Obama's Cairo Speech
I don’t think I could improve upon M.J. Rosenberg’s summary of what the meaning of the Obama speech would be to the Mid East. Clearly it was directed at that audience and its reception (except perhaps in the Likud and other expansionist parties in Israel) was very good. What struck me was how a similar speech might be addressed to an American audience, perhaps at one of the Think Tanks that is at the heart of the American Military Industrial Complex. This is a speech that Americans may not be ready for, but some time in the next three years, Obama should make it.
Obama seeks a new beginning with the Arab World. Part of that is the acknowledgement of what can only be described as the Imperial history of American intervention in the Arab world. There are hints in the Cairo speech that he understands this legacy.
The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations…
Let me also address the issue of Iraq. Unlike Afghanistan, Iraq was a war of choice that provoked strong differences in my country and around the world. Although I believe that the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, I also believe that events in Iraq have reminded America of the need to use diplomacy and build international consensus to resolve our problems whenever possible. Indeed, we can recall the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said: “I hope that our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”…
For many years, Iran has defined itself in part by its opposition to my country, and there is indeed a tumultuous history between us. In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically-elected Iranian government. Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians. This history is well known. Rather than remain trapped in the past, I have made it clear to Iran’s leaders and people that my country is prepared to move forward. The question, now, is not what Iran is against, but rather what future it wants to build.
The question is also what kind kind of future America wants to build. Do we want to continue with a future in which the military consumes more than 50% of our discretionary budget? Do we want to continue in a world in which we spend more than all of our commercial rivals combined on Defense (chart below), while they spend on health care, infrastructure and education? I have written extensively on “The Cost of Empire” and many of us have noted Alan Greenspan’s unusual candor when he noted that the invasion of Iraq “was all about oil”. But do we really believe that if we were not occupying Arab lands they wouldn’t sell their oil to us?
It is one thing for the President to state that “America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire”, but it is quite another matter to prove it by reining in the military industrial complex that has ruled Washington budgets since 1950. 57 years ago, President Eisenhower spoke to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. His words are just as true today as then.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
Bill Clinton, President in a relative time of peace, was unable to cut military spending. The greatest lost opportunity for President Obama would be to complete his term of office without having dealt with the monster of the military industrial complex that has haunted our politics for 60 years
Not quite on topic but just to the left:
http://bailoutnation.net/2009/06/04/7-factors-that-led-to-crisis/
For those who need
“pictures with circles and arrows explaining what each one was”.
Not quite on topic but just to the left:
http://bailoutnation.net/2009/06/04/7-factors-that-led-to-crisis/
For those who need
“pictures with circles and arrows explaining what each one was”.
Jon,
This is where you split with your own party. Can / should we cut military spending? Sure. Start cutting.
But, columns like this OBSCURE a much larger truth – we have to start cutting the entitlements.
In pure costs terms, the Military Industrial Complex pales in comparison to the tragedy of 65 years olds being allowed to retire on Social Security. By just requiring everyone to work until they are 75, we could build how many new schools?
Jon,
This is where you split with your own party. Can / should we cut military spending? Sure. Start cutting.
But, columns like this OBSCURE a much larger truth – we have to start cutting the entitlements.
In pure costs terms, the Military Industrial Complex pales in comparison to the tragedy of 65 years olds being allowed to retire on Social Security. By just requiring everyone to work until they are 75, we could build how many new schools?
Jon, dare I ask why everybody persists in calling what comes out of and is done by the MIC, “DEFENSE?”
It’s one of those convenient linguistic shorthand tics that completely obscures the real nature of the beast. Like “Iraq” and “Afghanistan” and such.
Up to 1949, the US had a War Department, and then in the PR coup of the century, “those people” renamed it the “Department of Defense,” because what sane person could be against “defense?”
Maybe there could be a contest to come up with a more accurate epithet.
Though how one undoes the mental momentum of billions of repititions of the existing “meme,” and the “interests” of the millions who bleed the rest of us of the trillions they convert into your Multiple Kill Vehicle and the V-22, I don’t know.
Resistance is futile, maybe?
Jon, dare I ask why everybody persists in calling what comes out of and is done by the MIC, “DEFENSE?”
It’s one of those convenient linguistic shorthand tics that completely obscures the real nature of the beast. Like “Iraq” and “Afghanistan” and such.
Up to 1949, the US had a War Department, and then in the PR coup of the century, “those people” renamed it the “Department of Defense,” because what sane person could be against “defense?”
Maybe there could be a contest to come up with a more accurate epithet.
Though how one undoes the mental momentum of billions of repititions of the existing “meme,” and the “interests” of the millions who bleed the rest of us of the trillions they convert into your Multiple Kill Vehicle and the V-22, I don’t know.
Resistance is futile, maybe?
Jon,
That’s such a beautifully crafted and timely quote from President Eisenhower. I hadn’t remembered that passage, though now I realize that it has spawned many immitators over the years. Thanks, I’ll go back and read the entire speech now.
One of the things I appreciate about this site is that you attract correspondents, such as len, willing to explore the immediately current meanings of the MIC. We need a military, and the military needs industrial products, and were we to provide for those needs smartly we’d maintain a complex of industrial providers. Still, this is in no way to deny that following WWII the USA developed its own forms of Germany’s Ruhr and Saar, replete with luciferic excess.
But I’m thinking of the atmosphere, in the U.S., in 1958. Good music, ever-improving shopping opportunities–Chevy Corvettes, even!–but also a felt need, in the throes of the Baby Boom, to provide first protection for Americans, and then to provide for their upbringing and education. In that year Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the Father of the Nuclear Submarine, called education “America’s first line of defense.”
That was post-Sputnik talk, but it also presaged our present need to identify the national security interest with things that the MIC can’t produce: healthy and capable and fulfilled children, a prosperous economy, a proud culture. You should be proud that you’ve stimulated so much discussion, over time, as to these non-military forms of our security.
Eisenhower and his successor tried to strike a balance between security-as-military and security writ large. I wish that Americans could explore that kind of trade-off more openly and cooperatively.
Avocationally, I’m interested in seeing the military stronger in some areas and leaner in others. Professionally, I’ve been involved strictly, if fitfully, only in such as arms control, nation building, and veterans affairs. I do continue to study the lessons we might garner from military training to inform our schoolteaching–not to militarize schoolchildren but rather to ensure their educational victory.
San Francisco has an interesting Spanish motto: “Oro en pas, fierro en guerra” (In peace, gold; in war, iron). As I’ve said before, from time to time I toy with an updated version: In peace, silicon, lest in war, plutonium.
Jon,
That’s such a beautifully crafted and timely quote from President Eisenhower. I hadn’t remembered that passage, though now I realize that it has spawned many immitators over the years. Thanks, I’ll go back and read the entire speech now.
One of the things I appreciate about this site is that you attract correspondents, such as len, willing to explore the immediately current meanings of the MIC. We need a military, and the military needs industrial products, and were we to provide for those needs smartly we’d maintain a complex of industrial providers. Still, this is in no way to deny that following WWII the USA developed its own forms of Germany’s Ruhr and Saar, replete with luciferic excess.
