Fun fact you may take some enjoyment in: Today’s cartoon was drawn one block from K Street. In case you don’t know, K Street is home to most of the nation’s largest lobbying firms. There are more decisions made on K Street about how to spend your money than there are on Capitol Hill.

Another fun fact: I am now writing today’s blog in the underground food court at Union Station. A girl just walked by on the phone screaming that there are pigeons in the station. “Pigeons,” she said. “Pigeons. You know. Birds!” I don’t know what was going on there. There are always pigeons inside Union Station.

President Biden proposed $754 billion (with a “B”) in military spending for fiscal year 2022. The Senate appropriators, feeling horny for more blowy-uppy shit, have tacked on another $24 billion, which is a five percent increase. Did you actually believe we were going to reduce military spending after pulling out of Afghanistan? Pause for, “HAHAHAHAHAHA.” Even Democrats spend a lot on the military.

Jon Tester, the Democratic senator who chairs the Appropriations Committee said this budget, “strengthens our military and ensures the brave men and women that protect this country have the resources they need to keep Americans safe.” Yeah, yeah, yeah…support our troops…spend more money. What? You wanna reduce money for the defense department? Why do you hate our troops? Don’t you realize we need an increase in billions for missiles to be fired from drones at Muslim weddings, you communist?

And then, we got news last week that China has developed a brand new missile that does something bad. Oh no! Even worse, they might invade Taiwan! Good Lord! What will we do about that Chinese missile? Why, we’ll buy more missiles. Take that, Chinese missile fuckers. What will we do if they invade Taiwan? Absolutely nothing but increase budgets and wag fingers. Also, we’ll make sure our sneaker industry will survive the turmoil. It will? Well OK then. Carry on. Now, where are them Muslim weddings?

Republicans and other assorted idiots who don’t know things always bark about how we need to spend more on our military to keep up with the bad guys. But the thing is, kids…we’re not keeping up with anybody because we’re ahead. As for the bad guys, they can’t keep up with us because they don’t have the money and they’re not dumb enough to waste as much.

Remember when Mitt Romney was complaining about President Barack Obama allowing the military to rot away from inside itself? Yeah, we were spending over $500 billion on defense at that time. Then four years later a big orange ass clown came along and said the same bullshit even though were were now spending over $600 billion on defense. About two days after the orange ass clown entered the Oval Office, he claimed he had already rebuilt our nuclear stockpile. During the 2020 Republican convention, one of his idiot ass head kids (I think it was Eric) claimed his father had given us new aircraft carriers…plural. In case you’re a Republican, “plural” means more than one. In case you’re Eric Trump, no, your daddy didn’t give us any new aircraft carriers. Not one, not two, not three…nada. None. Zilcho. No new boats from daddy.

Here is another fun fact: The United States spends more on its military than the next top ten spenders put together. Another fun fact is eight of those spenders are our allies, unless France really gets more upset over us swiping a nuclear submarine deal with Australia from them than we orignally thought.

The Pentagon argues we need to spend more than other nations, as if we’re barely keeping up while we hundreds of billions ahead. And they love when Russia and China increase their budgets, even a little, because that gives them another reason to yell for more, like a pigeon being given bread crumb from a Jersey Mike’s sub in Union Station’s food court.

Speaking of aircraft carriers, the two enemies on that list, China and Russia, only have about three aircraft carriers between them…and they’re shitty aircraft carriers. As for us, we have almost as many aircraft carriers as Donald Trump has sexual assault allegations. Yeah, we have over 20 of those ships. But enough about boats, what are we losing?

We’re losing free community college. Now keep in mind this five percent, equallying $24 billion, is for one year. Biden’s plan for free college cost $45.5 billion….over five years. So, we’re losing free college which over five years was under ten percent of the military’s budget for one years. As President Biden might say, “C’mon, man.”

This nation needs more education. Have you watched Fox News? Yeah, we need to teach more Americans more stuff, like facts. It’s good to know things…actual things and not conspiracy theories, like Dr. Anthony Fauci is training Wuhan bats to bite Americans and given them COVID. I just made that one up but you have to admit, it’s pretty good. The truth is, he’s been training these pigeons on how to get indoors and beg for food scraps. Seriously? Where are the doors down here? How’d these birds get here?

At this rate, I’m not optimistic. About the budget, not pigeons. I don’t believe that even if the Democrats controlled the White Houes and Congress by large margins that we’d ever take money away from the defense industry and do some actual good stuff our nation needs, like free college, child care, job training, road, pre-natal care, and pigeon-free train stations.

I mean, seriously, no free college but we’re about to give Space Force $17 billion for for 2022. Another $17 billion for Space Force and they haven’t even been to space yet, but William Shatner has. We could probably give Shatner a quarter of that, he’d go back to space, date a green woman, and come back and solve our train-station pigeon crisis. Space Force hasn’t done shat.

This blog is done. I have to catch a train and I can’t concentrate while someone’s standing next to me talking into an invisible phone about why Bojangles Chicken isn’t in here anymore. Obviously, this person has a mental condition but I too want to know why no more Bojangles.

Anyway, to sum up, cut back on missile production, the only new aircraft carriers should be the ones Eric’s imagining, and we need free two-year college education.

If anything, we need to spend less in the capital on military bullshit and more in the capital on these indoor pigeons. I nearly lost a taco.

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