Close to 1 trillion dollars USD spent on our military.

The official 2012 Defense budget of $530 billion, and just a shade under that for 2013, leaves out an enormous amount of defense-related government spending. According to a recent piece in The Atlantic, when you add in, oh, the cost of our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, our spending on nuclear weapons development (relegated to the Department of Energy budget), Homeland Security, veterans' medical care (inadequate as it is, but rising), military aid to allies ($3 billion to Israel, for instance), and interest on the military's portion of the debt (projected to be $63.7 billion in 2013), our defense spending almost doubles, to $986.1 billion in 2012 and $994.3 billion in 2013.

In the last 13 years, according to Business Insider, U.S. military spending has increased 113 percent. We spend more on the military than the next 15 biggest military spenders combined - and more than all 50 states spend, in total, on health, education, welfare and safety. In 2007, some $11 billion was simply written off as "lost" in Iraq, the Business Insider story notes.

Read about it here - http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13342

Wow this really makes me sad - RIP Gary Carter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Carter

I had no idea he was ill. This is what happens when you lose sight of things on the Internet.

Thank you for providing many hours of enjoyment in watching you hit home runs, throw people out at 2nd (and 1st and 3rd base) and be the positive spark the Montreal Expos had during their best times.

You will be missed.

Why do I get the feeling ...

... this isn't going to end well for us?

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2012-02-22/news/hanford-s-toxic-avengers/

Read the first part here -

http://www.seattleweekly.com/2011-10-19/news/hanford-s-nuclear-option/

This is the price we all will pay for America's race to become the first nuclear power.

Gee you think this guy's a fucking idiot?

Proof that the oilsands in Alberta, Canada will only fuck up the planet permanently AND make people say stupid things in of all places, a climate summit forum -

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/02/17/428375/canadian-minister-promotes-tar-sands-at-climate-summit/?mobile=nc

Canadian Minister Promotes Tar Sands At Climate Summit


" Kent also pushed Clinton to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which alone would add five billion tons of greenhouse pollution to the atmosphere over its lifetime" 

I wish this were an Onion article ...

... kind of like this one ... http://www.theonion.com/articles/michael-bay-signs-50m-deal-to-fuck-up-thundercats,2702/.

Sadly, it's not - http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/teenage-mutant-ninja-turtles-wrath-titans-director-290554.

Yes. That Michael Bay.

Another element of my younger years is going to be destroyed.

2012 US Elections, Super PACs, the less-than-1%, and democracy ...

... all in one -

http://www.demos.org/publication/auctioning-democracy-rise-super-pacs-and-2012-election

"Super PACs represent much of what is wrong with American democracy rolled neatly into one package. They are tools that powerful special interests and a tiny privileged minority can use to work their will by drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans in a sea of (sometimes secret) cash."

This what happens when non-people (i.e. corporations) along with wealthy individuals are allowed to corrupt the political system, by using the one tool they have more than anyone else - money.

Here's the gem of gem paragraphs -

"Raising and spending money directly is not exactly the same as having money raised and spent on one’s behalf. But, as Newt Gingrich’s lifeline from Sheldon Adelson and Stephen Colbert’s stinging satire have so compellingly demonstrated in recent weeks, lax FEC regulations have virtually collapsed the distinction.


This means that Americans who can afford to give thousands of dollars to political candidates or Super PACs that support them are more likely to see candidates who share their views on the key issues of the day win office and assume positions of power.

This is the influence of money on elections, rather than on politicians."

Democracy in the United States of America has been reduced to -

money=power

Download the report and read it for yourself - here.

Decline of the American Empire.

Or as Noam Chomsky puts it - The Imperial Way. Read it.