A $468,900,000,000.00 cashier's check

That's the amount the U.S. Pentago is expecting for its 2008 fiscal budget. Yeah, that's right. $468 billion. As some of you may be aware already, that's more dough than our next twenty competitors combined spend. The next biggest spender is China, which the Department of Defense guessed in 2005 spent $90 billion. That figure, however, is just that- a guess. China claims the number is $30 billion. Still, 90 is a far cry from 468.

What kills me is pondering what could be done in the U.S. alone with just half, even a quarter, of that money. Instead of mass-producing weapons and bombs, we could bolster our economy, fund independent business loans, fix the educational system, end hunger, fund medical research, incentivize alternative energy, and more. Hell, the question isn't what we could do with $200 billion, the question is what couldn't we do.

Which begs the question, why the fuck do we allow our politicians to spend as much as they do on defense? Why don't we demand they alter their goddamn priorities?

It probably has something to do with the Pentagon's being obsessed with their "guns."