Politics


Sunday, December 26, 2010

when you’re carrying an armload of hammers, every problem looks like a nail.

What a great and to the point quote from Nicholas T. Kristof. The current wars and U.S. military policies are killing the United States. This is in addition to all of our American military personal who are paying the ultimate price along with their families.

But economically, what's the point? President Obama is as conservative as I feared. And yes I know if you are a Republican, he's a commie and a fascist. Republicans consistently complain about government waste, but only focus their attention on domestic programs. Republicans oppose health care reform, support cuts on education spending, and generally believe a balanced budget is a far superior objective than say having sufficient fireman and police officers.

But let's invade another country, build more prisons, and add more security to an already saturated Mexican/US border, well no problem. If you don't believe me than read the following statistics provided by Kristof.
  • The United States spends nearly as much on military power as every other country in the world combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. It says that we spend more than six times as much as the country with the next highest budget, China.
  • The United States maintains troops at more than 560 bases and other sites abroad, many of them a legacy of a world war that ended 65 years ago. Do we fear that if we pull our bases from Germany, Russia might invade?
  • The intelligence community is so vast that more people have “top secret” clearance than live in Washington, D.C.
  • The U.S. will spend more on the war in Afghanistan this year, adjusting for inflation, than we spent on the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and the Spanish-American War combined.
  •  For the cost of one American soldier in Afghanistan for one year, you could build about 20 schools.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the unemployment rate for November 2010 was 9.8%.

Do the math. 

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