the days when feminism asserted that abortion was a male-driven conspiracy to destroy minorities.

and that was when with which "feminists"? I think this canard is more a religious nut's idea.

That bomb "graphic" was literally the most childish thing I've ever seen in international politics, and politics is pretty childish enough as it is. That racist asshole should be ashamed of himself, at least put up a substantive and informative chart with stats and numbers, not some cartoon. What a joke. Israeli and ALL Jewish people should rightfully be ashamed of such blatant fear-mongering..



That was the radical Black and Chicana feminism of the 1960s and 1970s long before the Democratic party brainwashed women.

'll tell you like my poppa told me
Stay sucka free and fuck the police
What you know about honor, respect and loyalty?
What you know about the father, Che and Huey P?
What you know about being hung, stabbed in the grill?
Nothing cuz you don't know about the youngins on the hill
On the real, all these fake thugs know the deal
When we start the revolution, all they probably do is squeal

I told you, its not about religion. I don't impose my Faith on anyone. In our society, is murder ok? What about stealing? Those are universal norms which have little do with one's religion, it is just common decency which atheists and religious folks alike agree with. Sometimes the atheist crowd is even MORE vindictive than the religious folks, the Gospel says to love you enemies and visit the guilty in prison, some atheists believe in eye for an eye more than Bible thumpers.

My beef with abortion is cultural, philosophical, and deeply personal. Again, I accept that it is not going away, but what I can't for the life of me understand is why can't as a society we have a substantive dialogue? Why can't we have mutual compromises? If folks like myself compromise and accept abortion as a practical reality in our society, can't abortion folks compromise and respect folks like me's sentiments for the youth? If you read my criticisms it is about unabated and unrestricted abortion, not abortion in general. I personally feel that teenage girls should not be allowed to have abortion without adult consent (it doesn't have to be parents though I'd prefer that) and further I feel that there is no harm in having a mandatory waiting period for folks to sleep on the decision? Can't be a mature society and discuss these matters without relying on fear-mongering, hyperbole, or vilifying? I am not trying to demonize abortion, I am just trying to be reasonable and further express my serious and well grounded concerns about the young adults in our society.

But you know what, like Tupac said, "Fuck the world if they can't adjust, its just as well Hail Mary."

;)

Chomsky agrees with !@#$%! (up to a point).

How Progressives Should Approach Election 2012.

And also with Suchfriends (up to a point).

poor chomsky! this is proof that senility can turn a genius into a caricature of his former self. :(

He also looks remarkably like my nan.

i lissened to most of the interview and it was pretty good, though he's hard to understand cuz he sort of has a very low-volume growl. he doesn't project at all.

true story: i've seen chomsky up close and personal several times and i'm convinced that he's an alien for 2 reasons:

1) he has an enormous head. i mean ENORMOUS.

2) he glows in the dark. this i have seen with my own eyes.

--

i also read the robert fisk article-- a very good one! i haven't had time to reply due to work + my free time has been devoted to the UEFA games. prolly will reply closer to the weekend.

I tried, but alas, it was too dribbling... I would have killed for a transcript :)

I did like how he rightfully mentioned the "other King Dream speach" (i.e. speaking out against Vietnam on April 4, 1967 and again on April 3, 1968) which doesn't comfortably fit into our liberalized narrative of King as not being a radical. To me, the Beyond Vietnam speech from 1967 is STILL a manifesto for my daily living. Every year on the anniversary of his passing, I listen to that speech to here the power of his voice, and meditate on the depth of his words. There is so much Truth resonating across even four decades, and it is as pertinent today as it was then. This is my premise for being more active than voting. YES King initially was very much involved in the legitimate political system, and yet, but he end of his life, I think he reassessed the successes and failures, and it seems from many of his speeches during 1967-1968 that he would have promoted a boycott of the 68 elections before he ever promoted a Rock the Vote kind of campaign like he had in 1964. It seems that the good Dr King had finally realized that the racist political machinery of his time had been USING him to pacify radicalism.

"Should he abandon his supposed obedience to the white-liberal doctrine of non-violence, and to embrace militant black nationalism, through Counter-Intelligence it should be possible to pin point potential trouble makers, and neutralize them"

:( :( :(

Like Jah B (Bunny Wailer) said, "Some of the brothers may have gotten a bit, (hesitates) soft along the way, which may be why they are not here with us today, still, the flag has got to be hoisted!!!"

