Thursday, January 03, 2008

Hey, You Iowans, Read This Before Pulling The Levers!


Since we brought up "bipartisanship" yesterday, here's a post we were remiss including in it.


Glenn Greenwald, in Salon yesterday, has a sobering and staggering post, that, as he argues, should be discussed and debated, but surely, as the sun rises over a corrupt and morally bankrupt White House every day, it won't be.

Here's some caveats to cringe over;

"Our military spending exceeds the rest of the world's spending combined, and we spend almost 10 times what the second-place country, China, spends."
"The US military budget was almost 29 times as large as the combined spending of the six "rogue" states (Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria) who spent $14.65 billion."
"In indisputable sum, we are the world's empire, in a state of permanent war readiness. In American politics and policy, there is no distinction between "peacetime" and "war." We're the most militarized country in the world by far, on permanent war footing, far beyond what anyone could ever remotely argue is necessary for "defense" or a "strong defense," no matter how broad a definition one wants to adopt for those terms."
"Nonetheless, it's still worth noting (as Matt Stoller recently documented) that despite all the incessant chatter about "change" and the intensity of election conflicts, our most significant, dubious policies -- the ones that actually shape what kind of country we are and how we are perceived around the world -- don't really get debated at all. Those who try to are quickly and widely dismissed as fringe, insane, angry, deranged "crazies.""

There's links, charts, graphs and pie charts to go with it.

Read The bipartisan consensus on U.S. military spending


It's likely to define the country you live in for the rest of your life.

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