I remember hearing in the media right after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR that even without the USSR that there were significant military threats facing the US. And the collapse of the USSR only made those threats more dangerous. So the case was being made right away why we needed to keep on 'feeding' the M-I monster.

I can only imagine what good uses that money could be put to instead of the next generation weapons systems which we don't need. The amount of money we're spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. The amount of money we're spending with our permanent bases in Western Europe. Etc...

We have been on a permanent war footing since WWII. With our government operating in almost police state like secrecy. With countless trillions of our national treasure being funneled into the defense industries coffers.

We have to demand an end to the obscene annual expenditures first and foremost along with an immediate halt to the wars. If we reduce the current proposed budget by 50% we will be back down to pre-Bush obscene levels of military spending and still, by way of example, would be spending three times or more what the Chinese spend each year. Our federal budget priorities are so out of whack with the needs of the nation it is literally criminal.

We must demand that our leaders respond to the needs of the people. That means withholding support for conservadems, that means putting pressure on the President and the Democrats to stop fiddling while Rome burns. For God's sake, we have 17 million officially unemployed people in this country! The real number is probably closer to 30 million but officially we are going under in terms of the employment situation in the US with little or no hope of re-employing the recently unemployed at or even near the same incomes they had previously. Our economy has collapsed and we are taking literally trillions and dumping those funds down a rathole that is the worst possible use of investment dollars: war and the machines of war.

People must realize that only we can do this, that our political, civic, military and economic leadership is as corrupt and rotten as there has been in any empire that came before us. Their total mismanagement of the economy, our education system, our national security, etc... requires they be replaced with new, less corrupt or noncorrupt people who will carry out their responsibilities in the national interest.

As the great Frederick Douglass said: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will!"

We could also go with your cartoon and simply ask the military to take over all the functions of government. The military could run schools, hospitals, provide healthcare, etc. Instead of unemployment benefits, every person losing their job will be automatically enrolled in a the "seek and apply" brigade, a unit whose mission to is to find new jobs, and there would be standard pay and benefits while looking. The army can do urban planning (see Faluja!), manufacturing, universities (the hard sciences are already paid by the DoD. It's time they start paying for the literary criticism as well). Etc. Etc.

Once we achieve all the about, we can have a new Chartist movement demanding the right to vote and elect the Joint Chief of Staff, and call ourselves citizens of the United Armies. And once we get that we will finally have a functioning democracy.

That's seems to me a much easier job than cutting down the defense budget.

War, n: A time-tested political tactic guaranteed to raise a president’s popularity rating by at least 30 points. It is especially useful during election years and economic downturns - Chaz Bufe.

"Give Peace a Chance"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-NRriHlLUk

That's a helluvan idea! I'm for it!

We were told by activists to do that with our phone bill taxes in the early '70s; I did it, and the phone company never made a peep. Odd, eh?

And

"Imagine"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdybbBXDlOc&feature=related

I put up this blog on this subject in November:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/w/e/wendy_davis/2009/11/hidden-limits-to-presidential.php

and you argued well for Obama to just grow a set, in effect. Aside fronm that, he has a wife and kids.
I have just been incredulous that a man I like, really, hired Gates from the October surprise, McChrystal of Bagram torture, kept scores of Bush-era DOJ employees in place (knowing that they had to pass Bunny Whatever's loyalty tests), kept Bernanke, rehired the Clinton neo-liberal Goldman Sucks team; oh, hell; you know the rest. It just doesn't parse for me.

Even if what you say is true, he is morally obligated then to resist them, to let the people know what is going on, what the stakes are and to lead them in an uprising. Despite all their power, the military industrial complex has on power we don't hand them via our obedience and complacency toward their criminal enterprises.

Corporatism is destroying America. Militarism is just one of the ways they have found to suck the life blood from our nation.

