11/2001, many Americans are better at geography and many are concerned at what is going on in Asia. Benazir Bhutto's death helps terrorists. Was she a panacea to Pakistan if she would have been re-elected? No. Would she have solved the problems the US has with Al-Queda and terrorists? No, she simply would have helped.


I'll tell you what would really help, a better US President would really help towards solving a very difficult terrorist problem.


Did anyone notice that the very flawed, bumptious, ursine President Bush is unable to send more troops to Afganhistan in the wake of this good woman's death? & why can't he send more troops? Because he's pissing away too much of his military resources in Iraq, that's why. Now some Bush apologists will say we're doing better in Iraq, and some of the same apologists will say that we killed Sadaam Hussein and his 2 murderous sons. The good we did in Iraq, and the good we may currently be doing in Iraq doesn't outweigh the well over 2,000 young Americans that have died in this very flawed struggle. People can point out that some people in Iraq are doing better. But many if not most are NOT. & no matter how much the Bush people and our flawed President tip toe around it and try to obfusicate, we have, in fact, plunged that nation into a civil war. That civil war pits Shiite Iraqis against Sunni Iraqis, and they are dying by the scores every single day. This war has done more harm than good. How bad is Iraq? Let me count the ways:

1. The war began under false pretenses. Bush proclaimed long and repeatedly in 2002 and into 2003 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. THEY DIDN'T! The reason that he wanted the war was that he, Cheney and probably even Rumsfeld wanted to invade Iraq when they unfortunately took over the executive branch in Janauray, 2001. After all, Hussein had plotted in the 1990s to kill Bush's father (a much better president who balanced his budget by raising taxes and knew when to stop in Iraq!) Bush wanted to settle a score, among other reasons.

2. The Iraq War was ill-conceived. Even Bush states that he made a mistake vainly flying onto of a aircraft carrier that said MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Very symptomatic of the profound mistake made. They figured the war was won when they kicked out Hussein. They had no conception, very poor planning on how to reconstruct Iraq. AGAIN, THEY HAVE, IN FACT, PLUNGED THE NATION INTO A CIVIL WAR - Shiites vs. Sunnis!

3. The Iraq War sapped the strength of fighting terrorists in Afganhistan. To his credit, Bush actually helped facilitate a well designed, well executed war against Afganhistan a month after the terrorists struck on 9/11. It is well documented that when the US bombed and invaded Afganhistan, they fundamentally changed the way terrorists could operate and diminished their effectiveness. It's well documented as Senator John Kerry noted in his challenge against Bush in 2004 that our American forces had Bin Laden within their grasp in Tora Bora only to let him go by poor execution and poor insight by Bush. The instability of Bhutto's death (how this part of the post began) gives strong support to the fact that the Taliban was only temporarily setback in 2001 and 2002. It gives support that Al Queda's setback was more temporary than permanent. Now that there's so many troops are in Iraq, we have depleted forces elsewhere and precludes or options of a stronger force in Afganhistan to take on a re-energized Al-Queda and Taliban.

4. The Iraq War has wasted billions and depletes our ability to work towards solving domestic problems. We no longer have a budget surplus but a budget deficit. Bush doesn't want to upset his rich friends by raising taxes which would be the financially responsible way to pay for his war. But that's a Republican for you. While there are some good Republicans out there, a certain core of Republicans love indiscriminately spending money in the Pentagon, raising deficits and spending needless money on interest to fund that deficit. Why? Because if they put money there, they don't or even can't put money on domestic concerns and help people who really need it. One of the idiotic Republicans' (not all of them are this screwed up prioritywise but the following describes far too many of them) pet ideas is make it a law that Congress can only raise taxes when there's 2/3 of a majority.
In so doing, the military would get their money, Social Security (until about 2030) would get their money, but the rest of the budget could "go fly a kite" because after all, the federal government is there to fight foreign foes and dole out corporate welfare. These screwed up Republicans don't actually think they should help people in need.
One should look no further than Bush's NoChild Left Behind educational initiative. Bush had bipartisan support when he helped push the initiative through Congress. But thanks to a partisan, Republican Congress made up of hacks like former CORRUPT Majority Leader Congressman Tom DeLay, the page-abusing congressman of Florida and Senator Craig of Idaho, they badly underfunded this law well below what they originally pledged. Since we were fighting the almighty war in Iraq, the No Child Left Behind was given less funding than Bush originally pledged.
For these and many other reasons, the Iraq War is the wrong war to be in, and the only place we need to be fighting is Afganhistan. For these and many other reasons, President Bush may go down in history as the worst president the US has had since Warren Harding, president during the Roaring 20s. For these and many other reasons, the death of Benazir Bhutto is a very serious setback in the War on Terrorism. Whether or not this setback is insurmountable only time will tell.
I don't have a problem with all Republicans. In fact, the last decent Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, stated, (this is paraphrasing not verbatim) that spending money on the Pentagon and the military takes money away from those who are hungry and those who are in need. He said that, not some knee-jerk liberal. He accurately warned about and presciently stated the perils of the military-industrial complex on the eve of his retirement from the presidency. The military-industrial complex has wasted trillions of dollars on such boondoogles as the Seargent York artillery gun, spent money on ships that sunk to the sea instead of defending our nation, paid for $1,000 hammers and screwdrivers.

5. The US. should have a strong military, there's no argument from me on that point. I changed from being Republican to being a proud Democrat during the Reagan administration when I read about the wanton wasteful spending that occurred by the Pentagon. The American people and even those people on the entire planet deserved better than the trillions of dollars wasted at the Pentagon as President Eisenhower so articulately described while he was still president.

SUBJECT #2

I consider writing my hobby. I certainly (as you all can tell) am no Saul Bellow or Studs Terkel, but I do have something to say, and I write it better than the average person. I know I write better than the average person because they often say or write "good" when they should have said or wrote "well". Many don't realize that well is an adverb and good an adjective. Therefore, many will use "good" when their sentence requires the adverb "well".
So what?
So what, indeed, being able to use "good" and "well" properly doesn't make me a good writer merely a better one, that's all. & I definitely have a lot to learn.
Last Friday night, I sent what I thought was a humorous e-mail to a score of people, quite a few people. I thought I would get some response. Well, I received one response. One man thought what I said was very funny. That's the funny thing about humor. You can have 3 friends hearing a joke: 1 will think it's hilarious, 1 will think it's stupid, and the last one will be indifferent.
I'm still trying to figure out if other people besides Marty thought it was stupid and deleted it out of their e-mail (probably some did), or chuckled at the e-mail and moved on to something else (possibly some did).
Why don't I post the satirical e-mail here? I thought about it. But I considered my readership. I considered in particular one special reader who has a very good blog herself. When you go to her blog, it is consistently good writing, consistently written work that puts a smile on one's face (especially mine). I want to be consistent, too. I thought that since my satire was "dirty humor", "R rated humor", then I would be considered by her and maybe others "inconsistent". Since the humor was "edgy", I was concerned that it would be "edgy" enough to make her NOT want to read my blog anymore.
But, I don't know, a person, especially a blogger, should take risks from time to time. So if any of you readers out there want to see it, I'll definitely reconsider and possibly even post "my satirical e-mail".