Chart of the day: America's military spending. O M G!!!

Ezra Klein has this chart

The outsized military spending on steroids compared to the rest of the world is simply astounding by itself ... but then when you think about this against the backdrop of all the discussions on budgets and deficits, isn't it ridiculous that under the pretext of 30 billion dollars the GOP is ready to shut the government down, and Paul Ryan is eager to go after Medicaid, and the military budget goes, well, untouched?

Klein adds:

Our military spending is absurd in comparison to the rest of the world’s, not particularly popular here at home and widely acknowledged to be full of waste. And yet it has emerged pretty much unscathed from the 2011 spending cuts and the 2012 budgets of both the House GOP and the White House. It’s really quite odd. Real deficit hawks would be spending some serious time with the report (pdf) of the Sustainable Defense Task Force. Guess we’ll see Wednesday whether President Obama is willing to take this fight on.

 Dream on, if you think that Obama will take on the defense budget.  Yes, I am thinking of Paul Krugman here on "Obama is missing."

I don't know if I should worry about defense spending or the fact that the politicos are willing to even restrict  the First Amendment rights in order to keep the military happy.  The following are what Senator, yes, US Senator, Lindsey Graham said:

Free speech is a great idea, but we're in a war. During World War II, you had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy.

Can you imagine ever going after the defense budget when such politicians govern? ever, ever , ever?  As Reason pointed out in that context:

You know what? We're always going to be in a war, thanks in no small part to the Lindsey Grahams of the world. Which means if we truly value our free speech, we're gonna have to bounce out every politician who subjects American expression to a wartime litmus test. Better yet, maybe start electing some who at least occasionally refrain from supporting new wars against majority-Muslim countries that have yet to make it through a Reformation.

Yes, war forever.  If not with Eurasia, then with East Asia.  There is no place for Winston Smith, unless he truly believes that 2 + 2 = 5.

At the end of it all, as Andrew Sullivan noted:

the liberties taken away by wartime are permanently taken away.

Going after the massive defense budget is, therefore, not merely about deficits, it is also to regain the liberties that the government has taken away from us.  But, ain't gonna happen :(