Joint Strike-Out F-35

A $100 bag of confetti looks like this

If you could hold 3 billion of these bags, you would be holding the amount of confetti the US Congress authorized the Pentagon to spend over the next 25 years on a fleet of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft.

A few questions beg asking

1. Which fiscal conservatives in Congress authorized the Pentagon to spend $300,000,000,000 for 2,456 Joint Strike Fighters?
2. Why is the procurement of F-35s a more pressing priority than Health and Education?
3. Why is weapons procurement handed a blank check, but it takes 13 excruciating months of show-boating and dicking around in Congress to ultimately have legalized organized crime (a.k.a. the Insurance Industry), and their greedy pals in Big Pharma, BUY enough US Senators to kill insurance reform?

The JSF is such a boondoggle that President Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates is working overtime to get the F-35 program back on course.

Who is the real enemy? The Defense Industry? A Congress beholden to the Defense Industry? Comatose citizens?