Oh, the sanity!

Yesterday Barney Frank and Ron Paul of all people joined forces to call for a reduction in defense spending.  They actually co-authored an op ed.  Cats and dogs applied for, and were granted, marriage licenses , and some were gay!  I danced naked with my uncle with a pickle in my mouth.  Even though  that prolific moron Michael Steele stuck his dick up his nose by calling Afghanistan Obama’s war of choice, Pat Buchanan opined that it was the Republicans that foolishly got us into Iraq and sort of wondered out loud at the legitimacy of the war in Afghanistan.  Are these douchebags (Frank excepted) reading my blog?

If you read my last one, you understand how this plays directly into my hands.

If the Republicans do manage to wrest control of Congress, they are so fractured, they’ll make asses of one another.  They will become parodies of themselves and their shrill accusations for a lack of leadership hurled at the current administration.  Honestly, the Republicans that aren’t arrogant insensitive neoconservative dicks like McCain, Boehner and McConnell, are embarrassing dunces like Steele,  Bachman, Cantor and Palin……or worse they’re full blown whack job Tea Baggers like Angle, Beck, Hannity, Armey…….all at one point pissing on one another or in each others ear about each other and then shape shifting from dunce, to dick, to whack job with a prolific inconsistency.  The Keystone cops want to lead.  Remember when the Democratic party was the poster child for an absence of unity?

But I digress.

It’s the first time I’ve heard actual elected members of Congress give voice to what I’ve been screaming, replete with spittle and snot, for years.  To paraphrase: We’re fucked, We’re broke and we should look at what we spend the most money on first, to actually cut.  War.  The Pentagon.  The military industrial complex.  As opposed to say, education, health care, homeless veterans et al.  Ron Paul has been saying it persistently for some time and I give him credit.  Otherwise I think he’s puts on a tin hat the second he walks in the door at home.  If not smarter, he’s measurably more savvy than his his round headed kid, Rand, who is a racist fuckhead.  I do wish I owned an eatery in his home state of Kentucky (of course).  Were he to darken my door, I’d happily explain to him that we don’t serve his ignorant kind.

Barney Frank However, we loves us some Barney Frank.

At a health care town hall in Dartmouth, MA, a woman asked, “Why are you supporting this nazi policy?” Frank responded with a question asking,”On what planet do you spend most of your time?” -the huffingtonpost.com

“As you stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler, and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Trying to have a conversation with you would be as interesting as trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.” -Barney Frank courtesy of CommonDreams.org

Now that’s my kind of openly Gay Jew member of our House of Representatives.

But I digress.

Our defense budget for this year is some $693 Billion. Next year it will be over $708 billion.  I guarantee that’s not even close to all there is.  Let’s just say a trillion plus.  It is more than the entire rest of the world combined.  Yes, more than the entire rest of the world combined.  As of 2005, we maintain a conservative estimate of over 732 military bases in other countries.  That number is more likely over a thousand.  Two words:  Empire.  Imperialism.  We still have 15,000 marines based in Okinawa.  For what?  That war was over 65 years ago.  I should remind you that nuclear powered aircraft carriers have fuck all to do with mitigating terrorism.  America’s prosperity or demise will never ever be determined by the sheer size of our armed forces.  Such a notion is obsolete, archaic and profoundly absurd.

See, America is still filthy rich.  Filthy.  Rich.

I’m not here to suggest we shave 10 or 15 percent off the military budget.  No, that would be insane.  Crazy. What I sincerely posit is that we cut it in half.  HALF.  Half of it is at best redundant and truthfully, quite probably useless in the context of any contemporary modern day conflict.  Worried about the suddenly out of work soldier?  Put him or her to work on infrastructure.  Trust me, they’ll be much happier and far more productive repairing bridges than being shot at for no fucking reason.  I don’t doubt we could pay them better.

Why this cow has been so traditionally sacred, makes no sense at all to me.  Well, it does actually, because giant vaginas like Cheney, KBR, Halliburton and the afore named Blackwater are getting stinking rich.  So yeah, it makes sense, but it sure as fuck isn’t in your best interest or mine.  Ever wonder why all those other countries are able to afford superior health care at no cost to their citizenry?  Why they’re able to kick our ass in education?  It’s because they don’t spend over half their people’s money on this kind of bullshit.  They don’t take it upon themselves to intervene in everyone else’s affairs only to make matters worse or have it blow up in their faces………

Deficit hysteria and national security are not mutually exclusive paradigms.  They are indeed two facets of the same concern.  This is easy.  It’s simple.

