November Election

[Virulent]

Virulent, are you saying that anyone who believes we should be out of this war only believes that because of gas prices?

I can totally see how you could read it like that, but I was just sort of using gas prices as a metaphor for a bad economy. No, I think an overwhelming majority of Americans, of all political inclinations, no longer want to stay in Iraq because they're beginning to feel, viscerally if not intellectually, what its like to spend 12 billion dollars per month over there. That's 4.95% of the total U.S. federal income. In contrast, the Department of Education gets 1.9%, the Department of Health & Human Services gets 2.4%, and the Department of the Interior, which is responsible for tending to our wild spaces in ANWR and other places gets 0.4%

Note this is not for military spending, per se. This is just off-budget appropriations for Iraq & Afghanistan. Military spending is an additional 16.6%. Put another way, for every $100 you paid in taxes last year $21.55 was used to blow shit up. So, for someone making the minimum taxable income, $7,825 per year, they contributed $168.62 (21.55% of 10% of their income) to buy bombs and shit.

If you make $8k per year, and you realize that you're spending $168 on bombs and guns, I wonder why you're not out in the street, with some guns and bombs of your own. That's fucking theft, and from people so institutionally under-educated they can't understand that someone else is spending their bread money... and on what? 25 million individual Americans got aid at non-governmental food banks last year. 8% of the population can't feed themselves adequately. Nothing makes me angrier than taxation.

If Americans feel poorer lately, it might have something to do with the tremendous amount of wealth being expended in Mesopotamia. I think most Americans are starting to come to that conclusion, and I really think political affiliation becomes irrelevant at that point. Its important to remember though that long-term health care costs for the wounded troops will also cost between 240 and 500 billion, depending on whose numbers you use.

That's all I meant.

An old man told me, instead of spending billions on the war,
we can use some of that money, in the ghetto.
I know some so poor, when it rains that when they shower,
scream and fight the power.