Barack Obama winning the election in 2008 =

Hey suchfreinds,

Remember when California failed to legalize weed? You were all about state's rights.

Remember last night when Romney pushed for state's rights?

I guess this means you're gonna cast a vote for a republican this year.

(I absolutely could not resist.)

Based on our experience with medicinal cannabis I've changed my stance, corporations and cartels are worse than hippies and growing artists, keep that shit underground. Oh yeah, that is another hypocritical stance of Obama, in 2009 his administration issued a document stating that medicinal cannabis would be up to the states and that the DOJ would not push back on that. Since 2011 the feds have raided hundreds of medical marijuana growers and distributors ;)

Fuckin ell Pookie i didnt expect this from you

1. They have an active nuclear program, if you trust their motives with regard to this then you are a very trusting man

2. The president of Iran has referred to the Holocaust as if it never happened, not in a secretly taped conversation with donors, but at the fecking United Nations

3. Which American party that advocates the use of nuclear weapons against a particular race of people do you think will get elected?

4: See Pont 2. Its not pretend rudeboy, its the real fucking world.

the US electoral process is the endsum result of demonic vibrations from the lower levels of the aether.

until it's over, expect friends to disappoint you, enemies to seem sane and your grandmother to be a misinformed racist.

reanalize your channels for distortion. it's coming from subspace.

as they say in the white neighborhood, let's cut the crap, guy.

you and I both know that you do not want jackboots having your state-issued and cross-referenced identification card devoured by Echelon and spat back at LAPD Mainframe:01; which would then, obviously, be forward the data to scores of other state agencies, namely, LAUSD-BoE and your local PTA.

I can dig it, jack.


if that shit were regulated like smokes and liquor (instead of a system that in spite of HIPAA certainly adds you to some .gov *sql, somewhere), you would be LOL-TTLY-4-IT.

just sayin'.

No seriously, the entire culture of the emerald triangle has changed, and quite literally on the streets the gangsters all push that "kush" now when they used to push speed and compressed mexican cess. Sensimilla used to largely be a holistic and local thing, and the stuff from the Triangle was equally reputable. Now that cartel hyrdo has taken over the market, it has gotten challenging (not impossible) to find decent, high-grade, flavorful, soil grown sensi... This major push began as the store front pot shops starting showing up around 2006 and 2007. We had this law since 1996 and it was strengthened in 2004 with a legislative refinement, but this law never supported shops which is why they never existed. If you ask me, you nailed it the mainframe aspect, I've always felt it was a ploy to lure all the underground growers and distributors under the guise of easy money and a sense of legitimacy. These guys do this for a living, a lot of them were fooled into believing suddenly they were like vineyardists because they worked with pot shops. Meanwhile as you mentioned, the Feds and the 1-timez were quietly raiding and shutting these things down daily. What is worse (and THIS IS HOW THE GANGSTERS GOT INVOLVED) (A) gangsters and cartels pooled their resources to invest in grow houses to supply pot shops, and (b) they began setting up unlicensed shops anywhere for a month at a time just to push. Strip malls are confused about the laws, so they just wait till the cops come, and a lot of these shops then (LA County estimates are upwards of 25-50% at any given time) are quick cartel operations. This is how gangs and drug cartels crept into what used to be a lovely craft industry in California.

In the early 2000s gangsters had crap weed, now they got the good shit and they know it. In the early 2000s a minority of professionals did all the growing, now a lot of cartels have gotten into that game because it is so much more lucrative than the old school "Mexican" compressed stuff they used to work with..

Further, the medical card movement is a joke, and it abused sick folks to make recreational consumers switch from breaking one law to the other. Either legalize it or don't. For me, the best thing has been the further decriminalization signed by Arnold, it reduced under an ounce to a parking ticket which is also not required to be reported to any agencies. In others words, like it never happened :)

Oh yeah, how is Obama in on all this? Well aside from obvious CIA and FBI connections with the dealers and networks (after all, its an American tradition), the Obama administration late in 2009 released an official statement through the Justice Department that they would not target medical marijuana in California. In actuality, the DEA just shut down 71 shops last week (which in all actuality they should be doing by the way, its kinda their gig and its a cat and mouse game many folks have grown to like) contrary to the White Houses public stance.