But I’m thinking of the atmosphere, in the U.S., in 1958. Good music, ever-improving shopping opportunities–Chevy Corvettes, even!–but also a felt need, in the throes of the Baby Boom, to provide first protection for Americans, and then to provide for their upbringing and education. In that year Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the Father of the Nuclear Submarine, called education “America’s first line of defense.”
That was post-Sputnik talk, but it also presaged our present need to identify the national security interest with things that the MIC can’t produce: healthy and capable and fulfilled children, a prosperous economy, a proud culture. You should be proud that you’ve stimulated so much discussion, over time, as to these non-military forms of our security.
Eisenhower and his successor tried to strike a balance between security-as-military and security writ large. I wish that Americans could explore that kind of trade-off more openly and cooperatively.
Avocationally, I’m interested in seeing the military stronger in some areas and leaner in others. Professionally, I’ve been involved strictly, if fitfully, only in such as arms control, nation building, and veterans affairs. I do continue to study the lessons we might garner from military training to inform our schoolteaching–not to militarize schoolchildren but rather to ensure their educational victory.
San Francisco has an interesting Spanish motto: “Oro en pas, fierro en guerra” (In peace, gold; in war, iron). As I’ve said before, from time to time I toy with an updated version: In peace, silicon, lest in war, plutonium.
A fairly obvious nexus betwixt the military and civilian spheres is the frightful systems thinking bequeathed by Cold War militarists to our health and education systems, which now feed that thinking by the tail back into the mouth of the snake.
A fairly obvious nexus betwixt the military and civilian spheres is the frightful systems thinking bequeathed by Cold War militarists to our health and education systems, which now feed that thinking by the tail back into the mouth of the snake.
As you might say, JTMcPhee, ALERT: we are becoming distressingly convergent!
As you might say, JTMcPhee, ALERT: we are becoming distressingly convergent!
Len, you right it is a little left of the central point here. I’d like to see where the MIC fit as a drain and strain if in fact it did?
Len, you right it is a little left of the central point here. I’d like to see where the MIC fit as a drain and strain if in fact it did?
Morgan, have you been to Florida lately? Happen to notice how many 65 and older bag persons there are?
Morgan, have you been to Florida lately? Happen to notice how many 65 and older bag persons there are?
Yes, but there are thousands of us who can probably thank <a href="http://www.calstate.edu/suam/SUAMDOCUMENTS/SUAM2800/SUAM2801.01.HTML" Ike for this use of the defense word.
Yes, but there are thousands of us who can probably thank <a href="http://www.calstate.edu/suam/SUAMDOCUMENTS/SUAM2800/SUAM2801.01.HTML" Ike for this use of the defense word.
Make that this.
Make that this.
Make that this.
There you’ve got a banner photo of our American President happy amongst the fools who’ve done the seen-and-go whilst they cut a figure at our best colleges and proceed to finance those who need ideology & cash & weapons to destroy us, and I’ve got to ask myself, Is this guy a Columbia- and Harvard-educated idiot; is he a hopelessly inveterbrate glory seeker; or is he worse?
There you’ve got a banner photo of our American President happy amongst the fools who’ve done the seen-and-go whilst they cut a figure at our best colleges and proceed to finance those who need ideology & cash & weapons to destroy us, and I’ve got to ask myself, Is this guy a Columbia- and Harvard-educated idiot; is he a hopelessly inveterbrate glory seeker; or is he worse?
There you’ve got a banner photo of our American President happy amongst the fools who’ve done the seen-and-go whilst they cut a figure at our best colleges and proceed to finance those who need ideology & cash & weapons to destroy us, and I’ve got to ask myself, Is this guy a Columbia- and Harvard-educated idiot; is he a hopelessly inveterbrate glory seeker; or is he worse?
Hugo, I’ve got to ask what banner photo are you looking at? The one I see shows a serious President amidst also serious Egyptions.
I have to ask are you actually in doubt about our need to get off this confrontational our way or the war way highway of the last 40 years and solve the problem with reason and sense and a willingness to admit our part in the whole dilemma?
Hugo, I’ve got to ask what banner photo are you looking at? The one I see shows a serious President amidst also serious Egyptions.
I have to ask are you actually in doubt about our need to get off this confrontational our way or the war way highway of the last 40 years and solve the problem with reason and sense and a willingness to admit our part in the whole dilemma?
Hugo, I’ve got to ask what banner photo are you looking at? The one I see shows a serious President amidst also serious Egyptions.
I have to ask are you actually in doubt about our need to get off this confrontational our way or the war way highway of the last 40 years and solve the problem with reason and sense and a willingness to admit our part in the whole dilemma?
No, rhbee, I’m totally serious about their “need to get off this confrontational our way or the war way highway of the last 40 years” and to solve the problem precisely along your lines.
I went to school with some of those fronticepieces, and they’re not to be trusted absent demonstration.
Why would you, of all people, advocate for those whose lifeblood is petro?
No, rhbee, I’m totally serious about their “need to get off this confrontational our way or the war way highway of the last 40 years” and to solve the problem precisely along your lines.
I went to school with some of those fronticepieces, and they’re not to be trusted absent demonstration.
Why would you, of all people, advocate for those whose lifeblood is petro?
No, rhbee, I’m totally serious about their “need to get off this confrontational our way or the war way highway of the last 40 years” and to solve the problem precisely along your lines.
I went to school with some of those fronticepieces, and they’re not to be trusted absent demonstration.
Why would you, of all people, advocate for those whose lifeblood is petro?
Hugo, you and I might “converge,” just us two cerebrums, tete-a-tete, with maybe some conscious control over our limbic systems and enough peripheral vision to see “big pictures.”
But the heirs to Krupp and Speer, from whatever tribe you want to name, make their livings, and profitable ones, I might add (I almost said “good” livings — see what words can do?), from fomenting and extending and expanding and peddling the notions that those bipedal creatures across the lake or over in the next valley are not really human. And don’t worship the Good God, but that Evil Other Enemy Creature. And that We must Achieve Victory over them, because they are The Enemy. We must Succeed in our Battle Against The Forces of Evil. And in order to do so, “We” absolutely must have the very latest and most expensive and who cares if it works or not technology, to write our dry but glowing descriptions in Aviation Week and Defense Weekly and Mechanix Illustrated and such, about how these wonderful “programs” just are absolutely mission-critical to the Projection of Power to Negate Threats. And see how inventive we are in coming up with Threats! to be very Afraid of. Threat and Enemy thinking is either hard-wired, or so easy to mentally connect by “education” to that there limbic system. And so what if the species dies, so long as The Enemy dies before We do?
As a long-time well-indoctrinated “do my duty to God and My Country” Cub and Boy Scout, I let that limbic system drumbeat overcome my gentler notions and enlisted and did the Vietnam thing. I might have to protest that the military “warrior“ mindset, however “updated” or “civilized” or “modernized,” is focused on “victory,” even if the Generals and all the other President’s men can’t and won’t define what that word looks like in physical as opposed to psychic space. And teaching martial virtues in the schools ain’t likely to produce any of the kinds of thinking that are needed to recognize and foster the kinds of symbiotic relationships and thinking that might give the species a chance to survive a bit longer. As opposed to being able to really make a killing in the modern battle space with your team members.
