ok- i guess I am in official blog mode again,
but this appealed to me, not just your ordinary - things could be worse, or we should appreciate freedom, but the essential fact that people just want to live their lives, raise and educate their kids- what is it that keeps getting in the way?
and where does Bush's vaunted "freedom" kick into this?

Washington Stories: "It's an odd place, Washington. This is a city rife with real outrages: corrupt congressmen, incompetent officials, dangerous or stupid ideas. As a result, it's also a city of quarrels and arguments, a place where people endlessly discuss 'our broken health-care system' and 'our disastrous foreign policy.' Here, the phrase 'this town' -- as in 'I've had it with this town's hypocrisy' or 'I'm sick of this town's attitude' -- refers not to streets and buildings but to this metaphorical Washington, with its bitter politics and its angry debates.
And yet Washington is also a very real home, both permanent and temporary, to many people whose sole desire is to live an ordinary life -- to study, to work, to talk about what they please -- but who cannot do so, whether in Mali, in Russia, in Iran or somewhere else. Every once in a while, and for no particular reason, I try to remember how lucky I am to have been born here, where the possibility of living such an ordinary life is so easily taken for granted."