Kristof, you poor naive bastard

Ahh, Nick Kristof. Nicholas, Nicholas, Nicholas, what to do with you? You're a good man, write good columns on important things, and you seem to be respected. But Christ are you naive. I bet you thought you were pretty damn clever when you pointed out the eagerness of celebrity seeking political degenerates like Joe Lieberman to spend hundreds of billions and thousands of lives in pointless wars, but unwilling to spend billions on health care and saving thousands of lives. Hell, I've made that point a few times here on the Internet's only political commentary and fake news blog, These Bastards.

While I am accusing you of stealing my thoughts and a lawsuit is forthcoming, where your fault lies is in the fact that you actually expect a reasoned answer for the disconnect and think that by pointing out this seeming incongruity you can somehow shame our elected betters, or mainstream media betters, or apathetic voters into noticing and punishing those who transgress this hypocrisy. You poor poor bastard.

So if President Obama dispatches another 30,000 or 40,000 troops, on top of the 68,000 already there, that would bring the total annual bill for our military presence there to perhaps $100 billion — or more. And we haven’t even come to the human costs.

As for health care reforms, the 10-year cost suggests an average of $80 billion to $110 billion per year, depending on what the final bill looks like.
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On the other hand, the health care legislation pays for itself, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while the deployment in Afghanistan is unfinanced and will raise our budget deficits and undermine our long-term economic security.

So doesn’t it seem odd to hear hawks say that health reform is fiscally irresponsible, while in the next breath they cheer a larger deployment of troops in Afghanistan?

My God, what is this? Is it your first year covering politics? Doesn't this seem odd? No, it seems perfectly normal. You want to know why we're so eager to spend a trillion dollars a year on defense spending and wars? Because that money doesn't count. Yup, no matter how much money we spend on blowing up brown people and building aircraft carriers, it never, ever, ever counts as spending money. In fact there is no logic ascribed to any dollar spent on defense. I mean that's why President Obama can cut the rate at which military spending increases and still everyone pretends like he's actually cut military spending. That's why $100 billion more for a war that's already costing hundreds of billions a year is perfectly fine, while $90 billion a year for health care is a crippling debt that we're foisting on our children, who'll have to give 5 cent handjobs in alleys to Chinese businessmen just to pay off the interest. The same principle works for tax cuts for the rich. Those don't count either, no matter how much they increase deficits.

But this is the key reason that politicians love spending on wars but hate spending on improving the lives of people, Nick: there is no part of the health care bill that will make a politician feel like his dick is huge or that he is, in fact, the manliest, burliest fucking manly man on the planet. Even the smallest defense appropriations bill does that a million, or should I say trillion, times over. You ever tried to chestbump a dude after cutting heealth care costs for Americans? Awwwwkwaaaaard. On the other hand nothing is better than a high five after a predator drone wipes out some mountain village.

The reason people like the world's greatest man, Joe Lieberman, won't vote for decent health care reform, I mean besides petty spite, is because it just doesn't get their cocks rock hard. No one gets their cocks hard over health reform, except maybe Ron Wyden, he's.....a little weird. This is the biggest failing of the health reform movement. Obama never walked around talking about the wood he got when he thought of saving 45,000 lives a year. There were no high fives and screams of "Boo-yah" when CBO estimates came in projecting a decrease in the deficit, and the fight to improve people's health was never described in terms of an comprehensive international effort to wipe out brown terrorists that live inside our bodies.

So I'm sorry Nick, this is just standard operating procedure. It is the way things will always be: fiscally irresponsible. Now I only hope we can spend the $90 billion we would have used on health care to fund some even larger TOW missile that shoots out a giant fireworks explosion in the shape of a large dragon every time we hit a suspected terrorist. That, and only that, would show the fiscal seriousness of our Senate.