I don’t know if Curtis LeMay or his opposite number in “the Kremlin” (what an Evil, Enemy-sounding word) would really have sent off a First Strike if they thought Their Side had enough “superiority” and he could bypass the “civilians” without recourse. LeMay certainly had no qualms about ordering and organizing the firebombing of cities to “degrade The Enemy’s war-fighting capabilities.” I know Edward Teller would have loved, for personal reasons, to kill every damn Commie over there. Those Creatures are The Enemy, and it is perfectly acceptable to do anything at all to The Enemy. Which is what those Commies and “extremists” and such. say about US.
LeMay and his successors still broach (all in the name of “proper war contingency planning, and VICTORY!”) using nukes on places like Hanoi and Haiphong and Baghdad and Pyongyang and for all I know, Sao Paolo and Rio and Moscow Petropavlovsk and maybe even Tel Aviv. That ain’t symbiosis, that’s, in my overused biological analogy, an immune system out of control, destroying villages in order to save them.
Now please don’t tell me that the contingency plans and target lists don’t cover “friendly” targets. Once humans start down that seductive path of thinking, the bureaucratic impulse takes over, especially if one’s career and post-military “industrial” employment benefit from pushing the cart along the same deepening rutted path. And the kinds of people who are attracted to this “patriotic” mutual suicide pact are found on every side of every tribal-national border, and they sneer at “civilians,” those not members of the Band of Brothers that lets old warriors who tried very hard to kill one another decades earlier sit down over a beer and discover that they are beyond all experience and teaching they have ever had, friends. And they view the rest of us as ciphers in the megadeath counts, “soft targets” to be collaterally damaged or “bombed back into the Stone Age.” After, of course, we have slaved to concentrate enough wealth for them to build their arsenals of “really cool stuff.”
And whether it’s “Christian” or “Muslim” or “Israeli” or “Godless Communist,” it’s all the same: as to those creatures Over There, why hey, man, that is The Enemy! Surely, say the militarists, you can see how evil and depraved and worthy of destruction They (or at least most of them) are, and how your only reasonable course is to fear their Threat enough to give us all your money so we can procure a Counter-threat! Maybe an Anti-anti-missile-missile-missile-missile -missile -missile -missile -missile –missile! So let’s kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out!
You are “interested in seeing the military stronger in some areas and leaner in others.” Is there any reason for that other than your sure and certain knowledge that Those People Over There have their own set of parasites who want to “us” as The Enemy what we want to be ready to do to them FIRST?
Sorry if this is all too “off topic,” and long and all. Like ol’ Kelly sorta said elsewhere, “That’s not fair! That’s not how it’s done! Go get your own blog!” But I do hope that what Obama is doing really is as symbiotic as they want us to think, and will not get him KILT like Mohandas K. and Indira Gandhi and others I could think of, for views and policies that are a Threat to the Great Parasite that thrives on “The Enemy Threat, My Tribe Right Or Wrong” thinking.
Hugo, you and I might “converge,” just us two cerebrums, tete-a-tete, with maybe some conscious control over our limbic systems and enough peripheral vision to see “big pictures.”
But the heirs to Krupp and Speer, from whatever tribe you want to name, make their livings, and profitable ones, I might add (I almost said “good” livings — see what words can do?), from fomenting and extending and expanding and peddling the notions that those bipedal creatures across the lake or over in the next valley are not really human. And don’t worship the Good God, but that Evil Other Enemy Creature. And that We must Achieve Victory over them, because they are The Enemy. We must Succeed in our Battle Against The Forces of Evil. And in order to do so, “We” absolutely must have the very latest and most expensive and who cares if it works or not technology, to write our dry but glowing descriptions in Aviation Week and Defense Weekly and Mechanix Illustrated and such, about how these wonderful “programs” just are absolutely mission-critical to the Projection of Power to Negate Threats. And see how inventive we are in coming up with Threats! to be very Afraid of. Threat and Enemy thinking is either hard-wired, or so easy to mentally connect by “education” to that there limbic system. And so what if the species dies, so long as The Enemy dies before We do?
As a long-time well-indoctrinated “do my duty to God and My Country” Cub and Boy Scout, I let that limbic system drumbeat overcome my gentler notions and enlisted and did the Vietnam thing. I might have to protest that the military “warrior“ mindset, however “updated” or “civilized” or “modernized,” is focused on “victory,” even if the Generals and all the other President’s men can’t and won’t define what that word looks like in physical as opposed to psychic space. And teaching martial virtues in the schools ain’t likely to produce any of the kinds of thinking that are needed to recognize and foster the kinds of symbiotic relationships and thinking that might give the species a chance to survive a bit longer. As opposed to being able to really make a killing in the modern battle space with your team members.
I don’t know if Curtis LeMay or his opposite number in “the Kremlin” (what an Evil, Enemy-sounding word) would really have sent off a First Strike if they thought Their Side had enough “superiority” and he could bypass the “civilians” without recourse. LeMay certainly had no qualms about ordering and organizing the firebombing of cities to “degrade The Enemy’s war-fighting capabilities.” I know Edward Teller would have loved, for personal reasons, to kill every damn Commie over there. Those Creatures are The Enemy, and it is perfectly acceptable to do anything at all to The Enemy. Which is what those Commies and “extremists” and such. say about US.
LeMay and his successors still broach (all in the name of “proper war contingency planning, and VICTORY!”) using nukes on places like Hanoi and Haiphong and Baghdad and Pyongyang and for all I know, Sao Paolo and Rio and Moscow Petropavlovsk and maybe even Tel Aviv. That ain’t symbiosis, that’s, in my overused biological analogy, an immune system out of control, destroying villages in order to save them.
Now please don’t tell me that the contingency plans and target lists don’t cover “friendly” targets. Once humans start down that seductive path of thinking, the bureaucratic impulse takes over, especially if one’s career and post-military “industrial” employment benefit from pushing the cart along the same deepening rutted path. And the kinds of people who are attracted to this “patriotic” mutual suicide pact are found on every side of every tribal-national border, and they sneer at “civilians,” those not members of the Band of Brothers that lets old warriors who tried very hard to kill one another decades earlier sit down over a beer and discover that they are beyond all experience and teaching they have ever had, friends. And they view the rest of us as ciphers in the megadeath counts, “soft targets” to be collaterally damaged or “bombed back into the Stone Age.” After, of course, we have slaved to concentrate enough wealth for them to build their arsenals of “really cool stuff.”
And whether it’s “Christian” or “Muslim” or “Israeli” or “Godless Communist,” it’s all the same: as to those creatures Over There, why hey, man, that is The Enemy! Surely, say the militarists, you can see how evil and depraved and worthy of destruction They (or at least most of them) are, and how your only reasonable course is to fear their Threat enough to give us all your money so we can procure a Counter-threat! Maybe an Anti-anti-missile-missile-missile-missile -missile -missile -missile -missile –missile! So let’s kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out!
