You know, that tsunami business was pretty horrible. I was stunned at the amount of damage and lives caused during that catastrophe. Mother Nature is simply amazing...the power and extent of her wrath is astounding...
My heart goes out to those who have lost their families and homes....
However, I'm getting really sick and tired of all these bleeding hearts who bitch about the amount of money the US is contributing...We gave money,why the hell should we give more? Has everyone forgotten about the problems we have here at home? We're already contributing how much money to the Iraqi and Afgahnistan cause? How many other times have we delved into our pockets and handed over cash to those in crisis?
Good God...give it a rest already. Yes, we are wealthy and powerful nation. We have an obligation to help out, but exactly "HOW MUCH" of an obligation? Millions of dollars? Billions of dollars? Take care of the problem all by ourselves? As far as I'm concerned, a donation is a donation, there isn't any set amount on what we should pay...in fact, we don't have to give anyone a friggen cent! It pisses me off how people just expect it from us...espeically our own country men. Ummm, hello you geniuses. Who do you think pays for these contributions you're crying so hard about? Do you think the treasury fairy just fires up the presses and spits out cash? Oh, and I bet most of these people are the same people who bitch about jobs going overseas, yet pass up dropping a dollar into a coffee can at the local convience store the help feed the homeless. Can't spend your money at home to help your own people, eh? How noble you are....
I suppose the argument there could be, "The US is a rich country and can help it's own." Sure...if we stop giving all our pity money away to other countries I'm sure that attitude would work just fine. I for one am all for cutting off charitble donations to an extent and spending our cash here on our own soil. We've got enough problems of our own...if you haven't noticed...Oh, but that's right, if we actually fixed everything wrong with our country, the bleeding hearts wouldn't have anything to bitch about...Silly me...
Anyway...
I'm praying for a friggen blizzard. I want it to snow so damn hard into next week that I can't get out of my driveway. I want it to hail and freezing rain until you need ice skates to get the mail. I'm praying...I've been praying...God seems to be answering, since it started snowing this afternoon. Please, please, please give us a blizzard! Please! I DO NOT want to go to a meeting in Spokane this week. If it snows hard enough, we won't have to attend (it's 150 miles from home).
I decided I don't care much for my job. It's not a bad job, but it's boring. It's coorporate work (read:slimy). I love the people I work with, that's not an issue. They're all really great. It makes my boring, dull, monotonous job fun. I suppose one of these days I should figure out something else to do with myself....Until then, I'll continue my life in public services and practice my fake smile...heh...
*sigh*
Such is life...
Posted by Zoso at January 7, 2005 12:38 PMI kinda feel your pain on this one. I've been reading the headlines in the local paper and the Seattle PI (which are more like running tallies on donation), and It's becoming a giant pissing match between countries. Australlia is doing an awesome job of actually organizing and aiding in the physical sense. They are also hefty donaters, and we've done a fair share of humanitarian work there.
At first I was really dissapointed that we were only paying out 35 mil. to what is possibly the greatest natural disaster of my lifetime. That was a bit shabby, but I thought our second wave of funding was more than suffecient. I would have rather seen us offer more physical aide, but since the whole damn army is in Iraq... that's not likely. There's a lot to be done. A lot of money to get it done. Seriously though, America doesn't OWE millions of dollars just because a natural disaster occured. I think we should feel obliged to aid, but essentially we are just reallocating borrowed money. All these donations combined couldn't buy us out of our national debt!
I do think that we should avoid looking at this from a "what we get out of the deal." standpoint though. The world should come together over a disaster this catastrophic... but to be obligated to donate hundreds of millions while we are already busy rebuilding the heart of the middle east... uhm... there's only so much we can do at once!
My solution would be to reduce funds to Iraq and redirect it toward the tsunamis (which I feel is a more worthy cause), but that would only make things more difficult for our troops and us in the long run.
It seems no matter what we do we'll be criticized anyway. It seems to be popular to hate us these days. Get over it! Not everybody can be number one, and Bush won't be around forever! Our critics may want to spend some time evaluating their own problems FRANCE!
Anyway, my diatribe is over, though I'm sure everbody stopped reading about two sentences in anyway = )
Posted by: J at January 7, 2005 08:21 PMWell, I feel we're obligated to fork out the cash in Iraq to some extent. We caused quite a bit of damage there...so we should pay to fix it. I agree though, that the tsunami diserves the money more...Iraq wouldn't be such a mess if human beings weren't such shitheads to each other and there's not jack that we can do to stop mother nature when she decides to off a couple hundred thousand people...
All in all, the pissing match is beyond annoying...but I'm more disgusted with our own home-grown snivlers...
Posted by: Zoso at January 7, 2005 09:19 PM