Happy New Year?!

Well it's been a while since I've thrown up some ranting. But with all the holiday hoopla, there hasn't been much time to get around to writing. The most notable thing in the news today is of course the tsunami that ravaged the western Pacific and eastern Indian ocean regions. Of course one of the things you'll hear about for months is the whining and complaining that initially the United States only promised 35 million dollars to the relief effort. You'll likely hear less that it was increased to ten times that amount a few days later. All I have to say to those who complained about the initial amount of the donation, is bugger off. It was December 26th, and a Sunday to boot. Off the cuff 35 million dollars is a good donation. Surely not enough to provide much relief from effects of the devastation, but when they announced the disaster no one really even had an idea exactly how bad things were.

However there are certain idiots who get these crazy socialist ideas that the wealthiest countries are stingy and should give more to poor countries to help with the relief effort. I agree that the U.S. should give more to help, and so far we have increased our aid amount to $350 million. This isn't counting private donations made by citizens to the charities of their choice. This smacks of the usual U.N. "tsk, tsk, tsk" response to anything the United States does. That's because we're cheap. The kind of cheap that provides 20% of the operating budget to the U.N. and provides them operating space in New York city, and has provided the majority of military manpower in numerous operations and even let foreign generals play war with our resources. Damn we suck as a country.

Never mind that half of Europe drinks Coke, smokes Camel cigarettes, and watches American television. Never mind that our colleges and universities educate thousands of foreign students each year when their own countries don't allow nearly as many American students into their colleges as they send out. Also let's not worry about our military presence in Europe that kicked the Nazis in the teeth and kept the Soviet Union from turning all of Western Europe into a giant failed experiment in Communism. The most wretched thing we've done is definitely the advances in technology and medicine that our hospitals and corporations have contributed to the world. That's because we have this nasty evil corrupt idea about at least recouping our research expenses to allow us to finance even more research.

We're all horrible, horrible people. We should raise the tax rate to 70% so that the rest of the world can sit idly by, not get a job, smoke pot all day, and shake their fist at us. God damned hippies.