Some More of Pete's Greatest Peeves

No sooner had I finished my last post when I remembered more things that really make me mad. Here they are.

Smokers. Do you know what you're doing to your body? Each year, 400,000 Americans die from lung cancer. It is estimated that 85% of those deaths are caused by smoking. That's 340,000 people who would have lived longer if only that had never started smoking or had given it up. How many people are sickened or killed by second-hand smoke is unknown, but certainly there are innocent victims of the filthy habit. The extra healthcare smokers require also drives up the cost of medical care for the rest of us. And don't even get me started about enriching tobacco companies, or the immorality of using farmland for tobacco when there are starving people in the world. In religious terms, the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. You don't profane your temple. Thinking of smokers puts me on the track to. . .

Narcotics. Billions of dollars are wasted each year and thousands of lives are damaged or ruined by narcotics. Whether it's a product of nature like the opiates or something produced in a laboratory like meth, it's still suicidally dangerous and a producer of great evil. Narcotics and the demand for them are turning Mexico into a shooting gallery and enriching the Taliban who are then able to buy the weapons that kill our soldiers. Users of narcotics are just that - users.

Dissembling politicians. Congressman Weiner doesn't know if the picture of a man's torso in underwear is a picture of him? How many pictures of him in his underwear could there be that he isn't sure this particular picture is of him? There must be a mole, freckle, wart or scar on either the picture or his own anatomy that would allow him to make a determination. Come on now.

Actually, I think this is kind of a tempest in a teapot. Much more egregious is the legal practice of politicians converting "campaign contributions" into personal assets (i.e. bribes). As Harry Truman said, "No man can get rich in politics unless he's a crook. It can't be done." And yet they seem to manage it.

The editorial writer for the Colorado Springs Gazette. His most recent and heinous editorial concerns Texas oil drilling and an endangered lizard. The editorial asserted that our need for oil and gas are more important than one of God's creatures. We'll take reasonable steps to assure the lizard's existence, he said, but resource development comes first. It is the depth of human arrogance to suppose it's okay to wipe out animal or plant species. Extinct is forever, folks. All this reminds me of a self-excusing line from Leonard Bernstein's "Mass."

God said, "Take charge of my zoo,

I made these creatures for you."

So He won't mind if we

Wipe out a species or two.