Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

The Back Pages

What with all the excitement lately, you have to turn a few pages to find out about unimportant stuff like the federal budget, but just so you know, the House Agriculture Committee yesterday voted to take food stamps away from 300,000 people, which would also have the effect of taking subsidized school lunches away from 40,000 kids.

As Rep. John Boehner (R. Ohio) put it: "The fact is, our country is going broke. We're spending money we don't have and passing it onto our kids, and at some point, somebody's going to have to say, 'Enough's enough."

Right Mr. Congressman, we're passing that debt on to our kids -- at least the ones who live long enough and are productive enough to have to pay it, because we didn't starve them when they were five years old. (The government also reported yesterday that the number of people who can't afford to buy a sufficient diet rose last year to 38.2 million, that's 12 percent of Americans. Thanks to Libby Quaid of the AP for putting this particular two and two together.)

So I'm gonna say it. Enough's enough. Let's stop spending $5 billion a week to defend the Shiite side in the Iraqi civil war that we started. Let's stop getting our young men and women killed and maimed in the process. Let's stop spending money on useless and dangerous projects like ballistic missile defense and biological weapons research. Let's stop building bridges to nowhere, and endlessly cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans. And let's throw these greedy, lying, war mongering hypocrites like John Boehner out of office. Enough's enough.

Okay, I'm out of here until Sunday.

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