I was at a family dinner yesterday, having a hard time convincing some Obama supporters that Obama has promised to increase the size of the military. I guess it isn't something he talks about regularly, and maybe a lot of people aren't aware of it. I myself, in telling them about his policy, actually understated his proposal by a factor of three.
But Obama's proposal is no secret; here it is in black-and-white from the Obama for President website:
Expand the Military: We have learned from Iraq that our military needs more men and women in uniform to reduce the strain on our active force. Obama will increase the size of ground forces, adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.
So that's a total of 92,000 more he plans to add to the military (and, needless to say, pay for with money that could be used to hire nurses, teachers, or all sorts of other people who could fill critical needs in our society).
Incidentally, the website also informs us tht "Obama will give our troops new equipment, armor, training, and skills like language training." It neglects to tell us, however, how he plans to pay for those things either.
Bonus picture of the day:
Black-crowned Night-Herons (note the strange capitalization) aren't a particularly challenging photographic target. They're fairly large, not people-shy, and spend a lot of time standing stock-still in visible locations. Nevertheless, they're one of my favorite birds, with their striking appearance which is sort of a cross between a penguin and, thanks to their hunched appearance (they do have necks, they just rarely extend them), a thug standing on a street corner. I thought this picture of a BCNH sitting in a pine tree overlooking a creek in Santa Barbara, was particularly striking.
Black-crowned Night-Heron, Santa Barbara
Reprinted from Left I on the News