Right now we seem to be on a constant quest for knowledge. I am not talking about the individual per se, I am talking about the human race. You have to wonder what drives us to do this? Sure we may want better medicine to cure ourselves, or a better car to ride in, but is that the main thrust of our drive? Someone once said, "show me the money". What he meant was look at where the big portion of money is going and you will find what we are doing. Well believe it or not, half of all our research dollars this year, are being spent on military research. HALF and that isn't hay. We are talking about spending 78 Billion dollars on the military. I wonder what we could get if we pumped 78 Billion dollars into research for cancer or heart disease or even the cure for the common cold? Many of you might be saying that defense research is a good thing and we must have it and you would be correct, we do need worthwhile research. Notice that I said worthwhile So let's see what the military is up to.

One of the projects that may or may not be looked into is a gay bomb. No this is not a misprint. One lab asked the military for money to develop a bomb that, as they said, would encourage the enemy to make love and not war. Give me a break guys, why not just sneak into the vault at the Pentagon, if there is one, and steal the money, it would be a lot quicker and have no cost overruns. I just had to check further to see how they thought that this might work. Supposedly the bomb would use some sort of aphrodisiac to sexually attract the soldiers to each other and they would be so attracted that they would forget about fighting. A couple of years ago big bucks were spent, by the US Air Force, on a project that they thought had real merit and indeed they published a voluminous report that stated this. The research was in mind teleportation. They were convinced that people could teleport objects by just thinking about it. This has to make you wonder, is this where the money is really going or is it being used for some super aircraft or spacecraft or being secretly given to some country and the government doesn't want us to know this? I just can't believe that such a project would be considered and funded when the money could be used so much better in other areas. It has been estimated that the military is spending about $50,000 a second on research.

I don't want you to think that the US is the only country doing this. Look at India. You wouldn't know it to look at that country, but they are also spending over half their research money on military research. The European Union is beginning to up their military research spending as are a lot of other countries. Where is this all going to lead. There can only be one place, war. If enough countries begin to spend huge amounts of money on military research, they are going to want to test their shiny new weapons. At some point one country may believe that it has far superior weapons than another and that is going to be bad. We felt (the government) that we had far superior weapons and so we invaded Iraq. Unfortunately for us we found that winning a battle against a standard military is far easier for us than holding what we won. The Chinese are pouring lots of money into their military budget and at some point they might feel far superior to the forces defending Taiwan and then who knows what might happen? The world is a mess and it could be a paradise. If countries weren't putting these huge amounts of funds into their militaries and I am not just talking about research money here, but the entire military budget and used them for social programs, the world would be a really great place for everyone.

Unfortunately for the American people, the current government can't spend money fast enough. The national debt has grown to trillions and trillions of dollars and future generations have been mortgaged. It is not like we got anything for this money either, all that has happened is that contractors have made billions and billions of dollars. If you are big business and have not offended those in office, than you have it made. This period in American life will be fondly remembered by those corporations as the Golden Age of Profits and maybe also as the age of weak regulations. Can you imagine having a contract to build buildings in Iraq and you can build them as shoddy as you like, because there are no controls on you, so you just slap up anything and so what if it falls down right away or parts of it collapse. i am not making this up people, buildings are crumbling and collapsing over there that were just built, but do you ever hear of any company being reprimanded for this? I haven't.

