For men who are pro life: what would you say to being told that you don't have a right over your own body? Because that's what you're telling women.

@HoraceGreenley

...?

@HoraceGreenley If men practiced birth control when they didn't want kids, the abortion rate would be a lot lower.

@LeopoldBloom I've always maintained that if you are going to walk in the rain you should wear a raincoat

@HoraceGreenley But if your raincoat leaks, you should be able to dry off with a towel later.

@LeopoldBloom As long as you don't buy the towel with my tax dollars

@HoraceGreenley For the time being, because of the execrable Hyde Amendment, abortion is treated differently from every other medical procedure and has to be privately funded. But since you favor tax dollars not going to things we disapprove of, how about I get a break from paying for that bloated military you people think you need? If you want a $35 billion dollar airplane that doesn't even work, pay for it yourself.

@LeopoldBloom Economic analysis indicates that the optimal spending for national defense is 5% of GDP. For the US today, that would be $1 trillion annually. This is for peace time. Right now we're spending less than $800 billion. We're under 4%.

The military is a victim of their own success. People forget why we need it. Spending too little emboldens our enemies to attack us, e.g., 9/11.

Military spending also generate technological advancements and tremendous economic benefit. Little thins like computers and the Internet.

Frankly, we don't spend enough money on the military.

@HoraceGreenley Taxpayer-funded abortions would more than pay for themselves in welfare payments saved. So from an economic standpoint, they make sense. The only obstacle is religious dogma.

Speaking of which, I resent that my taxes have to cover religious institutions that are tax exempt. Those organizations are worthless to me, so why should I have to subsidize them?

We weren't attacked on 9/11 because our military was too small. We were attacked because President Howdy Doody didn't pay attention to the intelligence briefings that predicted al Qaeda was going to mount an attack using commercial airliners.

We currently spend more on our military than the next ten countries combined. It's obscene. We shouldn't be the world's policeman.

@LeopoldBloom I disagree.

@HoraceGreenley Well, you have nothing to worry about, because Joe Biden is the last guy to reduce military spending. It's not even on his radar. We will continue to blow half of our discretionary budget on a military that is still set up to stop the USSR from invading Europe through the Fulda Gap.

@LeopoldBloom I hope Biden doesn't cut the military budget if he gets the chance.

@HoraceGreenley Don't worry, he won't. Too many defense contractors contributing to his campaign.

@LeopoldBloom Thank God for that

@HoraceGreenley Yes, let's flush more money down the toilet instead of spending it on infrastructure. Our bridges are collapsing, but we need more airplanes that don't do anything.

@LeopoldBloom Ah yes...the infrastructure. I've heard that for decades. I'll take Wi-Fi, the Internet, computers, AI, integrated circuits, materials science and the many other things that our military has given us.

@HoraceGreenley The military hasn't "given" us those things. They were developed by private industry with government money, and the military took advantage.

If technology requires a massively bloated military, how do you explain the fact that Japan, South Korea, Finland, etc. are ahead of us technologically, without insanely large militaries? One thing Trump was right about, the U.S. taxpayer is covering the military needs of many other countries. Unfortunately, he didn't do shit about that. It's a shame since as a Republican he could have gotten away with reducing our overseas military presence.

@LeopoldBloom Those countries aren't "ahead" of us in terms of technology. They are using technology invented in the US. All of it was invented here. The US military, yes their money, is the world's best technology transfer mechanism for applied science.

You should thank them for protecting you and keeping the US the most technologically and economically developed country in the world.