The Cost of the War in Afghanistan

70 billion dollars. That's the projected amount of our nations budget that will be spent on the war in Afghanistan in 2010. Its just interesting to see that 70 billion tax payer dollars are going to to war with little participation by the country we are helping. I'm not here to say the wars wrong, its just questionable to see were putting money towards a conflict when the country we are helping doesn't seem to care.

Go Figure

It seems our attempts to fix our rising health care issue might be coming just in time. Reported on at time.com an independent economic group has found that

the United States ranks near the bottom in life expectancy among wealthy nations despite spending more than double per person on health care than the industrialized world's average

If this doesn't convince you that we need health care reform, what will. Were spending over 7000 dollars per person on health care, 3x more than the average in industrialized countries, and our mortality rates are still high. I think its time to turn our health care system from treating sickness, to prevention.

Low Income Babies

I think watching Fox News will now get me a better laugh than comedy central.
When you ask if their will be more low income babies due to no government subsidization of the cost, then you really should just leave journalism, not that fox news is much of a news organization anyway.

This also qualifies as my humor break, as it essentially is the same thing.

It does amazingly however, bring up and interesting point on abortion. Should the government pay for low income woman who cant afford to keep the child to have an abortion. Personally, i say yes, and i say this as a devout Christian. While im all about Pro-Life, i think that woman should also be able to choose, but should see all the facts and realize the options they have if they do conceive. Im not about scaring the crap out of them, just let them know you will probably regret this in the future.

Obama on the Media

Swampland had a really interesting post about Obama's view on the media lately. While it seems his war with the Fox news channel is over, it seems he still has a problem with other media outlets.

But it's not going to come easily and it is going to require a level of cooperation and a willingness to work strategically together that we have not seen over the last several years. And frankly, this town and the way the political dialogue is structured right now is not conducive to what we need to do to be globally competitive. And all of you are leaders in your communities -- in the business sector and the labor sector, in academia, we even have a few pundits here -- it is important to understand what's at stake and that we can't keep on playing games.
I mentioned that I was in Asia on this trip thinking about the economy, when I sat down for a round of interviews. Not one of them asked me about Asia. Not one of them asked me about the economy. I was asked several times about had I read Sarah Palin's book. (Laughter.) True. But it's an indication of how our political debate doesn't match up with what we need to do and where we need to go.

Lets hope the media gets a clue here that they need to report on what really matters, not Sarah Palin's book.

This is Still a Problem?

New York Times posted this interesting article on its website about how Millions of people in the US still have contaminated drinking water.

According to the article

More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years

This was something you would expect in a developing country such as India or China, not back home. And while according to the article, it only seems to be happening in towns with a population of 20,000 or less, it should still be acted upon with the utmost speed and urgency.

Healthcare and Slavery...?

I think its pretty interesting how Senator Reid compared the republicans blocking of this healthcare bill to slavery. And hes right in the fact that this is the biggest piece of legislation passed since the civil rights act as it does in fact effect everyone. Lets hope this speech convinces some to switch sides and do whats right for the country.

Chaos in Iran

It seems that the dissent in Iran is again bubbling to the surface. I think its a good sign that people are starting to realize the rule in Iran is wrong. It also shows the power my generation is having, and how students can change the shape of politics in the future to come.

Small loss reported in Bailout of Banks.

New York Times posted some promising news today about the Treasury Deparments report of a possible loss of 42 billion of of the 370 billion used in a bailout.

Whats even better is that they report this years deficit spending could lower from 1.5 trillion to 1.3 trillion with the return of this bailout money.

Im stil very skeptical if there will be a large enough return to prove that this bailout worked. In my opinon, more banks should have failed for their misuse of funds, and bailing them out just lets them continue the risk. But if they do turn a small profit, or almost break even, ill be amazed.