You are “interested in seeing the military stronger in some areas and leaner in others.” Is there any reason for that other than your sure and certain knowledge that Those People Over There have their own set of parasites who want to “us” as The Enemy what we want to be ready to do to them FIRST?
Sorry if this is all too “off topic,” and long and all. Like ol’ Kelly sorta said elsewhere, “That’s not fair! That’s not how it’s done! Go get your own blog!” But I do hope that what Obama is doing really is as symbiotic as they want us to think, and will not get him KILT like Mohandas K. and Indira Gandhi and others I could think of, for views and policies that are a Threat to the Great Parasite that thrives on “The Enemy Threat, My Tribe Right Or Wrong” thinking.
Hugo, you and I might “converge,” just us two cerebrums, tete-a-tete, with maybe some conscious control over our limbic systems and enough peripheral vision to see “big pictures.”
But the heirs to Krupp and Speer, from whatever tribe you want to name, make their livings, and profitable ones, I might add (I almost said “good” livings — see what words can do?), from fomenting and extending and expanding and peddling the notions that those bipedal creatures across the lake or over in the next valley are not really human. And don’t worship the Good God, but that Evil Other Enemy Creature. And that We must Achieve Victory over them, because they are The Enemy. We must Succeed in our Battle Against The Forces of Evil. And in order to do so, “We” absolutely must have the very latest and most expensive and who cares if it works or not technology, to write our dry but glowing descriptions in Aviation Week and Defense Weekly and Mechanix Illustrated and such, about how these wonderful “programs” just are absolutely mission-critical to the Projection of Power to Negate Threats. And see how inventive we are in coming up with Threats! to be very Afraid of. Threat and Enemy thinking is either hard-wired, or so easy to mentally connect by “education” to that there limbic system. And so what if the species dies, so long as The Enemy dies before We do?
As a long-time well-indoctrinated “do my duty to God and My Country” Cub and Boy Scout, I let that limbic system drumbeat overcome my gentler notions and enlisted and did the Vietnam thing. I might have to protest that the military “warrior“ mindset, however “updated” or “civilized” or “modernized,” is focused on “victory,” even if the Generals and all the other President’s men can’t and won’t define what that word looks like in physical as opposed to psychic space. And teaching martial virtues in the schools ain’t likely to produce any of the kinds of thinking that are needed to recognize and foster the kinds of symbiotic relationships and thinking that might give the species a chance to survive a bit longer. As opposed to being able to really make a killing in the modern battle space with your team members.
I don’t know if Curtis LeMay or his opposite number in “the Kremlin” (what an Evil, Enemy-sounding word) would really have sent off a First Strike if they thought Their Side had enough “superiority” and he could bypass the “civilians” without recourse. LeMay certainly had no qualms about ordering and organizing the firebombing of cities to “degrade The Enemy’s war-fighting capabilities.” I know Edward Teller would have loved, for personal reasons, to kill every damn Commie over there. Those Creatures are The Enemy, and it is perfectly acceptable to do anything at all to The Enemy. Which is what those Commies and “extremists” and such. say about US.
LeMay and his successors still broach (all in the name of “proper war contingency planning, and VICTORY!”) using nukes on places like Hanoi and Haiphong and Baghdad and Pyongyang and for all I know, Sao Paolo and Rio and Moscow Petropavlovsk and maybe even Tel Aviv. That ain’t symbiosis, that’s, in my overused biological analogy, an immune system out of control, destroying villages in order to save them.
Now please don’t tell me that the contingency plans and target lists don’t cover “friendly” targets. Once humans start down that seductive path of thinking, the bureaucratic impulse takes over, especially if one’s career and post-military “industrial” employment benefit from pushing the cart along the same deepening rutted path. And the kinds of people who are attracted to this “patriotic” mutual suicide pact are found on every side of every tribal-national border, and they sneer at “civilians,” those not members of the Band of Brothers that lets old warriors who tried very hard to kill one another decades earlier sit down over a beer and discover that they are beyond all experience and teaching they have ever had, friends. And they view the rest of us as ciphers in the megadeath counts, “soft targets” to be collaterally damaged or “bombed back into the Stone Age.” After, of course, we have slaved to concentrate enough wealth for them to build their arsenals of “really cool stuff.”
And whether it’s “Christian” or “Muslim” or “Israeli” or “Godless Communist,” it’s all the same: as to those creatures Over There, why hey, man, that is The Enemy! Surely, say the militarists, you can see how evil and depraved and worthy of destruction They (or at least most of them) are, and how your only reasonable course is to fear their Threat enough to give us all your money so we can procure a Counter-threat! Maybe an Anti-anti-missile-missile-missile-missile -missile -missile -missile -missile –missile! So let’s kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out!
You are “interested in seeing the military stronger in some areas and leaner in others.” Is there any reason for that other than your sure and certain knowledge that Those People Over There have their own set of parasites who want to “us” as The Enemy what we want to be ready to do to them FIRST?
Sorry if this is all too “off topic,” and long and all. Like ol’ Kelly sorta said elsewhere, “That’s not fair! That’s not how it’s done! Go get your own blog!” But I do hope that what Obama is doing really is as symbiotic as they want us to think, and will not get him KILT like Mohandas K. and Indira Gandhi and others I could think of, for views and policies that are a Threat to the Great Parasite that thrives on “The Enemy Threat, My Tribe Right Or Wrong” thinking.
Hugo, you and I might “converge,” just us two cerebrums, tete-a-tete, with maybe some conscious control over our limbic systems and enough peripheral vision to see “big pictures.”
But the heirs to Krupp and Speer, from whatever tribe you want to name, make their livings, and profitable ones, I might add (I almost said “good” livings — see what words can do?), from fomenting and extending and expanding and peddling the notions that those bipedal creatures across the lake or over in the next valley are not really human. And don’t worship the Good God, but that Evil Other Enemy Creature. And that We must Achieve Victory over them, because they are The Enemy. We must Succeed in our Battle Against The Forces of Evil. And in order to do so, “We” absolutely must have the very latest and most expensive and who cares if it works or not technology, to write our dry but glowing descriptions in Aviation Week and Defense Weekly and Mechanix Illustrated and such, about how these wonderful “programs” just are absolutely mission-critical to the Projection of Power to Negate Threats. And see how inventive we are in coming up with Threats! to be very Afraid of. Threat and Enemy thinking is either hard-wired, or so easy to mentally connect by “education” to that there limbic system. And so what if the species dies, so long as The Enemy dies before We do?
As a long-time well-indoctrinated “do my duty to God and My Country” Cub and Boy Scout, I let that limbic system drumbeat overcome my gentler notions and enlisted and did the Vietnam thing. I might have to protest that the military “warrior“ mindset, however “updated” or “civilized” or “modernized,” is focused on “victory,” even if the Generals and all the other President’s men can’t and won’t define what that word looks like in physical as opposed to psychic space. And teaching martial virtues in the schools ain’t likely to produce any of the kinds of thinking that are needed to recognize and foster the kinds of symbiotic relationships and thinking that might give the species a chance to survive a bit longer. As opposed to being able to really make a killing in the modern battle space with your team members.
