A group of weepy warlords in the Senate including ol’ Jowls McGoo Joe Lieberman are busily soiling their Depends over a $487 billion planned reduction in defense spending over the next decade that was included in the White House fiscal year 2013 budget. But know who is not having a whiny meltdown over the proposed cuts? The people in charge of the military are not! Because they helped to design the cuts, along with the White House. And this is trying the patience of various Republican Senator humans and Joe Lieberman who refuse to have their naps until everyone goes back to the old system of military appropriations, where the Pentagon sends over its thirty-mile long list of every wish it ever had scribbled in blood collected from Afghan corpses and Congress says sure, the FDA does not really need to screen baby formula for arsenic this year. That system worked so well!
From The Hill:
A group of Senate Republicans is pressing the Pentagon to submit “wish lists” to Congress, arguing lawmakers cannot determine the military’s budgetary needs without them.
…
The service chiefs have announced they are ending the long-standing practice of sending annual budget wish lists to Capitol Hill. They say the budget proposals submitted to the DOD for fiscal 2013 include everything they need, given the financial pressure the department is under.
But the decision to end the wish lists has drawn protests from Republicans, who have questioned whether military leaders are withholding their true opinion of President Obama’s proposed cuts to defense spending.
So that is sort of a fun tactic, for the Republicans to start worrying now, in 2012, that the military’s top brass are publicly lying about war stuff.
Here, Joe Lieberman, we have found a report to soothe your rage:
According to the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), each $1 billion invested in clean energy technology generated 50 percent more jobs than the same amount of spending on the military. Investing in health care created 54 percent more jobs, while $1 billion spent on education resulted in 138 percent more jobs. Or to put it another way, if federal investment in the military creates fewer jobs than other federal spending, then cutting the military will cost fewer jobs than cuts to other programs.
“More jobs” is much less exciting than having a bunch of trillion-dollar doorstops littering the tarmac at a military base in Texas, though, so we should not discount that. [The Hill]
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I heard that the generals are liars.
That's just like like that Bastard O'Bama to appoint Generals who ask for the military equipment they need, rather than $100 billion in extra gear they can't figure out how to use!
With Bush, of course, it was different. Bush was like: here's $250 billion, don't worry: that schmuck Bill Clinton left us a surplus, so it's cool. Whaddaya mean you wouldn't know what to do with all this extra stuff if you wee to accept it? Show a little initiative! Be creative! Start a war, for God's sake! I hear Iraq is nice this time of year!
Being on the Joint Chiefs. It's like being the dieter at an Italian Sunday dinner: "No. Really. I've had enough. I couldn't eat another mouthful."
MR. CREOSOTE:
Look. I couldn't eat another thing. I'm absolutely stuffed. Bugger off.
MAÎTRE D:
Oh, sir, just– just one.
MR. CREOSOTE:
[groaning] All right. Just one.
MAÎTRE D:
Just the one, monsieur. Voilà.
You no like-a my cruise missiles? Why you no eat more cruise missiles? Maybe you like multi-role-fighter-bomber? Why you no eat more multi-role-fighter-bomber? You gonna go hungry eating like that! Why you no eat? Eat! Eat!
Lindsay, Lieberman and Walnuts dressed as Italian Grandmothers, hectoring queasy Generals with huge bowls of Carbonara.
Relevant
Note the shovel
This reminds me of the first time I met my husband's grandmother (who was from Italy). I went to the kitchen to thank her again for dinner as we were on our way out the door, and she offered me some cookies. I politely declined, and she yelled at me, demanding to know why I didn't want cookies. It was terrifying, but at least she didn't call me a mangiacake (to my face).
Wow, hadda look that one up:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ma…
So, Ann Romney is Mangiacake #1, eh?
EDIT: Cookies are made of white flour and sugar, right? So wouldn't taking the cookies make you a mangiacake?
Technically yes, but it's really more about a person not being Italian (or not enjoying Italian foods) than about the specific ingredients. I'm not Italian, but I did eat every course of the meal that was laid out.
"Mangiacakes and Moulignons" was perhaps XTC's greatest album.
