An Apache Attack Helicopter of the type that'll be part of a Brigade at Fort Carson, Colorado - which will waste millions of gallons of oil a year, adding to the Pentagon's numero uno ranking as the Planet's top polluter and wastrel. If the Afghan fiasco is winding down do we really need a base with 120 of these oil-guzzling monstrosities?
I should add to that: which doesn't eliminate us all, or make us permanently stupid or sick! Right now, driven by the Tee-pee Express and their 140 assorted bellicose idiots in the House, Boner.....errrr....Boehner...and his fellow clowns are rampaging all over trying to find government cuts to total at least $35 billion. (The Tee-pee nation idiots and morons are pushing for much more, up to at least $100 billion).
So far some of the ideas they've come up with for cuts:
- Making women pay for their own abortions out of their own pockets
- Cutting the FDA's budget for recently enhanced food safety oversight (so from now on the food poisoning and E. Coli cases are bound to affect everything from eggs to spinach, peanuts, burgers and you name it!)
- Cutting the security-law enforcement matching federal funds provided under The Patriot Act which will force many cities to cut their police departments.
- Cutting the education budget and also subsidies for school meals to poor kids
- Cutting the EPA budget to halt further oversight and regulations against pollution, such as rocket fuel (potassium perchlorate) now being dumped into our water sheds compliments of carelessness.
When my wife, after reading in this morning's paper of their proposed federal cuts, asked me what kind of people these (Republicans) are, I replied: "No kind, they were shat out, not born as we understand it in the normal sense". I stand by that description of these turds until or unless I see some majorly different behavior.
Still, it is dubious that even with all these proposed federal program cuts (and the Senate will likely kill them all anyway since at least the Dems are still in control there, conferring a patina of sanity) the $35 billion mark will be hit.
Maybe the Repuke morons and their tea bagger affiliates ought to have thought of that before passing a monstrous $140 billion bonanza for the wealthiest 1 % as part of the ignorant Bush tax cut extension package thrust through in December. Ostensibly, to help more than 10 million unemployed whose benefits were due to run out. (But really, does one burn down a whole house to get rid of a fixable structure problem? I think not!)
Let's assume that despite that boondoggle the Reptiles are still serious about finding something to cut. Then may I point them in the direction of the Pentagon's ridiculous, exploding budget which now consumes nearly 57 cents of every yearly dollar! Even Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, admitted that $100 billion could easily be sliced out with no undue damage.
Given the U.S. military spending exceeds that of the next 25 nations combined, it wouldn't make any difference at all! A sobering look at the expanse of the American Empire (up to 2007) is provided in the book: The State of the American Empire, particularly the highlighted maps showing its geographical extent (pp. 70-71), as well as the total U.S. military interventions from 1945-89 (pp. 76-77). Meanwhile, the comparable military spending per person (page 67) boggles the mind into insensibility. One beholds that abomination then recalls the Rev. Martin Luther King's famous words: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." The further fact that so many evangelicals now tie themselves to the Military (as "the Lord's Army") discloses the extent of their spiritual death as well, which may explain why evangelicals' numbers and influence are declining as documented in a number of books.
As a case of wasteful spending, one need only consider the planned "Attack Helicopter Brigade" currently being humped and pumped to arrive at Fort Carson, Colorado by 2013. The waste incurred (including consumed oil, millions of gallons a year) will be unthinkable. This copter force addition will add nearly 2,800 (plus 4,000 family members) to an already militarily -saturated community of 30,000+ many of whom are bleeding down scarce resources in the budget-crunched greater Colorado Springs community. They make an impact on schools (which are now over-crowded after the budget cuts last year and merging of many) as well as hospitals, and highways (which have no more money for repair or maintenance thanks to further cuts). They also make an impact on crime, with too many returned troops perpetrating rapes, robberies and homicides. Yet the copter humpers (like Rep. Doug Lamborn, always on the lookout for more military expansion- including trying to take over the land of ranchers in Pinon Canyon area) aren't satisfied.
Do we really need 120 choppers sucking up over ten million gallons of precious oil per year? FOR WHAT? The dumber people in the community bellow: "Them choppers are the sound of freedom!" - but they have their heads and brains where the Sun doesn't shine. That's not the sound of freedom, dummies, it's the sound of precious oil being burned up that will force us to make more dangerous deep well drilling choices, as well as trying to garner more oil from unstable Mid-east regimes. You call that "freedom"? Y'all need your heads examined!
