Things in recent news that drive me bonkers

Well, I'm normally pretty low key in regards to my opinions about what's happening politically and in the news, but recently I've read about a couple of things that just drive me nuts and I can't keep quiet about it.

1) Alright, so I'm assuming everyone knows about the G8 summit that's going on in Scotland between leaders of 8 of the wealthiest nations in the world. So, Tony Blair has been trying to push for the leaders to step up their aid to Africa to help stop the severe poverty there. He's also pushing for Bush to FINALLY ratify the Kyoto Act that EVERY OTHER NATION at the G-8 summit has ratified. The Kyoto Act, for those who don't know, is basically a statement that says that those who ratify it will work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to help curb the global warming. And guess what? Bush won't do it. Why you ask?? Because he thinks that helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissons is going to hurt our economy.

Ok, I can find several things wrong with that statement. Number one: What kind of economy are we going to have if half of our nation is underwater because the polar ice caps have melted?? Number two: Is it a little fishy to anyone that Bush, who happens to be invovled with oil companies, doesn't want to reduce emissions that are caused by his product? Hmmm.... Number three: It CAN be done without hurting our economy. Check out this link about Portland, Oregon's efforts to be more eco-friendly: www.sustainableportland.org Basically what it says is that Portland has taken some not-so-drastic measures to reduce emissions and be more eco-friendly. Such as providing subsidized bus passes along with subsidized parking passes, to encourage those who want to take the bus to work; and using different kinds of traffic signals that instead of emitting light, reflect light, thus cutting down on the amount of energy used. And guess what?? Portland is booming! People LIKE communities who are eco-friendly, and consider it an asset, and thus are more enticed to move there.

2) This kind of stems off of the whole G-8 summit thing. The whole aid to Africa thing. Alright, so there's this thing called AIDS that's a huge problem in Africa. About half the population has it. There's also a terrible overpopulation problem. But, instead of doing everything we can to help out this problem, Bush is promoting an abstinence only sex-ed policy in Africa (and here as well, but that's a different rant). Now, if he wants to advocate certain moral standards among a population that isn't in as dire straits as Africa's population is, fine, whatever. BUT the thing is, that instead of handing out condoms and teaching women about birth control and safe sex, the administration wants us to tell them to just not have sex. Now, I'm all for teaching morality, but I think survival is a bit more pressing for the Africans. Why not teach them ways to avoid spreading AIDS and avoid pregnancy, and let them decide for themselves what is moral and what is not. Cultural relativism people!

3) I don't know quite as much about this as I do the others, but there were a couple of reporters for national publications on trial recently for not revealing their sources and one of them for sure has been sentenced to jail time. Now, I thought that we in this nation wanted freedom of speech and freedom of press. In order to HAVE freedom of press and in order to get information out to the public, sometimes reporters have to guarentee anonimity to their sources. Would we have caught Nixon without Deep Throat? I'm not thrilled about the jailing of these reporters.

4) One last thing that's driving me kind of nuts is this big expensive game of Chicken we seem to be playing with Al-Qaida. It seems to be a big testosterone battle to me. Let's see who's got more guts. I don't really know the solution to this, but what we're doing is obviously not working. Let's find a new solution. OK? Ok.

Anyways, that's my rant fest for now. I'll stop back in later with an update about my life.