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Sick and Sad America: House Approves $1.48 Trillion Pentagon Budget
by Jake Johnson via gus - CommonDreams Sunday, Jul 28 2019, 9:22pm
international / prose / post

"Wanna know how broken and captured Washington is by the Pentagon and the corruption of our nation's 'defense' budget? Well, look no further than the soon to be enacted budget deal."

Indeed, America is a very sad case, as this Pentagon budget demonstrates. But what does it really indicate to the WORLD? Clearly that America is a terrified nation populated by terrified people. This absurd budget, at the cost of social services, national failing infrastructure and a myriad of other necessary maintenance and social service projects benefits only a handful of mega-banks and corporations, collectively know as the Deep State, which couldn't be happier as to them everything reduces to the acquisition of MONEY/PROFIT. YET the current reality is that Russia (and China) on tiny fractions of that amount have competitively out-performed America in weapons development and innovation, as avaricious, profit only driven, corporations are left out of the Russian and Chinese formula.

However, the above reality notwithstanding, there is a far more tragic social aspect to this budget. It clearly indicates a fearful cowering populace that imagines they require protection from the rest of the world as they KNOW they have illegally INVADED and mass murdered millions of innocent civilians in order to steal valuable resources, and the population knows that blow-back and retaliation are INEVITABLE. So whether or not the Deep State utility of the Pentagon performs well and maintains supremacy, that becomes a secondary issue, the population must HOPE it does and that wishful, DESPERATE hope translates to the most WASTEFUL (F-35 strike lemon) military budget on EARTH. Nevertheless, the cure is simple, stop making enemies of the rest of the WORLD. Engage the world in civilized fashion, as China does, build mutually beneficial infrastructure projects to EVERYONE'S advantage, do business, NOT WAR! If China, a push-bike economy in the 60's, was able to rise to its present superpower economic status today without firing a shot in anger, why can't America, which HAD a huge head start, do likewise? Good question which requires an answer.

President Eisenhower (search youtube) warned the public of exactly this threat decades past, he termed it the "military industrial complex," which today incorporates Big IT, digital surveillance and numerous other high tech enhancements all used to oppress average Americans and enhance its OWN power, a power that is CLEARLY self-interested. The Pentagon has lost the plot regarding its original commission that is defense NOT imperialist aggression and its the aggressive aspect that is BLEEDING AMERICA DRY.

What benefit to average Americans is there in losing all your rights and liberties, being locked down whenever the new military/police state wishes? The Boston lock-down was a disgrace as simple effective police work, the most effective solution in the circumstances, could have easily apprehended one critically wounded teenage suspect on the run; however, average citizens became subject to paramilitary forces with outrageously broad powers to search and intimidate average innocent civilians who had committed no offense and to top that violent absurdity, it was a citizen responsible for the apprehension of the suspect -- so wherefore ALL these ABUSES of POWER? Answer, simply to intimidate citizens and demonstrate new police powers and how they are abused by these rogue Deep State forces, which clearly threaten the public, forces that Eisenhower warned us about.

But the above is not the half of it -- the other major Deep State utility is the mass media or propaganda machine owned today by the Deep State, which sings in chorus according to the dictates of a self-interested, non-representative Deep State milieux. The American population has been so thoroughly intimidated by media inculcated FEAR that average citizens now quake in their boots, so it follows that they allow themselves to be robbed because of incessant repetitive lies, like the government is duty bound to protect its citizens -- 'keep us safe' -- from all the enemies it creates -- lol. The solution here is obvious and simple, STOP making enemies of the world!

There is only one nation that wishes to attack China and Russia and that is America, why? Simply due to the fact that both nations have overtaken the USA while the USA was hell bent on stealing weaker nations' resources in the Middle East, it was manically psychopathic to imagine that while America BLINDLY pursed its criminal Deep State agendas other competing nations would not take advantage of America's obsession to steal and kill for SHORT TERM gain PROFIT. And so they did to the extent that America is now a second or third rate superpower. But who is clearly to blame for not keeping their eye on the geopolitical ball? The money/profit obsessed Deep State, that's who!