It's a wonderful world, cuz.

hello spookie (if you see this)

i know i promised to reply sooner but eh! i was out of town.

anyway, i read the fisk article and i've been thinking about it and okay: iran is not going to nuke israel today. true dat. and all that "iran must stop" is probably just hysteria.

HOWEVER

there is a logic underneath the hysteria: having nukes would turn iran into the dominant power in the region. all sorts of regimes from iraq and saudi arabia all the way to israel would cack themselves in fear. which is why the west doesn't want that-- the west basically wants to keep propping up the gulf monarchies & keep the balance of power more or less where it is.

change the balance of power and really, but really-- who knows what could happen? iran smuggling nukes via syria, right at israel's doorstep? totally possible, like the famous cuban missile crisis.

nobody likes to have a knife at their throat, and the farther ahead you can prevent said knife to reach your throat the better. why wait when the blade is starting to push the skin.

if i were israel, i'd bomb iran too.

You know you are smarter than that. Israel can't just bomb Iran because (a) Iran has a strong SAM so if Israel were to do that, they'd lose a lot of aircraft which would hurt them when they try to defend themselves against retaliation (b) Iran got money and weapons, they just might have the balls enough to attack Israel where Lebanon and Syria and Egypt have always been to weak. Israel isn't hardly that stupid, which is why they want the US to attack Iran, not them ;)

Bit busy to reply now but I've just read this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ions-suffering

yesssss. that guy has it 100% right in how/why democrats support sanctions & drones over invasions. but he doesn't mention that non-interventionism isn't in the cards. intervention will happen-- the only question is how. i have no illusions about this and nobody else should.

the basic foreign policy issue of this election is about how to manage the american empire, not whether or not it should be dismantled. this in spite of what right-wing twats are saying-- that obama is some sort of anti-colonialist manchurian candidate (for a good summary on this, please see here).

why do i mention right-wing twats? because they exist and they exert political pressure sufficient to keep the empire going regardless of what others may say. any attempt to do otherwise will be swiftly marginalized (see for example how ron paul's "isolationist" candidacy never manages to take off among republicans). same thing with mainstream democrats by the way-- wasn't joe lieberman a VP candidate with al gore in 2000? yes he fucking was.

take a page from your own recent history: when argentina wanted to recapture the islands that britain had disputed with them for centuries (let's not look at the real motives of the 1982 argentinian military junta for now)---did the british public say "oh fuck yeah, we've been squatting at the door of the poor argies for nearly 2 centuries, let's give them back their doormat?". nope-- your country went rah rah rah behind pm thatcher and proceeded to raise their flag again over those fucking rocks for the glory of some sort of some shit.

my point being... people everywhere are greedy for power and love it when their state uses their muscle for their profit/convenience/comfort/"honor". nobody gets elected by promising to be meek.

so... the pullback/withdrawal/dismantling of the american empire is going to be a HUGE undertaking that's not going to be solved in one election-- more likely it will collapse and be replaced by a different and perhaps even more malevolent empire (very likely, considering world history). the election in november will simply move the needle of what's "normal" and "acceptable" either in one direction or another--mainly in the domestic arena, because in foreign policy the issue is basically one of choosing drones vs. marines as the way to enforce corporate interests, and ends up being a domestic issue (creating more veterans vs. developing technology).

of course there are 2 schools in this direction-- one wants to slowly move towards some day living sanely (i'm a reformist so that's me), the other is more maoist and would have the system "exacerbate its contradictions" so it can implode and some sort of cockamamie revolution will save everyone. oh, fuck, i've seen maoism at work and it's shit, and revolutions end up in tyranny. so i vote for the democraps because in balance things come out slightly better-- that's all you can do in this macro contex. no candidate is proposing to dismantle the american empire, certainly not tomorrow. it would be nice some day to have a "voluntary recall" of military forces around the world, but like i said with the malvinas/falklands example, the populace of "evolved" democracies loves to rule over others as much as any petty somalian warlord or third world country with nukes. the only question left then is "how".

Incidentally I've always thought that anybody whose voting choice is influenced by a television debate should be automatically excluded from having a right to vote.

^

Yes. Reason #173 why democracy is stupid.

I live in the battleground state of Ohio. It sucks! Glad my vote is so important, but I feel like I'm getting anally probed on a daily basis.

The landscape is littered with political signs. So many they block out the sun.

