I'm tired

I'd really like to rip apart Obama's speech but I won't because
1. I was recently reminded how childish that is
And 2. It is dang long! And boring. Like almost all political things.

I will say, though I threw up in my mouth a little at the "our founding fathers were AWESOME!" part. I think the entire point of these speeches is to make us think we are great. Like cheerleaders.

Anyway, I missed the inauguration (yeah, I'm broken up about it) because we had an IFH meeting for school.....which was also entirely pointless and boring, but at least it didn't take 160 million dollars.

Which brings me to the point of this entry: 160 MILLION DOLLARS?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!??!
First, where did that money come from?
Second, if Beyonce and Fifty Cent or whoever sang at this thing support him so much why didn't they do it for free?
Third, 160 MILLION DOLLARS?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
I made a list, very quickly and mostly based on facts from Sarah MacLachlan's World on Fire music video, of exactly what that amount of money could do.



Rural clinic for 8,000 people (39,000)
Medicine for 10,000 people for 1 year (30,000)
Running a street children’s hospital in India for ten years (110,500)
Feeding 1000 street children in Calcutta 3 meals a day for 10 years (3,000,000)
Schooling for 1000 street children in Tanzania (25,000)
One deep well for each country in Africa (846,000)
Sending 10,000 girls to school for 5 years in Afganistan (1,724,137)
Training 1000 teachers in Afganistan (40,000)
Equipping 1000 classrooms in Afganistan (48,000)
Total cost of running an orphanage in South Africa (16,500)
Mobile Medical Unit vehicle providing medical treatment for the elderly (15,000)
Entertainment and escapsim for refugees (9,500)
100 former child soldiers to receive schooling and psychosocial support (5,000)
70 young people in Sierra Leone to receive job training (15,000)
Education, shelter and food for orphans in Ethiopia (500)
Malaria prevention for 1 million families (20,000,000)
A year of school for 500 orphans who lost their parents to AIDS (35,000)
A Hope Center in Swaziland (providing food, shelter, education, medical care, cutting child death rates by 50%) (15,435)
Safety for 1000 exploited children in Cambodia (100,000)
50 bicycle ambulances (13,000)
Nuts & bolts to secure houses of monsoon victims (500)
Irrigation for drought afflicted Sudan (1,050)
2 heifers, 2 goats, 2 sheep, 2 llamas, 4 goats, 1 buffalo, 1 pig, chicks and ducks (2,680)

This only comes to 25,330,402 -- which doesn’t even cover his train tour. We could do this more than 6 times.
Onstead, over 6 million people were directly negatively affected by us having a party instead.

Yes, please, Mr. President, sir, tell me how great and awesome we are and how we are lacking oh so very much and need more money.

These are the sort of things that make it so hard for me to keep my cool. And there's virtually nothing I can do about it because, like it or not, the government doesn't listen to us. And a letter to Obama saying such won't even get near his desk.

Ugh! It's disgusting.
I'm disowning America. ....again.