I don’t know if Curtis LeMay or his opposite number in “the Kremlin” (what an Evil, Enemy-sounding word) would really have sent off a First Strike if they thought Their Side had enough “superiority” and he could bypass the “civilians” without recourse. LeMay certainly had no qualms about ordering and organizing the firebombing of cities to “degrade The Enemy’s war-fighting capabilities.” I know Edward Teller would have loved, for personal reasons, to kill every damn Commie over there. Those Creatures are The Enemy, and it is perfectly acceptable to do anything at all to The Enemy. Which is what those Commies and “extremists” and such. say about US.
LeMay and his successors still broach (all in the name of “proper war contingency planning, and VICTORY!”) using nukes on places like Hanoi and Haiphong and Baghdad and Pyongyang and for all I know, Sao Paolo and Rio and Moscow Petropavlovsk and maybe even Tel Aviv. That ain’t symbiosis, that’s, in my overused biological analogy, an immune system out of control, destroying villages in order to save them.
Now please don’t tell me that the contingency plans and target lists don’t cover “friendly” targets. Once humans start down that seductive path of thinking, the bureaucratic impulse takes over, especially if one’s career and post-military “industrial” employment benefit from pushing the cart along the same deepening rutted path. And the kinds of people who are attracted to this “patriotic” mutual suicide pact are found on every side of every tribal-national border, and they sneer at “civilians,” those not members of the Band of Brothers that lets old warriors who tried very hard to kill one another decades earlier sit down over a beer and discover that they are beyond all experience and teaching they have ever had, friends. And they view the rest of us as ciphers in the megadeath counts, “soft targets” to be collaterally damaged or “bombed back into the Stone Age.” After, of course, we have slaved to concentrate enough wealth for them to build their arsenals of “really cool stuff.”
And whether it’s “Christian” or “Muslim” or “Israeli” or “Godless Communist,” it’s all the same: as to those creatures Over There, why hey, man, that is The Enemy! Surely, say the militarists, you can see how evil and depraved and worthy of destruction They (or at least most of them) are, and how your only reasonable course is to fear their Threat enough to give us all your money so we can procure a Counter-threat! Maybe an Anti-anti-missile-missile-missile-missile -missile -missile -missile -missile –missile! So let’s kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out!
You are “interested in seeing the military stronger in some areas and leaner in others.” Is there any reason for that other than your sure and certain knowledge that Those People Over There have their own set of parasites who want to “us” as The Enemy what we want to be ready to do to them FIRST?
Sorry if this is all too “off topic,” and long and all. Like ol’ Kelly sorta said elsewhere, “That’s not fair! That’s not how it’s done! Go get your own blog!” But I do hope that what Obama is doing really is as symbiotic as they want us to think, and will not get him KILT like Mohandas K. and Indira Gandhi and others I could think of, for views and policies that are a Threat to the Great Parasite that thrives on “The Enemy Threat, My Tribe Right Or Wrong” thinking.
> Up to 1949, the US had a War Department, and
> then in the PR coup of the century, “those
> people” renamed it the “Department of Defense,”
> because what sane person could be against defense?”
So perhaps a good start, for an administration interested in shrinking the M.I.C would be to rename it the ‘War department’ again?
> Up to 1949, the US had a War Department, and
> then in the PR coup of the century, “those
> people” renamed it the “Department of Defense,”
> because what sane person could be against defense?”
So perhaps a good start, for an administration interested in shrinking the M.I.C would be to rename it the ‘War department’ again?
> Up to 1949, the US had a War Department, and
> then in the PR coup of the century, “those
> people” renamed it the “Department of Defense,”
> because what sane person could be against defense?”
So perhaps a good start, for an administration interested in shrinking the M.I.C would be to rename it the ‘War department’ again?
Someone wrote…
>We need a military
As an exercise in debate, why?
Fairly recent events have demonstrated a need for a Coast Gaurd at least worthy of the name Navy to protect commerce.
But is an entire ‘Military’ capable of invasion and conquest neccessary at all?
In practical terms defence of the U.S mainland requires no such thing. It can only be used abroard.
Does anyone care to specualte on exactly what interests are usefully served abroard by the U.S military that an economically strong, healthy, trading U.S would not be better off without?
Someone wrote…
>We need a military
As an exercise in debate, why?
Fairly recent events have demonstrated a need for a Coast Gaurd at least worthy of the name Navy to protect commerce.
But is an entire ‘Military’ capable of invasion and conquest neccessary at all?
In practical terms defence of the U.S mainland requires no such thing. It can only be used abroard.
Does anyone care to specualte on exactly what interests are usefully served abroard by the U.S military that an economically strong, healthy, trading U.S would not be better off without?
Someone wrote…
>We need a military
As an exercise in debate, why?
Fairly recent events have demonstrated a need for a Coast Gaurd at least worthy of the name Navy to protect commerce.
But is an entire ‘Military’ capable of invasion and conquest neccessary at all?
In practical terms defence of the U.S mainland requires no such thing. It can only be used abroard.
Does anyone care to specualte on exactly what interests are usefully served abroard by the U.S military that an economically strong, healthy, trading U.S would not be better off without?
“I don’t know if Curtis LeMay or his opposite number in ‘the Kremlin’ (what an Evil, Enemy-sounding word) would really have sent off a First Strike if they thought Their Side had enough ‘superiority’ and he could bypass the ‘civilians’ without recourse.”
JTM, I don’t know about his opposite number, but I guarantee you that Gen. LeMay would have given the order were he not under civilian command. Teller, I’m not so sure. Really.
Your very valid thing about how a people first dehumanizes and then demonizes an opponent preliminary to destroying them–that was the point made by our unwelcome guest Kelly on a neighboring string in which she ran headlong into rhbee and Tennessee et al. She decried the intolerance of the tolerant. Her respondents could have done the same over against her, but nobody on the comfortable side of this blog was tolerantly (in my book) intolerant enough to do so.
You’re undoubtedly right, JTM, in that we’re all just fallout dust in the calculations of those who keep the codes. Those persons are made of the same stuff as we, however, and especially in the West they are freedom-loving, freedom-fighting, and more. (’tis a subtle point, but worth it: consider who’s got the other button in actual fact, while Hollywood makes the USA the foil over against such an unlikely humanitarian as Nikita Krushchev.)
You are right to decry American warmongering. You’ll always be right. You should never let up. But warmongering is different from warmaking. December 8, 1941, did not instance warmongering. In this context, however, you’re right to ask anew what standing the U.S. has to prosecute warfare for perceived, preemptive reasons. We should keep asking this question, constantly, to hold the warmakers to the wall.
“I don’t know if Curtis LeMay or his opposite number in ‘the Kremlin’ (what an Evil, Enemy-sounding word) would really have sent off a First Strike if they thought Their Side had enough ‘superiority’ and he could bypass the ‘civilians’ without recourse.”
JTM, I don’t know about his opposite number, but I guarantee you that Gen. LeMay would have given the order were he not under civilian command. Teller, I’m not so sure. Really.
