9/11 is a joke

sorry for stealing the line from public enemy's song, 9-11 is a joke, but today is the first time in 6 years i've been able to avoid any mention of our losses. and it feels good.

i'm so sick of the gop trotting out "9/11" as the answer to every question about domestic and foreign policy. finally, here on 9/11/07, we've been able to move beyond that trite expression and pay attention to things that matter more.

sure, i'll probably get a lot of hate mail on this, so let me say first that i'm not out to trash the memories of the victims who died at the hands of terrorists on 9/11/01. and i certainly think that the guys who took on the terrorists over the skies of PA were pretty courageous. the weakest link on that day was our screwball nutjob of a president Bush, who flew across the country in random zigzags like a chicken without its head. next would be darth cheney, hiding out in an underground bunker, building his shadow government. yawn.

~4000 citizens died on 9/11, and that was a tragedy. but more Americans die every year from smoking -- do we have a war on cigarettes, mobilizing troops against the terrorist nicotine providers? nope, too important to the state's bottom line, now that they're hooked on tobacco tax revenue. what about obesity and heart disease? some 300,000+ Americans die each year from overeating and underexercising. where's the invasion force when you really need them, paratrooping into McDonalds and other fast food chains? that's a whole lot more people than the 4000 who died on 9/11, and we could spend a lot less money OVER HERE, fighting these stateless enemies, then OVER THERE in Iraq, watching our servicemen and women die for no good reason.

finally we have some peace on the airwaves. the 9/11 tragedy inspired our Democratic leaders to abandon our 200+ year old system of checks and balances, and decide to give full unbridled and unchecked powers to a madman named Bush. but for us here in Chicago, or in the thousands of other cities and towns across america, 9/11 didn't really change that much about our daily lives. sure, we pay more for gas now and less for airplane tickets. and perhaps there's some benefit to taking off our shoes in the airport. but i doubt we're that much safer than before, and frankly, i don't spend much time at all worrying about a new terrorist threat or attack which I have no power to prevent. I'd rather we had saved $500 billion on NOT attacking Iraq and just divided the money evenly amongst every single American citizen. For you math scholars out there, that's $1666 for each of us -- a bit more than Bush's crappy $100 tax handout a couple of years back.