BAM!! Just Like That! A Culture in Crisis

What a swell bunch of folks!
Too bad no one told them that you should never point a gun directly at someone unless you aim to shoot them.Which reminds me, in the wake of the Omaha mall killings and suicide this week, I got curious about just how twisted this culture of ours has become.
Let me put it this way:
According to the FBI web site, there were over 17,000 murders in 2006 in America. (This years totals haven't been established yet. Hey! It's still early!) Of those 17,000 murders, 65% of them were committed with one sort of gun or another. So "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."...Yeah, but they do it overwhelmingly with guns! At least 11050 of 'em in 2006 at any rate.
We are a country that is supposedly in a time of peace and yet somehow we have a murder rate higher than other countries that are in a state of war. That would include the wars we've initiated by invasion and occupation like Iraq and Afghanistan.
You might be thinking " Oh, sure, Zach, but look at the size of our population compared to those other countries that are at war!" As if somehow our obsession with procreation justifies the wing nuts of our village to thin out the herd. Why? Because we can use the room?
Nah. Something is very, very wrong here. And whether it's because of guns or not because of guns, when you have 17,000 souls being snuffed out per year there's something very wrong with the culture we live in.
Many think these are acceptable stats for a country in a time of peace.
I happen to see it as a culture going to pieces.

And the Bush administration is now scrambling
to shore up the damage caused by the sub-prime
lending parasites on the defenseless folks who slept through their civics classes and never heard the words "let the buyer beware". This is special! People with jet skis, boats and SUVs in their drive ways, all bought on credit go and get themselves in even deeper debt. And now the rules get changed so that the poor schmucks who sacrificed much and occasionally did without new toys in order to pay off their debts and keep their heads above water financially are penalized for their frugality with the same payments they always had while the financially irresponsible get automatic tax breaks, excused debts and all kinds of extra consideration from the banking industry. What a great lesson to pass along to little Johnny and Mary about accountability, responsibility and the honor of signing a contract. Look for more of this in the future. And wait until even the people with good credit ratings wake up and realize it gets you nowhere in a hurry, fast compared to over spending on credit just to give the feds the opportunity to bail you out. Yes folks! It's the beginning of the age of shopping till you drop, because just like in elementary school these days, everybody gets to play, no matter what your level of effort and everybody gets a do-over until everyone gets a passing grade or someone comes up with a bell curve that makes an F look like a C on the (credit) report card.

I could go on.
Maybe tomorrow.