Your very valid thing about how a people first dehumanizes and then demonizes an opponent preliminary to destroying them–that was the point made by our unwelcome guest Kelly on a neighboring string in which she ran headlong into rhbee and Tennessee et al. She decried the intolerance of the tolerant. Her respondents could have done the same over against her, but nobody on the comfortable side of this blog was tolerantly (in my book) intolerant enough to do so.
You’re undoubtedly right, JTM, in that we’re all just fallout dust in the calculations of those who keep the codes. Those persons are made of the same stuff as we, however, and especially in the West they are freedom-loving, freedom-fighting, and more. (’tis a subtle point, but worth it: consider who’s got the other button in actual fact, while Hollywood makes the USA the foil over against such an unlikely humanitarian as Nikita Krushchev.)
You are right to decry American warmongering. You’ll always be right. You should never let up. But warmongering is different from warmaking. December 8, 1941, did not instance warmongering. In this context, however, you’re right to ask anew what standing the U.S. has to prosecute warfare for perceived, preemptive reasons. We should keep asking this question, constantly, to hold the warmakers to the wall.
In pure costs terms, the Military Industrial Complex pales in comparison to the tragedy of 65 years olds being allowed to retire on Social Security.
Um. No, it doesn’t. Not even close.
In pure costs terms, the Military Industrial Complex pales in comparison to the tragedy of 65 years olds being allowed to retire on Social Security.
Um. No, it doesn’t. Not even close.
In pure costs terms, the Military Industrial Complex pales in comparison to the tragedy of 65 years olds being allowed to retire on Social Security.
Um. No, it doesn’t. Not even close.
In pure costs terms, the Military Industrial Complex pales in comparison to the tragedy of 65 years olds being allowed to retire on Social Security.
Um. No, it doesn’t. Not even close.
Fentex,
Just random thoughts:
…you say that “fairly recent events have demonstrated a need for a Coast Gaurd [sic] at least worthy of the name Navy to protect commerce”…
dot-dot-DASH-DASH…the Coast Guard has been placed under the directorate of the Deparment of Homeland Security, so that the Pentagon now has four sides…
…it is not now, nor was it before, an arm of the USN…
…the USMC is, though, and it still warrants one of the four remaining sidewalls of a five-sided complex…
…but the USMC “Can’t Get Around Much Anymore” (that’s Johnny Mercer) with a 280-ship Navy soon to be reduced to a 200-ship one that in 1989 was a 600-ship one…
…what do you call “invasion” and “conquest”?
…you ask rhetorically, “is an entire ‘Military’ capable of invasion and conquest neccessary at all?” so that you can decide that, “in practical terms defence of the U.S mainland requires no such thing.”
…Hey, I happen to dig Alaska, and especially Hawaii…
…to say nothing of American Samoa, the Marshalls, the Gilberts, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. Also all of our protectorates across the globe, and our farflung military bases and scientific stations…
Fentex,
Just random thoughts:
…you say that “fairly recent events have demonstrated a need for a Coast Gaurd [sic] at least worthy of the name Navy to protect commerce”…
dot-dot-DASH-DASH…the Coast Guard has been placed under the directorate of the Deparment of Homeland Security, so that the Pentagon now has four sides…
…it is not now, nor was it before, an arm of the USN…
…the USMC is, though, and it still warrants one of the four remaining sidewalls of a five-sided complex…
…but the USMC “Can’t Get Around Much Anymore” (that’s Johnny Mercer) with a 280-ship Navy soon to be reduced to a 200-ship one that in 1989 was a 600-ship one…
…what do you call “invasion” and “conquest”?
…you ask rhetorically, “is an entire ‘Military’ capable of invasion and conquest neccessary at all?” so that you can decide that, “in practical terms defence of the U.S mainland requires no such thing.”
…Hey, I happen to dig Alaska, and especially Hawaii…
…to say nothing of American Samoa, the Marshalls, the Gilberts, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. Also all of our protectorates across the globe, and our farflung military bases and scientific stations…
Fentex,
Just random thoughts:
…you say that “fairly recent events have demonstrated a need for a Coast Gaurd [sic] at least worthy of the name Navy to protect commerce”…
dot-dot-DASH-DASH…the Coast Guard has been placed under the directorate of the Deparment of Homeland Security, so that the Pentagon now has four sides…
…it is not now, nor was it before, an arm of the USN…
…the USMC is, though, and it still warrants one of the four remaining sidewalls of a five-sided complex…
…but the USMC “Can’t Get Around Much Anymore” (that’s Johnny Mercer) with a 280-ship Navy soon to be reduced to a 200-ship one that in 1989 was a 600-ship one…
…what do you call “invasion” and “conquest”?
…you ask rhetorically, “is an entire ‘Military’ capable of invasion and conquest neccessary at all?” so that you can decide that, “in practical terms defence of the U.S mainland requires no such thing.”
…Hey, I happen to dig Alaska, and especially Hawaii…
…to say nothing of American Samoa, the Marshalls, the Gilberts, Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. Also all of our protectorates across the globe, and our farflung military bases and scientific stations…
Hey guys, they just figured out the CA debt problem:
http://reason.org/blog/show/1003327.html
Hey guys, they just figured out the CA debt problem:
http://reason.org/blog/show/1003327.html
“Those persons are made of the same stuff as we, however, and especially in the West they are freedom-loving, freedom-fighting, and more.”
I’m with you on the first clause, but too much knowledge of history to buy the second. It’s one of those nice comfortable thoughts, though. We are “freedom-loving,” they are “fascist” or “terrorists” or whatever.
And Dec. 7 (and 8, for that matter), 1941, was a long time coming, for a lot of reasons, having to do with commercial combat over mercantilist access to markets and other peoples’ “natural resources” and the games that our betters or at least Biggers play with our lives. And there are any number of “interventions” by “the US” one could point to that put a big footnote and a bunch of asterisks behind any claim of US being particularly “freedom-loving.” And for just whom that “freedom,” one of those buzzzzzz words that buries in good-feeling noise a whole lot of inconvenient truths, is specially reserved. It sure ain’t for the minimum-wage burger flipper or Walmart greeter. Or the “hajji” or “camel jockey” or “sand ni___r” or “gook” or “slant” or any of those Other People “we” have been so busily “liberating” via weapons both smart and dumb, and doctrines and strategies and tactics mostly dumb. Like the Cubans, so they could get themselves under Battista and Giancana and Lansky and the other “boys.”
Or Chileans, or Nicaraguans, or Iranians who elected a leader who got offed and replaced, CIA-style, by the Shah (remember him?) . Read anything about the post-WW II histories of Italy and South Korea? All in the name of “freedom!”
As to who on the other side has the codes and buttons, I do recall reading that it was Kruschev who cranked the wheel of his Zil hard left to avoid the head-on, everyone-dead collision that Kennedy and his “systems” people said was the correct outcome of history. Some have argued that for all the corruption of the Soviet system, their “they pretend to pay us, so we pretend to work” generals were more honest about what was really going on than our own “which way is the revolving door, again? next to the executive restroom?” types. But hey, who’s counting in the elongated game of human idiocy?
