Just Fed Up

I don't know about you, but I have been feeling fed up with ... The scope of my "fed-upness" is so broad that I have trouble throwing it into a broad category. For that reason, I have had problems settling on something to write about. Every time I start to write, some other thing comes up. Since many of you often seem to be at the same space I am in, I'll try to hit the main gripes, and you can fill in the rest.

Not getting the job done
Why is it that the Republicans in the senate can control what gets discussed when they are in the minority and the Democrats couldn't stop anything when they were in the minority?

On the surface this is really a conundrum, and I know that there seem to be more Democrats (like Lieberman) who were willing to side with the Republicans than seems to be the reverse. Also that Republican Senators - even those with tremendous seniority (like Warner), are more than willing to lock step in a party-directed vote. Now that seems just a bit frightening to me. "My party right or wrong my party" sounds a lot like "My president right or wrong my president" which sounds a lot like "My country right or wrong my country" which all sounds like blind compliance and jingoism to me. Welcome to America.

How much IS the Defense budget?
I was going to write on this and talk about the dramatic growth in "Defense" spending. However, after spending almost three hours trying to figure it out I gave up in disgust. First, we have the range of figures:
Washington Post $622 billion and Tom Capaccio at Bloomberg for a better break down;
Or Capaccio revising figures to $716 billion;
or Katrina Vanden Heuvel's $745 billion?

Or one can head over to Bush's 2008 Federal Budget proposal and look at the requested Defense budget. One will find the following line items:
A discretionary budget subtotal of $481.406 billion
Emergency funding for "Global War on Terror" $141.665 billion;
Total discretionary authority $623.071 billion
Total Discretionary outlay $581.329 billion
"mandatory" outlays (non-discretionary spending) total $2.023 billion
Total outlays $583.283 billion

Of course none of this covers parts of the Defense budget that are part of other agencies budgets - like EPA responsibilities for cleanup of toxic military waste.

Contractors in the budget?
Regardless of the estimate of the defense budget, everyone agrees it is a baseline increase of roughly 11 percent over the 2007 appropriations, which was about 10% over 2006 - you get the drift. We are spending a lot of money on "defense" - more than the entire rest of the world. Amazing! No end in sight and we are now officially fighting an emotion - "terror" - it's right there in black and white in the budget. And how much of that is going to contractors? Who knows? The Pentagon won't say. How many private "fighting forces" are we paying for? Estimates are all over the place, but it could be 80,000 or more. The "forces" are much more expensive that our troops, and they are bound by no law (Iraqi or US) nor are they under control of the US military authority.

Immigrants
Meanwhile, undocumented border crossers are being killed by "masked men" in Arizona. Might it just be that the anti-immigrant wrangling and policies might be creating an environment where killing "invaders" is OK in the minds of the hateful? Might the resurgence off the KKK be linked to the same climate?

Is there not something that makes your heart fall that the US is locking up whole families in corporately operated prisons? Must be that Bush (crime) family vaunted "compassionate conservatism" at work.

Lost and not found
Out of $12 billion in US dollars sent to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in 2003, $8.1 billion is not accounted for. The money was sent on pallets to Iraq via cargo plane - 363 tons of it in shrink wrap. Nobody knows, and the Bush functionaries and Stepford Republicans don't care, that the bulk of that money effectively disappeared. According to a long haul trucker I heard on the radio, it would take at least 16 tractor-trailers to move that amount of money (363 tons). One might wonder, where that money went. How many arms, munitions, explosives, and garage door openers might one purchase with $8 billion? Enough to fuel a civil war? Of course, we must not forget the 377 tons of looted munitions that went missing because the US military had more important things to do than secure the Iraqi armories and weapons depots. We never found them either.

And lastly ...
Anna Nicole Smith
The ongoing coverage of Anna Nicole Smith has bothered me for a long time. The smearing of her has been an ongoing gender role object lesson for women in the United States. It has been sordid, dirty, and painful. Now, I have no particular feelings about Anna Nicole nor the basis of her (disputed) wealth. However, the meanness of the coverage of her death in the mainstream news is worse than the tabloids could ever come up with. Women of America, pay heed. No amount of money can protect you from the consequences of your being "uppity." You will be called "trailer trash" even in death. You will be alluded to (and sometimes outright labeled) by four and five letter words that imply you are a "loose" woman of "questionable" morals and too much sexual drive - even in death, and perhaps particularly in death, when you can no longer silence them through threats of libel. Get "uppity" and they will smear your name and character for all eternity.

Posted by rowan at February 10, 2007 8:17 AM | [eMail this article!] |