An ineffective drug war costs you more than 13$ billion a year.

How much have you spent so far on SDI: Star Wars. Stop paying for it, I'm worried for your kids' safety. Privatize the Star Wars program. Let it have a bakesale to raise money. Let it rent out satellites. Let it mail you 100,000 letters a day that start Dear American and end by asking for a donation. Let them try to explain to you directly that we need an X-Ray laser in orbit in case we need to disarm a terrorist with a nuclear device in a briefcase in a crowded subway in Manhattan. Let them call your house and say "Hi Mrs. Enslin I'm Sylvester Sherlock of Strategic Defense Initiative calling to tell you about our new orbiting space laser. I was wondering if I could have a second of your time." [click] "Hello?"

Dismantle the military.

pentagon probes leak of chemical into berries

california closing homeless shelters in guard armories

DEFENSE CHIEF ORDERS REVIEW OF FLIGHT SAFETY

There have been six crashes of military planes in seven days.

Friday: A B-1 Lancer crashed in Montana. The Air Force said it did not know if the plane was carrying dummy bombs, as they normally do on training missions, or live bombs. The crew of four were killed.

Tuesday: two Air National Guard fighter jets collided off the coast of New Jersey, in the vicinity of a passenger plane.

Monday: a Marine F-A-18D Hornet crashed in North Carolina during a practice bombing run.

Sunday: a Navy F-A-18 crashed in Oman. The pilot killed.

Saturday: An air Force C-141 Starlifter crashed in the South Atlantic: The debris was spreading out and moving northward because of a slight current. Twelve German, U.S. and South African planes continued searching in the fog today. Debris found Monday, including airplane seats and a few newspapers, came from the German plane. Faint distress signals were detected Sunday and early Monday but nothing has been heard since. The two planes, carrying a total of 33 people, vanished Saturday while traveling in opposite directions: the German Tupolev 154 was headed from Germany to South Africa; the American C-141 Starlifter was flying from Namibia to Ascension Island. "The water in Benguela current is extremely cold, and I believe there are also sharks in the area," he said.

DEBRIS FROM U.S. AIRPLANE FOUND; RESCUE HOPES DIM

Sunday - an Air Force F-117A fighter crashed during a Maryland air show:

air force probing stealth-jet crash; pilot ejects safely.

During an airshow, an F-117A fighter just fell apart and crashed in a Baltimore suburb, wounding eight civilians and the pilot.

Ban fighter planes. They just aren't safe.

Two days later, the military is still keeping nine families from their homes until the crash is investigated.

Is this in violation of the third and fourth amendments?

Ban fighter planes. They cause people to lose their homes in violation of their constitutional rights.

The F-117-A costs $45 million to build, with an estimated total lifetime cost of $100 million. If it falls apart during an air show, how well will it perform in combat?

It went down with 11,000 pounds of fuel and destroyed an elderly woman's garage.

Protect elderly women. Ban the F117-A. Privatize Lockheed Martin.

In apparently unrelated news:

NEW US STEALTH FIGHTER TAKES FIRST FLIGHT

The F-22 Raptor. It costs 100$ million. They are planning to build 339 of them between now and 2014.

The planes are dropping like flies. A bloated military in peacetime leads to inevitable casualties. Friendly fires burn in Baltimore, in Montana, in Oman. The warplanes are pacifist. They are committing suicide rather than fly into battle. They are disarming us of them. The arms have voted to repeal the 2^nd amendment.

Soon in cities across America, gun-owners will begin to die in a string of identical, unrelated catastrophes. Assault-rifle owners will be killed while cleaning their guns. Safety catches will slip off. People will soon want to bury their guns, and others will be too afraid to enter their own houses.

Weapons are dangerous.

Here is a list of dollar figures, omitting those greater than one million:

( )

Protect our soldiers: disarm them.

Ban land-mines. Ban stealth planes.

The B-2 Bomber is worth three times its weight in gold and is so fragile that for every hour spent exposed to weather it requires up to 124 maintenance hours.

Will the Air Force cry over fortyninebilliondollars worth of spilt milk? It will, because the milk spilled across the fleet of 21 B-2 stealth bombers. In a cool sticky wave of white foam, the milk splashed across the jagged black planes. Milk broke across the wings and chocolate frosting melted and swirled down in striped rivulets. Droplets spattered tiny craters in the soft concrete hanger. A nozzle descended from the ceiling and hissed a spray of strawberry syrup. The flow of milk whispered into drain grates. A general wept tears and another general joined in. The gentle trickle of saltwater dissolved the nosecone of one B-2 bomber. Another's wing drooped slowly until it was bent against the floor of the airconditioned hangar. A windshield collapsed softly into a powder of crystal. A mechanic's wrench twisted a wet bolt from a landing gear, and the plane fell with a splat. Something about the Kansas sunset and the soft rain that fell across the compound had caused the soldiers to waltz in pairs across the meadows. A sergeant major pondered a lump of metal, licked his finger, scooped up some bomber and let it melt on his tongue. A check for $27 billion for the next nine bombers had blown off of the desk and a private, with horror, saw it lying in a puddle of stealth paint. He tried to grab it but was up to his waist in melting bomber.

