When Iran endured a social uprising in 2009 President Barack Obama was handed a golden opportunity to make statements strongly in support of Iran's people, long suffering under extremist Mullahs who catapulted the country backward in time, forced into a vice-grip of strict Islamic rule. Instead, curiously, Obama did nothing -- except he DID do something, as we now know. Obama was determined to achieve a legacy-enhancing deal with Iran, and he apparently entertained no obstacles as he followed a pathway eventually ending in an absurd agreement over nukes and other matters, culminating also in the delivery of millions of U.S. dollars in cash to Iran, accomplished pretty much in the dark of night. When the New York Times, of all things, exposed this ruthless Obama/Iran relationship, the circumstances behind Obama's lack of action in 2009 suddenly offered clarity.
Refreshing is the contrast now, as President Donald Trump takes full advantage of Iran's current chaos, encouraging Iran's miserable population, no longer wishing domination by an extremist regime intent only upon squandering national riches on promoting terrorism abroad, neglecting or brutalizing altogether Iran's people. The barbarity of Iranian prisons is already well known, so Trump's reference to human rights violations barely touches a hot surface, as the country violently self-destructs by degrees.
Anybody who might have read my former Air Force blog (I dismantled it because I experienced problems carrying it on LiveJournal. . .maybe I'll put it up on Blogger sometime) knows that during my Air Force training decades ago the USAF took on an experiment where two young Iranian women joined our class. Obviously, this was the era when the Shah still ruled Iran, and the U.S. and Iran at that time were on friendly terms. We routinely trained Iranian pilots.
I'll post their picture here, cut from a graduation photo taken when our class ended in the sixties. I decided to blacken out their eyes in the photo, just because I don't trust Iran's radical police element, even some fifty years later. The fact that these very nice and smart young women (whose names I can't list, either) came to the U.S. attired in Western clothing, attended U.S. schools and then returned to the hell which overtook Iran after the Shah would hardly gain them acceptance among the extremist vultures holding Iran in a death grip. Maybe, just maybe, this time the Iranian people will deal with these thugs, and it's just so wonderful that Trump issued a few words of bold assurance. (Note: Newest information from Iran indicates that the country's brutal guard personnel may have squashed the demonstrations, at least for now. But as Trump said -- the world is watching.)
Miss America under new management: Look, women no longer like to be called "miss," and except primarily for male audience members and wannabees who keep this televised dinosaur walking the earth, would most folks really object to ending this meat market ritual, its reason for existence apparently dependent upon demonstrating that beautiful ladies can have brains, too?
Marijuana for everybody: States continue to go crazy. Smoke it, eat it or find a way to take it intravenously -- it's still chock full of chemicals and really bad stuff set to invade one's lungs and other organs. Unfortunately, young folk often believe they will live forever, health consequences be damned. As states slowly legalize this stuff, rational minds must ask why. Aside from states expecting a huge tax windfall, we wonder if much of the joy demonstrated by an anxious weed-lovin' public hasn't come about mainly because people believe they've won a thrill-victory of sorts over The Authorities. Fine. Now what?
Astronomers continue discovering Earth-like planets: And we wonder how many of them, had they hosted life, encountered asteroids over the millennia which wiped out every trace of it?
Take a pill: While law enforcement and government agencies go nuts attempting to control the opioid addiction, the FDA and associates happily unleash a non-stop blizzard of new "legal" medications intended to affect every bodily organ and function. Aside from questions regarding future harm on DNA sequences and damage accumulating merely by the indiscriminate excretion of medications into the environment, the fact that pharmaceutical corporations survive only by perpetuating a vicious cycle of manufacturing new, often dangerous drugs given the "okay" by people with uncomfortable connections to published research, should be a major concern.
Hey Kim: Nice new suit, but no matter your attire, you still look like a James Bond villain. Just be careful about not spilling a drink on that nuke button while lounging about your desk area with nothing to do but luxuriate in your creeping irrelevancy.