I hear you; I always get stuck in the 'who the hell would ever want to be the President?' question. I get literally sick to my stomach imaging myself (or anyone, really) in the Situation Room, at a table with all the might of the US war machine represented by all the different bodies sitting at the table with me.
(Shudder, cringe.)

I've given up on the Democratic Party particularly because of their healthcare fiasco but if there is one major reason why we need a 3rd party, it is foreign and military policy.

Americans deserve to hear alternatives and there essentially are none given the existing parties. Americans deserve the chance to vote for a different set of priorities.

Maybe we could call it the Canada Party. Healthcare. Peace. Regulated banks. And if the party thing doesn't work at least it would work as a platform for a secession movement!

at the ballot box!

Nice.

"The biggest threat we face in this country is allowing militarism to continue to control our political and economic future."

Just had to repost this line, Oleeb, it sums the issue up very nicely.

Most wingnuts think "leaving our children a better world" means no more than their kids should be in a higher tax bracket than mom and pop were. The same people rarely have anything but contempt for "the peace movement."

Peace is not a "movement", it is our hope for the future. If there is one way to give our children a better world than the one we knew, it would be to make war obsolete.

THE pie chart...

http://www.truemajorityaction.org/csba/priorities.php

Don't forget almost all that "foreign aid" goes to Israel, Egypt, Colombia and Jordan, to pay for repression, and the rest is over 50% disguised help to corporations (like food help, which must be spent on US agribusiness).

the best way the US can help people is to stay out of their lives.

I was going to make this into a blog but I think it works right here. From Counterpunch

Yet the ending of the imperial wars and the dismantling of America's global military empire -- and its global gulag -- would save trillions of dollars in the coming years. Not only from direct military spending, but also from the vastly reduced need for "Homeland security" funding in a world where the United States was no longer invading foreign lands, killing their people, supporting their tyrants -- and inciting revenge and resistance.

This would release a flood of money for any number of "new domestic initiatives," while also giving scope for deep tax cuts across the board. Working people would thrive, the poor, the sick and the vulnerable would be bettered, businesses would grow, opportunity would expand, the care and education of our children would be greatly enhanced, our infrastructure could be repaired and strengthened, our environment better cleansed and cared for. In short, people could keep more of their own money while government spending could be directed toward improving the quality of life of all the nation's citizens.

This is no utopian vision. Many problems, much suffering would remain. But it would be a better society -- more humane, more just, more secure, more peaceful, more prosperous than it is now. Such an alternative is entirely achievable, by ordinary humans; it would require no divine miracles, no god-like heroes to bring it about.

But such a society is precisely what our elites cannot -- or, to be more accurate, will not -- imagine. Because, yes, it would "erode" their "influence" around the world to some extent. Although they would still be comfortable, coddled and privileged, they could no longer merge their individual psyches with the larger entity of a globe-spanning, death-dealing empire -- a connection which, although itself a projection of their own brains, gives them a forever-inflated sense of worth and importance.

And on a more prosaic level, the end of empire would mean an end to the horrendous economic distortion wrought by our war-profiteering industries. Other businesses would inevitably come to the fore, economic activity would be spread more evenly across more sectors. And so, yes, those who have feasted so gluttonously for so long on blood money would not be quite as rich as they are now.

'Nough said.

C

Just how bad do you want peace?

Well, draft one up and post it!

If "doppelganger week" can become a Facebook phenomenon, sending a sheet in with our taxes might just catch on. Protest we can believe in. Or, at least a start at protest. (hmmmm, how to attach it to a e-file?)

OK! I'll make it into a blog (soon.)

More from the TrueMajority pie chart page;
"Even after trimming $60 billion (of outright waste) from the Pentagon budget, America would spend nearly as much on defense as does the rest of the world combined. We would spend more than triple the amount spent by Russia , China , and the Axis of Evil combined.

