Michael Vick, as most have heard, dabbles in the field of animal welfare issues. His involvement in this issue is commensurate with the welfare of dogs to the same degree George Bush's foreign policy insulates us here, in "The Homeland", from the terrorists out there.
Vick has mastered a portion of Bush's foreign policy in his prepping of dogs for the fighting ring. To wit: National Public radio reports that the United States is funneling twenty billion dollars ( I've got to spell it out 'cause I don't want to wear out the zero key ) in arms, such as bombs, bombers, and missile systems to the ever-friendly Saudi Arabian monarchy. But just to keep things on the up-and-up, we're also sending thirty billion dollars to Israel.
Just as Vick does whatever one does to keep a dog in tip-top fighting mettle, we are following a foreign policy regimen that gives the middle east that little edge; just enough to keep it interesting to the peddlars in the M/I Complex. Anybody got a tooth file handy?
What has this to do with the price of apples in New Albany? Only this, our tax dollars are sent off to Washington in incomprehensible amounts: $522 billion dollars for this year, (and the
Bush-war, for some arcane accounting legerdemain, is not even part of that number). We're spending so much we've got to arm both sides. Is there just a chance that money could have been put to better use here in "The Homeland"?
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Given the fact that more than half the captured "insurgents" currently sitting in Iraqi jails have been reported to be Saudis, one has to consider if providing them arms constitutes an act of direct treason.
Given the decades long business relationships between the Bush family and the very undemocratic Saudi royal family, I highly doubt the President will turn himself in.
I wonder how the soldiers feel about their Commander in Chief spending our tax dollars to better arm the people shooting at them?
Bluegill:
My attempt to craft an analogy of Vick's dog-baiting with our government's baiting of both sides in the volatile middle east may have been too much of a stretch as my editor informed me.
But the double-dealing is one of the behaviors that instills in me the bitterest sense of hopelessness--hopeless because it is a sin committed by both of our political parties and hopelss because it is largely an accepted condition that feeding the war machine is simply what we do.
How much better if ingenuity and industry turned out rails and wheels rather than guns and bombs; books and art rather than us and them.
Imagine...
True enough. We can target missiles into specific parts of buildings in foreign countries but can't seem to figure out how to get food to hungry people down the street.
When the federal government does allocate money to more humane endeavors, they tend to attach such restrictive stipulations to it that even the most knowledgeable and responsible of public servants often have difficulty spending it for its intended purpose.
Thus, the politicos get credit for both "giving" the money and "saving" it. Meanwhile, services and people suffer.
I didn't think the Vick analogy was that bad. Both Vick and many other leaders are due their day in court.
bluegill:
You are certainly correct that governmnet often misses the mark in its application of funding.
I am troubled by the image of those living on the margins who struggle to play by the rules, who dutifully send their tax money to Washington only to see it sucked up by the criminal element running that government.
The anti-taxers show high dudgeon when faced with social spending but remain mum about the welfare system Eisenhower warned us about.
These same people often ascribe mythic power to the "Market" while ignoring needs that the market can not address.
They forget or ignore that capitalism derives from our constitution and not the other way around.
At the risk of exposing my mathematical insufficiency, I offer this for the hopefuls in tonight's Hoosier Lotto--the jackpot is
$40,000,000 (forty million bucks):
If you are lucky enough to win tonight's monster pot, the largest ever in Indiana aside from Powerball, you will win enough money to keep the war in Iraq going for two hours and fifty four minutes.
You would need to win this amount 250 times to pay just one month's Death Tax in Iraq. Our monthly squandering there is conservatively figured at $10 billion.
John,
since it is nearly election time again, I would like to invite you to place a sign in my yard again.
You can reach me through my blog at www.newalbanyeyesores.blogpot.com.
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