Entitlements

I saw somewhere the other day that Bush has decided to concentrate on the problem of entitlements in his last two years in office. You know, Social Security, Medicare, stuff that requires lots of money every year and, in the eyes of Republicans, are really unnecessary (they can all be privatized). Apparently he is not going to concern himself with Iraq (having already announed that the next President will have to deal with that problem). And, as he can't realistically invade Iran, I guess he has given up on that as well. His plan to have Israel attack Syria seems to have fallen on deaf Israeli ears. The national debt, as Cheney told us earliers, is not a problem. Blatant corruption in Washington has now become so commonplace it is just accepted as business as usual. He has already vetoed stem cell research. So, as he doesn't have much else to do, it is no wonder he want to concentrate on entitlements.

Rather than worry about entitlements at the moment might I suggest another area where some money could be saved? I guess this has become a taboo subject as you don't seem to see much about it. The Defense Budget. Realize first of all that our defense budget is larger than all the rest of the world's combined. I guess this is because we are constantly being threatened by Cuba, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, and other great powers. Apparently it is also necessary for us to keep troops in half the countries of the world, especially places like Germany and Japan who cannot afford to protect themselves. If this is all that was involved maybe things wouldn't be so bad. However, our defense budget spends billions of dollars on stuff we no longer need, like tanks, for example. Or a missile defense system that doesn't work. Or horrible new forms of killing as many as possible. If the defense budget were cut in half (which I believe would be easy and not truly affect our defensive abilities) we wouldn't even have to worry about entitlements. We might even have money for decent public schools, rebuilding our infrastructure, universal health care, and other stuff like that. How many billions has been spent in Iraq in the last three years? And what do we have to show for it? And why should we be sending billions of dollars of military equipment to Israel? And what are we doing with all our military outposts all around the globe? Certainly not minding our own business. Let's face it, our defense budget is an absolute disgrace. It doesn't really exist even for national defense anyway. It exists only to provide corporations with more money than they know what to do with. And where does that money come from? It comes from American taxpayers. It is pure and simply a military-industrial-governmental scam that exists primarily to convert taxpayer monies into corporate profits. Saying that our defense budget is not obscenely bloated is like arguing Hippos are basically svelte, that baconburgers and fries are really good for you, that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice actually know what they are doing, that war is good (especially if you are in the defense industry). What an absolute farce we are living out. Is no one ever going to admit how ridiculous it all is? Is human greed and stupidity really the apex of evolution? The top of the great chain of being? The end result of intelligent design?