The janitor took a can of stealth paint out of the hanger surreptitiously. He hoped to paint his car so that he could speed to and from work without being detected by police radar. He painted his car. With every brushstroke he smiled. After he had finished he sat inside it. The neighbor saw him. That night it rained heavily.

Privatize the B-2 bomber: let it raise money selling rides to kids.

Dear Love: Thank you for the stealth fighter, but I cannot accept it. It is simply too expensive a gift. For one thing, you cannot afford it: you have 2 billion mouths to feed. For another, I don't know what I would do with it. Finally, I am afraid that if I tried to fly it I would accidentally crash in the ocean. And I would never risk flying it into another country. In fact, I am keeping it in a hangar in Missouri just to be safe. Please come and take it back as soon as you can.

The Canadian government is getting worried. Why is the United States stockpiling stealth bombers on the North American continent? Even if the United States isn't planning an invasion, sooner or later they are going to have a terrible accident.

Oh waiter, my plane seems to have crashed. Can I have another?

Waiter, there's a B-2 bomber in my soup.

Waiter? Waiter?

Ban the B-2. Privatize Northrop Grumman.

Ban the X-33. Ban the F-117A. Privatize Lockheed-Martin.

Ban the F-22. Privatize Boeing and Pratt & Whitney, a division of the United Technologies Corp.

Privatize Urbana real estate developers.

Send the military into the inner cities on a peacekeeping mission. Hand out rations and fatigues to the hungry and homeless. Let the gunfire cease and let there be peace at last.

Give each welfare mom a stealth fighter.

Give each homeless person a stealth fighter.

Give everyone who refuses to work a nuclear missile.

Give every orphaned child a Mars probe.

Give those dependent on alcohol a tank.

Give those who cannot afford rent artillery.

Give those who cannot afford food a parachute.

Give those who cannot read infra-red goggles that will allow them to see in complete darkness.

Give those who cannot pay their hospital bills an armored personnel carrier.

Billy has fallen off of the swingset and cut his knee. Here comes the helicopter.

Sarah feels safe to walk alone down the street at night with her AK47.

When Uncle John decided to tear down the old shed, he used a handgrenade.

The following are free: flashlights, compasses, goggles, belts, backpacks, boots.

At dawn there is the sound of helicopters and jets. Paratroopers descend by spotlight and APCs arrive, troops, in formation, storm the factory and replace all the workers at their positions. The workers are marched out into the parkinglot and given coffee and donuts, blankets, medical attention.

Above the most dangerous neighborhoods, lowflying helicopters drop twentydollarbills.

Bombs are taken apart. Their explosive material is removed and recycled as fuel. Their casings are large enough to create public beds for the homeless or simply tired.

Guns and cannons have their barrels filled in. Rifles are used as canes and crutches. Larger barrels are recycled as lamposts, or used as beams to build lowcost housing.

Barracks are opened to the homeless. Bases are opened to the elderly. Mess halls are opened to the insane.

A tank, when stripped of all its weaponry, is just large enough for two people to sleep in. So the military drove them off the bases and in a slow procession down the highway and into Golden Gate Park, where they were covered with flowers and bequeathed with flowers. Their power source was removed so they could not be driven � because otherwise someone might accidentally flatten a building.

A stealth plane, when stripped of all its weaponry, likewise, can be converted into an extremely good shelter for a small number of people. Also, it is possible to stretch large sheets of canvas over the wings and use them as very dry tents in warm seasons. It is possible for twenty people to sleep beneath a B-2 comfortably, because of its large wings.

Welfare never injured eight civilians.

Affirmative action never fell apart in midair.

Supplemental Security Income never leaked petroleum destroying an entire crop of berries.

Socialized medicine will never cause Gulf War Syndrome.

Editorial: America doesn't need expensive stealth planes, America needs cheap conspicuous ones. After all, all those old moldy cold war planes were just for show. Deterrence. Mutually Assured Deficit. So what's with all the secrecy? It's time for a new strategy. A big $20 bomber parked right on the white house lawn for the nations of the world to see. Unpainted, with the bolts showing. In no way Top Secret: take a look at this plane. Build one yourself. We have a fleet of 200,000 and we saved 49 billion to do it. Complete blueprints for a dollar. If you invade us, Canada, we'll clog your radar with our low-cost, unsafe bombers. After all, let's face it, war is hell, and South Central Los Angeles ain't exactly the garden of Eden. Let's build a few cheap ugly planes and put them right where our hostile neighbors can see them. We're rugged, unassailable, charming America.

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