HAHA I feel bad for laughing at that. But it does have such a nice alliterative and rhythmic ring.
They should make a rule where the first person to suggest a war should be the first person to go there and fight it.
Or at least the first to pay for it.
All foreign military costs should be paid with a tax on gasoline. Everyone needs to pay for war.
I suggest a war on Michelle Obama's underwear drawer. Who's with me?
Always with your mind on your fapping and your fapping on your mind!
You fight the wars you choose to fight and I'll fight mine.
Just remember, her husband has DRONES. The boom-boomy kind. He will not hesitate to take you out.
I still love the suggestion from All Quiet on the Western Front – all the asshole "statesmen" who want war can have a battle royale wrestling match in a field (or better yet, on pay per view). Whoever wins the match, wins the war.
Now, with the advent of women politically we might have to adjust the competition a little – because I know Hillary throws a mean shoe (or lamp, or whatever else was at hand to throw at Bill back in the day), and the old rules were strictly hand to hand.
The military asking for what they need instead of what will keep the defense plants in Connecticut running. How unAmerikkkan.
Won't somebody think of the Drones!
Send in the drones. There ought to be drones.
Isn't it rich?
"Don't bother – they're here."
Don't worry, Skynet does.
Drones are people, my friend!
I did, already!~
The economists are right and defense whores/contractors are wrong. For every $ pumped into military procurement and R&D, the net result is a return of approx 1X $ you get back. For every $ pumped into infrastructure, the net result is 4-6 X the return.
War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
Tell that to Cheney/Halliburton et al.
War-Profiteers in the august United States Senate?!? BALDERDASH!!!!
Ah yes, the GOP is begging the Military to "for God's sake, ask for more unnecessary and more expensive shit than you did last time" because the deficit is pretty much under control and Medicare and Social Security are basically completely funded until the year 9,999.
The readily available publication "Mr. Smith Is Dead" that describes how the Republican (and, yes, a few Democratic) Senators and Congress people used 9/11 to garner huge porkbarrel projects.
http://www.dnipogo.org/fcs/spartacus_mr_smith.htm
These cost the lives of American service women and men, because much of the money came out of the equipment maintenance and repair budgets. Yes, we sent unarmoured Humvees to Iraq.
It's a terrible story – because of the naked lies and greed, and because so little has changed today.
You mean like the asshole David Brooks who sold the Pentagon defective bullet proof vests (apparently not even bullet resistant) and then spent a pile on getting Fiddy Cent/Aerosmith/Tom Petty to his daughter's Bat Mitsvah?
It is not the GOPs fault that the military does not understand how important war machines are, now is it? SOMEONE has got to be the reasonable war mongerers, these brown people will not just kill themselves. Oh wait. Yeah, maybe we just don't need the GOP?
each $1 billion invested in clean energy technology generated 50 percent more jobs than the same amount of spending on the military…
I think it's pretty much an established fact that the job multiplier for military spending is pretty low, especially when you consider that once a bomb is made it creates zero jobs – until it explodes – and then a bunch of jobs are created to make another. Meanwhile spending on real shit tends to circulate $$$ through the economy. Econ 101 folks.
You forgot about the jobs it makes for morticians, surgeons, contractors and the like. These are jobs mostly for brown people in other countries though.
When Republicans can't even rely on military support anymore, you know they are fucked.
Just ask yourself this question:
Which would you rather see – a Head Start class or a Stealth Bomber in flight?
I've seen both. Stealth Bomber wins hands down.
In fairness, we ought to have the bomber teach a group of five year olds and the kindergarten class launched off the deck of an aircraft carrier.
Clarity of though is why I come here.
Clarity of …… though?! Is that the thought of a blah person?
please do not feed the trolls
Not even to mock them?
Yes, the 2011 Chicago Schoolkids & Water Show was dead boring!
This year I wish for world peace, a cure for cancer, for my mommy and daddy to live together again, and for 183 F22s with Sidewinder missiles and a full array of combat electronics.
Sure, give the Pentagon more money because they spend it so wisely. I eliminated the middle man this year – I owed $7800 more in taxes so I sent 'em two hammers and a toilet seat.
