Country Of Crazy

I read a lot. I don't know how many hours I spend reading, I should probably try and count some day, but why waste time doing that when you could be reading? While I was reading, I came across an article in the Washington Post, it's about the difficulty of closing down commissary's on military bases. It would save tax payers about $1 billion a year. In this article it states that "personnel costs account for more than  one quarter of all defense spending." In other words, look out any of you who served your country, austerity is coming to a military base near you! Apparently, there was so much complaining, that they couldn't get rid of the commissary's.
 "We are on an unsustainable course,” said Arnold Punaro, a retired Marine major general who chairs the Reserve Forces Policy Board. “We are trading off active-duty combat readiness to protect all of these benefits.” God forbid, the people who were promised benefits in exchange for say, fighting in the "War On Terror" get benefits.
But guess what we can spend billions on? 2000 unused M-1 Abrams tanks, because General Dynamics, (I have written about them and their donations to every politician in DC) $3 billion spent on tanks the military obviously doesn't need and instead picks commissary's to cut the budget. That is what makes the US the Country Of Crazy. I am all for cutting the DOD's bloated budget, but can we be smart about it?
"173 members of the House from both parties wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta urging him to continue producing more tanks" It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that these 173 members of congress are getting lots of money from General Dynamics. Since they are working for General Dynamics and not the American people, I think we could save a lot of money for say, not paying anyone in congress or the senate a salary or benefits. $174,000 is the basic salary for political whores, I mean, members of congress and the senate, not including all their other perks. 435 in congress, 100 in the senate x 174,000= $93,090,000. It's a start!

If we are on an "unsustainable course" and we can't have commissary's on military bases, why is it that we can have H.R. 1446, a bill that calls for a colony on the moon? A bill called "Reasserting American Leadership In Space Act" I remember this was part of Newt Gingrich's act. We can't take care of the people in our own country,  why not start populating the moon?
Salon had an article about half of Americans living in poverty,
One in eight post 9/11 veterans are living in poverty. More vets are living in poverty, report shows.
This is a disgrace, no veteran should be living in poverty. Americans should not be going without healthcare or living in poverty so we can build more tanks that no one wants or needs. There used to be a "War On Poverty" anyone remember that? President Johnson said that in his State of the Union Address. Now we have a war on the poor, whether they are veterans or any ordinary American. What is really crazy is that we tolerate this. A real war is going on right under our noses, it's the war on Social Security, the war on SNAP, the war on any social program that is helping anyone, especially the people who were left behind in The Great Recession-Depression 2008.  Every one I know of is getting by with less, except the people who supposedly represent us. I think they should  get by with less, lets start with cutting their salaries.