You want a revolution?  It’s not about some dipshit Tea Party movement.  It is fiscal and it should start here.  right here.

Drinks for my friends.

18 Responses to “Oh, the sanity!”

  • Dragynn:

    Another great post Michael, the most recent figures I read on the ongoing Bush/Cheney opium/oil raids..oops…i mean “war on terror”, said that they are costing approximately 5.5 million dollars per HOUR.

    Basically our “defense” budget for just one year, is enough to feed and clothe and send every child on earth to school for ten years. As opposed to the reality of things, which is that every day on this planet, 18,000 children die from malnutrition and hunger.

    That’s about one every 5 seconds.

    Do the math and you’ll see that in that 5 seconds, the U.S. will spend $7,638.88 to KILL people.

    Thanks amigo, i’ll take that drink today, and raise my glass to ya in support of truth.

    • Michael Douglass:

      Thank you Dragynn, nice stats. Would’ve been nice to have them when I wrote the piece…….can you source them for me? Maybe I’ll revise it.

  • reiya:

    Yeah, well the global jack booted bully, is in no place to shrink it’s military might or presence. Because when they pull back the curtain the empty black hole which is us, would force the audience to look at it self in the mirror. And they might just think….maybe we are not number 3,, or number 6 perhaps it’s the U.S. that is so vacuously empty. Smoke screens and mirrors, will only work for so long.

  • Ben:

    FUCKING YES! YES! YES! YES! YES! That’s a total of 5 yesses.

  • SBB:

    “I danced naked with my uncle with a pickle in my mouth.”
    That. Is. Filthy. Rich.

  • Lex:

    Excellent Read. Thank you.

    However, if I could add. It was told to me that after Japan surrendered, part of the deal was that they were to dismiss their military. This made America obligated to be their Military. Interestingly enough, because Japan has no real military as we speak, guess who foots the bill for a Japan. We do. So, that is why we have military in Japan. As far as the rest of the world, everything I read here just reminds me of a board game called “Risk”. The person who controls most of the map… controls most of the world?

    • Michael Douglass:

      Yep Lex……except we are rapidly losing control of what we thought we had no matter much blood and treasure we throw at it. Sad.

  • HonorMatters:

    This is my time and I couldn’t agree more. In regards to the game of Risk, the game is rigged to make you think that those controlling most of the map equates to controlling most of the world. He who has the gold controls the world and the Unfederal Reserve, IMF and World Bank, or at the least the cartels behind them pulling the strings have all the gold because it sure as hell is not in Fort Knox!!

  • HonorMatters:

    I meant to say this my first time checking out your blog. Not that is my time to rant.
    Still chuckling about the dancing naked with the uncle line. Hilarious. I would accuse him of being high but he doesn’t know what a pot plant looks like.

    • Michael Douglass:

      Well, I’m not sure exactly what you’re talking about, but I must confess I stole that line from my best friend of some thirty plus years who uttered it some twenty five years or so ago……

      I do understand the IMF, World Bank and Federal Reserve……I’m just saying I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at.

  • Fact Check:

    In May of 2010 the Department of Defense military budget was $46.8 million, total spending through May was $443.2 million. In May the Department of Health and Human Services budget was $55.6 million, total spending through May was $559.6 million. This info is available at the Treasury website.

    As your only criteria for budget cutting is size of the expenditure does that mean we should cut DHHS spending by 50%?

  • Michael Douglass:

    I’ve no idea how they break it down and their figures are the last I would trust. We are spending nearly 10 billion a month in Afghanistan alone so to rely on those numbers is pretty silly. And no DHHS does not not have killing people as it’s expressed impetus, although I don’t doubt there is probably waste on a criminal level there as well…

  • robert dagg murphy:

    Nothing is so invisible as the obvious. Converting weaponary to livingry should be the no. 1 priority as you state. I say cut mitlitary spending in half every year for 5 years being careful to provide meaningful work for all our brave young men and women as work is the only true religion.

    Our Star Sun provides us with energy abundance, more than we can ever spend. Intellect is ever increasing we only learn more not less. Wealth is without practical limit. We are the victims of an economic system which does not recognize our good fortune. The glass isn’t half full. Put the glass under Niagara Falls and that is a good picture of whats available for our use. Science has turned on the cosmic reservoir and now what ever needs to be done can be done.

    The commission is right about debt being a cancer on our economy. We must eliminate debt. We don’t owe the Sun.

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