Too quiet.. US troops are in Afghanistan because . . .

I've been quiet about Obama for two reasons. First, he needs his 100 days to stop campaigning and start getting to work. Second, he's making too dang many mistakes every day for me to even start talking about. I'd be talking all day.

He's busy this week trying to convince us his budget is smart. He's not convincing me. I do love the fact that he's not trying to sweep the cost of the wars we are engaged in under the rug any longer, and including them in the budget. That's a plus. But it's also a minus. Because the budget doesn't answer the question: Why are US troops in Afghanistan? Click on the link and you'll find that Google found two answers, neither of which are from the government or the military. In fact, the answers are from people like you and me that really do not know the answer.

Obama ran on making a change and being open. He's making a change - sending more troops to Afghanistan. But he's not being open about the reasons he wants more American soldiers killed there. Ask all your friends and strangers you meet for the next few days. Their answers will be no better or worse than the answers on the two pages Google can find, really lame answers.

The best answer I heard this week when I asked that question was "to keep the price of heroin low". I checked, and turns out that's true - more heroin is leaving afghanistan than ever before, bringing supplies way up and costs way down. Interesting, but still not excuse enough to have one more death of an American because he was ordered to go.

I really love the answer by one of the regular folks that says: because we are part of NATO. North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Anyone looked at a map lately?

Wanna talk economy? No, neither do I. Gotta be rich to get bailed out, that's the lesson of both Bush & Obama. Republican, Democrat. It doesn't really matter. Just don't ask how the money is getting into their pockets and we'll be at peace. I was very sad to hear of protesters being arrested last week. Obama promised to bring change and listen to people. I guess his definition of people is different than ours.

Future taxes (handout aka bailout) vrs forward thinking

In the US our government is using future taxpayer mnoney (from my grandchildren, basically) to make a few extremely rich people even richer in what they are calling "bail-outs". It's a smoke-screen, and most citizens know it, but we are are not going to start a revolution, so the rich will stay rich and the middle class will become poor. Such is life.

It does intrigue me, however, that there are companies that refuse to participate in the bail-out (actually hand-out), and think more of reality. I love this from the guy running HP:

In fact when it comes to the economic downturn, Mr Banerjee said it is not a major focus of concern.

"We are not looking at the recession," he told the BBC. "We are looking at investment in technology for the long term so that HP is fully prepared to provide its customers with a variety of choices when we get out of the recession.

"Innovation is not for the next quarter, it is for the next two years, five years from now. The key is to invest in innovation that truly matters."

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