“The military budget is not on the table. The military is at the table, and it is eating everybody else’s lunch,” said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., commenting on the House passage of the $649 billion FY2012 Defense Appropriations Bill. I don’t think that I am eating your lunch. Now Barney has been a longtime critic of military spending. He has always tried to force the choice of butter over guns. I’ve observed him for years. I was a student of his. Now he might be getting more traction

I like to read the weekly magazine The Economist each week. It is sometimes a chore, but always worthwhile. A recent cover story caught my eye (The Economist, April 9, 2011). The cover featured a fellow who looked like many of us on a nice motorcycle. The caption emblazoned over his head was “70 or bust.” This referred to our retirement age of the future. I turned to the lead editorial

The joke in Washington in the 1990s was that the cost of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will ultimately reduce America to nothing more than a nursing home with a few tanks and guns