In addition to the pointless polls and even more pointless robo-calls, I've been getting these calls from various Blahblah for American Whateverthefuck. The message invites me to press "1" to join a conference call that will begin momentarily.

Last week, it was Veterans for a Strong America. Some moderator and a retired CIA agent answered questions from regular folk, ostensibly about veterans issues. Really stupid questions, obviously. "Why do you gentleman think Obama hates the military so much?" a question these "gentleman" took the time to answer.

Last night, some Catholic group. "We are non-partisan. Please press '1' to join the conversation about important issues facing the day." Yeah right. The first question I heard: "If Obama is pro-abortion, doesn't that mean he's okay with killing Americans? Isn't that treason?"

I don't know what's worse: living in, say, LA where the state, county and probably suchfreind's ward will vote democratic. Yawn.

Or living in a place where the vote is so important you get fucked with daily. For at least a month. By everyone.

End rant.

apparently nobody cares about debates:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...-time/?hpid=z2

(not really-- what that says is that debates matter less than pundits make them out to do)



lololol

oh man... that sounds terrible. you have my sympathies. just make sure to take daily emetics! :(

you've got early voting in Ohio. If you cast your vote now, you won't get many of those calls anymore. They release the fact that you've voted, but not how you cast your vote to the campaigns. so, if you vote, both sides will know it and cease the contacts.;)

Well, 100 calls a day vs. 125 might be nice.

But partisan hacks, in my experience, don't check the voter rolls before calling.

I like your logic. They don't.

I was thinking, is Barack Obama the golden boy highschool phenom pampered to much like Lebron James? Lebron could simply do no wrong to anybody for the first several years of his career, and simply wowed people like the President has been since 2004. Perhaps Mr. Obama needs to lose in the Finals to finally get "that look" and take out the drama like Michael Jordan?

the only good thing Barry Obama got going for him is repping the Choom (4:20) Gang in Hawaii, coining the phrase TA (total absorption for inhaling all the smoke), and giving a big up to his herbsman Ray "for all the good times" in his highschool year book. Take that Michael Phelps, you are only the world's SECOND most legitimately successful mainstream stoner yo!


Then again, for a good while in the dirty south they called herbs that "Billy Clint" ;)

"we go play hoop"

what the fuck are yout alkinga bout suchfriends? could you rewrite than in Plain English?

you know, like, for furrners.

Its my attempt at being gastbot ;)

Lebron James= high school phenom basketball player who entered the NBA at 18 making millions of dollars and putting up all-star statistics even in his first game! He was billed to be the one to dethrone Kobe Bryant who had replaced Michael Jordan as the NBA's greatest player. Basketball was polarized, a lot of people didn't like Kobe (hey here in LA we only liked Jordan because he humiliated our rivals the Seattle Supersonics and the Utah Jazz) so folks put their hopes and beefs on the young Lebron James' shoulders. After all, the kid really could ball it up like he was the next Magic Johnson (and true to form of the Bird-Magic bromance, Magic likes to insist that Lebron is the next Larry Bird:p ). Moral of the story, Lebron James had some of the greatest performances in NBA history, and yet couldn't get a Championship. He was simply never challenged, and didn't push himself enough. Winning it all isn't about a single player, its about a player who can push an entire team, and Lebron just couldn't do that. He had to get clowned by the veteran San Antonia Spurs (fuck Texas basketball yo!!) in 2007 and then again by the Dallas Mavs in 2011. Finally he realized it takes even MORE work than just being a phenom, just being praised, just being coddled by peoples' instant affection. Lebron realized it was all or nothing, just like a trustfund college kid finally realizes when like the young Saddhartha they finally leave the palace and enter the Darwinian real world. He thrived. He put up a legendary performance, and more importantly, the team thrived, and dominated. Bingo. NBA Championship for the young phenom, who finally had to realize sometimes the chips are down, keep playing your top game. Bill Clinton had to learn this same thing when it suddenly looked like Newt Gingrich (???) was the new golden boy. Pimpin Bill Clinton came back thriving through adversity to pimp another generation of Americans. Now Barry Obama is in the same situation. He was barely a congressmen, even less of a senator ( I mean in experience, not action, he was involved in quite a bit of legislation in his brief tenure there) and just kept jumping the ladder, the way Lebron James was allowed to skip college, skip earning fame and acclaim by consistently winning games and championships. In 2004 people were already say the brotha was going to be the first black president. However, he was green, he hadn't had enough of that ugly experience to understand how government and politics function on the day to day level. There is a reason presidents tend to come from a legislative or government background. It is also the reason why Mitt Romney will not win either, he is greener than Obama. So now that Barry has lost his shine, had his own Lebron James Decision moment where the country started to turn on him, and now has in his first term essentially lost at the Finals, in his reelection bid this is his chance to finally win it all. Just like when the Heat faced the young Oklahoma City Thunder (who in this instance is Mitt Romney), Barry Obama has all the advantages to persuade Americans

ahhhhh... now i understand. YES.

