What could we buy for $323 billion? F-35s or unemployment benefits?

Now let me say that nobody loves a great advance in aviation more than the folks here at Rancho Maven. Mr. Maven just received his Wright Brothers Award for 50 years in aviation from the FAA. However, ‘cool’ isn’t the point here.

This is very ‘cool’:

And the manuevers which the F-22 is capable of are also waaaay ‘cool’:

But here’s the question for the day: Who are we going to fight with these amazing systems? The Taliban and their equally amazing air force? Al Queda? The French?

Who?

You and I - the taxpayers - are buying 2,443 F-35 Joint Task Force fighters at a cost of $323 BILLION. To fight who?

And Sharron Angle is concerned about how much the Department of Education is costing you and I? Is she fucking serious?

Angle believes we just can’t afford deficits. How about the hole that $323 BILLION makes in the country’s budget? Explain to me why we can’t afford to help the ‘spoiled’ unemployed but we can afford this sort of horsehit that merely serves to enrich the heavily government subsidised military industrial complex.

Sheesh.

F-22 stealth fighter: Win one for the Obama man

Obama needs a few more wins like this one, in these dog days of summer heat and waning congressional and popular support for the stimulus and healthcare reform. He and his allies finally beat back the military-industrial complex, with the support of Sen. John McCain …. and suprise, suprise, Sen. John Ensign, capping any further production of the F-22 stealth fighter.

“There was an extensive effort by the White House,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, Carl Levin. “The president really needed to win this vote, not just in terms of the merits of the F-22 issue itself, but in terms of the reform agenda.”

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Defense Secretary Gates: quit stealing our precious bodily fluids

I read, with all due alarm for our on-going national security, Ann Onn’s liberal screed in support of Obama’s Defense Secretary, Robert M. Gates proposed cuts in military spending. To support her arguement, she cites that bastion of all things liberal ( therefore obviously untrue ), The New York Times and then suggests we look at a speech by the late Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Major General Smedley Butler.

Adding insult to injury, Ann Onn describes true believing patriots as “dupes of the military-industrial complex”!

You go, girl.

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