Healthcare For The Poor? No. Frickin' Death Rays For The Military? Oh Yes!

Is it just me, or do we have a strange double standard in this country?

Last year, rage erupted around the nation's podunk townhalls when Obama floated the idea of providing health insurance for the less well-heeled (well-healed?). Hell no! But grandiose military spending like $5.5 billion a month on the Iraq war, $6.7 billion a month on Afghanistan and a dizzying total military budget of $663.8 billion for fiscal year 2010? The more the merrier!

Why?

Why are we cool with flushing billions down the toilet every time the Pentagon sticks out its hand, but we hate the idea of a few of those dollars helping the working poor get healthcare instead? Is it that we're OK with killing foreigners on our own dime, but NOT saving American lives? Are we that f*cking depraved?

USA Today has an apropos story today titled "Star Wars meets reality? Military testing laser weapons". It goes on:

"We literally are the invisible death ray, let me tell you," says Mike Rinn of Boeing's Airborne Laser Program in Seattle, a missile- defense effort, one among dozens of Defense Department-supported "directed energy" programs.

[But] says 'Imaginary Weapons' author Sharon Weinberger: "In the military world, one real question is: Why do we need them? What can lasers do that we can't do with bullets and missiles? Given their costs and the fact that they weigh too much and are unreliable, I don't see them as too useful."

The Missile Defense Agency's chemical laser weighs more than 175,000 pounds... If you visit labs, Weinberger says, "you'll see the 'laser' is something the size of two buildings. You can't fit that onto a rifle barrel."

So... our five-decade-long quest for the death ray has burned through more money than most most countries' total GDPs. And what do we get for that? A 175,000lb pile of junk. It's as lethal as a laser cat toy if further than 80 miles away from its target, it has a sticker price of $214 million, it consumes enough power to supply "about six U.S. homes for a month", and it's "unreliable". As Dr Evil himself might say, what a frickin' bargain. Not.

Fiscal conservatives have no qualms about subsidizing this giant lemon even as they reject the softcore socialism of taxpayer dollars for public health. How does this sh*t not sound crazy???