Showing posts with label Pentagon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pentagon. Show all posts
Thursday, April 15, 2021
Great, Even Important Question About Our Defense Budget
President Biden proposed increasing, yet again, our nation's annual defense budget--but then followed that up by saying we're getting out of Afghanistan. Representative Ro Khanna asks an excellent question today out in social media.
“The Pentagon increases make no sense. If you’re ending the forever war in Afghanistan … then why are we increasing, at the same time, the defense budget?” --Rep. Ro Khanna @RoKhanna
Friday, February 26, 2021
The World's Warmonger
We, the US, the United States are, hands down, the world's warmonger, ladies and gentlemen. No one, no other nation comes even remotely close to spending what we do on what we call "defense." And we don't even do it well.
See the fighter jet above? It's the Air Force's F35.Nice, huh? And it only cost us 400 billion dollars. The Pentagon's most expensive program. Ever. Literally. Google: "The US Air Force Just Admitted the F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed." It's at Forbes Magazine.
$400 billion dollars. And it doesn't work.
Aren't we terrific? Exceptional, don't you think? But hey, let's keep shoveling more and yet more money to the Defense Department. That'll keep us all safe. Right?
Saturday, December 5, 2020
Trump Endangers the Nation -- Some More
This broke today. Unreal.
Pentagon blocks visits to military spy agencies by Biden transition team
As I said. Unreal. Someone at the Pentagon is putting this man Trump and his phony election claims ahead of the nation and our security. This is, again, dangerous. Reckless. It's not like we haven't seen recklessness from this President before now, we certainly have but this is very late in his presidency to have this going on.
Meanwhile, with no leadership from this President, the White House or his administration, this is going on presently.
Certainly still no leadership on or about this pandemic.
And he's still attacking our votes, our election and Democracy.
Fortunately, there is a little bit of positivity.
Now, mind you, it's only 25 members of the GOP. In their research, they found that, yes, 25 of them agree Biden won, 222 of them said it was unclear, the cowards, and 2 actually said Trump won, in spite of all the evidence otherwise. And this late after the election and vote, too. More insanity.
He's still losing his attempt at a war.
We have to take our wins where we get them.
It's time. We need to #throwthebumout
More:
From the UK:
From Scotland:
Saturday, July 4, 2020
Either Instead of or Along With Defunding Police, Let's Do These
Either instead of or along with defunding police, for a much better, stronger society, let's do the following, instead. I've been saying this for years.
We pay more out, year after year, than any other country, far and away, for what we call "defense." We buy bombs and weapons and have bases all over the world.
You'd think we were still fighting World War II.
And we just keep increasing how much we shell out for this "defense."
It's insane. It's not rational. It's certainly not moral nor necessary. It's not making us stronger, either, as a nation. This businessman said this correctly and it was 3 years ago.
And keep this in perspective, too, before anyone says it would weaken us as a nation.
If we cut our defense budget in half---cut it IN HALF---we'd still, still outspend and overspend EVERY OTHER NATION IN THE WORLD. Still.
Then, after that, how about we STOP INCARCERATING SO MANY AMERICANS.
Check this out.
We incarcerate more people THAN ANY OTHER NATION.
Put that into perspective.
China has approximately 1.43 billion citizens.
India, 1.353 billion people.
We, the US?
We have a paltry 329 million people.
But we jail more fellow Americans than ANY OTHER NATION, to repeat.
How is this not insane? It's completely, totally unnecessary. Again, obscene and immoral.
Here's a thought.
Instead of jailing so many people, how about we take that money and, oh, I don't know. INVEST IN THEIR SCHOOLS, instead?? Invest in health care? Invest in social programs? Take care of our people instead of throwing them away?
Check out this one statistic:
America Spends Much More on Prisoners
Than Students
The U.S. spends more on prisons and jails than it does on educating children – and 15 states spend at least $27,000 more per prisoner than they do per student, according to a new report. (link below)
And along with this incarceration is the fact that, since the end of the Civil War, we, the United States, have also disproportionately incarcerated FAR more African-Americans as a percentage of our population.