(it probably also helps my reading comprehension that i'm now slightly less wasted--ha!)

Something that is really starting to piss me off. Whats up with Republicans suddenly pretending that they honestly care anything about debt? They are masquerading their bigotry and prejudice against non-white folks and poor folks under this current banner of "austerity" Who invented sky-rocketing deficit spending? Oh right, Ronald Reagan. Who balanced the books? Oh right, pimpin Bill Clinton. Who got it going in the negative again? Yes sir, Bush II. Now Barry Obama has unfortunately kept it running at essentially the same rate, though given, this is a Depression so debt is a better strategy than it was for Reagan and Bush II..

These Republican dudes keep talking about deficits and debt like (a) at any time in their history they have ever substantively done anything about it and (b) like it wasn't a total crock of shit. Debt is part of doing business, period, whatever the scale. The country has always been in debt, it always will be in debt. Now deficit spending, that is different, and that is a long-term problem if it is structural (like it was under Reagan and now clearly under Bush II/Obama) so that needs to be rightfully addressed. Come on over to California and see what two decades of deficit budget spending does to a once beautiful place.

However, when these guys say they want to cut debt, they are being manipulative. Further, there are these bullshit statements you hear from everyday folks who say, "If our household income declines, we have to tighten our belt, not get into more debt." That is simply bullshit, Americans LIVE on debt, for cars and houses and credit cards and all kinds of things. Essentially, the government and the national debt (including the concept of the ceiling) is the same thing. The government routinely borrows and repays monies to pay its bills. When revenue is strong, everything is fine, when revenue is down, then it adds to long-term debt. However, we will always be borrowing, and will always repay our current debts with priority. To say that when Americans are short of cash they don't also borrow is simply ridiculous and further is not a fair comparison to government borrowing and spending. Lying assholes ;)

Bullshit.

You seem to think that any debt is good debt and acceptable. There is good debt but the debt most countries are in is crippling. You only have to look Spain, Greece and Portugal to see what debt is doing.

And the fact is that one of the reasons we're (Brits and Americans alike) in so much debt and the recession has hit so hard is that people were borrowing more than they could ever afford.

Whilst the republicans idea of clearing the debt is basically lower taxes and have huge swathes of cuts mostly affecting the poor and middle class is a bad idea and has been proved to not work (you only have to look at the stumbling Britain's economy is going through). You can't just spend willy nilly in the hope something will get better.

It's the austerity programmes that are crippling these countries, not debt.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Pookie again.


I am not necessarily saying debt is good or bad, just that it is part of doing business. Spain and Greece have a different situation than the US, they accumulated a higher proportion of debt in a shorter time frame than the US has. Further, the US in the long arc will bounce back and begin to sort out its budget gaps. My real beef is not to say "debt is good or debt is bad" but to criticize hypocritical politicians who manipulate the narrative as if (a) trickle down economics isn't the problem with our revenue streams and (b) they ever substantively planned to do anything about it ;)

What is worse, the common analogy that Americans tighten their belts when the chips are down is a farce. Americans still have mortgages, car loans, student loans, credit cards, and all kinds of other debt obligations to pay, chips down or not. Often times when folks are paycheck to paycheck, its the credit card. When folks can't exactly afford the car they'd like, its the car loan. Dreaming big for a house? Mortgage. Need to repair or add on? Refinance. See what I mean? Debt is part of doing business. Structural budget gaps/deficits contribute to long term debt, true, but that is a separate issue than just talking about the national debt in general.

How do small business grow? Bank loans, investors, even venture capitalists. See, borrowing and spending is reality. The problem is that right now corporations are sitting on $ TWO TRILLION in capital and the government is short about 1 TRILLION a year, so clearly we see where the money went ;)

See the last paragraph.

