Teabaggers against Defense Spending?

I don't mind the defense spending too much; it's the offense spending that's pissing money away.

Everything that goes into defense costs us about a trillion dollars a year, most of which goes into fighting the Russians in 1978. Fighter planes for all those dog fights we get into with the Taliban, submarines to foil their evil plot to blow up our ships with car bombs, and space lasers to shoot down their exploding underpants...scream about handouts, this is what they should be protesting.

lol

On April 25 2010 06:49 ShadowDrgn wrote: I don't mind the defense spending too much; it's the offense spending that's pissing money away.

Same difference

The argument for the defense R&D is usually the whole "we gotta stay on top, cuz you never know if we might just need it". If NK builds an ICBM that can reach LA, we cant stop it. Our current array of interceptor missiles and what not are a mixed bag. None of them have proven very effective, and cannot be relied upon to stop an attack guaranteed. Things like the laser technology, and newer faster more accurate missiles have the capability to either stop an incoming missile (keep in mind an ICBM would be traveling at like 7-12x the speed of sound), or even reach a launch site before the missile ever takes off.

Then of course theres the crazy factor. If for instance China ever lost their minds and decided "hey, the americans never developed a fighter jet beyond the F-16. They have given up. We could technically take them over", a lot of it is for show. I dont necessarily object to the high tech stuff.

But the war, the global deployment of troops, the effort to sustain these resources with fuel and weaponry and vehicles that dont actually improve our strike/defense capabilities but rather burn a whole in our wallet, yea all that shit can go.

And I'm still an idealist and feel that continued space exploration yields other benefits towards technology in general which I wont bother going into b/c the arguments have already been made. I mean yeah, taking NASA's budget and using it to rebuild Detroit is nice and all, and I'm all for universal single payer health coverage and so forth, but I'm not really in the business of giving straight up hand outs to cities and populations that cant pull themselves out of the gutter. I still feel for a nation to achieve/maintain greatness, we have to pursue our dreams and not just make sure everybody else has can.