Medicare, Defense or Social Security?

[orogenicman]

War.

Calling it defence is an obscene euphemism. The US has not been under direct attack by another nation since Pearl Harbour, yet has been involved in approximately FIFTY armed conflicts.

There is no excuse for a county as wealthy as the US to have second rate systems of health,education and welfare. Traditional US jingoism gives the lunar right the appearance of an excuse not have world class systems of social justice. Instead, TRILLIONS have been spent on avoidable wars.

There is a large group of powerful and not-so-powerful people in the US who can only be described as callous and/or ignorant arseholes. These people are too callous, too ignorant or too stupid to grasp that high taxes are needed for an affluent society. [from which everyone benefits]

9/11 was not an attack by another nation, which I believe was the original point. It really is simple. Our defense budget is on the order of over 600 billion dollars per year, far larger than most of the other industrializaed nations combined. Not to mention that there are some 80 million well armed Americans thanks to the 2nd amendment. How much defense do we actually need? And how much of this spending is nothing but corporate welfare for the military-industrial complex? Cut the defense budget by 20%. That would give us a savings of 120 billon per year, and I contend, would not make us less safe. A smaller military would also give our leaders pause to reconsider using it in such pointless wars as the invasion of Iraq. And the much needed social programs wouldn't need cutting, though I have no problem whatsoever with looking into how it can be done more efficiently.