Black Americans incarcerated five times more
than white
Let's stop this insanity. Let's stop this ugliness. Let's stop this waste and stupidity.
Let's do this, America.
Let's invest in our people.
We'll be far stronger, all of us, because of it.
Monday, November 11, 2019
Happy Veterans Day: Let's Start REALLY Honoring Them
So yes, first thing, absolutely, HAPPY VETERANS DAY. First and foremost.
But then, after that, let's start really, actually honoring them, as a nation.
Let's:
- End the war in Afghanistan. This is our 18th year there. We are gaining nothing. It is our longest war in the history of the nation.
- End perpetual war
- End the empire
- Bring more of our soldiers home from across the globe.
- Let's stop creating new wars to send them off to
The United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad—from giant “Little Americas” to small radar facilities. Britain, France and Russia, by contrast, have about 30 foreign bases combined.
It's insane.
Let's bring all we can, home.
Let's bring all we can, home.
Saturday, September 1, 2018
What Most Americans Don't Know About Our National Defense Budget--But Should
There is an excellent, even important article out presently at Alternet I wish all adult, voting-age Americans would read. It is this.
How to Blow $700 Billion and Lose Wars
A Guide to America's Exploding Defense Budget and Military Failure
Step 1: Buy the most expensive weapons in history. Step 2: Don’t use them, since they mostly don’t work
A bit from the article:
This year, President Trump signed the largest defense budget in our history: $700 billion. The budget includes $13.7 billion for 90 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, which according to CNN are “in service and mission capable only 26 percent of the time.” Not a single F-35 jet has yet to see combat duty.
The budget will provide $4.5 billion for the construction of a new Ford class aircraft carrier, $450 million for three Littoral Combat Ships, $4 billion for two new guided missile destroyers, $5.5 billion for two new Virginia Class submarines, and tens of billions more for upgrades and repairs on various aircraft and naval vessels. Two of the guided missile destroyers already in service were involved in deadly collisions with cargo ships in the western Pacific last year. A Navy investigation revealed that for all of the hundreds of billions spent on defense, there was apparently not enough in the budget to provide for adequate training in standing watch and driving Navy combat ships...
He finishes the article perfectly, to me. It's something I've been saying for some time.
From 2011 to today, 2018, we more than doubled our national defense budget from 354 billion dollars to 700 billion.
We have no new enemies. No new group has attacked us or is attacking. Or is going to.
We are weakening, actually weakening our nation with all this absurd, obscenely expensive and very wasteful spending.
Understand this:
Our defense budget is very huge, very bloated and very wasteful and is actually making the nation weaker. Not stronger.
What are we going to do about this, America?
Links:
Note this next article is from the American Conservative magazine:
Thursday, July 5, 2018
What People Don't Understand About Our National Defense Spending
What too many people, too many Americans don't understand or realize about our obscene, absurd, very bloated and extremely wasteful defense spending.
It's actually making us weaker, as a nation.
Saturday, May 19, 2018
Quote of the Day -- On Defense--and Deficit--Spending
"For 40 years we were led to think of the Russians as godless, materialistic and an evil empire. When the Cold War ended, we suddenly discovered that Russia was a poor Third World country. They had not been equipped to take over the world. In fact, they were just trying to improve a miserable standard of oppressive living, and couldn't. They had to spend too much on arms build-up. We didn't win the Cold War; we bankrupted the Russians. In effect, it was a big bank exhausting the reserves of a smaller one."
And now, we're doing it to ourselves. That is, we are bankrupting ourselves, honestly, spending obscene amounts on "defense", far outspending any and every other nation on the planet.
And for no good reason.
Sunday, July 30, 2017
Quote of the Day/Week
"Let me say, in one week Donald Trump got rebuked by
the Boy Scouts,
by the Pentagon,
by the International Association of Police Chiefs,"
Rep. Ted Lieu said.
