On Relief

It's interesting. There's been a lot of hub bub about the fact that many countries across the world are contributing to the effort to help out in Southeast Asia, including the U.S.A. What makes this interesting is that there's a great deal of criticism that the U.S., the richest nation in the world (?), is not giving as much as they could.

My first response is "Of course not. We can't even afford to put proper armor on our soldiers."

Until it struck me.
Maybe the U.S. isn't half as rich as we'd all like to think.

No, seriously. I know it goes against common sense and what you read about, but what if the U.S. is hurting and trying not to show it.
We went to war, but we can't afford to give our soldiers good armor, good health care etc.
It doesn't seem to be going towards making sure the intelligence we're gathering overseas is better.
Most of our education reforms are badly underfunded. Hell, most of our schools are badly underfunded.
Even George Bush has said that Social Security is in trouble.
We are running the biggest national debt we've ever run. Ever.

So.. seriously.. here's the question. Where's the money? What's the money drain?
Sure, it could be the tax breaks. We're definately losing money there.
It could be the war. I understand very little about where money going towards "The war effort" really goes. It's obviously NOT to the common soldier.

Where *IS* the money?

I have no idea what the answer is. I'd definately like to know the answer, though.

New Years Eve Plans

So, I guess this year instead of a LARGE party with lots of friends, I'm going to have a small and quiet party, just myself, Kristen, various cattens of doom and whatever geek games we wish to play.
Kristen and I scored on the games this past year: She's got Chez Dork, I have CHez Geek and Chez Goth (actually, she has Chez Greek somewhere too.. dunno where). She's got Backgammon, I have Go. I also have not one but TWO Monopoly Sets now: Lord of the Rings (just got from Josh for Hannukah) and Star Wars (old, but still cool.)
We also have Chrononauts, Early American Chrononauts, Fluxx, Happily Ever After.

Of course, we could also break out the video games as well.
Or play with our iPods (see what happens when we connect her iPod to my computer)
Or Watch Farscape.

Or.. or.. or..
Yeah. We can keep busy :)

Also, I have every intention of ringing in the new year right! *wink wink nudge nudge*

So.. what are YOUR New Years Eve plans? :D