But I wish I could just get it through my skull that “It ever was thus, and will change nae maer,” and that the safe course is to just go with the flow and as a small person, keep my head below the trench line and keep my mouth shut and buy stock in Raytheon and Boeing and L-M. Cuz they will have all the money, and Blackwater/Xe or equivalent to protect their interests here and abroad. There was a lot of “decrying of war-mongering” both pre- and post-9/11, and to this day, has it made a damn bit of difference?
And do I disremember, or did that ultimate patriot and hero, “tank man,” who stopped a file of People’s Army Soviet knockoffs on their way to blast REAL freedom-loving people in Tiananmen Square, not get killed for his trouble after the fact? “Give me liberty, or give me death!” without his fingers crossed.
“Those persons are made of the same stuff as we, however, and especially in the West they are freedom-loving, freedom-fighting, and more.”
I’m with you on the first clause, but too much knowledge of history to buy the second. It’s one of those nice comfortable thoughts, though. We are “freedom-loving,” they are “fascist” or “terrorists” or whatever.
And Dec. 7 (and 8, for that matter), 1941, was a long time coming, for a lot of reasons, having to do with commercial combat over mercantilist access to markets and other peoples’ “natural resources” and the games that our betters or at least Biggers play with our lives. And there are any number of “interventions” by “the US” one could point to that put a big footnote and a bunch of asterisks behind any claim of US being particularly “freedom-loving.” And for just whom that “freedom,” one of those buzzzzzz words that buries in good-feeling noise a whole lot of inconvenient truths, is specially reserved. It sure ain’t for the minimum-wage burger flipper or Walmart greeter. Or the “hajji” or “camel jockey” or “sand ni___r” or “gook” or “slant” or any of those Other People “we” have been so busily “liberating” via weapons both smart and dumb, and doctrines and strategies and tactics mostly dumb. Like the Cubans, so they could get themselves under Battista and Giancana and Lansky and the other “boys.”
Or Chileans, or Nicaraguans, or Iranians who elected a leader who got offed and replaced, CIA-style, by the Shah (remember him?) . Read anything about the post-WW II histories of Italy and South Korea? All in the name of “freedom!”
As to who on the other side has the codes and buttons, I do recall reading that it was Kruschev who cranked the wheel of his Zil hard left to avoid the head-on, everyone-dead collision that Kennedy and his “systems” people said was the correct outcome of history. Some have argued that for all the corruption of the Soviet system, their “they pretend to pay us, so we pretend to work” generals were more honest about what was really going on than our own “which way is the revolving door, again? next to the executive restroom?” types. But hey, who’s counting in the elongated game of human idiocy?
But I wish I could just get it through my skull that “It ever was thus, and will change nae maer,” and that the safe course is to just go with the flow and as a small person, keep my head below the trench line and keep my mouth shut and buy stock in Raytheon and Boeing and L-M. Cuz they will have all the money, and Blackwater/Xe or equivalent to protect their interests here and abroad. There was a lot of “decrying of war-mongering” both pre- and post-9/11, and to this day, has it made a damn bit of difference?
And do I disremember, or did that ultimate patriot and hero, “tank man,” who stopped a file of People’s Army Soviet knockoffs on their way to blast REAL freedom-loving people in Tiananmen Square, not get killed for his trouble after the fact? “Give me liberty, or give me death!” without his fingers crossed.
JTM,
I enumerated the 8th, not the 7th, for a reason.
JTM,
I enumerated the 8th, not the 7th, for a reason.
JTM, let’s shake hands on something: from the age of 14 years, which was a long time ago, I’ve been moved–at times, fascinated, at other times obsessed–by the causes of American wars. Often those causes were spurious; so spurious that, in some cases, the causes were not identified until post-bellum.
This same question, the challenge to our government to justify its wars, obviously animates you as it does some of the other here. In most cases I can’t guess how old any one of you is, but I’d like you, for one, to know that however old or young you may be, this line of inquiry describes a highly legitimate course of scholarly study in which advanced degrees can lead to the opportunity to impinge government decision in the future.
…unless you expect to lay lo whilst the next USS Maine or the next Lusitania blows up, or the next Tonkin Gulf claim gets trumped up, or the next yellow cake fails to show up…
JTM, let’s shake hands on something: from the age of 14 years, which was a long time ago, I’ve been moved–at times, fascinated, at other times obsessed–by the causes of American wars. Often those causes were spurious; so spurious that, in some cases, the causes were not identified until post-bellum.
This same question, the challenge to our government to justify its wars, obviously animates you as it does some of the other here. In most cases I can’t guess how old any one of you is, but I’d like you, for one, to know that however old or young you may be, this line of inquiry describes a highly legitimate course of scholarly study in which advanced degrees can lead to the opportunity to impinge government decision in the future.
…unless you expect to lay lo whilst the next USS Maine or the next Lusitania blows up, or the next Tonkin Gulf claim gets trumped up, or the next yellow cake fails to show up…
JTM, let’s shake hands on something: from the age of 14 years, which was a long time ago, I’ve been moved–at times, fascinated, at other times obsessed–by the causes of American wars. Often those causes were spurious; so spurious that, in some cases, the causes were not identified until post-bellum.
This same question, the challenge to our government to justify its wars, obviously animates you as it does some of the other here. In most cases I can’t guess how old any one of you is, but I’d like you, for one, to know that however old or young you may be, this line of inquiry describes a highly legitimate course of scholarly study in which advanced degrees can lead to the opportunity to impinge government decision in the future.
…unless you expect to lay lo whilst the next USS Maine or the next Lusitania blows up, or the next Tonkin Gulf claim gets trumped up, or the next yellow cake fails to show up…
JTM-Madison Avenue was involved with the MIC from the get go in 1948. They specialize in language that confuses.
JTM-Madison Avenue was involved with the MIC from the get go in 1948. They specialize in language that confuses.
JTM-Madison Avenue was involved with the MIC from the get go in 1948. They specialize in language that confuses.
JTM-Madison Avenue was involved with the MIC from the get go in 1948. They specialize in language that confuses.
Hugo- I think your first post in this series was really poignant and on the mark. I disagree about Obama visiting the Saudis. Their money to help develop Palestine is critical.
Hugo- I think your first post in this series was really poignant and on the mark. I disagree about Obama visiting the Saudis. Their money to help develop Palestine is critical.
Hugo- I think your first post in this series was really poignant and on the mark. I disagree about Obama visiting the Saudis. Their money to help develop Palestine is critical.
Hugo- I think your first post in this series was really poignant and on the mark. I disagree about Obama visiting the Saudis. Their money to help develop Palestine is critical.
Jon, Gross speaks again:
http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2009/IO+June+2009+Staying+Rich+in+the+New+Normal+Gross.htm
“Five more years of those 10% of GDP deficits will quickly raise America’s debt to GDP level to over 100%, a level that the rating services – and more importantly the markets – recognize as a point of no return. At 100% debt to GDP, the interest on the debt might amount to 5% or 6% of annual output alone, and it quickly compounds as the interest upon interest becomes as heavy as those “sixteen tons” in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s famous song of a West Virginia coal miner. “You load sixteen tons and whattaya get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” Pretty soon you need 17, 18, 19 tons just to stay even and that describes the potential fate of the United States as the deficits string out into the Obama and other future Administrations. The fact is that supply-side economics was a partial con job from the get-go. Granted, from the 80% marginal tax rate that existed in the U.S. and the U.K. into the late 60s and 70s, lower taxes do incentivize productive investment and entrepreneurial risk-taking. But below 40% or so, it just pads the pockets of the rich and destabilizes the country’s financial balance sheet.”
