Apparently, I'm in the mood to gripe today

Destroyed Torture Tapes

I am so sick of Bush talking about this stuff -- I'm not sure if I feel pity for him or just ashamed. It almost always sounds like he doesn't know what he's talking about -- and he tries to dance around too much. He knows what is being done is illegal, and so do those who destroyed the tapes. He talks about protecting American people yet they've used the "State Secrets" defense more than any other administration. They are also violating our rights and say that they're doing it in order to "protect us" -- how can you justify fighting for our freedoms when you're taking them away? We're not any safer just because we have to wait in line an extra 2 hours at the airport while everything is supposedly searched (I made it through security with a lighter in my purse still and would have been able to take it on the plane had I not remembered that I had it (I had to use it to heat up my key when my locks froze on my car lol) and disposed of it); and we're not any safer just b/c they decide to detain thousands of people for "questioning" -- if anything they've strapped their resources which is more detrimental to our safety b/c people are so caught up in searching everyone that they can't focus more attention on what actually seems threatening. They knew about 9/11 before it happened but said they didn't have the resources available to investigate the information properly. We're more likely to be victimized by domestic criminals than by foreign terrorists so why don't you focus a bit of energy into that? And while we're looking into the criminal justice system, why don't we look at all the social injustices that are leading many towards prisons -- at least in prison they get food and shelter and work. I could rant on about so much of this -- including Gitmo and the threats to habeus corpus -- and about how much of all of that is a crock of crap and mostly unnecessary... *takes a deep breath* -- I think I'm PMS'ing... time to go do some yoga and chill. lol

War Operations vs. Education, Health, and other Domestic Programs

Yet another budget battle...

A snippet from the article: The White House on Saturday threatened to veto a massive spending bill being assembled by congressional Democrats, saying it's unacceptable to add billions of dollars to domestic programs.

The White House has not seen details of the $500 billion-plus measure — which senior Democrats are constructing behind closed doors — but reacted to it based on media accounts.

The bill contains $11 billion above President Bush's February budget, awarding the money to domestic programs such as EDUCATION and health research. It also may contain several billion dollars in "emergency" funding for border security, foreign aid, drought relief and a food program for women and children.

So this is the kinda crap that bothers me, and this is the reason why I say education needs to be made a top priority for this country. Bush requested $196 BILLION to add to the war operations in Afghanistan and Iraq; yet, he calls trying to request $11 billion for additional programs in the States fiscally irresponsible. The war is costing us something like $12 billion A MONTH, which is $1 billion more than what was requested for the whole year for several domestic programs.

Seriously.... is anyone else bothered by this in the least? I'm in favor of taking care of those who are at war overseas, but we shouldn't neglect the domestic needs of our nation either. Education, health care, food programs -- these sound like things that can benefit the entire population in some way or another. I'm really tired of all this petty fighting and bickering and people using power to secure their best interests for when they're not in power anymore while forgetting about most of their constituents. We need to find, support, and elect more humanistic leaders. This selfish capitalism has gone way too far; it can' really be described as capitalism anymore either; it's just greedy materialism. :o\ And as much as I think we can benefit from having a member of "minority" status as President, please, please please, please, PLEASE don't vote for someone just because they are a minority. Research the candidates and read about what they stand for -- you might be surprised at what you find.

I guess I just hate the thought of knowing that there are so many people out there suffering needlessly (not just here but in other countries as well). The whole thing is just seriously out of balance.