"It's like the people who don't believe in free lunches believe in free wars." [View All]

[unhappycamper]

rant /on

The Reich wing talking point is 'we can't afford health care" because the Death Panel industry (Health Care Insurance companies) would go out of business.

And states are going broke because the government does not have money to bail them out.

And teachers and firemen are being laid off because the states are going broke.

And there's no money for jobs because a) we are broke or b) nobody in Treasury gives a shit.

Yet we can spend a trillion dollars a year to keep the occupations going, fund the 'Defense' black programs and fund the Department of Death 'Defense'.

Perhaps a short history lesson is in order. The military budget in 2000 was $302 billion, less than half of Obama's current military budget. We have two ongoing occupations costing us $164 billion a year that are funded as 'special appropriations' which means they are not included in the military budget.

We have $70 million dollar airplane/helicopter thingies (the Osprey), $212 million dollar (the C-17) cargo airplanes, $5.6 billion dollar Navy destroyers (the DDG-1000 series), $355 million advanced stealth fighters (the F-22) that don't like rain, $239 million dollar second-place not-ready-for-prime-time (the F-35) fighters to replace all the A-10s, F-15s, F-16s, F/A-18s that we are wearing out and a new $11.5 billion dollar Ford-class aircraft carrier in the works. Notice I did not mention the $650+ million dollar (300% over budget) LCS ships, nor the $1.2 billion LAPD ships, nor the $536 million National Security cutters (a.k.a. a Coast Guard cutter), nor the two $2.5 billion dollar submarines we build each and every year, nor the $89,000 precision guided 155 MM (the Excalibur) round, nor the $1 million dollar MRAPs. Gas costs $400 a gallon delivered in Afghanistan and we have been flying an average of 11 cargo airplanes (C-5 and C-17) a day from Charleston, SC to Afghanistan since 2001.

And we are wearing all that crap out in the sandboxes of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our wounded soldiers and veterans must fight for every fucking thing they have earned. Shinseki is doing the best he can but he's a fighting an entrenched bureaucracy. Change is coming but how many veterans are going to die from neglect before they are taken care of? (Note: this is still happening to Vietnam veterans 34 years after that last helicopter left the Saigon embassy.)

Obama wants to add another 34,000 $1 million dollar soldiers to the meat grinder in Afghanistan. Even David Obey commented that our economic choices are America or Afghanistan. Note Obey said "America or Afghanistan" not "America and Afghanistan".

As I see that's the choice - America or Afghanistan. Do we support our Country or kill it?

I'll choose America.



Finally, a special thanks to soupkitchen for the title of this rant.