The media are full of divisiveness. For some, the sky is falling because Romney will never move into the White House. Others are elated that Obama won a second term. The country seems to be divided right down the middle.
Obama didn’t meet his goals of getting down unemployment, and according to Romney, he is 9 million jobs short of his goal. The economy is still sputtering. Given these results, Obama had no business winning the election. I think Obama didn’t win because of his record, I think Obama won because of Romney’s character and personality.
If the GOP had delivered a statesman like Colin Powell, I would have gladly voted Republican. Romney, to me, didn’t run because he had a passion for the country or the people. Romney, to me, looked like he was on a power trip and he was running for president to round out his resume.
That just wasn’t enough for me. Emptiness came through in his so-called plans and policies, which simply didn’t add up for me. I still can’t figure out how you can spend $2 trillion more on the military and bring down expenses. Everything else combined does not make up $2 trillion. The math, to me, always seemed ludicrous.
This morning I heard a conservative talking head say this:
Clearly, when you cut spending by buying less fighter jets or hiring less park rangers, you hold back money that goes into the economy and you bring along a recession.
Talking about cutting fighter jets and park rangers in the same breath shows how out of touch the conservative side of our country is. The current state-of-the-art fighter jet, the F-22, costs $420 million each. A park ranger makes $12k to $20k a year, if that. The entire budget of the National Park Service for 2011 was $3.14 billion with 21,501 employees.
This math says that you could completely wipe out the entire National Park Service, lay off all 21,501 employees, and save $3.14 billion, which would pay for the cost of EIGHT F-22 jets.
Talking about jets and park rangers in the same sentence is ludicrous.
And here is something even more ridiculous: We have taken delivery of the final F-22 jet. The program cost $79 billion. Even though we have had these jets since, 2005, not a single combat mission has been flown by an F-22, ever. Not in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, anywhere. John McCain, a jet fighter veteran who knows his business, says that the entire program is wasted. He says that the plane has no mission in today’s military. It’s an air-to-air combat plane. Until al Qaeda starts flying fighter planes, there won’t be any mission either.
The entire federal government subsidy to PBS in 2012 was $444 million. One big bird, one F-22, pays for the entire PBS program for a year. One plane for Big Bird, Mr. Romney.
The Republican establishment, publicly announcing cutting park rangers and Big Bird, but increasing the military spending, exposes a vast, unconscionable, ludicrous lack of sense of reality.
They smoked themselves out.
That is why we voted the way we did.
I never could understand why people believe that the Republican party is the best choice for improving the economy. Economics is heavily steeped in Mathematics. It should be very clear from the rhetoric in the last election that Republicans have very little grasp on the most fundamental field of Math which is Arithmetic.