Alright, I’ll admit it!  There are times when reading the news (on-line and off-line) and listening to the TV  and radio broadcasts can be downright depressing.  It’s not that I spend the entire day totally immersed in learning more and more about the ills of this troubled world.  I mean, I do have plenty of other things to keep myself occupied.  It’s just seems to me, on occasion, that things over which I have no control just keep getting worse.  Some people would say that “ignorance is bliss”, but I don’t  think that being uninformed is necessarily “blissful”; especially when the world around us seems to be hell-bent on destroying itself.

This morning’s headlines are a good case-in-point.  After twenty-five years of research and educational campaigns, the number of HIV cases are reaching epidemic proportions in many poor, mostly urban areas in America.  Free needles for drug users,  free condoms for high school kids,  and free educational programs for everyone else don’t seem to be worth “squat” when it comes to stopping the spread of HIV.  How could so many people care so little about contracting an incurable disease?

The daily terrorist bombings continue in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and now Uganda.  Hundreds of innocent civilians are being murdered “en masse”  every single day, as the world powers fight over oil and minerals and land and religion and all the same things they have been fighting over for the last three thousand years.  In the meantime, the U.S. troops remain in Iraq to provide advice and lots of weapons, and they also remain in Afghanistan to provide plenty of “boots on the ground” to blow holes in any Taliban operative who is unwise enough to challenge their authority and “right” to be there.

The situation in Mexico gets worse by the day, as drug-lords with armies of loyal followers and tons of sophisticated weapons (including plenty of grenades) do battle with the police and the Mexican political establishment.  The death toll this year, after only seven months, has exceeded 26,000; many of which are women and children who just so happened to be in the line of fire.  The Mexican government says that the blame for the carnage rests squarely on the backs of the Americans, whose insatiable appetite for illegal drugs makes almost any risk worth while.  In the meantime, the U.S. government has done little to nothing to secure the porous border, and done equally little to stem the tide of high-powered weapons (legal in all fifty states) from flowing into the hands of drug-lords.

On the domestic political front, America is tearing apart at the seams with partisan bickering, name-calling and legislative gridlock.  The stock market is faltering, unemployment benefits are being slashed, municipalities are going bankrupt, and the waters of the Gulf of Mexico are being fouled by 100 million gallons of crude oil.

As they say in the Army, everything is SNAFU (situation normal, all fouled up).  Well, I guess I’m through complaining for today.  Oh yeah, there’s one more thing;  I’m leaving the house in about an hour to go to the Dentist and get a root canal.  Have a nice day!

Rich