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petal commented on the blog post Panetta Fearmongers on Defense Budget Cuts
Barney Frank spoke at Dartmouth’s Tuck Business School late this afternoon. The main point of his talk was that military spending absolutely needs to be cut from 650b down to 400b per year-We are overextended militarily. End both wars, close a lot of the overseas bases, and just focus on mainland US for true defense. He said we cannot keep invading country after country that a whiff of a “terrorist threat” may arise from. He rebuked Leon Panetta about the whole “if you cut the defense budget you’ll cause a lot more unemployment” thing. He said it costs 1$m/year to keep a single soldier in Iraq, and would be so much better and would do an incredible amount more good economically to bring that soldier and that $1m home. He said also there seems to be a cultural lag-that the US is still in the cold war state of mind and it’s killing us financially. This huge defense budget serves to project to the world that the US is the military enforcer of the world. He also commented that folks are arguing to keep US forces in Iraq in order to keep the various ethnic factions from fighting, but it isn’t possible to solve such complex issues by military force alone.
Those were just a few of the points he made. (This is my first real post and I’m pretty tired, so please forgive me for the poor quality and briefness of it. I just got home and saw this headline and as he directly mentioned Panetta today figured I ought to pass on what he said about it.)
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petal commented on the blog post Department of Justice Files Writ of Mandamus Against Judge in Dan Choi Case
Wow. I’m speechless. Thank you, Jane, and thank you to Lt. Dan Choi.
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petal commented on the blog post Late Night: Independence Day
WBER radio streaming on the laptop, and older Social Distortion and Mighty Mighty Bosstones in the car. Great driving music :)
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petal became a registered member