Here's what America could accomplish with that $60 billion. We could:
Provide health insurance to 9 million American kids who lack it
Rebuild or modernize our public schools over 12 years
Retrain a quarter million workers
Cut our reliance on foreign oil in half over 10 years
Restore recent cuts in life-saving medical research
Invest wisely in Homeland Security by inspecting cargo containers entering our ports
Save 6 million children who die of hunger-related diseases in impoverished countries annually
Begin to reduce the deficit

Who cares? With all the money we'd be saving on the military it would be fine with me.

But seriously Stilli, the point of something like this would be to put the assholes on the spot. It would certainly end their idiotic claims of not wanting to pay for abortion.

Excellent! Thank you!

A little more music because I have nothing to add to what has already been written.

"Sixteen Military Wives"

Sixteen military wives
Thirty-two softly focused brightly colored eyes
Staring at the natural tan
Of thirty-two gently clenching wrinkled little hands
Seventeen company men
Out of which only twelve will make it back again
Sergeant sent a letter to five
Military wives, his tears drip down to ten little eyes

Cheer them on to their rivals
Cause America can, and America can't say no
And America does, if America says it's so
It's so

And the anchorperson on TV goes...
La de da de da

Fifteen celebrity minds
Living their fifteen sordid wretched checkered lives
Will they find the solution in time
Using their fifteen pristine moderate liberal minds?

Eighteen academy chairs
Out of which only seven really even care
Doling out a garment to five
Celebrity minds, they're humbly taken by surprise

Cheer them on to their rivals
Cause America can, and America can't say no
And America does, if America says it's so
It's so

And the anchorperson on TV goes...
La de da de da de-dadedade-da
La de da de da de-dadedade-da

Fourteen cannibal kings
Wondering blindly what the dinner bell will bring
Fifteen celebrity minds
Served on a leafy bed of sixteen military wives

Cheer them on to their rivals
Cause America can, and America can't say no
And America does, if America says it's so
It's so

And the anchorperson on TV goes...
La de da de da de-dadedade-da
La de da de da de-dadedade-da

From The Decemberists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK3Ce9md96g

Just as true now as when it was released, if not more so.

C

And the warning from a previous president.

C

Libertine.
Oh, my god.
When I was in high school, I used this song as a basis for an English essay. I thought I was going to have trouble from the teacher because we were supposed to use a poem and I figured this wouldn't pass muster. But, it did. I don't know if it was because the teacher didn't realize it was lyrics to a song by Steppenwolf or what. Whatever the reason, I got an A. ;o)

Thanks.

I had the vinyl version back then....now, I will have to go look online and see if it's available on CD.

I meant to say "isn't getting much play..."

So sad they stopped playing it on the radio, about the same time "War" and "What's Goin' On" got dumped from the airwaves.

As the age of peace and love passed, I DJed for about 20 years, and NEVER saw those great songs, with even greater messages, on the standard playlists.

We had to bring our own 45's or cassettes (this was in the distant, forgotten mists of the pre-CD era) to sneak it on the air, and then if the station owners happened to be listening in, we might get chewed out, or worse.

I knew one fellow who played "War" on the eve of the FIRST Bush Gulf War, and he actually got fired for it.

Ohio? Great song. As are "War" and "What's Going On". Chamber Brothers "Time Has Come Today" and the 5th Dimension "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" too. Harry Nilsson's "Jump Into the Fire" also jumps to mind. Along with, although released a bit later than those other songs, Pink Floyd's entier album "Animals".

So you DJ'd in real life JEP? I am only an amateur on-line one. It has become a pretty sorry business if the big things are the Britany Spears, Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus. I don't doubt you that people got fired for playing 'unapproved' and 'un-American' songs. Remember the heat the Dixie Chicks took and how they were not played for the comments on the latest Iraq War?

We are being made to forget the past. They want a placated and titillated oublic that does not embrace social movements and just consume the crap that is offered them. Seriously what do you think the chances that this song could even be recorded, never mind played on the air, today?

'Bad attitude' is precisely what is needed to counter the idiotic servility of positive (non-)thinking in the face of our downhill rush.

