Recently, Jay Honeck posted:

Of course, in 15 years, when China (or a nuclear armed Iran) is
invading someone, I'll be probably be plenty glad we've got the
F/A-22.

Hmm. That sounds like an unlikely scenario for many reasons, not the least
of which is that in 15 years, China may be building those for us just as
they're building some of Boeing's fleet, now. Seriously, if we haven't
figured out how to peacefully resolve disputes with civilized nations by
then, the Raptor isn't likely to be of much help.

Lyndon Johnson tried to have both "guns and butter" (Viet Nam and
Apollo) -- and started our long, death spiral of deficit spending.

NASA's budget is rather insignificant compared with *any* military
spending. Why concentrate on the pennies while wasting the megabucks? And,
one of the most wasteful types of military spending is to build systems
for which there is no application. We did that in Viet Nam, and we're
still doing that today. I really can't see the Raptor, or even F15s for
that matter, being challenged by any real-world "enemy".

Just look at the recently passed transportation bill to see the
ultimate example of government waste and stupidity. Let's hope a
future Congress can do something about the problem -- the guys and
gals that are there now have shown that they clearly have no clue.

Jay... "they" are "us". We middle-aged citizens are the ones in the
driver's seat. And, from what I can see, we're not doing so hot at
driving. Or even thinking about what direction we should be driving. So,
instead, we run in circles like chickens missing our heads, enacting piles
of pointless legislation and hoping that no one with any power objects.

Neil