Further, we've already seen the Project Censored story that the U.S. Military remains the biggest polluter on the planet, see. e.g.
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-us-department-of-defense-is-the-worst-polluter-on-the-planet/
As noted therein:
The US military is responsible for the most egregious and widespread pollution of the planet, yet this information and accompanying documentation goes almost entirely unreported. In spite of the evidence, the environmental impact of the US military goes largely unaddressed by environmental organizations and was not the focus of any discussions or proposed restrictions at the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. This impact includes uninhibited use of fossil fuels, massive creation of greenhouse gases, and extensive release of radioactive and chemical contaminants into the air, water, and soil.
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While official accounts put US military usage at 320,000 barrels of oil a day, that does not include fuel consumed by contractors, in leased or private facilities, or in the production of weapons. The US military is a major contributor of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that most scientists believe is to blame for climate change. Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, reports, “The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007. . . . That war emits more than 60 percent that of all countries. . . . This information is not readily available . . . because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under US law and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”
Even worse than the preceding, Environmental journalist Johanna Peace reports that military activities will continue to be exempt based on an executive order signed by President Barack Obama that calls for other federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Peace states, “The military accounts for a full 80 percent of the federal government’s energy demand.” In other words, Obama's motivation to staunch greenhouse gas emissions is useless if he excludes the biggest perpetrator of them all. It essentially makes a mockery of all his rhetoric to be for a greener, less CO2 polluted -planet, if he lets the military get away with their wasteful consumption of fossil fuels. What is he afraid of? He's the Commander-in-Chief and can order them to do or comply with any E.O.! Kennedy did! (Ordering a Vietnam pullout by calendar year 1965, under National Security Action Memorandum 263).
The other aspect concerning this Helicopter Brigade is that it's to be introduced a year before the U.S. is to finally get its ass out of Afghanistan, when the NATO mission there is putatively to terminate. So what - does the installation of this nonsense base mean we're tied down there for another ten years? Then where will the fucking money come from if we're in such dire straights as approaching a nearly $15 TRILLION debt ceiling?
This again shows me this entire country is nuts, and running on half-baked bullshit more than common sense or any vision. Where the greatest need exists to do something and use public monies for the purpose (infrastructure building, and sustaining Medicare for another generation) everyone sits on their hands and looks the other way. Where the greatest need exists for cuts, political rhetoric, general PR and horse manure reign and we hear the f-word ("freedom") bandied about to the point it renders the majority populace deaf, dumb and blind and incapable of forcing their reps to make the cuts to defense we need. (And let us again recall the $1.1 trillion the Pentagon "misplaced" ca. 2000, and which we ought to hold them accountable for before giving them one thin dime!)
IF the Repukes are truly serious and not inveterate knob-polishers and bull shit artists, they will cease all this yap about cuts to food safety programs, police and pollution oversight and set their sights on the bloated Pentagon and Military. The very Military-Industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned us about in his January, 1961 Farewell address.
They could start by eliminating this proposed, stupid and wasteful chopper battalion that will merely bring more headaches to an already over-burdened, budget- busted community, not to mention the waste of millions of barrels of oil over its projected tenure. It is estimated (I say grossly over) that it will bring in some $12 million yearly to the community, but I call bollocks on that. When one subtracts the costs, especially to the environment and the drain on public resources, I'd estimate the liabilities exceed the benefits by 2:1 at least. No wonder Colorado Springs has made so little economic progress in the 40 or so years the military has colonized it. Who the hell else wants to set up shop there? What business wants to move there with good paying, decent jobs and be harassed by the Whop! Whop! Whop! of Attack Apaches all day long? The Military Dolts say they need this because Colorado is the closest thing to Afghanistan's terrain. I say, take a look to the state north of Colorado, named WYOMING! Or, is it that you prefer not to harass and bother the likes of Dick Cheney and his rich compatriots at Jackson Hole? Inquiring minds would like to know!
In the meantime, grow up, and get some sanity and sense, Repukes! Start by ditching all these military toys, projects and other white elephants! I will wager that if you really wanted you could find ten times the $35 billion you want to pare from federal domestic programs, such as food safety (which will actually help lower our ongoing HEALTH COSTS!)
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