Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Beautiful Shades of Purple

Safari sunrise
Matt Duffy
Alta Loma, CA

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Important things in life...

Important things in life...
- birthdate
- grow up to be the person you want to be
- family
- friends
- falling in love
- engagement
- wedding
- birth of children
- birth of grandchildren
so on and so forth...

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Middle class squeeze

The Bible belt voted for Bush thinking he'll do what's right for our country. In 1998, we had a budget surplus of $70 billion. Now, we have $8.4 "trillion" deficit. Bush may have good intentions, but his team doesn't make the right decisions overall for our country. Katrina made us a laughing stock of the world. We're supposed to be rich and powerful, instead of like a third world country. Bush needs to take better care of the middle class and the poor, instead of his rich friends (they don't need help, do they?) For example, Michael D. Brown, the head of FEMA from 2003 to 2005.

Human civilization went from the agriculture revolution, to the industrial revolution, and now to the digital revolution. In this new knowledge economy and in this new globalize market, education is the leverage we have in order to compete against other country. But our school system and family economic pressures are not up to par with our American dream. Since 2000, it's harder to send our kids through college, with decreased assistance and increased tuition. Education is a way to break the cycle of poverty. Lower class may have a way out, if you sign up to join the military, they will pay for your tuition.

God bless our troops and our intelligence agents. And God bless their family. We haven’t another tragedy like 9.11 yet, but I don’t feel safer in the world today. And seems like there are more Islamic extremist around the world who hate us even more.

Bottom line, Bin Laden hasn't been caught for what he did to us in 9.11, and the costs of living (housing, education, transportation) increase significantly while overall wage stagnant. Middle and lower income class are living a high pressured and stressful life (horrible traffic and long commute), and they are just trying to do the best for their family day by day. America, we need to go back to the basics -- protect our homeland, and improve education so we can better compete in this new service and knowledge economy.