"Defense Budget"

Man holds mother hostage
at gunpoint for refusing
to iron his clothes.

There are rumblings at last about our bloated “Defense Budget.” Barney Frank and Ron Paul have together put together a bill that would presumably cut this shameful waste substantially. Don’t bet too much that anything much will happen. The defense budget is not really all about defense. First of all we don’t have really very much to defend against, mainly a few terrorists out of the billions of people that inhabit the earth. There is nothing on the horizon that I can see that could possibly defend or justify our spending more than all the rest of the world combined on the military. As near as I can see our military/industrial/political complex is basically a scheme for converting taxpayer money into profits for our largest corporations. It is a circular kind of potentially never-ending process guaranteed to insure that money will be systematically and regularly transferred from one very large group of people to a smaller but more powerful group. Every year we pour more money into the defense budget through our annual Congressional budget process. The companies and corporations that receive this money make enormous profits, part of which they return to the Congresspersons who made these profits possible, thus guaranteeing that the same thing will happen over again. It’s really potentially better than a Ponzi scheme because Ponzi schemes eventually have to end when new suckers can no longer be found. The military/industrial/political complex has managed to create a never-ending supply of suckers called taxpayers, most of whom apparently believe we are in constant danger from someone or other and although they grumble about paying taxes have been taught to believe the problem has to do with social security or medicare or other entitlements, rather than the obscene and unnecessary military waste, clever, no? However, it may be the case that, like Ponzi, this clever scheme is also about to run its course for the simple reason that we cannot realistically sustain it much longer short of bankruptcy or worse. You don’t have to think too carefully to understand there is little or no rationale for our 15,000 troops in Okinawa, our bases in Germany and other European nations, and so forth. It’s all part of the same scam. You also don’t have to think very hard to understand that all that wasted money would go a long way towards fixing our decaying infrastructure, educational system, medical care, and so forth, including rebuilding our economy and producing more jobs. The Frank/Paul bill probably won’t get very far but it will at least focus some attention where it belongs. Getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan would certainly go a long way towards solving our budgetary crisis, perhaps that, too, will come to pass.

From the ridiculously absurd to the absurdly ridiculous, I cannot believe there is anything to this rumor that Sarah Palin is going to replace Richard Steele as RNC Chairman, clowns are not often replaced with mindless bimbos. But if it has to be, bring it on, nothing would please me more. Republicans seem to believe they are going to make huge gains in the elections later this year. I find this mysterious to say the least. Just what is it that Republicans have done that would justify their return to power. Remember, they are the ones that go us into this terrible mess in the first place, they have no program for our country other than their usual lower taxes and smaller government credo. Their current leaders are a collection of pretty extreme “crazies” like Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, Backmann, Hannity, O’Reilly, and so on. Even their senior Senators are little better: McConnell, McCain, Hatch, and the mental midgets from some of the Southern states who seem to believe it is still 1860. Even their Governors are a strange lot, like Bobby Jindal who just signed a bill allowing people to carry their guns into church. Now there’s an idea whose time has come! It’s a party that wants to keep on drilling no matter what, that wants to keep the unemployed, unemployed, to privatize social security, reverse the health care bill, and keep us permanently at war. If American voters go for this stuff you will know that our country is hopeless. All will surely be lost. And if by some strange aberration they should win in 2012 you won’t have to be nostalgic for a moron in the White House because there will surely be another one.

LKBIQ:
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.
Ernest Benn

TILT:
Przewalski’s Horse is the only true wild horse still alive today.