"You really gotta' try to be that bad."
Friday, October 7, 2016
Congratulations, America, On Your Very Dubious 15 Year Anniversary
Today is the 15th anniversary of the U.S-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Think about that.
15 years of sending mostly young American soldiers---men and women--to a foreign country to fight and die--for....?
How is this not like the Vietnam War? How is this not a "quagmire"?
Hoist By Their Own Words
Leslie H. Gelb says the U.S. military has lost its way in Afghanistan.Friday, January 1, 2016
Saturday, December 19, 2015
The United States---the Actual Big Problem in the World?
I've said it here before. I'll say it again.
The United States is the world's warmonger.
We spend more on war and what we call "defense" than any other nation in the world, far and away. Here's 2009 alone.
We're in more nations, with more bases and more weapons and more bombs and tanks and planes and ships and more of everything else's than any other nation, bar none.
Look at the last big wars of the past 5 decades. What were they and who was in them? Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan is where they were and we started them. We keep saying we're saving someone from something so we go over and blow 'em up real good.
Then there's weapons manufacturers as a nation. Guess who's making more weapons, by country, than any other nation and putting those out in the world. I think you see where this is going.
(H)ere is the list of the world’s top 10 arms exporters, along with their respective shares of global exports between 2010 and 2014, from SIPRI:
- United States: 31%
- Russia: 27%
- China: 5%
- Germany: 5%
- France: 5%
- U.K.: 4%
- Spain: 3%
- Italy: 3%
- Ukraine: 3%
- Israel: 2%
See the entire study from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
And those two are external. Now let's consider ourselves internally.I think we know which nation on the planet has more weapons, for civilians, than any other, don't we? Sure we do. It's the good old, USA, once again, bar none.
We, as a nation, as a people, need to both stop thinking of ourselves as a "peace-loving people" and nation, we need to stop kidding ourselves and we need, badly, to do something about it. More people are being killed on this planet, both inside and outside the US.
We need to cut down on the weapons. There are a lot better ways to "do business" on this planet than by creating and selling and profiting from weapons.
We need to get started.
We need to give peace a chance.
The world--our own and the rest of it--will be a lot better place for our having done it.
Link: Ceasefire in Yemen Faces Collapse as U.S. Continues Weapons Sales to Saudi Arabia, Fueling Civil War
Friday, September 18, 2015
Local Story for National POW/MIA Recognition Day
From the New York Times today:
Today, a personal reflection from Victoria, one of your Morning Briefers:
For many years, “Eugene M. Jewell” was just a name inscribed on a metal bracelet that I, like so many others, wore in the 1970s.
Nearly five million similar bracelets were sold by a student group, starting in 1970, to raise awareness about those missing in action or held prisoner in the Vietnam War. Each had a name, a rank and the date of disappearance.
In 1971, I paid $2.50 and agreed not to remove the band until my bracelet’s “name” came home. But the metal dug into my wrist, the war ended, and the bracelet went into a box.
He was 24 and a first lieutenant in the Air Force when he took off in an F-4 Phantom fighter jet for a mission over North Vietnam. His aircraft was shot down and lost on Sept. 4, 1965.
The Defense Department says 1,627 Americans who fought in the Vietnam War remain unaccounted for, including Captain Jewell (he was promoted in absentia).
When Captain Jewell was declared missing, his wife was back home in Topeka, Kan., with their 1-year-old daughter, Deborah, and pregnant with their second child.
Last year, Deborah Jewell wrote on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial website:
“It always is a surprise when I read about folks who have/are wearing a bracelet with my Dad’s name on it, and to hear about how their hearts ache for the loss and hurt our family feels.”
Victoria Shannon contributed reporting.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Monday, May 25, 2015
Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day? (Guest Post)
Because no one has said it better than Howard Zinn :
Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day?
Published on June 2, 1976 in the Boston Globe and republished in The Zinn Reader with the brief introduction below.
Memorial Day will be celebrated … by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors preparing for more wars, more graves to receive more flowers on future Memorial Days. The memory of the dead deserves a different dedication. To peace, to defiance of governments.