"It has become a pretty sorry business"

Almost totally automated, the pay for "talent" (which is what they called us living, breathing parts of the system, not "people" but "talent".)
has not gone up with everything else, either, anyone who thinks an entry level DJ job is glamorous has never seen a studio.

I also sold advertising, organized local sports tournaments and set up trade shows for the station(s) I worked for. Ad did play-by-play at a hundred small-town football and basketball games

The pay is lousy, and between that and the conservative programming restrictions (like I said, you can still get fired for playing "What's goin' on" or "War" or "4 Dead in Ohio) I have not attempted to re-enter the field since I left California 5 years ago, where we were working on building up local low=power radio.

With some of the changes that they are talking about in H.R.1147: Local Community Radio Act of 2009, that may begin to change the whole radio world, for the better.

"oleeb, the biggest problem with defense spending is the sheer lack of an enemy."

Correct. This is the natural result of decades of militarism and allowing the merchants of death to call the tune in Washington. It is precisely the problem Ike warned us all about so clearly.

Are there threats in the world? Certainly! But there is no threat on earth that justifies even a third of the military spending we do annually. There simply isn't. Sure they can invent all kinds of potential threats and they can obviously conjure up scenarios that unrealistically warp the perception of our entire nation in order to justify the unjustifiable. But common sense tells us, for examnple, that in order to fight less than 200 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan we do not need to send hundreds of thousands of soldiers, mercenaries, CIA thugs and spend hundreds of billions of dollars. The President's own National Security advisor publicly stated that there are less than 200 AQ in that country!

We are being lied to in the name of profit and the lies are being cloaked in patriotism and myths about a nonexistent enemy who possesses super powers and who can threaten the United States with underwear bombs, shoe bombs and other weapons that may have the potential to kill some people but which have no ability to actually threaten the US.

The "threat" such as it is, is no greater today than it was on September 10, 2001 really. The numbers of those willling to die trying to harm American interests has grown primarily because of our invasions and occupation of Muslim nations, our support for repressive regimes in the Muslim world, and what most Muslims perceive as the US's unbalanced and unequivocal support for Israel since Bush was elected. Prior to Bush, the US was seen as pro-Israel but also as an honest broker. These are the causes of anti-American sentiment among Muslims around the world and it would be much smarter (not to mention cheaper) to simply get our troops out of Muslim nations as soon as possible and to put the entire weight of the United States behind finding a real and lasting peace between Israel and it's neighbors.

If our defense and intelligence establishment was not putting all it's energy into fighting wars that only increase hostility toward the US they might be able to do a better job preventing major attacks on the US when they do appear. You may recall the complete, abject failure of the US intelligence and military communities to protect this nation on September 11, 2001.

And the engineers got payed even less. Almost became one but got talked out of it by a guy use to be an engineer at a radio station. We repaired TVs etc at the same place. He said he maid more money doing this than he ever got as a station engineer.

C

booked and rec'ed oleeb.
The US intel and military communities' abject failures to prevent the attack in 2001, and the compromised intelligence findings that led to the fraudulent Iraq invasion, were glossed over as totally unforseeable. And yet we spend more on our military than the rest of the world. The results of the last 10 years do not convince me we have gained an effective defense of our nation by giving the MIC every thing they wish for. If anything, Their need for eternal war has made the probability of another attack more likely. Their rewards were the Bush Doctrine of elective invasion of innocent nations; and the last wisps of privacy Americans had were taken away in a weekend. And the Bush approval ratings went up for a while. It is hard to argue with success.
We also spend more than any other nation on earth for our 37th rated health care system. The point of the MIC is not defense so much as profit. We end up with an invisible protective shield of infinite strength and nothing inside to protect.
My flip opinon is that we will never be beaten militarily. Some other nation will simply foreclose on us.
There was a time when potential military members had to pass psychiatric and moral standards to be accepted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0a6iWHSWbA