Priority One

I took this picture from my front yard the other day, as the USS Nimitz drove by. It lives here now, having just replaced the Abe Lincoln, site of GWB's "Mission Accomplished" overstatement. It's a damn big boat. On this occasion, Chester just cruised on by, but sometimes Abe would grace us with full regalia: fighter-bombers on deck, sailors lined up in full dress, tugs firing water cannons into the air. Impressive, is the word that comes to mind.

Mitt Romney thinks we need to build more of these boats, and is happy to cut funding for pretty much everything else to do so: education, medicaid, food stamps, highway funds, housing. And, of course, Planned Parenthood, which goes without saying: "get rid of that," you can pay for a couple of toilets on a carrier. I don't doubt the AFYP™ love his priorities. (It's a new acronym: "America-Fuck-Yeah-People.") But people with gyri instead of gonads inside their cranii? I guess we'll find out in a few months.

It's not that I don't think a strong military is important: I do. It is. But, like the ability to nuke the planet, how many multiples are necessary? We can do the nuking many times over. Do we need more than twice the military spending of every other nation put together? When it's not invasion that threatens us? When, in fact, we're more threatened by the teabaggR priorities than we are by foreign enemies? To me the answer is obvious. I wonder if it is to Mitt, too, and he just doesn't care. It's what he thinks he needs to do to get elected, so that's all that matters. That sort of thinking will be the end of us, though. Of that, I have no doubt.

But, lest anyone think my priorities are unAmerican, here's what I see from our place as well, this time in our maple tree, and I think it's beautiful:

It's a bald eagle, in case it's not clear from the picture. They fly by daily, nesting about fifty yards away. Sitting in our cedar or maple is a rare event, preferring as they do their spar tree and its nest, in which they've home-ported for years, while we've watched babies grow, fledge, and fly away. Maybe they stop by our place when they think I need an emotional lift. But if that were the case, they'd be knocking on the door or leaving fish on our deck.

Here's the funny thing ("funny," in the sense of "not funny:") people on the right think Obama is an anti-American who wants to destroy us, despite the fact (the Republican Party is where facts go to die) that everything he's done is a capitalist's dream, and has helped turn the economy around, while making bankers and CEOs very rich. Romney, on the other hand, has his actually destructive plans spelled out in black and white: of the devastation they'll wreak on our future there's no doubt.

Mitt, you craven deceiver; your budget will take us down from within. But I guess you'll be able to bury us all at sea, like Obama did bin Laden, once you get us enough aircraft carriers.