Andy Rooney's Commentary Speaks My Mind and Raises More Questions
Andy Rooney Speaks: I’m not really clear on about how much a billion dollars is but the United States, our United States, is spending $5,600,000,000.00 (that’s five billion, six hundred million) dollars per month fighting this war in Iraq that we never should’ve gotten into. We still have 139,000 soldiers in Iraq today. Almost 2,000 Americans have died there...for what? Now we have the hurricanes to pay for. One way our government pays for a lot of things is by borrowing from countries like China. Another way the government is planning to pay for the war and hurricane damage and is by cutting spending. For things like Medicare Prescriptions, highway construction, farm payments, Amtrak, National Public Radio, loans to graduate students. Do these sound like things you’d like to cut back on; to pay for Iraq? I’ll tell you where we ought to start saving. On our bloated military establishment, we’re paying for weapons we’ll never use. No other country spends the kind of money we spent on our military. Last year Japan spent $42 billion, Italy spent $28 billion, Russia spent only $19 billion, and the United States spent $455 billion!! We have 8000 tanks, for example, 1 Abrams tank costs 150x as much as a Ford Station Wagon; we have more than 10,000 Nuclear weapons, enough to destroy all of mankind. We’re spending 200 million a year on bullets alone, that’s a lot of target practice. We have 1,155,000 enlisted men and women and 225,000 officers. 1 officer could tell every 5 enlisted soldier what to do. We have 40,000 colonels alone and 870 generals. We had a great commander in WWII, Dwight D. Eisenhower, he became President, and on leaving the Whitehouse in 1961 he said this “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.” Well Ike was right; it’s just what’s happened.
Sunshine Speaks: This commentary causes me to ask: who approves these cut backs...who approves the spending budget? Why are we allowing this kind of waste. There are approximately 300 million people in the US, so our Military budget last year alone could've made every man woman and child a BILLIONAIRE! Now I'm not suggesting that is a very good idea, but there shouldn't be one solitary person needing meds or a doctor, food or a warm place to sleep, kids should have the best educations in the world. The people that worked their whole lives and dumped all their money into the company (Enron) they worked for, and wound up loosing it all, while the bastards that stole the money and put it all in offshore bank accounts and are still walking around rich and scott free, should be reimbursed triple what was taken. The injustices that could be righted in one lousy years worth of military spending, and what do the people of America do? Nothing, not a damm thing. If fact we re-elected the leader of the theiving cronnies, we gave him permission to do those things. We told him it was okay to help them get off the hook, he had to because our vice crony would've been exposed as being a contibuting factor. You know, by comparrision what Martha Stewart did only hurt herself, she lost millions of her own dollars. They hung her out to dry, made it seem like she was some horrible criminal. What those thieves at Enron did was take millions from thousands of hard working citizens. Those criminals are liars, they are greedy and in my view the worse kind of pathetic scum of the earth. Yet no one is hanging all them out to dry, Martha got more bad publicity than they did, and they are still walking around free and clear, she had to do time. Amazing, the only thing I have to hold on to, is the fact that no matter what they buy, or do for the rest of their lives will never bring them happiness. Further, even if they have no conscience here on earth, someday when they are standing before their God, they wouldn't have all that money and power, all they will have is their words and deeds, and if there is a hell, they earned a one way ticket. I hope it's worse than anything they ever imagined.
Source: Andy Rooney’s Commentary on 60 Minutes aired: 10/02/05
-posted by Kimberly Brown @ 10/02/2005 08:31:00 PM
Source: Andy Rooney’s Commentary on 60 Minutes aired: 10/02/05
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2 Comments:
I'm not sure what this reader, ‘blogger’, was referring to specifically by his comment, but Andy Rooney wrote the first half. I wrote my commentary on the second (depicted by color change). I will go back and specify when his ends and mine begins. I wish that ‘blogger’ would have been more specific. All of my articles are based on facts and research. Some comments are my opinion, but I am specific about that as well. I checked out his blog and it is all about NFL, nothing about politics. As I said in my blog description, your blog is your place to place your facts & beliefs. So ‘Blogger’… “To leave an entry like that you obviously don't know very much”
Dear Semper Fi, I don't think my calculations are off at all. There are approximately 300 million people in the US today (via the 2000 census bureau)and last year we spent 455 billion dollars on the military, that leaves an extra 155 billion left over after making every American a billionaire. I know it is a hard thing to even fathom, but a fact is a fact. Thank you for taking the time to read my article and leave a comment.
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