I'm not a big conspiracy person, but I've been giving a lot of thought to the Iraq war lately, mostly due to reasons I'll speak about a little on down the line, and I think I've figured out the real motive behind it. A lot of people think it was GW trying to do what his dad couldn't. I'm sure that had something to do with it, and I'm sure that part of it was actually to remove Saddam from power due to the way he ran things, but part of me is starting to think it was to destabilize the area to make the price of crude oil skyrocket. Think about it... the oil companies have been seeing record profits since the war began, and what does the Bush family have a lot of holdings in? You guessed it, oil companies. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but that's just the way I see it.
Now on to what I alluded to in the above thought... So, yesterday, a former classmate of mine, Mandy Menold, lost her battle with cancer, and the world is a worse place for it. We were never exactly close, but she was a genuinely good person, and was someone who made the world a better place just by being in it. Her passing made me think of all of the friends and family that I've watched battle this plague, and it got me to thinking... how much of the money that we've wasted on the Bush Vendetta and the necessary, but poorly executed war in Afghanistan, could have gone to cancer research? According to www.cancer.gov, in 2009, the government spent $4.97 billion, excluding the additional $1.26 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It also goes on to state that funding for research has not grown noticeably since 2004, and that it has averaged $4.81 billion per year from FY 2004 through FY 2009. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but, isn't the deficit several trillion dollars? If that is the case, and we're spending that much money, why is cancer research only getting such a small portion of it? I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to eliminate the deficit, but if we're going to spend that much money, why isn't more of it going towards cancer research? There is no reason that while everything else goes up, the budget for cancer research should be stagnant. It boggles my mind that we can have public officials fighting for so many trivial things, and one of them isn't cancer research.
That's all I have for now, as I've sufficiently gotten myself worked up enough that I'm going to put the computer down and maybe go for a run or something. See you next time... if there is one.
