rolling stone, lecturing the president and drug prisons...

a friend of mine left rolling stone out on the coffee table and i perused the cover last night...i should not have done that, it left me depressed for the state of american society. the big story was a historian wondering whether he and his colleagues rank gw as the worst president ever (although i am totally unsure how you could historically rank a president while he remains in office, and i am not sure how much i trust a group that ranked andrew johnson as one of the worst ever for "thwarting" reconstruction, when any examination of history will clearly point that the radical ferver of the republicans - previously kept in check by a perfectly practical and realistic lincoln - quickly brought a backlash that crushed any hope for meaningful reconstruction and led to another 150 years of striving for civil rights, and ranked nixon at the bottom too...although they did throw buchanan down there, which i would say is accurate)...anyways...another cover story was about soldiers returning severely injured from iraq and then being ignored by the government. i immediately thought to myself "wow, perhaps popular culture is pulling it's head out of it's ass and taking notice of important things"...but i thought much too soon. for the other two cover stories involved pearl jam (ooo...whatever could their top ten albums be?) and nick lachey (goody, i could not live without knowing how nick is taking the tragic divorce and without seeing that his jeans were resting so low he needed another haircut). yes, lets give lip service to things that matter and then get to what is really important, pearl jam and boy band rejects.

the iranian president gave bush a good old-fashioned tongue lashing via the pen in his recent letter (which apparently did not deserve a response). it seems he tried to explain to bush what 90% of humanity has tried to explain to us for the last few years...the unending and unquestioning support of israel, the invasion of iraq, the treatment of prisoners, etc. are totally unchristian. although i think maybe the iranian president is mistaken in what it means to be christian...he doesn't quite understand that to truly be a worthwhile christian you must always blame the sinner for his lot in life (especially if his lot in life clearly indicates him to be a sinner...i.e. poor people), waging war in the middle east in the name of god (afterall, christians have been doing this for centuries...usually to disasterous results...hint, clue), and blatant hypocrasy (see the catholic church and american puritanical trends) are all totally in line with christian values. but thanks for the lesson.

(side note, perhaps the more important missing part of this story is that the iranian leadership is continually reaching out to us to try and work out a solution...and for some reason we will deal with that nutbag in korea but not them - and by "some reason" i mean geographic location and biblical importance - why is this not appalling to more people?)

some states are beginning to wake up and see the light when it comes to fighting crime. more and more prisons are being built to specifically house drug addicts (namely meth) and work on their rehabilitation rather than just teaching them how to commit more crime to further their drug problems. low and behold, recitivism rates for folks in these programs are staggeringly lower than for folks just tossed in prison. hell, the governor of montana even actually said, out loud, to press, that just throwing people in prison will not help them with their problems. yes, it is a public health and safety issue...and clearly our lock 'em up for longer and longer approach has failed. i hope more states take notice and start to go the route of montana, illinois and the like...we lost the drug war...not that it was ever winnable...or a war...but let's figure out how to actually deal with narcotics in an intelligent, useful and productive way. but that would be unchristian...helping neighbors and all...since they are sinners i mean.

it's not right that someone so stupid can so easily screw up your life...