"… lawmakers cannot determine the military’s budgetary needs…"
They should ask a bunch of old male clerics what the military needs. Those guys sure knew what women should have.
An an Imperial Defense Contractor, couldn't you have worked out on the drawing board that designing a tall, top-heavy fighting machine with a narrow stance and towering center of gravity might not lead to many battlefield victories?
HEY! You go to war with the At-Ats you have, not the At-Ats you create with cgi after the special effects are easier to do. What are you, some kind of Jar-Jar-Binks-lover?
eta – I would also like to state for the nerd record that I said this based on your comment alone, I had not noticed KBJ's beautiful pictograph. Let it never be said that I don't know my explicit star warsian references sight unseen.
What was the exact year when Babes started to become Nerds?! Because it sure as hell was after I put away childish things in 1982! (And yet, after all these years, I am ashamed that I am so psyched for "The Avengers"!)
All the smart babes KNOW that being queen of the nerds is TRULY where it's at – plus you get A LOT of (intelligent) bang for your buck with a well shrunk Empire Strikes Back t-shirt. Trust your girl on this one.
"Young Lady, you are Boy Crazy!! It's a good thing those boys wouldn't know what to do with you!"
Oh come on! It worked fine against the other top-heavy fighting machines with a narrow stance!
Not such a problem when your foes are a bunch of fuzzy koala bears with stone age technology though.
Too bad the top heavy fighting machines left little room in the budget for stick and rock resistant armor.
It's not how well it works, it's how cool it looks. Ages ago I proposed a thesis on how cool Soviet military equipment looked compared to NATO's stuff. You have to admit those May Day parades in Red Square showed off some badass looking rocket launchers.
Then the Soviet Union collapsed and I dropped out of grad school.
Let's be honest, a Blackjack is much cooler than a B1-B.
But they both suck. 15% readiness. Expensive to maintain. Hanger Queens. Much older Bears and B-52 Buffs still more reliable.
Thanks Ronnie Raygun.
Well yah. I'm just talking aesthetics, not functionality. And the planes you mention are still going to be in the inventories for another 30 years or so…
I was going to ask how exactly one flies a 2-foot long paddy whacker over New York to drop bombs, but then I looked it up.
I'm guessing paddy whacker means something different than what I am thinking here. My kind is more fun I think, I mean, it's not 2 feet long – but I'm up for whatever.
Wow, if you had stayed with it, you could have become the next Skunk Baxter!
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/skunk_baxter_for…
Explains why my idea for retooling AEGIS systems into floating T-shirt cannons for beach side sporting events never got anywhere.
I heard Ol' Skunk suggested Xe's original name!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAitGMC1Bws
The Rooskies had some cool stuff. To wit: infantry-deployed anti-tank weapons. We got the Dragon, where you attempt to sit serenely behind the huge firing signature and fly your weapon to its target while everybody on the battlefield sprays your position. The Dirty Commies got the Sagger, where they could dig in 15 meters away from the launch site and let everybody pepper the vacant spot. Of course I'd druther be even farther away, but 15m beats zero.
Hey, it's not like the same guys built a gimungo planet destroying battle station that couldn't defend against one man stub fighters and had a 2 meter hole that was vulnerable to attack.
Counterpoint
Well Imperial Senator Larry Craig was against this and pointed out that if he had a narrow stance he never would have won any of his "battlefield victories", at which point Imperial Senator Lindsey Graham swooned and had to leave the room.
We can't keep killing everyone on earth who doesn't like us, it's way too expensive! How about we just offer $100 cash to every Afghani, Paki, North Korean, or whomever to just LIKE us? We'll lose less prestige, soldiers, and come out ahead financially.
Oh, I see. It's the dead foreigners that this is all about.
The War on Women is going to need some new weapons.
Ultrasonic Dildonic Drones!
Were do I volunteer for undercover ops?
Never mind that, where do we volunteer for underwear ops?
Yoshimi and the Pink Robots are not cheap. Read my flaming lips.
Beats waiting for a Superman….
