I know how much you hate it when I blame Bush

Not to stretch this topic very far, but it is a bit legitimate of a statement that western countries are being fairly stingy about the whole relief effort for Sri Lanka and others ravaged by the tsunami. Bush of course took the bull by the horns and assumed Jan Egeland - the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator - was referring directly to the US when he said this, which he wasn't, but his rhetoric proves rather false on the actual amount of money being spent on relief. He mentioned last year that we spent 2.4 billion or something like that which was some 40% of the global effort, which is double talk really. Think about it, we spend about a billion dollars a week in Iraq currently, so in two and a half weeks of Iraq we've paid out more money that we spent in the entire year on relief efforts. I can't think anything from this but that we have seriously messed up out priorities in this country. And the other day a friend told me of the inevitability of war vs. the extent that it is unnecessary in our modern world, and the truth is, people just don't care really. On TV, every person in front of a camera would admit that the United States should be in the forefront of helping the world in such tragedies as famine, disease and natural tragedy, but as soon as the budget is being prepped, the first thing coming out their ass is that we spend too much money on foriegn and relief aid. Bush commented on how the relief money comes directly from taxpayers, and the heavy burden that Americans are going to take on with the proposed monies for tsunami relief, and if you add it up, we're talking about 9 cents per person. 9 cents!?! Don't you think after seeing all of the tragic news and destruction that we could at least give a quarter each? Or fifty cents? Or a buck maybe, a buck each? I mean I give my pocket change to the friggin salvation army when they're out in front of the grocery store at Christmas, can we get some dudes in shorts and Red Cross shirts to stand around and collect some cash for these folks? At least then you could legitimately say that taxpayers are taking on a cash burden to help raise funds. I don't know, but as bad as we're doing we still could be offering a lot more help from the government level without really making a dent in our credit. Sorry for the long boring commentary, but it's things like this that make other countries hate the US.