So now in order to compensate for the Deep State's ineptitudes and failures they are throwing everyone else's money at the problem THEY created. So, American suckers, YOU are copping it right up the ass as usual. If you are unable to see the cause of ALL your national and social problems then you clearly deserve what you get, failed infrastructures, subsistence wages, no social services and now a national inability to compete effectively with the rest of the world.

Understand that competing and rapidly advancing nations are UNIFIED in purpose, which is in stark contrast to the divisiveness of America, which has the most divisive leader, Trump, in the short history of the nation. External forces do not need to divide and conquer America, puppet Trump and self-interested groups are doing that more efficiently than any external force could hope to do. So yay, yay, Donald, more racism, hate and division please.

Now choke on the following article by Jake you miserable, gutless American suckers, you are your own worst enemy:

In a bipartisan deal that one anti-war critic said demonstrates how thoroughly "broken and captured Washington is by the Pentagon," 219 House Democrats and 65 Republicans on Thursday voted to approve a budget agreement that includes $1.48 trillion in military spending over the next two years.

Just 16 Democrats—including Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.)—voted against the two-year, $2.7 trillion budget agreement. Largely due to expressed concerns about the deficit, 132 Republicans and Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) also voted no.

The final vote was 284-149. (See the full roll call.)

The House passage of the budget deal, which President Donald Trump quickly applauded on Twitter as a victory for the military, comes after the Congressional Progressive Caucus threatened in April to tank the measure in opposition to its out-of-control Pentagon outlays.

But most of the Progressive Caucus voted for the agreement on Thursday, pointing to increases in domestic spending.

"It's not a perfect deal by any means," Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus, said in a statement ahead of the vote. "This deal does not address the bloated Pentagon budget, but it does begin to close the gap in funding for families, by allocating more new non-defense spending than defense spending for the first time in many years."

Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War, took issue with the latter claim in a series of tweets Thursday.

"You're no doubt hearing a lot of crowing from Democrats about how the deal they struck with Trump gives more money to 'non-defense' spending than to 'defense,'" Miles wrote. "Let's be clear that by every measure, save the one they're using, that's simply not true."

"Under this deal, the Pentagon and its affiliated programs will get $1.48 trillion over the next two years. The entire rest of gov't, including the VA btw, will get $1.30 trillion. That's $178.6 billion more for the Pentagon than the whole rest of gov't," Miles wrote. "So, for the love of god, can we all stop pretending like this is somehow anything other than a continued orgy of unprecedented, wasteful, and obscene spending at the Pentagon."

William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, wrote for Forbes this week that the budget deal "vastly overpays for the Pentagon."

"At $738 billion for Fiscal Year 2020 and $740 billion for Fiscal Year 2021," wrote Hartung, "the agreement sets the table for two of the highest budgets for the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy since World War II."

"The proposed figures are higher than spending at the height of the Vietnam and Korean Wars, and substantially more than the high point of the Reagan buildup of the 1980s," Hartung added. "And the Fiscal Year 2020 and Fiscal Year 2021 numbers are only slightly less than spending in 2010, when the United States had 180,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, roughly nine times the number currently deployed."

The sweeping 2020 budget agreement is expected to pass the Senate next week, and Trump has signaled he will sign the measure.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined the president in celebrating the increase in military spending, which is significantly more than the Pentagon requested.

The deal, McConnell said, "achieves the No. 1 goal of the Republican side of the aisle, providing for the common defense."

As Common Dreams reported on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) came under fire from progressives for striking the budget agreement with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Specifically, critics highlighted the deal to suspend the debt ceiling until 2021, a move that could give Republicans power to cripple the next president's agenda.

"If you really listen," wrote Splinter's Paul Blest, "you can almost hear [Texas Sen.] Ted Cruz yelling on the floor of the Senate that Congress shouldn't raise the debt limit by one more dollar unless President Bernie Sanders promises to drop his demand for Medicare for All."

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