In 1974, I was invited by Tom Winship, the editor of the Boston Globe, who had been bold enough in 1971 to print part of the top secret Pentagon Papers on the history of the Vietnam War, to write a bi-weekly column for the op-ed page of the newspaper. I did that for about a year and a half. The column below appeared June 2, 1976, in connection with that year’s Memorial Day. After it appeared, my column was canceled.
* * * * *
Memorial Day will be celebrated as usual, by high-speed collisions of automobiles and bodies strewn on highways and the sound of ambulance sirens throughout the land.
It will also be celebrated by the display of flags, the sound of bugles and drums, by parades and speeches and unthinking applause.
It will be celebrated by giant corporations, which make guns, bombs, fighter planes, aircraft carriers and an endless assortment of military junk and which await the $100 billion in contracts to be approved soon by Congress and the President.
There was a young woman in New Hampshire who refused to allow her husband, killed in Vietnam, to be given a military burial. She rejected the hollow ceremony ordered by those who sent him and 50,000 others to their deaths. Her courage should be cherished on Memorial Day. There were the B52 pilots who refused to fly those last vicious raids of Nixon’s and Kissinger’s war. Have any of the great universities, so quick to give honorary degrees to God-knows-whom, thought to honor those men at this Commencement time, on this Memorial Day?
No politician who voted funds for war, no business contractor for the military, no general who ordered young men into battle, no FBI man who spied on anti-war activities, should be invited to public ceremonies on this sacred day. Let the dead of past wars he honored. Let those who live pledge themselves never to embark on mass slaughter again.
“The shell had his number on it. The blood ran into the ground…Where his chest ought to have been they pinned the Congressional Medal, the DSC, the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, The Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of Rumania. All the Washingtonians brought flowers .. Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies.”
Those are the concluding lines of John Dos Passos angry novel 1919. Let us honor him on Memorial Day.
And also Thoreau, who went to jail to protest the Mexican War.
And Mark Twain, who denounced our war against the Filipinos at the turn of the century.
And I.F. Stone, who virtually alone among newspaper editors exposed the fraud and brutality of the Korean War.
Let us honor Martin Luther King, who refused the enticements of the White House, and the cautions of associates, and thundered against the war in Vietnam.
Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.
On Memorial Day we should take note that, in the name of “defense,” our taxes have been used to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a helicopter assault ship called “the biggest floating lemon,” which was accepted by the Navy although it had over 2,000 major defects at the time of its trial cruise.
Meanwhile, there is such a shortage of housing that millions live in dilapidated sections of our cities and millions more are forced to pay high rents or high interest rates on their mortgages. There’s 90 billion for the B1 bomber, but people don’t have money to pay hospital bills.
We must be practical, say those whose practicality has consisted of a war every generation. We mustn’t deplete our defenses. Say those who have depleted our youth, stolen our resources. In the end, it is living people, not corpses, creative energy, not destructive rage, which are our only real defense, not just against other governments trying to kill us, but against our own, also trying to kill us.
Let us not set out, this Memorial Day, on the same old drunken ride to death.
--Howard Zinn in the Memorial Day article that led the Boston Globe to cancel his column in 1976.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Small Government? Cut Government Spending?
Anyone who has ever complained about "big government" or that our government spends too much and that we should cut spending needs to see this video over 8 minutes and 18 seconds.
The fact is, we need to cut Defense spending. What we spend is obscene, the amount we spend is obscene, it's bloated, it's wasteful, it's unaccounted for, it's immoral it can easily be argued and it actually ends up actually weakening the nation.
Friday, March 6, 2015
!['It's called building an empire, not fighting for freedom.
