&gt; If you&#x27;re going to lump together everything even tenuously connected to the military (all of NASA? all of the State Department? all of the Department of Energy?)<p>I very clearly said I am not going to lump together NASA and the DoE.  Now you&#x27;re claiming to people, who can clearly read my post, that I did lump them in, when I explicitly did not lump then it.<p>I do lump the State Department in with the military, as it&#x27;s all more or less the same thing, beyond even that the CIA etc. routinely uses the State Department for cover ( <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;voices.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;spy-talk&#x2F;2010&#x2F;06&#x2F;state_dept_loses_round_in_cia.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;voices.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;spy-talk&#x2F;2010&#x2F;06&#x2F;state_dept...</a> ).  Foreign embassies that have the ambassador go out and threaten the other state&#x27;s executive with US military intervention can&#x27;t really be considered on the domestic social spending side of this military&#x2F;social breakdown that is being discussed.<p>&gt; It&#x27;s bigger than this other number<p>The point is that military spending was being presented as smaller than it is - by saying veteran&#x27;s benefits were not part of military spending etc.