Excessive profits, Hurricane recovery and 'My War' and other troop blogs.

I haven't been writing much due to my work schedule and the coming holiday crunch and all its attendant madness, but the fact that during the recent spike up of gas prices and the $100B profit run up by oil companies while heating oil bills double hasn't escaped my scutiny either. Instead of asking Joe Sixpack to cut back on errands by car as the President basically did, how about asking his corporate sponsors to cut back on the use of their private jets? Each one of these uses more gas for their owner's enjoyment than 100 private vehicles do to run errands. It is also absurd on the part of the oil companies to 'pre-raise' the cost of gas BEFORE the hurricanes hit, rather than determining the cost of damage AFTER the hurricanes hit. Now that some of the oil rigs were not destroyed on the scale as was previously feared, how about a 'refund' or 'rebate' or 'price break' for consumers for the next month or so? Or here's another idea: Since consumers have apparently no choice put to pay the price anyway, why not have tje oil companies use their excessive profits for the next 3 months be used to rebuild the Gulf Coast? That way, no one's tax money has to be used, since the Bush Administration always claims there is no money for social programs or a reasonable health care system. But ironically, it wants to keep in place the Wealthfare tax cuts until 2010. $100B. What would Donald Trump build with that kind of money? Could Trump (or anyone else) do a quicker job of dispatching all those trailers that are to be used as temporary hosuing for the displaced in the gulf? One provider of trailers was told to take them back because they were filled with food and clothing and FEMA's rules demanded that they be delivered empty! And by the way, FEMA says the disaster is over, you can go home now and start paying your mortgages again even if you have no home to live in. Happy Holidays!

The other story dominating the news lately is the situation in Iraq. There's been a lot of back-and-forth as to wether the 'media' are accurately reporting the situation over there. Well, for a complete and unabridged version of what it's like over there, try reading a blog wriiten by a soldier or Marine who is living the war on a daily basis try 'My War' by the 'Nom de Blog' of CBFTW, aka Corey Buzzell, a soldier stationed outside of Mosul. 'My War' is the one I've started reading and I will post the link in my link section. I always start at the beginning so I have some catching up to do. You can find blogs from many military personnel by checking out sites such as Iraqi Blogs, Military blogs. I encourage anyone who is interested in what's going on over their, without the filters of the left or right. We didn't have this during my generation's war, Vietnam and after 1970, renamed 'The War in Southeast Asia' after Nixon's invasion of neutral Cambodia.

Can the truth filter out of Iraq even via the blogosphere? Not according to this article by NPR. But as I understand it 'My War' will be published into a book soon. But a warning is in order here, 'My War' is certainly not family reading, but it is an god blog to keep things in perspective this holiday season, while retailers and etailers are saying 'Don't worry, be happy, so keep spending".