Predatory lending is the fault of the lenders, not solely the victims. Further, the European situation is not comparable to the US. European countries are in staggering debt because those countries overplayed their hands during several concurring economic bubbles, and as a nation, never had the level of economic output to sustain such over the long term. The US IS such a nation that can easily afford its long term obligations at the rates it pays. No lenders or investor are balking at the the change to get involved in US debt, so clearly it is not an issue. Should we keep deficit spending by a 1 TRILLION a year? Of course not. However, we shouldn't be using the National Debt in that discussion, it is quite literally irrelevant. The US pays its debts on time routinely. No investors are complaining. We are not in an economic situation where we can suddenly try to double down on our National Debt, just like a family losing a significant source of income, can't suddenly decide to pay off their credit cards. Rather, we are going to have to like grown ups seriously sort out our priorities in the short and long term to solve our budget gaps. It is not just a tax and spend idea, it is a radical assessment of our values as a society and community. For example, business is booming, why can't we have short term high tax rates (say for 1-3) years which will draw in revenues and yet will not be a long term or systemic threat to business. Corporations are quite literally BOOMING, if there was ever a time for them to be paying 37-39% like in the Clinton era it is today, and if there was ever a time when the government was so short on the revinue it is now. Trickle down economics through the combination of the Bush II tax cuts, several business tax loop holes, and the crippling effects of free trade agreements have gutted revenues for the government, hence 4 years of nearly TRILLION dollar deficits. We need revenues, and that is simply not going to happen by MORE trickle down. Corporations couldn't have any more capital available unless we continued to just print more money, and even then, they'd get the lions' share. However we sort out our next few budgets, they have to be substantive, not 9 consecutive stop gaps. We need to get to work, not bicker over political pandering. Lets be honest, the Democrats had compromised on a lot of issues, there was a good plan last year that was simply shot down by Republicans who insist on this silly no tax pledge. Fuck corporations if their desire is to continue to pay less wages, provide less benefits, AND not pay their fair share in taxes to pick up the slack when government has to provide those same services that employers used to or should be providing?

People do and should tighten their belts of they fall on hard times.

I can't afford to have a brand spanking new car or to get a loan out to buy a huge 40 inch tv. I'd like to but there's no way I could afford to pay back the loan bills and I know in this current situation many, many more people are in the same boat. Would you rather I get into more debt and risk getting turfed out of my place? It's a shitter especially when you know that the rich/poor divide is only gonna get worse.

You seem to be making out that even if someone can't afford a loan they shold take on out anyway.

As for small business loans I'm a painter and decorator by trade, but when I got laid off my last employer due to lack of work nearly a year ago I had to go on the dole. A few months later of unemployment and nobody hiring I said fuck it and decided to try and go and do it on my own.
Thing is I knew I needed a loan. It worked out I would've needed 2 grand to buy a van etc. I ended up having a meeting with my bank asking for a loan, and lo-and-behold as they have done to many more people wanting to set up a business I got denied.
If I had been approved and I had been able to build up a good steady level of customers I could've a)paid the loan back easily and b)had a hell of a lot more disposable income. As it stands I'm now in a shitty warehouse job with bare minimum level of disposable income.

I more than understand that banks and the government should be giving more help people set up businesses.

When people are broke, its not brand new cars and 40" TVs that the are putting on debt, it is groceries, electric and phone bills, kids' clothes and school needs, etc etc..

Further and again, you are right, the government could afford to tighten its belt, but on that bloated military and police-state spending (the local police agencies absorb between 60-80% of local revenues and have huge federal subsidies) and those greedy corporate tax loop holes ;)

Oh.. Bush II tax cuts cost about $5 TRILLION in lost revenues, and the war(s) are $1-1.5 TRILLION (yeah, war is ugly like that, the margin for error is $500,000,000,000 not to mention), and all kinds of other silly things and what do you have? Trickle Down economics 2.0. By the way, how much does all this looking tuff and blowing shit up around the world cost the US in the past ten years?

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/...94 .01_894.97

(the answer is $6 TRILLION on defense spending )

How does this happen?

I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm just asking.

I'm one of the few people who will fess up and admit I don't understand how complex economic systems work.

So how do austerity measures hurt the overall economy?

Look, I'm not saying they don't. Chill. Hey, it's just a question. Fuck you, I'm just trying to figure it out. No need to call me that. Oh, bite me.