In other news, sky blue, grass green

Americans politically ignorant

I'm somewhat heartened to see national defence cuts scores as one of the top pluralities of things that should be cut in federal funding, though it's nowhere near a reasonable approach (I'd cut the current defence budget by at least 33% immediately if I were in charge of things. Probably as much as 50%. I don't imagine I have the most reasonable and popular views on international relations and defence budget projects, but I do at least know how much we spend relative to anybody else, much less the villains as selected by our neoconservative friends this week). Still, defence spending, while outrageous and disproportionately high in America relative to many of our allies, much less any of our potential enemies, is a relatively fixed expenditure. It's not going to bankrupt us in the long run because it really can't get much higher than it already is (at least not without yet another shooting war).

I'm continually amused that Social Security and Medicare are among the least popular cuts while foreign aid ends up as the #1 public enemy. This is probably because most people seem to comfortably assume that foreign aid for millions of impoverished Africans and Asians and Latin Americans consumes vast sums of public treasure while somehow a retirement savings safety net and providing for the health care for millions of wealthy Americans does not. Until more Americans are aware that Social Security and especially Medicare will be consuming ever more enormous percentages of our economy and federal funding to the exclusion of anything else these programs will not be cut and no meaningful deficit cuts will be made. Clamors that we stop funding programs to feed starving children in some nameless village in Africa are cut from the American tradition of isolationism and "exceptionalism", along with some more vile strains of xenophobia, but they're hardly going to help us in dealing with our fiscal problems in a timely and noticeable way.

Wake up. Drink some more coffee or something before responding to questions like this.