Welcome Back

Welcome back to the grind everyone! Hope you all had a great 4th of July weekend! We had fun and did the usual fireworks/family picnic/hanging out thing.

Before I get into my scheduled rant, a quick announcement. I've added an MP3 to my website. It's a rough demo of one of the songs on my upcoming Voice of the Spirit CD. It's still missing a keyboard solo and final editing. Please remember that it is copyrighted my me so all the usual legal stuff applies. Let me know what you think! Here's the URL: Give it All to You. Also, at the request of the Wife, I've moved her picture down. While I feel her beauty should be prominently displayed, it makes it difficult for her to be inconspicuous looking at the site at work with the large picture of herself on the screen. Hope that's better for you dear!

Now for my scheduled rant:

This may be a little out of date, but work with me here. I’ve got a lot to write and I don’t want to post it all at once. If you’ve been following world politics, you’ve heard that Iran has elected a new president and that he is of a conservative bend, meaning there is fear he is going to take the country backwards and make it an even more Islamic state. I was kind of amused about this since it brings up a messy question for our current administration.

Mr. Bush keeps talking about spreading democracy. So what if a country like Iran through free, uncorrupted elections, elects a leader that is reactionary and hates the US. Or perhaps even sponsors terrorism? Do we then have a right to do something about it? After all, the person was democratically elected by the population, representing their values and desires. Can you on the one hand say we support democracy around the world, but then on the other hand decide which democracies are a thread to us and should perhaps be invaded on the war on terror. What kind of a hypocritical nation would that make us?

The bigger news item, though, has been the accusation that the new president of Iran was one of the hostage takers back in 1979. The Bush administration has vowed to look into this matter and is giving it a high priority. However, my response is, so what? What are we going to do about it?

Let’s assume for one moment this accusation is true. Does this make this guy any less the president of Iran? After all, he was officially elected by the population. And if they all knew that this guy was a hostage taker, would it make any difference to the Iranians? For all we know, that would have gotten him more votes. Again, we’re talking about a sovereign nation here. So, are we going to invade Iran to arrest the president of their country for taking American’s prisoner? Again, I have to throw the hypocrite flag here.

So what we’re really talking about is that the Bush administration is going to pretend like they’re doing something, maybe issue some sort of condemnation, and Congress will draft some stupid resolution that doesn’t mean anything. And this guy will still be the president of Iran. Can we move on to some meaningful news now?