Did you ever wonder why we are really in Iraq anyway? Oh you didn't really think it was to dispose a tyrant and free the people did you? Iraq is the golden goose in so many ways and it doesn't seem to matter to those in power that our guys are dying over there, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. You don't want to lose something like this because you have so many perks. You can use it to suck funds out of the US Treasury and say that you are rebuilding, you can divert some or all of the oil in this oil rich country and you can use the invasion to just plain get even for Sadam daring to threaten back at a US President. Hey we all know that Sadam was a tyrant of the worst kind, but is this an excuse to invade. When Iraq was losing the war against Iran we supplied them with intelligence because we wanted them to win Sadam was our man, but he made a deadly error, he invaded Kuwait. We felt that he might go for Saudi Arabia next and that is also why we invaded, to protect our oil supply there. Apparently most of our former allies from the first invasion didn't think that we should invade again and I think that they were right. Aside from looting our treasury and killing our soldiers, the second Iraq invasion left a void in that area of the world that Iran would be only to glad to fill. Where were our master planners and how come no one ever gave this a thought? Could this administration be so dumb that this never came up? We have all sorts of planners and advisors on the payroll, where were these people? If we find out that some of them did advise against the invasion, precisely for this reason, than it seems to me, that no one really cared about this and all they wanted was time to drain the funds or did some of the advisors have their own agendas?

Where else are we leaking money? One glaring area is in drugs. I am talking about prescription drugs. What could the possible reason be that the US Government refuses to buy prescription drugs in bulk for resale to it's citizens at a greatly reduced price? I have heard that they wouldn't need a new department for this and Medicare could handle it. I have no way of knowing if that is true or not, but it certainly would give them buying power, if they did it honestly. Unfortunately they are not considering doing this, even though some people can't afford drugs. There is certainly a lack of sympathy here. The drug companies are laughing all the way to the bank. They will sell a pill to a farmer for an animal for a few cents and that same pill, if it happens to be compatible for human use, will be sold for $20.00 to us. It is a national disgrace and another indication that anything that the companies want to do is fine with this administration, after all they sell the same drugs in Canada at a cheaper price. Hey the drug companies have a very big lobby and everyone is probably getting something out of this. Again I have to say that the system of lobbying has to go. It is just legalized bribery. Think of it this way, you want the legislature to do something for you, so you go to Washington and you can't even get to see anyone, so you hire someone and give him millions of dollars to spend around and send them to Washington in your behalf. Suddenly everyone there wants to see your representative as he circulates those funds around. Does that seem right to you? Even worse than this, is the fact that foreign countries have lobbyists and are doing this.

Another sector that is allowed to run rampant in this country is the energy sector. Where are the controls over monopolies? President Theodore Roosevelt fought against big oil and won, now all his hard earned gains are being flushed down the preverbal toilet. He broke up the monopolies and they came roaring back during this administration, only to meet a friend in the congress and presidency. Somehow I believe that they have gotten to the auto makers. I read an article that stated that many of the hybrids are getting lousy gas mileage. The New Chevy truck is said to only get 16 mpg and this is a hybrid. In some cases a hybrid. gets only the same mileage as its gasoline counterpart. There are only a couple of examples of hybrids actually getting good gas mileage and for most of them, it doesn't pay to purchase one. Why hasn't the plug in come out yet, the one that was supposed to get over 40 miles on a charge? Now we are hearing rumors that when and if it does come out, it will only get 8 miles on a charge, keeping us running to the pumps for more juice. I saw a figure that stated that even the owners of the Prius still spend an average of $900 a year on gasoline and this is the most fuel efficient of the hybrids. The car does get over 50 mpg on the road, but is tiny in comparison to most other vehicles.

Everyone wants your money. The government wants it, the oil companies want it, the medical companies want it, the insurance companies want it, the credit card companies want it and even the farmers want it. The time has come to be very selective in how you purchase things. Write you representatives when you see something outrageous coming up before congress, don't use those high rate credit cards and if you have to, never charge more than you can pay back in a month. Don't shell out extra bucks for a hybrid. until they actually come out with one that will save you a lot of money in fuel. There isn't much you can do about your medical insurance rates, except protest them to your senator which is probably a huge waste of time since the medical lobby has probably paid for his vacation. Lastly, try and keep you thermostat on 68 to 70 degrees instead of 72% and turn it down when you go to bed.

By the way, it was just announced on September 21, 2007 that Federal investigators are examining allegations of criminal misconduct related to six billion dollars worth of military contracts that were given out and this is only a drop in the bucket.