Valentine's Day Post

In honor of Valentine's Day, I want to send all my feelings of love and caring for humanity out into the world.

Ok, so much for that. What part of "curmudgeon" don't you understand? I mean, let's face it, people are jerks. Not all of them, but I'll bet there aren't many who don't at least act like jerks once in a while.

I mean really. We've been at this civilization business for what? Maybe six or eight thousand years? THOUSAND! Yet we still argue about whether or not we can tax the super-rich so we can provide some relief to people who don't have a place to live or enough food to eat. 

I know the counter-argument is that if we tax the wealthy too much, they'll get all sulky and stop creating jobs for the rest of us. Yeah, that's worked out really well. Think about the richest man in the world, Bill Gates. At one point, he was worth $60 billion. BILLION! Then he decided to do some good in the world (maybe to make up for unleashing Windows), and started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, helping cure disease in the third world and improve education everywhere. What a humanitarian! He made such a huge sacrifice, that today, he's only the richest person in the world, worth ... $60 billion. BILLION!

And how about the need to dredge up dead dinosaur guck and schlep it all over the world in boats, trains and pipelines, so everybody can drive his or her SUV to the gym. If the ships and trains and pipelines leak, we spill dinosaur guck and poison the land and kill wildlife. And if they don't leak, we burn the stuff in our cars and poison the air and kill wildlife. And the planet.

I'm sorry. I hadn't had my coffee yet. What I meant to say was Happy Valentine's Day!