Misplaced priorities

In case anyone has been living under a rock for the last few months, the economy is pretty well in the drink, and most respectible economists are predicting at least two to three years of recession.

Where to start? We’ve fed massive amounts of cash into buoying institutions where I wouldn’t invest in as much as a taco which have made killings screwing the crap out of our economy. The latest institution to receive sweet, sweet bailout green is Citigroup, which received a shocking 306 *billion* dollars of borrowed money. As of mid day on Monday the 24th of November, this amazing injection of capital has doubled Citigroup’s stock, and sent the dow spinning upwards, again. I’m not particularly fond of rich fuck bailouts (for references, see AIG, Goldman Sachs, etc), and honestly could care less if this particular investment and banking group went down in flames. They shouldn’t have been allowed to be one group, after all, if not for the foresight of such incredible assholes as Phil Gramm and John McCain. At the same time, lawmakers are scratching their asses and refusing to make *any* bailout offers to the automobile industry. As I’ve said in past, I’d rather they go down in flames, but to throw the monies to the wolves who caused this entire epic clusterfuck in the first place instead? Not that we have been promised that it will be paid back, which smells like a manure farm to me. If only they would consider dropping their sports sponsorship deals, or maybe consider not going on expensive junkets.

Or how about the increasing militarization of the United States? At last report, we’ve spent almost 5% of our GDP trying to bomb and/or blow up dark people. And now, they want to tie defense spending intrinsically to our GDP, while we grossly outspend every other nation on the planet? I mean, not that the United States isn’t now following the same folly that those loathed cheese eating surrender monkeys, the French, found out in World War II? You can’t exactly continue an outdated type of warfare in new scenarios — In the French’s case, it was continuing trench warfare against Germany’s tanks and blitzkrieg technique, in the case of the United States, it’s assuming that war is a game, with rules. Not that pointing penis-shaped objects at other people isn’t inherently childish to begin with, but our generals want their toys, even when a missile defense program is kinda pointless these days against shoe bombers and insurgents … What ever happened to domestic civic service? How is it that the only way young people are asked to be of service is by being a blood filled barrier between other people and bullets? The best the “conservative movement” was able to put forward was “Americorps”, which even Bush could give a crap about funding. yet the military gets carte blanche to spend however much they want on whatever they want. Amazing after Ronnie “Tear Down This Wall” Reagan more or less removed the military from the adjustable part of the budget, since we couldn’t have *accountability* messing with our ability to control that awful red menace. Yeah, that one, the one that collapsed on itself. All those missile defense shields? Put some fuckers on yachts, they did. I don’t think “defense” spending has been spent on “defense” in a very, very long time.

Then there’s George W Bush and his habit of trying to prove conservative ideology in the most idiotic ways possible. Apparently according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Bush flubbed numbers to attempt to prove that privatizing jobs is more efficient than having a government official perform the same duties. Of course, privatizing is *never* cheaper or more efficient due to profit overhead, so a bit of straight up lying is required to make the public *think* that big bad ol’ gov’t is a horrible idea. It’s probably a lousy idea to leave government in the charge of people who think that not only is it a lousy idea, but that that government is incompetent. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy …