Let’s solve some problems, NRA style.

So, there’s a problem in America, and the problem is too many guns.

The National Rifle Association has a solution to the problem:  more guns. I think this is a great solution.  I think the theory is, if everyone had a gun, then no one would shoot anyone, because someone would shoot back at them.  That is, the more guns there are, the less people will use them, and the safer we will be.  I like this theory.  I like this theory a lot.

I think this is such a good theory, we should find other problems we can solve the same way.  I think we have many, many, dozens, hundreds of problems we can solve the same way.

Like, there are too many people who smoke cigarettes in America.  What’s the solution? More people should smoke cigarettes.  Then the people who smoke cigarettes would realize how gross it is, smoking cigarettes, and they’d quit.  Not only, but if more people smoked, then more people would get cancer, and we’d finally get frigging serious about finding a cure for cancer.  We would be healthier and safer.

Like, there are too many obese people in America.  Oh great NRA Ouija, what’s the solution? More obese people.  The biggest issue with all the obese people is that they stand out.  We notice them.  They feel bad.  We feel bad.  If there were more obese people, we wouldn’t notice them, we’d all be obese people.  Obese would be the new normal, and we’d all feel good about ourselves.  Plus which, think of all the new business for restaurants and food companies, all the high fructose corn syrup.  Good for the economy.

Like, there are too many people who drink and drive in America. NRA to the rescue.  More people drinking and driving.  I mean, if you didn’t drink and drive, and you knew there were all those drunks out on the road, you’d stay home, right.  YOU WOULD BE SAFER.  And if you did drink and drive, what a frigging hoot, getting out on the road with all those other drunks.  It would be like a video game, with consequences.  And think of all the extra work for the EMTs and emergency rooms.  Good for the economy.

Too many cars on the road?  We need MORE cars on the road.  We need to sell more cars.  Good for the economy!!

Too much CO2 in the atmosphere?  We need MORE CO2 in the atmosphere.  We need Florida from Maine to Alaska.  Good for farmers.  Good for tourism.  Good for the economy!!  Bad for polar bears, maybe, but that’s what zoos are for.  And what are zoos?  Good for the economy!!

Too much violence on TV?  We need MORE violence on TV.  Then people would stay at home out of fear, and they would be SAFER.  And other people would go out and buy guns.  And guns are the best way to prevent violence.  They would be safer too.  We would ALL be safer.  Not to mention, selling more guns is good for the economy!!!

Too many politicians?  We need MORE politicians!  I mean, the problem is not that there are too many politicians, but there are not enough good politicians. If we had more politicians, we’d have more good politicians.  Right?

I think, when the histories are written, that we will be thanking the NRA for such a good idea.  Got a problem?  Here’s the solution:  create more of the problem.  Create so much of a problem that it’s not a problem anymore.  It’s a SOLUTION.

That’s just what we should do.  We should solve more problems, NRA style.

U.S. Defense: Spending a lot, buying very little

Here’s a fact about America.  We have five percent of the world’s population, and we spend forty-one percent of the world’s defense budget.  We spend seven times as much on defense as China, and more than ten times as much as Russia – four times as much as China and Russia put together.  We spend more on defense than the next fifteen countries in the world combined.

Who is it we are defending ourselves from?  It must be the other people who spend a lot on armies and weapons, right?  Then who are they?  Well, there’s China at number 2.  Then there’s France (Napoleon?).  Then there’s England (they want their colonies back?).  Russia (aren’t they friends now?).  Then there’s Germany, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia, India, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Spain, Australia.  They really want to have a go with Uncle Sam?  I thought they were buddies.

And what is it we’re defending ourselves against?  The only attacks on the U.S. since World War II have been 20 guys with box cutters, one guy with a shoe bomb, and a dufus who tried to blow up his underwear.  All of those guys were on airplanes, and we have the TSA to deal with that.  TSA is not in the defense budget.  Apparently they should be.

Speaking of which, where was our defense budget on 9/11?  9/11 was a clear day and they hijacked four big, slow airplanes.  Our Defense Department has hundreds of small, fast airplanes that have all sorts of radars and missiles and guns, and they have other radars and satellites that can count the flowers in your back yard.  But they couldn’t find four big slow airplanes heading for NYC, the White House, and the Pentagon?  The Pentagon?  For $900 billion a year, they couldn’t defend their own headquarters?

We spent trillions of defense dollars in Iraq.  Our President told us that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, which he didn’t, and was poised to use them in cahoots with Al Qaida, which he wasn’t.  Either our President was making things up, coincidentally in time for an election, or our defense budget isn’t buying us much in the way of intelligence.  I don’t know which I want less to believe.

We’ve spent another trillion or so in Afghanistan, where the biggest threat to the U.S. was some camps in the desert where they taught people to make shoe and underwear bombs.  Now I think they run those camps on the internet.  And if we wanted to get rid of camps in the desert, don’t we have those satellites to find them and drones to take them out?

So what is it again we’re defending ourselves against?  Well, there are many real threats to the security of the United States?

There’s poverty.  Poor people envy rich people and try to bring them down.  But the U.S. spends proportionally less on peaceful foreign assistance than any other developed country on earth.

There’s overpopulation.  The biggest threat to humankind is too many humans competing for limited resources.  But our government spends virtually nothing on population programs.  (The best population control, by the way, is poverty relief, but see above.)

There’s our own spending and debt.  The biggest direct threat to U.S. security is the fact that we owe so much money to so many countries (particularly that one called China), and are so utterly reliant on them to pay our bills.  Defense is the biggest item in the U.S. budget, and, by far, the big item over which we have the most control.  But it’s a sacred cow.

There’s international relations.  Friends don’t attack you, they don’t support terrorists, and they back you up if you need help.  But our foreign policy in the past decade-plus has made outright enemies of much of the world, alienated most of the rest, and created multiple terrorist breeding areas.

There’s dependency.  As long as we depend on other countries for the things we need most – like oil – we’re at their mercy; we either have to appease them or bully them.  But in 40 years since the first oil crisis, we have done practically nothing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.  And in the name of “defense” we have made enemies of much of the Middle East, where most of that oil comes from.

Why again do we spend so much on defense?  Or, more precisely, why do we mis-spend so much on defense.  We spend a lot, but we buy very little.