How Not To Stick To Your Guns – Defense Budget Overload

In today’s Washington Post Dana Milbank has written an article on the largest defense budget that has ever been passed in real dollar terms in the history of the world.  $680 billion dollars under President Obama is the price tag for the 2010 defense budget.  He said he would not do that.  He did it.

We are stealing our childrens’ and grand childrens’ future.  We are making war industry captains so rich it boggles the mind.  We are committing unrelenting evil and calling it patriotism and good economics. We are going to get what we deserve and that will be civil war.  Mark my words.  The story is here.

In this article we learn that the recession officially ended this past summer with an increase of 3.5% in Gross Domestic Product.  Try and understand something crucial here. 

We have almost 10% unemployment which does not take into consideration under-employment of the American workforce.  It also means that we have close to 18% unofficial unemployment. One in nine American homes is standing empty due to mortgage default. But our economists are claiming that the recession is over.  No it is not.

This crushing inequality in American wealth distribution is a recipe for huge unrest when we have just passed the largest defense bill in history.  Less than 1% of the American population controls more than 23% of its wealth. Our economists are telling us everything is now just fine.

We are now officially insane at this point in our history.

Here we have a story outlining the president’s new angle of attack relative to the decision making matrices he is using to figure out troop increases in Afghanistan.  He wants to know which provinces can protect themselves against violence and which provinces need American help.

How about this as a matrix?  We just pull out and leave Afghanistan’s problems to the Afghanis.  What do you say?

In this article we learn that Iraq has arrested many high ranking security officials in the wake of the massive bombings yesterday.  The government fears collusion by Iraqi security forces in the blasts.  I would think that was evident by now.

In this article, the leader of a U.S. based and Sunni affiliated radical and violent Muslim group was killed in a shoot out with federal agents near Detroit.

Get informed and stay informed.  It makes you a powerful citizen.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)