Just got back from vacationing in Arizona a few days ago and it’s good to be home. Melissa and I visited her parents in Prescott, AZ for over a week. I love Prescott. It’s so… Western. When you travel around Prescott, especially when driving to where my in-laws live, it really feels like you’re in the Wild West. I’m not sure I’d want to live there just yet (I am a city boy afterall) but maybe someday. Though horses do intimidate me and I don’t like hats (just the occassional beanie) and country music is not something I want to hear on purpose, so I guess I wouldn’t make the best cowboy. Eh. Oh well. Guess I’ll have to move to somewhere with an art and music scene and no horses instead, not that I’m moving anytime soon. Melissa still has a few years left with school and what I call “school follow-up” so we’ll be in Santa Barbara for at least that amount of time – though I’m always on the look-out for cool places to check out for the future.
Check out the rest of the pictures from the Prescott trip here.
I was reading random articles on-line this morning, as I am prone to do, and came acorss a list of foreign aid the U.S. disperses in order of amounts to the top ten countries. The list always includes what that aid is generally used for and though I don’t know of the accuracy of the article, it does bring up some very interesting concepts.
I understand the desire to support Israel but why is the U.S. dumping BILLIONS into that region? I don’t for a second believe that the U.S. government is doing it out of the goodness of their hearts or because of any Judeo-Christian belief that Israel are the chosen people. If that were true then why is so much aid poured into countries that also generally dislike Israel? I think there are two basic reasons that can be derived from the above list. One, the U.S. likes having strong allies in that region. This is clear cut and understandable if we have resouces at stake in the region such as say…. something like oil. Two, the U.S. especially likes strong allies that spend money we give them back on our products (in this case weapons). Speaking of which, where exactly is all this money coming from? Thin air? Or borrowed in the trillions from other countries like China and Japan? The money we borrow and print is then given away to countries who then use much of that money to purchase weapons from us. This is part of the “Military Industrial Complex” and much of our world economy is dependent is on it. Scary.
