Sarah Palin vs. the Odd Couple, Barney Frank and Ron Paul, sponsors of the Sustainable Defense Task Force

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A few years before the first Great Depression, President Calvin Coolidge said that the "business of America is business," suggesting that the God who blesses America is Mammon, the fat deity of unbridled greed whose Invisible Hand guides the free market, efficiently feeding and enriching all who defend the laissez-faire faith.

But America has a new god for the 21st century: Mammon has wed, or been raped by, Mars, the god of war, and spawned the monster that Eisenhower warned us about -- a Military-Industrial Complex on steroids, lobbying and conspiring for perpetual war, a sustainable war, to keep the promotions and profits infinitely rolling without a downturn as the rest of the nation slides deeper into debt and depression.

To keep the war racket going (as Marine Gen. Smedley Butler, the only recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor, called it), the public must be continuously stupefied with the glory of blood sacrifice and Pavlovian slogans, such as the profound bumper sticker sported by all true patriots: "Freedom isn't free." Meaning somebody has to pay for it -- the Chinese, for instance.

And the public must swallow, without a hiccup, a steady diet of Orwellian double-talk, such as the claim that American missile bases in Poland are not, repeat not, aimed at Russia. They are there, reiterated Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently, to protect Poland against the "Iranian threat."

Of course, it's widely known that ever since Xerxes, Persia has lusted to conquer Poland, coveting its vast resources of kielbasa and pickles. In Farsi, the word for Poland is the same as "the Prize." Some may dispute that Iran, even if it had a nuclear arsenal the size of Russia's, poses any kind of danger to distant Poland, but they haven't heard the special evidence released by the Pentagon: a declassified NSA communications intercept between Iranian President Ahmadinejad and a top aide:

AIDE: Oh Esteemed One, have you heard the anger-making report from our spies in Poland?

AHMADINEJAD: No, what?

AIDE: In Warsaw, they are converting Polack jokes into demeaning Iranian jokes.

AHMADINEJAD: Like what?

AIDE: I tell you, but please not to decapitate the messenger... What is long and hard that an Iranian bride gets on her wedding night?

AHMADINEJAD: I know, but Allah forbids me to say it.

AIDE: It's not that.

AHMADINEJAD: Not the mighty sword that puts uppity harlots in their place?

AIDE: No, sir.

AHMADINEJAD: Then I give up.

AIDE: A new last name.

AHMADINEJAD: Bastards! That's a direct insult against me!

AIDE: Indeed, sir. What shall we do?

AHMADINEJAD: Speed up development of our non-existent nukes, so that I may avenge my honor!

I think this proves that the only thing standing between us and a global Islamofascist dictatorship are a few missile bases in Poland -- plus our 700 military bases spanning the world and the Pentagon's $700 billion annual budget. Domestically, that amounts to 42% of discretionary spending, more than all other expenditures combined; globally, it is 44% of military spending, almost as much all of our allies and alleged enemies combined. But there is trouble brewing in the Homeland: a new odd couple, Barney Frank and Ron Paul, recently held hands and organized the bipartisan Sustainable Defense Task Force with the mission of cutting defense spending by $1 trillion over the next 10 years. If that were not enough to knock Raytheon's stock down a notch, even Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been muttering blasphemies, wondering:

"Whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines, and $11 billion carriers... do we really need more strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?"

It's obvious that the man has been possessed and needs an exorcist -- it's his job to inflate the threats and justify budget boosts, not go off like Hamlet in the middle of our longest discretionary wars.

Let's be perfectly clear what these limp-wristed whinings about the defense budget amount to: Defeatism. Treason. Dishonor! A fifth-column of al Qaeda-Kim Il Sung-Venezuelan fellow travelers is trying to emasculate the greatest Power for Goodness the world has ever known, and many naive Americans are starting to buy into it. We just can't afford to be a Great Power anymore, they say -- let's curl up naked like John Lennon with Yoko Ono and be sensitive girly men as the gook Whore of Babylon yodels us into the rocks. Castrate the Navy! they cry. So we can repair bridges and afford a prostate exam!

Well, they don't write history books about great nations that merely made good aqueducts, or achieved a high literacy rate, or mollycoddled all its losers with food stamps and universal medical care. The minimum requirement for Historical Greatness is slaughtering great hordes of another tribe, race or enemy nation while making another kind of killing doing it.

And that's the Greatness America is destined for. Who else has the balls to conceive of DARPA's (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) latest brainchild, the ultimate weapon of mass destruction -- the flying submarine. I kid you not, it's really, truly in development, although there are many hurdles to be overcome, such as red-hot jet engines exploding after plunging into cold sea water, and the general contradiction of a lighter-than-air vehicle that can dive to crushing ocean depths. But this is the kind of rare problem that the genius of America -- with boatloads of money -- can solve. And then our enemies will tremble verily indeed: there is simply no answer to a multi-billion dollar airborne submarine. The very thought will be enough to make even the most feral terrorist think twice, and then some... as long as we don't become surrender monkeys by abandoning such inspirations, however much they cost overrun.

There is only one person today who can keep the nation firmly on the track of historical Greatness, and that person is, ironically, a woman. A woman who can stiffen our resolve, who can keep our hegemony up, who can both bring home the pork and stick it to our enemies, our own Margaret Thatcher, a virtual booster shot of Viagra for our declining imperial testosterone: Sarah Palin in 2012!

Recently, Sarahcuda Palin stood tall and answered Defense Secretary Robert Gate's flaccidifying question about the affordability of our gigantic Navy. Let her brilliant riposte ring out across our fields of genetically-modified wheat and shuttered factories like Winston Churchill whacking the Liberty Bell:

"My answer is pretty simple: Yes, we can and, yes, we do because we must."

I'm a manly man myself, and I don't cry easily, but that clarion simplicity unleashed a gusher of wet, dripping patriotism. It's the kind of Simple Simon talk that tingles the spines of all true Americans, and that's where the sensation stays, down near the coccyx, never rising to the brainstem. You betcha!

Sarah is not the ideal candidate, of course: we've had a white male moron, and now a black/white male Pentagon puppet, so logic dictates that the next POTUS should be a black/Hispanic female imbecile -- but Sarahcuda will do. Some even say that her reign in the End Times was prophesied by the Mayan Calendar. Whatever, history has a certain inevitable trajectory, and it's just futile to buck the trend. Sometimes fire has to be fought with fire, and stupidity with even greater stupidity.

I would never have wagered a single share of Silverado S&L stock that George W. Bush could have been elected President of the United States, twice, but I'm not going to miss the action this time: I'm betting on Palin in 2012. All the downward trends point in that direction, and it would be the perfect coda to America's descent into auto-destruct madness on the eve of the Apocalypse: Sarahcuda Palin, commander-in-chief of the flying nuclear submarine!

Authors Website: www.traviskelly.com

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Award-winning editorial cartoonist, webmaster, graphic designer, writer