Fish Sticks, Mac & Cheese

quick post as a follow-up to yesterday...

fuel prices were in the midst of being changed as i rode in to work today. albeit this is a metro area, but regular unleaded hit $2.99 a gallon. bush cut his vacation short by two days (what a trooper!) to return to washington and announce that the federal reserve of 700 million barrels of oil will be tapped by week's end.

that should hold the price steady at $3 for a week. i am going to end this post now, leave work early, and fill up the tires on my bicycle...

at the risk of sounding cliché, i would like to extend a heart-felt sympathy to the vicitims of hurricane katrina until they get back on their feet again. as i read the headlines, i feel sad for the people and their families that lost not just material items, but some lost their lives. i can't help, in the back of my head, think about the cost to the nation.

many people think firstly that "it doesn't effect me, i live in XX." well jethro, that's where your wrong. it does affect you, just not directly. sure you didn't have your house flooded and all of your belongings floating out to sea, but by the end of the week when the tallies are in and the price of fuel jumps 25 cents a gallon, you will feel it. when the insurance companies begin to shell out the estimated $25 billion to rebuild, who do you think pays for that? they "loan" it out to the victims, only to recoup it on the back end. bottom line is through rate increases YOU pay.

sorry to turn this into a bitter rant, but as i am earning the same salary for over two years now and now have to pay for my son's daycare, insurance that keeps going up, and now friggin fuel to get to the job that barley pays these expenses, i feel i have the right to be a bit bitter. i can only carve the paycheck so many ways, you know what i mean?

so i feel i need to comment on the lance armstrong situation. it seems that a french laboratory had a blood sample that armstrong left in 1999 and they analyzed it using 2005 technology and detected a "blood booster," whatever the hell that means. technically it would mean he used a performance enhancing substance, which would compromise the integrity of the tour de france.

now we are talking about a sample from six years ago. surely the statute of limitations needs to be applied here. armstrong is of course saying that they are lieing about it and that he will pursue legal action against the paper that ran the story for slander.

ultimately let me first say that i don't really care about cycling. that aside, if he took drugs six years ago i don't think it is at all a big deal. i think if people did stuff in the past, than that is the past. i really don't think armstrong duped cycling in the past. my contention is this > if the technology was not available in 1999 to detect this blood booster, than could armstrong really have been knowledgable to its positive effects on his performance. did he really know it would affect him more than say, a vitamin?

that's my thought. chime in if you wish...

well another week goes by and cindy sheehan is right back outside the bush ranch in crawford, texas. she left last week to spend some time with her ailing mother, but now has returned to be a thorn in bush's side. i love it, i love this woman, her tanacity and commitment to something she beleives in. i love the fact that she has endured the onslaught of the conservative media that tried to paint her in a negative light. stupid. she is not trying to be a role model, she just wants answers to questions that many intelligent americans have on their head.

in doing so, though, she has become a role model, i suppose.

in my last post i called on bush to meet with her, to do the descent thing. of course he hasn't. but now i want him to continue to ignore her and his numbers to continue to plummet. what an arrogant as*hole. you owe miss sheehan, and us, and explanation...the problem is he doesn't have one.

so cindy sheehan is in her eleventh day of camping in texas. in my opinion she is a champion and each day that passes bush looks more and more like a fool. in case you don't know, sheehan's son casey, a marine, was killed in iraq. she was obviously greif stricken, but when she heard bush in a press conference make light of wmd's, she got offended and now wants a meeting with bush to get closure.

bush knows she is there and is currently on the longest vacation is presidential history. in my opinon he should just meet with her, he owes her this much. not even from a p-r perspective, but from a human perspective this is the right thing to do. bush is coming off like he doesn't care, and whether he does or not is irrelevant. just do it, w, and pretend like you are not out of touch with the public.

check the bbc news link on my page here today. i read that israeli troops are being used to clear residents from their homes to complete the evacuation. i understand the importance of an independent palestinean state, and agree with this. but i can't help but wonder how americans would react had they were asked to evacuate their homes or land they felt they owned.

i know, its not the same thing, apples and oranges, etc., but think about it. i think the evacuation and creation of an independent state for the palestineans is a postivie step, but don't feel it will give us peace, only deeper root animosity.

that's my opinion, what's yours?

so the shuttle landed this morning in california. am i a bad american for not really caring? i can't seem to get past the fact that this voyage cost $43B and the US is sorely lagging behind in the fields of communication, unemployment benefits, number of homeless, healthcare, teachers need to fight for more money while schools cancel art and music programs because of lack of funds.

i am sick of it. i am happy that the crew laded it safely but would be very happy if nasa was shelved and the money was used elsewhere.

your thoughts?