When I read that, I had a great idea!

There's still more pork barrel money for home districts, millions in fact.

Salon readers, write your Congress persons right away and alert them to this tsunami-like windfall of money that can wash over their districts.

I'm talking Veterans Administration hospitals and clinics folks. Thats right! Hospitals. Man, we need 'em now. You may not realize just how many of our military people we are maiming and crippling and "laming" every day. And the number of post traumatic stress cases rise right along with the physical injuries.

We are in a very special kind of war, with very special kinds of injuries, namely concussion-produced brain trauma, severe burns and piles and piles of amputated limbs. In addition to that, the psychiatric wards of the VA facilities are overwhelmed right now. Street fighting house-to-house, with lots of collateral damage among innocent civilians, is a sure-fire way to produce life-long nightmares, guilt, stress and anger among our returning soliders and Marines.

So while some Congressional districts are fortunate enough to be situated in locations where shipyards can prosper, you don't need any special terrain to start up a VA hospital, a burn clinic, a special brain injury center, or a psychological rehab facility.

Apply for that federal government money today!!

Oh, no, wait.

There isn't as much federal government money for treating the ruined lives of those who bear the brunt of our war policies. There's only money to create more cripples and crazies. What happens to them after they come home is just another "Inconvenient Truth" in a society that loves war, but doesn't really give a shit about the warrior.

The VA, currently in the hands of Jim Nichols, a Republican political hack who was appointed specifically to cut VA programs. Nichols last year tried to cut VA funding by $2 billion, saying it wasn't needed. When the terrorist-sympathizing main stream media got wind of this story, Republicans scrambled to reverse their support for the cuts and rebuked Nichols for ever suggesting such a thing. But it's not just him.

It's you too.

It's the feckless nature of the American people. They swell with pride at the sacrifice of those who serve. You can draw a crowd of flag-waving patriots when Memorial Day rolls around. But after the marching band has passed and they retreat to their homes, they don't write letters to Congress complaining that the disabled heroes don't get fair treatment. No sir. They write letters complaining that they are being taxed to death and won't their Congressman please, please, please lower their taxes no matter what programs get cut.

If being hypocrite were a hanging crime, the trees of America would groan under the weight of dangling corpses.

The truth is, unless you are related to a disabled veteran and see what they go through, nobody really gives a shit about you until its time for the next parade, or the next opportunity to bash a political opponent.

There are so many Salon readers and contributors who make the mistake of thinking that people in the armed services of our country are right-wingers. That's a false assumption.

Some of them may have been right-wingers when they went into combat, but if they come home on a gurney and linger in a VA hospital, the chances are good they become Democrats real fast.

Allen hired a campaign manager named DICK WADhams. Talk about tone deaf.

The Post writes that "In some European cultures, macaca is also considered a racial slur against African immigrants, according to several Web sites that track ethnic slurs." The Post doesn't mention that Allen's mother was Franco-Tunisian and Allen speaks French.

It doesn't take too much imagination to picture little racist Georgie boy, a goddamned Cracker of the first water, to be sitting at the kitchen table at age 9, listening to his French Tunisian mother ridiculing "Macacas." Even though little Georgie didn't know what it meant then, and may still not know, the word got lodged in his racist head and sprang forth in a moment of frustration, as racial epithets often do.

Every Marine and U.S. Army soldier knows that most gays are in the Air Force. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Alan, if you are reading this, I hope you gag on it, you goddamned phony loser!