What would $134 million buy?

(Other than troops sent to Los Angeles)

The Pentagon has estimated that sending troops to stop people in LA from exercising their First Amendment rights by protesting against Trump’s federally-sponsored kidnapping operation (boy, this is a long sentence, but stay with me) that targets brown people would cost roughly $134 million.

That figure is probably low. From Politico (linked above):

Acting Pentagon comptroller Bryn MacDonnell, testifying at a House budget hearing on Tuesday alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said the estimate covers costs such as travel, housing and food.

As we can see, there’s a kink in the hose, as troops were photographed sleeping on floors, piled together like puppies in what looks to be not-great planning on the — what would that be? — quartermaster. So if the federal government covered their travel, someone forgot food and housing. From a post from Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom (and originally reported in San Francisco Chronicle):

So that money that’s being spent doesn’t appear to have been spent — at least, not yet. On a quick deployment, there may be some lag time between the actual deployment and preparing a place for the troops to land, but that denotes a gross failure of leadership (says the daughter of a soldier who made his career arranging the logistics of such events).

That also says the deployment was a knee-jerk reaction and who knew assholes had knees (says the daughter of a soldier who made his career arranging the logistics of such events).

But back to the original question: Had the diapered felon who rapes thought twice, he could have taken that $134 million and put it toward:

• Making a big dent in the roughly (2023 numbers) $176 million in school lunch debt that accumulates each year.

• Getting the ball rolling on housing all veterans who are sleeping outside. You know, those vets the GOP claims to luuuuuuv?

• Excusing more student loans, which has proven to be a huge boon to young adults who’d been struggling under the burden. Those young adults have taken that money they would have spent on interest on their loans, and they’re buying houses and cars and basically helping us prop up Trump’s sagging economy. So thanks, young people. We appreciate you.

If also we canceled the diapered felon who rapes’ military parade and threw that wasted $45 million into the mix, we could do even more good. But the tanks have arrived, the warnings against protests have been issued, and so I’ll just take my wokety-woke-woke self and hoist my banner in a big fuck-you to this administration and all its minions.

(Can someone let the pimply-faced incels at DOGE know that we have some waste going on? 'M’kay, thanks.)

Besides, what with the Epstein files, and the tanking economy, and that steamer of a not-beautiful bill that just may not make it through the Senate, the diapered felon who rapes really really really needs this drama. So thanks, Mike, for the meme: