COULD IT REALLY BE?

When you see the satellite photographs of terrorist training camps, why do they always have a set of monkey bars, the kind that you have to climb hand over hand across a treacherous rubber mat located 6 feet below you? What exactly are these guys training for, third grade? And if you don't carefully program those robot predator drone planes, won't they start firing missiles at playgrounds at some point? Or could it really be that these so-called terrorist training camps are simply their idea of an adult gym? We'll never know until we start checking under the robes of the blown up guys for perfect abs. You have to figure that anybody nuts enough to torture himself into sculpting an ideal 6-pack stomach is the last guy who would risk them by being a terrorist.

Could it really be that second-hand smoke is not the issue at all, and that targeting an easy mark like smokers is the whole idea? You don't see a whole lot of do-gooders approaching truck drivers and road construction workers and berating them for the second-hand fumes belching out of their monster machines. For the most part those guys are too tough and scary looking for the average pencil neck killjoy to challenge. Better some guy who wheezes already and has been programmed to feel guilty about what he enjoys. Often enough to make it entertaining, however, the second-hand smoke crybabies still get a shock from time to time in the form of two quick slaps from a smoker sick and tired of being exposed to their second-hand rudeness.

Could it really be that what society needs is a Living Death Certificate? It seems that there are a whole lot of people enjoying the privileges of living when they have been dead inside for a long time. They engage with no one unless in a negative and insulting way, love no one but their own worthless selves and generally are far more of an impediment to smooth society that a help. Perhaps a tattoo on their foreheads of the Grim Reaper to warn the living of their presence might be appropriate? Or maybe a stiff tax on their zombie asses to be used for the frivolous pleasures of living people? These measures wouldn't solve the problem of those who surrender before their time and try to take as many people with them as they can, but it would be a considerate warning to the rest of us to avoid wasting even a few seconds of our precious lives in the company of negative chumps.

Could it really be that gun nuts in this nation forgot the part in The Second Amendment about a well-regulated militia, the key phrase being well-regulated? Nowhere does the amendment mention letting every Tom, Dick and Harry with a bumper sticker addiction collect machine guns just for the hell of it. The right to bear arms by definition means a great responsibility not to use them, thus that whole well-regulated part. Maybe making them just a tad harder to obtain than a bottle of Pepsi might mean that John Lennon, Phil Spector's girlriend and Steve McNair might still be alive?

Is there a solid reason that most of us are unaware of exactly why the government keeps throwing away trillions of our dollars on The War On Drugs? This was one we lost many years ago. There are more recreational drug users spread across every strata of society than there ever were before. Even one of the champions of the War On Drugs, Rush Limbaugh, is as stone hardcore a junkie as any addict who ever prowled any back alley in search of a fix. Could it be really be that the giant pharmaceutical companies saw what a good thing the drug cartels håçcription pain killers than are required for routine medical use? Where did they think these super expensive extra drugs would wind up?

And could it really be that too much money is crossing too many hands in the form of bribes and good jobs to actually declare drugs legal and take away the mega profits? Without their opium profits, the Taliban would have access to a crop about as valuable as bananas and could only afford to buy spears and slingshots and have to sell their monkey bars. Could it be that there are some people so attached to having our Bogey Men alive and thriving that they actively seek to maintain the billionaire killer cartels and enemy armies that are built on drug profits? Maybe they figure the economy couldn't take the prison industry being cut in half without all the drug charges? Maybe they're afraid lawyers would suffer too (Yet another pressing reason to legalize everything that doesn't harm anyone else!)? Without vampires, Van Helsing wouldn't have had all that much to do with himself, would he?