This space has become a real writing excercise lately. I haven't been able to conjur up any unusual or interesting stories. I spend my days confused. With more knowledge and thoughtfulness put towards politics these days...well, my head has just been spinning.

If you're interested, I did find something pretty disturbing on the O'Franken Factor Blog.

"The O’Franken Factor is all about giving credit where credit is due. Yesterday on the Factor, a guest mentioned Bush’s pledge to give $15 billion over five years to fight global AIDS. AIDS kills 3 million people every year. With existing medicines, the vast majority of those deaths could be avoided. Our guest suggested that Bush was doing a good job on AIDS--demonstrating that “even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

In fact, Bush’s record on global AIDS is shameful. It’s riddled with half-measures and broken promises.

• The Bush administration insists that America only buy brand-name AIDS drugs. Even counting the discount that we’re getting on the brand-name drugs, they cost four times as much as generic medicine which is just as safe. So we could be saving four times as many lives with treatment if Bush didn’t insist on overpaying U.S. pharmaceutical companies. The administration's given reason for its policy--fake safety concerns--echo its disingenuous arguments against importing medicine from Canada. Drug companies have contributed $44.8 million to the GOP over the last five years—246% more than they’ve given Democrats.
• In Bush’s plan (dissected here), a third of the money that goes to AIDS prevention goes to abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which don’t work. The world’s experts on this agree that the most successful programs teach abstinence, faithfulness, and condom use. Tens or hundreds of thousands of people will get HIV because this administration is putting its ideology over science.
• Bush is creating a whole new administration to run his anti-AIDS program. It’s taken more than a year just to set it up. Bush is dragging his feet while people are dying. And at the same time, he’s proposing a 60% funding cut for the one global agency that is actually proven and effective: The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. The Global Fund has an amazing track record in fighting corruption and moving quickly, and Bush is undercutting it because it’s multilateral.
• To top all of that off, Bush’s supposed $15 billion plan is almost all money that he promises to spend in his second term. He’s not giving $3 billion a year now, and every experience we’ve had of this guy is that he talks big and then doesn’t actually come through with the money."

To read more, check out their blog. You just might find something disturbing and unusual there.