[Kim]

True but what about something like healthcare? Money would certainly be useful there, the government could help relieve costs for those less fortunate. I saw this documentary on tv the other day, about a couple in the US. The guy was unemployed so he didn't have healthcare and the woman was suffering from cancer. She had to keep working while she was getting chemotherapy in order to ensure she had healthcare coverage. That's just not right, is it? I don't know, maybe I've just been spoiled by our Dutch system.

I agree that humans are explorers and that includes going up into space but it's not priority number one. Plus I can't get over the fact that Bush is presenting this great plan a couple of months before he hopes to get re-elected.. just another self-promotion scam.

There are alot of valid points in your arguement about different health systems, however I don't know anything about Dutch health care, perhaps you could fill me in. The thing is here in the States, there are alot of big companies being squeezed by their health care costs and lots of disagreements between companies and unions when it comes to contract negotiation time. My granddad's pension from Bethelhem Steel got dumped when the company was acquired after spending years in bankruptcy. It sucked for the pensioners, but it isnt the fault of the new management because the previous management grew complacent and squeezed by foreign and domestic competition. Plus when the old management finally woke up and realized that they had to cut costs in order to survive, the pensioners and the union didnt want to budge on what had been promised to them. They were stuck and the company was stuck between a rock and a hard place. And if you remember correctly, Kennedy made his man on the moon by the end of the decade speech out of idealism and political concerns as well. Politicians are politicians, doesnt matter what party they belong to. There always has to be something in a policy issue that either addresses their political needs or makes them look good.

We're very fortunate here in the Netherlands, practically everybody has health coverage, which is heavily subsidised by the government. It's a good system. The government made some cuts recently due to the economic recession and this didn't go down well at all, there were lots of protests but no matter what, we're lucky people.

As for Kennedy, I don't think it had anything to do with idealism but it was all about politics, like you said. The truth is that the US got their asses kicked in the Bay of Pigs affair in Cuba, which just so happened to be a communist ally of Russia. Yuri Gargarin had already gone into space in 1961, Russia seemed to have made clear advances and so the USA needed something to strike back with, to demonstrate their superiority. Getting a man on the moon seemed the perfect way to do that.

Let's not forget though that presidents are merely puppets, they don't actually call the shots. Behind the scenes are all kinds of advisors and sponsors who will tell the president what to do and in the process make sure they reap all the benefits. It's an "I scratch your back, you scratch my back" situation. If anything is going to change about the way the US is run, one of the things that needs to be taken into consideration is this whole system of mixing business with politics, the two are so intertwined, it's only logical conflicts of interest will arise.