This picture says it all, the sun fading to the west as it illuminates the water tower against a darken sky. The reason I posted this was the fact that yesterday, Defense Secretary, Bill Gates, gave sent his most recent budget proposal to Congress. In it is a death sentence for various weapons systems that are either outdated, costly, not practical in today's geopolitical climate or all of the above. In Georgia and specifically the metro Atlanta area, the F-22 has come to the latter.

People, even a Bush appointee like Bill Gates knows when the time is up on a weapons system. He has to gauge the needs our country has in this new century, not one that was predicated on a cold war scenario. These weapon systems have taken completely different lives of their own, promising the allure of "high paying" jobs where ever they are built, with some being the life blood of the towns they occupy.

When the cold war ended twenty years ago people should have seen this day coming and prepared for the inevitable. The F-22 in particular is not a fighter aircraft suited for the Afgan-Iraqi theatre and is a a white elephant at this point. Yet the workers of this plane are staunch Republicans who love to rant about "welfare recipients" living off their hard earned tax dollars.

The Congressman in this district, Phil Gringrey and Saxy Chambliss are staunch supporters of this kind of porkulus and see no reason why this program should be cut even though this makes welfare look like a ninety-nine cent happy meal.

So, why should the rest of us foot the bill for a fighter that is obsolete? Has it come to this, propping up programs that have long outlived it's usefulness to save $60-80K jobs in an bear of a recession. Have we Americans become that soft that we have to do this to stave off catastrophe.

I say cut this turkey loose, find these workers real work, there's plenty of it out there. We don't need to resort to this kind of silliness to stay relevant - do we?