Friday, April 22, 2005
$300,000,000,000
Not that anyone really knows, but that is the amount of money you and I have supposedly paid so far for our visit in Iraq. This month or next, "they" are going to vote on another $80,000,000,000 for the same thing. This is for a country that has no WMDs (a term which in itself drives me crazy - as opposed to "minor destruction" perhaps?), virtually no ties to the Saudi nutcases involved in 9/11 (another term which drives me crazy - it's become a catch-all phrase for increased bureaucratic obfuscation) and couldn't launch an attack on the US if its life depended on it (which, come to think of it, it did).
Meanwhile, Osama (remember him - Wanted: Dead or Alive!) is still running around loose. We're stopping Dutch aircraft because they'll probably be flown into the Donald C. Cook nuclear plant. Kim (what a hairdo) il Sung is doing everything he can to get our attention. The problem is once his rhetoric stops, he may actually do something violent if his army doesn't starve first. Twelve-year old kids are being raped and buried alive in the US. We're selling F-16s to both India and Pakistan - that way, when they go to war, we can't be accused of taking sides. I don't even want to think about how many bodies are being buried in Africa who have died long before their time from disease, war and just general mankind's intolerance for mankind.
If all this doesn't depress you, just think about the fact that your taxes were due last week. And now you know where all those zeros are coming from. Pay any doctors for healthcare lately - well, not doctors exactly, but the hospitals they labor for. Wages are going down, health costs are going up and us peons are stuck in the middle.
Happy Earth Day everyone and enjoy the $3 a gallon gas this summer.
2fers: Earth Day and Federation of (Appalled) American Scientists
