Chuck:
I agree with the 550 foreign bases, there is no need for that many. My son is to be deployed to Afganistan in June of 2013. Not one country has ever won in Afganistan, it is what is is a tribal nation that relies on growing poppy for revenue. It will be probably be the same in 100 years from now. There's not much we can do there, and the "mayor of kabul" does not have influence beyond the city limit.
As far as military, CHINA is building and will continue to build as long as they have revenue. We need to have strong deterrent to make sure that China does not want to dominate the world. History repeats it self and one day there will be another napoleon, hitler and mussolini along with the various other crackpots that have come and gone. I'm all for giving the military what it needs to maintain our way of life and yes we could have more money to sustain our advanced military technology if we closed half of the bases.
If we don't have strong military then someone else will and that someone else is CHINA. It may not happen in our lifetime but I'm sure one day it will. In 50 years China has doubled their population to almost 1.4 billion chinese, in another 50 years they could reach 2.8 billion that's a lot of people to feed and they as others will set their sites to maintain their way of life.
When it comes to illegals, the US turned a blind eye and let them come in for years without doing anything to stop the problem until it was too late. I've read some articles that stated that the US needed a cheap labor force and thus the reason for turning a blind eye. Now the problem is out of control.
Whatever way you slice it, the people in Congress, the Senate and the President all need to be locked in a building and not be allowed to take leave until they have solutions to the nations problems. If this were to happen I'm sure we would have a solution rather quickly.
Too many people want their piece of the pie in government and we as citizens let this happen for many decades because most of our countries population does not bother to vote except in a Presidential Election.
There needs to be a strong third party however neither the democrats nor the republicans will allow that to happen. Laws are made for the rich by the rich, because we don't hold them accountable. When was the last time an average joe made it to the whitehouse?
That's my rant for the night!