The senators have obviously not received the soft bulletin.
Do you realize…that everyone you know someday will die?
And if Jowly Joe and his gang of sociopaths get their way, it'll be at the business end of an American's service rifle.
When Larry Craig finds himself in Minnesota, he don't use jelly, he uses — VASELINE.
But we need to bomb things damn it. It's who we are.
"And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air"
I rest my case.
ITZ IN TEH CONSTITOOOOOOOOOOOOSHUN!!!!!!!!!!!
How the hell are we going to attack North Korea and Iran if we don't have more war toys?
Furthermore, how is Iran going to electronically hijack/reverse-engineer our military hardware if we don't have it in the first place?
According to the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI)
No fair!
I can't pew! to this name!
Meanwhile the teachers are like "Um — we have a wish list."
TEACHERS WISH LIST
1. To get my job back.
Just wait for the exploding heads when sequestration comes. It'll make the 487 billion look like a disputed bill with a Colombian hooker. It will be a nice late Xmas present for us libtards.
Just so long as the cuts don't effect anything in Az..
JOB CREATORS, MISSILE KRUSHER DONGLE, &C
In my area of the DoD, we are cutting back like a motherfucker over the next few years, people already getting RIFfed and all that. But then, I don't work in the Kill-People division.
Oh, a commie peacenik, eh?
Worse yet, one who cleans up the soil and groundwater that the USAF contaminated for years and years (environmental!!). We're much better now!
A tree-hugger! Even worse!
We need more non-functional Star Wars missile defense systems to defend against the non-functional N. Korean missiles!
Sure bombs are expensive, but if we didn't have them, we'd have to learn diplomacy stuff. Just think how much it would cost to teach a bunch of people about all of those other countries out there…and a lot of them don't even speak our language. THEY HAVE DIFFERENT WORDS FOR EVERYTHING! In the long run it's just cheaper to use bombs on people.
Messier. But cheaper, nonetheless.
One million dollars spent on a drone to blow up an Afghan wedding party is money well spent.
One million for medical care in Amerikka is vile socialism.
It has worked so well until now, why change anything?
And that's why we have the best health care system in teh world!!!11!
Hen hao kan, de!
This is like a trick question, isn't it? "Okay, which of you is for ignoring the military and just going with what your defense contractor lobbyists tell you that you should buy?"
Let's see that show of hands, please. Higher. Raise 'em higher. Okay. Got it. Thanks.
Now how are we going to rule the world with our flying robot bombers and orbital death lasers?
Well obviously since the end of DADT all the military generals caught teh ghey and now are more concerned with being nice and working with the administration. So ghey!
Did they already factor in new window treatments?
this is now standard issue http://blog.riflegear.com/archive/2007/12/26/hell…
US needs more weapons like it needs a hole in the head.
This makes about as much sense as a South American game show.
Continuing today's trip down Memory Lane, does anyone remember the "Super Committee" that was going to use its super powers to solve all the budget problems, and when they did so it wouldn't be necessary to "sequester" funds? Republicans and faux Dems like Lieberman are hoping no one does, because they're going to look like shameless liars when they refuse to agree to the defense cuts that were part of that deal.
What? They already look like shameless liars?
Never mind then. Carry on.
"…each $1 billion invested in clean energy technology generated 50 percent more jobs than the same amount of spending on the military."
So now you all know why we have to spend so damn much on war stuffs… Job creation!!
Just think, though, if we had a smaller military budget, and therefore a smaller military, then George W Bush might have had to think twice over whether invading and conquering Iraq was a good idea, and that would have been a disaster.
Babs should've thunk twice on which Bush Fetus belonged in the jar.
Answer: All of them, Katie.
Srsly. They're a thumping bunch of eejits.
And if we didn't invade Iraq the Arab Spring would never happen. Because people in the Middle East had never heard of elections and democracy until our hero W shoved it down their throats.
Sen. Wardell Tightwhitey (R-Chickenhawk): "The president needs to listen to the generals on the ground. No, seriosly, down here on the ground. If you put your ear right here you can tell what they really mean when they say they're doing just fine with a mere $1 bijillion appropriation …"
how can we expect senators to live on the kickbacks from a reduced military budget?
