More, More, More: Give 'Em More!

Here's a picture of everything that's wrong in conventional thinking, if not, in the broader sense what's wrong with the country. Or should I say one of the main things wrong with the country? It's a picture of the love affair our politicians--and it doesn't matter which party--have with the Pentagon. First of all, we have the sainted General Petraeus, whom the vile little pretender formerly in the White House--I really need to get an acronym for this oft-used appellation, but how catchy is VLPFWH?--appointed the Far-and-Away-Only-Qualified-Man-in-the-US-to-Set-Middle-Eastern-Policy. A title which the country continues to bestow in this guy, who, as far as I can tell has the same policy as every other flag-ranked officer in the Pentagon: more money for more troops and more billions for the ever-greedy, ever-present defense corporations and their lackeys. And then there's the senator from Connecticut. The photo above should be captioned: Aw, Come On, Joe, You Know You Want to Kiss Him.

If there's one guy in the Senate who makes me retch, it's that grinning, pasty droop-face, Joe Lieberman. The last time I had to notice this repulsive specimen was when the Democrats decided they needed his vote too much to kick his ass out of their caucus over to the Republican knuckleheads where he belongs. So, surprise, surprise. Joe Lieberman thinks the military is not getting enough money. Just how mad do we have to get? How insane does this society have be before we wake up and realize how much of our sustenance as a nation we're pouring down the military rat hole?

Here we are in the grips of the worst economic downturn that anyone alive has ever seen, with a military that consumes about $1 trillion a year (counting all the war-related spending that doesn't get counted in the so-called "defense" budget, things like spying, nuclear weapons, etc.), that furthermore got a 4 percent bump in the budget this year, and Joe Lieberman and other nimwits like him--Cornyn (R-TX), Kyl (R-AZ), Thune (R-SD), Graham (R-SC), and some so-called "centrist" Democrats--think the military needs more money. Apparently, goes the argument, they need this money for the Obama plus-up in Afghanistan.

So are we now adopting the idea that $1 trillion a year is baseline for the Pentagon, that anything further they do has to be funded because they don't have enough to cover everything? Oh, please. This rant is long enough as it is.