(y) @[277613075615568:274:Mint Press News]'](https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/s480x480/10897955_876154342428102_347206590353734005_n.jpg?oh=df009645a039e2e65f1bd8fe773a22d4&oe=559385F1&__gda__=1434639990_844e49f40369f593cfdbdda380cc97ea)
Friday, January 16, 2015
Our Obscene Defense Spending, America
Famous and very talented, accomplished author James Fallows writes, this week, in The Atlantic Monthly on the obscene, wasteful Defense budget and our military and it's anything but flattering:
The Tragedy of the American Military
The American public and its political leadership will do anything for the military except take it seriously. The result is a chickenhawk nation in which careless spending and strategic folly combine to lure America into endless wars it can’t win.
The Chickenhawk Chronicles, No. 11: A Failure of Grand Strategy
What Alfred Lord Tennyson could teach us about civil-military relations. Plus, the simple lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan, from a naval veteran's point of view.
It's fantastic reading and research, as ever, from Mr. Fallows and it's downright important material many more Americans need to read, be aware of and hopefully, hopefully act on----maybe by contacting our governmental representatives and telling them it must stop.
Here's hoping.
The Nightmare That Is US Military Spening
Americans, you think you're a "peace-loving country", don't you?
Contact your Congressional Representatives and the President. Tell them to get the Defense budget cut. It's bloated, it's wasteful, it's unaccounted for, it's immoral, it's downright obscene.
Contact the U.S. Congress and the White House
Tell them, not in our name. Not any longer.
Friday, December 5, 2014
This May, Finally, Be THE Meteorological Event
Last year, about this time, a "super typhoon" rather infamously hit the Philippines. It was named Haiyan and the strength and power and destruction was rather legendary.
Right this moment, just now, a second "super typhoon" is building and bearing down on the Philippines, once again:
Super Typhoon Hagupit may try for a near-repeat of deadly typhoon Haiyan
Super Typhoon Hagupit may be peaking in strength this morning, with maximum sustained winds of about 170 miles per hour. All weather agencies, from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in the U.S. to the Philippines' own agency known as PAGASA, now forecast the storm making a slow trek across several Philippine islands starting on Saturday. However, these agencies still disagree on the storm track and intensity, and the specifics are going to matter a great deal.
If there is some good news, it is that, so far, it is not as powerful---yet---as Haiyan. Not quite.
It will not be nearly as intense as Super Typhoon Haiyan was last year when that storm made landfall near Tacloban in the central Philippines. Still, Hagupit, also known as Typhoon Ruby in the Philippines, poses a multitude of life-threatening risks, from rainfall-induced landslides to high winds and storm surge flooding.
All that said, however, though Hagupit won't be quite as strong as its predecessor, it will be strong, it will be big, widespread and it has the potential to be destructive, likely quite so, and deadly.
Haiyan opened eyes, so to speak, with its power, naturally (no pun intended). And again, naturally, people who have accepted the overall scientific and science-backed opinion of not just climate change but human made climate change mentioned then that this storm and its effects were a part of that very meteorological change and development.
Now, with this new storm, especially on top of all the other rather historic storms and weather events, from Hurricane Katrina, now years ago, to the rather phenomenal 9 foot snow event last week in Buffalo, New York that nearly immediately changed to 60 degrees the following Monday, I believe more and more people are beginning to notice. And maybe believe.
I think they're quite possibly, quite likely beginning to accept and believe that human-influenced climate change has taken place and is. As just one example, look at this:
223 firms back EPA power plant rule: Companies Sign Letter Supporting 30% Carbon Cut
More than 200 U.S. companies came together Tuesday to support a major reduction in carbon pollution from power plants proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
"As businesses concerned about the immediate and long-term implications of climate change, we strongly support the principles behind the draft carbon pollution standard for existing power plants," states a letter that was sent to the EPA, the Obama administration and congressional leaders.
Major brand names and Fortune 500 companies -- including Kellogg's, Starbucks, Ikea, Levi Strauss and Nestlé -- were among the 223 companies that signed the letter.
And then there's this, with the US military supporting action on climate change:
Even our military thinks we may well, we likely will be fighting climate change.
Perhaps we should listen to the military as well as the scientists.
If not to Mother Nature herself.
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