Congress needs to fund the Death Star!
The GOP focus has now shifted off the War on Women to the War on War. All war. All the time.
As always, Wilco will love you baby.
Those damn troops need to support our troops!
KBJ — "Jowls McGoo Joe Lieberman" is so full of win. I wiped a tear from me' eye upon reading it~
Baby needs new jodhpurs and riding crops! Have you no compassion?
Well the top brass can be wrong like that time Admiral Hossel brought the Empire's Battle fleet out of Light speed too soon, alerting the Rebel alliance to their presence.
One day I hope to be a rear Admiral..wakka wakka.
The reason why conservatives and Jowls McGoo Joe Lieberman are in favor of increased defense spending is because it allows them to look tough and to create an image of toughness that belies the reality that most conservatives are lazy cowards and weaklings. If you look at today's leading conservatives you'd be hard pressed to find anyone with any military experience. Hell, some of them come from families with no military experience whatsoever. Mittens Romney never served in the military, his father never served in the military and none of his sons ever served.
The cowardice of American conservatives is well-documented, Ted Nugent shit and pissed himself to avoid being drafted during Vietnam and Tom Tancredo got a note from his doctor saying that he couldn't go because he was depressed (and rightly so, if you told me that I had the choice of going to jail or going to Vietnam and risking my life I'd be pretty fucking depressed as well), Rush Limbaugh had a pilenoidal cyst on his ass (probably caused by his rent-boy days), Dick Cheney had five deferments, etc, etc, etc. So since conservatives are lazy, cowardly weakings they call for increased defense spending because it's cheaper and easier than actually getting off of your ass and serving your country. Even better you can finance the defense spending with deficit spending, so you can fob the costs off on future generations.
Why don't we have conservatives like this any more? Fun fact, there is some debate that Eisenhower meant to say "military-industrial-congressional complex" but changed it to "military-industrial complex" to spare the feelings of Congress, which is a real pity, when he wrote:
A group of Senate Republicans is pressing the Pentagon to submit “wish lists” to Congress, arguing lawmakers cannot determine the military’s budgetary needs without them.
But, somehow, they are able to figure out the rest of the government's needs without these? Bitches, please…
Included in the wish list will be lots of tailored camo jackets and baseball hats with gold braid for politicians.
Just curious: How many jobs do we get per billion spent on Bridges To Nowhere?
Republicans really should stop calling our military leadership liars.
Gentlemen, gentlemen, we can't have any fighting in here, this is the War Room, for God's sake!
Obama likes to pretend he is a "liberator". But the people of Libya; after having their mamas and daughters raped by thugs; will soon have the shariah law that will be used to oppress them. Nothing says "liberation" like having the infrastructure of one's country decimated by bombs while creepy fucking thugs rape your daughters and moms! Hallelujah! King Obama! Ruler of the proud and the free! Be an American hero! Kill a sand niggaz mama fo Obama!
Yeah, maybe by 2017 we can finally audit the Pentagon to find out how much money they're spending:
http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20111013/DEPA…
Maybe….
Jesus, they need to inspect those things, Captain America could be frozen in one.
That, what you just said. I wanted to research the idea that the Reds cared more about aesthetics than functionality when it came to, say, rocket launchers. Theirs looked like hell demon machines straight out of comic books while the West's looked like pickup trucks with giant Cracker Jack boxes mounted on top. I reckoned NATO's were a hell of a lot more functional.
I think I read somewhere a while back that there was a B-52 out there that had been flown over the years by pilots of three generations of the same family, i.e. grandpa, dad, and then son. But the AF might have made that shit up.
Being a "moulignon" myself, I grant you permission to laugh!
EDIT: I can also hear Rosemary Clooney swinging out on a tune by that name.
Peter Gabriel?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh_2cTp-Ixs
Right you are – I didn't have to worry about the competition when my GF was in one of her incomprehensible math classes (Naive Set Theory? You mean a theory that hasn't learned the Ways of the World yet?). Those pocket-protector boys were terrified of her.
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