I see where the US taxpayer is going to cough up a few more billions so that the guardians of global freedoms at the Pentagon can increase America's military capabilities in Eastern Europe. After all, you never know which of those Eastern European statelets Putin might want to annex next, do you?
Here's the part that I don't get. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, last year Russia spent 51 billions on defence. The USA spent 600 billions. That's what, over a thousand percent differential in defence spending? And WE have to spend more because even though we're outspending Putin by a factor of ten, we still feel threatened?
Really?
And that's not the whole story; Russia is just one country. The USA has a gang, a veritable pack of allies known as NATO. According to NATO's own documents (scroll to p 5), their aggregate defence spending was over 900 billions in 2015!
Fifty billion for the Ruskies... 900 billion for our team, and we're still scared of Putin?
Anybody else smell something fishy here? Obviously, this kind of spending discrepancy can only be the result of endless arm-twisting, lobbying, and fear-mongering by our vaunted military-industrial complex.
It's time to call the bullshit.
Trump figures he can get along with Putin. I say give him a chance. If it looks like it's gonna work out, I say scale back the US defence budget so it's oh, maybe only 100% bigger than Russia's. That should free up about half a trillion per year to address healthcare, education, and infrastructure. Hell, there'll be such a labour shortage in America we'll have to let all the black and hispanic doobie-dealers out of prison to take the jobs! They'll be able to buy houses, send their kids to the free universities... Christ almighty, happy days are just around the corner!
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