All great points Ken. And I guess the use of the terms red and blue states could be provocative. I've lived in both many times in my life and they all have pros and cons.

But guess when we are mainly concerned with military matters, we are concerned about the military budget. How will it be funded in years to come when so many other obligations to include the deficit are looming?

My pro-Republican argument is that you cannot spend $77 billion at the federal level on education as proposed...because as my "wife" argument showed, there are already too many folks at higher HQ who make life harder for local educators. Increasing pell grants is nice...you don't get diddly squat when you have a decent income and that would not change. At some point you must look at making college cheaper...not providing more federal money to allow it to get more expensive.

My pro-Democratic argument is that rich folks can afford to pay more taxes than they already do. If they don't want their kids to serve, then they should at least pick up more of the tab for those who are so willing.

Another example. We sent our girl to a reasonably priced private college because she wanted to play tennis and they had a good reputation for education and were not that far away. It ended up being about as cheap as sending my son to Auburn where he had to drop Calculus II because he could not understand the Chinese assistant instructor teaching it. So again, you cannot always claim that additional tax money spent on public institutions is providing a proven product.

Get the idea. It is possible to discuss the issues without a flame war. No revolutions required. Education may be part of the answer to making our economy better, but simply throwing $77 billion at it in 2012, a 20% increase over 2010, is not necessarily going to be money better spent than say an extra billion and a half spent each year to have a split buy on KC-X and put 98,000 to work in a long term high tech aerospace industry that does not require college.