Anonymous Opinion's Politics

The following quote from the U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs days after the "Boxing Day" Tsunami irked me at the time as it was no doubt aimed at the U.S.

"If, actually, the foreign assistance of many countries now is 0.1 or 0.2 percent of the gross national income, I think that is stingy, really," he said. "I don't think that is very generous."

He suggested that governments "believe that they are really burdening the taxpayers too much, and the taxpayers want to give less. It's not true. They want to give more"

-12/28/2004 Jan Egeland

Fox News Reports

Donor listings on WFP’s website show that this year, as in every year since 1999, the U.S. is far and away the biggest aid provider to WFP. Since 2001, U.S. donations to the food agency have averaged more than $1.16 billion annually — or more than five times as much as the next biggest donor, the European Commission.
...
The only other major oil exporter who made the WFP list of 2008 donors was the United Arab Emirates, which kicked in $50,000. UAE oil revenues in 2007 were $63 billion.

There is an organization out there that believes that world hunger would end if the U.S. would just give 1% of the budget to defeating it.

I wish it were so, but with nations like Burma/Myanmar where the government is more interested in staying in power and escaping the influence of "outsiders" than keeping their people alive, the outlook is grim. How can the U.S. singlehandedly feed the world if there is no accountability of the governments that might disperse the food and the largest umbrella organization has proven itself the most corrupt of all with the history of the oil for food scandal.

Can we be more generous? Of course.

Should this generosity be paid by the taxpayer and handed off to a governing body that continually shows it's disdain for us (i.e. kicking us off the Human Rights council while giving our seat to the likes of China (AKA SHUT-UP-ABOUT-TIBET-OR-WE-SEND-A-DEATH-VAN-FOR-YOU-AND-YOUR-FAMILIY) or Sudan(Rwanda - New and Improved genocide). No.

Are we more generous than the U.N. gives us credit for? Of course - private donations weren't calculated into this whole thing.

And, in all likelihood, we will do our best to stem the tide of the rise in world food costs.

H/T: Fox News, Free Republic, Cheese and Crackers

So much for economic stimulus. My rebate of $600 came last week and is going right out the door to pay my car insurance for the next 6 months...that's around the $720 range (no accidents!).

Somehow my car insurance is due right before I want to go on vacation, and right around Christmas.

Sigh.

I don't see my defensive driving class discount...must check into that.

There is a general consensus that the increase in food prices is correlated to the destruction of feed for the purpose of fuel increasing the demand and decreasing the supply of food, or feed for animals destined to be food.

Now - how on earth do we knock some sense into politicians who subsidize and incent ethanol production, pay farmers not to farm corn? How do we get the farmers to go back to farming the way they used to?

I just had a rather uncharitable thought that follows the following windy logic...

Read more!

I've worked and been friends with the drummer of the Dave Smith Band pretty much since I came to Delaware. I try to go out and support his musical activities when I can, so I went to see them play last Friday.

As I'm sitting by the bar with his wife who was having a side conversation, a man old enough to be my father comes up to me and says, "Hey, you know you got the whole geisha thing goin'."

I was speechless.

"No..no...it's a complement..."

My friends have had great fun coming up with appropriate comebacks.

1. Mace to the face
2. Me decking the guy
3. The drummer said I should have kicked him in the...
4. Drink in the face
5. Remind him that my brother can accurately shoot a target the size of silver dollar at 400 years
6. Drafting the nearest male co-worker to be "insta-boyfriend" so the guy will buzz off.
7. "Wow, you got the whole white trash thing goin'"

Luckily, he went away. Had he laid a hand on me, I think I would have done my best to break a finger or two.

"Is that God up there?" - Felix Fritzl, 5, sees the moon for the first time since leaving the cellar.

A poignant quote today, amid the horrors of the story of the Austrian children who have spent their whole lives locked by in a windowless vault by the man who is their father and grandfather. Josef Fritzl, 73, admits trapping his then 18-year-old daughter Elisabeth in the cellar and raping her over 24 years. Among the seven children he fathered with Elisabeth is Felix. Now freed from the basement, Felix is constantly excited by what he is experiencing, say doctors. The Telegraph describes how he keeps trying to hit the air with his hand, gurgled excitedly on seeing a cow and was stunned when he saw an officer start talking into a mobile phone.

My Bible study is doing a series on forgiveness.

If I were Elisabeth, I don't know if I would have the strength within me to forgive the monster that did this. I can't imagine being imprisoned in a dungeon my whole life and weeping upon seeing the sky, moon, and stars for the first time.

I wonder how a person's soul can become so twisted to do such things.

Because there is no death penalty in Austria, I'm sure Fritzl will spend the rest of his days in prison, but with far more accommodations than he provided for his children.

May God have mercy on his wretched excuse for a soul for I doubt anyone else could.