This is categorically the paramount issue of the day. It CANNOT be solved bitching about the military, which is the only budget item you ever even speak of… it is CARELESS and dates you.
We’re at a point where this can no longer be about just taxing the rich. There isn’t enough money there.
Let me ask my big question of everyone here: if you KNEW that EVERYONE in society was going to pay higher taxes for the services being provided… the Medicare, the roads, the schools, the alternative energy you want – would you still want all those things?
Because even if we raise the upper limit on taxes until the point where it decreases federal receipts THERE WONT BE ENOUGH $ to cover this spending.
I’m serious here. I don’t know the answer and I really want to understand from you all… when it comes towards creating this utopia you imagine, where do you come down on this hard choice:
1. Only raising taxes on the rich, and if there isn’t enough money – society gets less services.
2. If we have to tax the non-rich, so be it, we MUST have these services.
Jon, Gross speaks again:
http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2009/IO+June+2009+Staying+Rich+in+the+New+Normal+Gross.htm
“Five more years of those 10% of GDP deficits will quickly raise America’s debt to GDP level to over 100%, a level that the rating services – and more importantly the markets – recognize as a point of no return. At 100% debt to GDP, the interest on the debt might amount to 5% or 6% of annual output alone, and it quickly compounds as the interest upon interest becomes as heavy as those “sixteen tons” in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s famous song of a West Virginia coal miner. “You load sixteen tons and whattaya get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” Pretty soon you need 17, 18, 19 tons just to stay even and that describes the potential fate of the United States as the deficits string out into the Obama and other future Administrations. The fact is that supply-side economics was a partial con job from the get-go. Granted, from the 80% marginal tax rate that existed in the U.S. and the U.K. into the late 60s and 70s, lower taxes do incentivize productive investment and entrepreneurial risk-taking. But below 40% or so, it just pads the pockets of the rich and destabilizes the country’s financial balance sheet.”
This is categorically the paramount issue of the day. It CANNOT be solved bitching about the military, which is the only budget item you ever even speak of… it is CARELESS and dates you.
We’re at a point where this can no longer be about just taxing the rich. There isn’t enough money there.
Let me ask my big question of everyone here: if you KNEW that EVERYONE in society was going to pay higher taxes for the services being provided… the Medicare, the roads, the schools, the alternative energy you want – would you still want all those things?
Because even if we raise the upper limit on taxes until the point where it decreases federal receipts THERE WONT BE ENOUGH $ to cover this spending.
I’m serious here. I don’t know the answer and I really want to understand from you all… when it comes towards creating this utopia you imagine, where do you come down on this hard choice:
1. Only raising taxes on the rich, and if there isn’t enough money – society gets less services.
2. If we have to tax the non-rich, so be it, we MUST have these services.
Jon, Gross speaks again:
http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2009/IO+June+2009+Staying+Rich+in+the+New+Normal+Gross.htm
“Five more years of those 10% of GDP deficits will quickly raise America’s debt to GDP level to over 100%, a level that the rating services – and more importantly the markets – recognize as a point of no return. At 100% debt to GDP, the interest on the debt might amount to 5% or 6% of annual output alone, and it quickly compounds as the interest upon interest becomes as heavy as those “sixteen tons” in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s famous song of a West Virginia coal miner. “You load sixteen tons and whattaya get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” Pretty soon you need 17, 18, 19 tons just to stay even and that describes the potential fate of the United States as the deficits string out into the Obama and other future Administrations. The fact is that supply-side economics was a partial con job from the get-go. Granted, from the 80% marginal tax rate that existed in the U.S. and the U.K. into the late 60s and 70s, lower taxes do incentivize productive investment and entrepreneurial risk-taking. But below 40% or so, it just pads the pockets of the rich and destabilizes the country’s financial balance sheet.”
This is categorically the paramount issue of the day. It CANNOT be solved bitching about the military, which is the only budget item you ever even speak of… it is CARELESS and dates you.
We’re at a point where this can no longer be about just taxing the rich. There isn’t enough money there.
Let me ask my big question of everyone here: if you KNEW that EVERYONE in society was going to pay higher taxes for the services being provided… the Medicare, the roads, the schools, the alternative energy you want – would you still want all those things?
Because even if we raise the upper limit on taxes until the point where it decreases federal receipts THERE WONT BE ENOUGH $ to cover this spending.
I’m serious here. I don’t know the answer and I really want to understand from you all… when it comes towards creating this utopia you imagine, where do you come down on this hard choice:
1. Only raising taxes on the rich, and if there isn’t enough money – society gets less services.
2. If we have to tax the non-rich, so be it, we MUST have these services.
Jon, Gross speaks again:
http://www.pimco.com/LeftNav/Featured+Market+Commentary/IO/2009/IO+June+2009+Staying+Rich+in+the+New+Normal+Gross.htm
“Five more years of those 10% of GDP deficits will quickly raise America’s debt to GDP level to over 100%, a level that the rating services – and more importantly the markets – recognize as a point of no return. At 100% debt to GDP, the interest on the debt might amount to 5% or 6% of annual output alone, and it quickly compounds as the interest upon interest becomes as heavy as those “sixteen tons” in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s famous song of a West Virginia coal miner. “You load sixteen tons and whattaya get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” Pretty soon you need 17, 18, 19 tons just to stay even and that describes the potential fate of the United States as the deficits string out into the Obama and other future Administrations. The fact is that supply-side economics was a partial con job from the get-go. Granted, from the 80% marginal tax rate that existed in the U.S. and the U.K. into the late 60s and 70s, lower taxes do incentivize productive investment and entrepreneurial risk-taking. But below 40% or so, it just pads the pockets of the rich and destabilizes the country’s financial balance sheet.”
This is categorically the paramount issue of the day. It CANNOT be solved bitching about the military, which is the only budget item you ever even speak of… it is CARELESS and dates you.
We’re at a point where this can no longer be about just taxing the rich. There isn’t enough money there.
Let me ask my big question of everyone here: if you KNEW that EVERYONE in society was going to pay higher taxes for the services being provided… the Medicare, the roads, the schools, the alternative energy you want – would you still want all those things?
Because even if we raise the upper limit on taxes until the point where it decreases federal receipts THERE WONT BE ENOUGH $ to cover this spending.
I’m serious here. I don’t know the answer and I really want to understand from you all… when it comes towards creating this utopia you imagine, where do you come down on this hard choice:
1. Only raising taxes on the rich, and if there isn’t enough money – society gets less services.
2. If we have to tax the non-rich, so be it, we MUST have these services.
Nag, nag, nag…
Nag, nag, nag…
Nag, nag, nag…
America has changed from a rough and ready militia ready to defend house and hearth to a spend and forget MIC ready to ensure the American lifestyle persists.
There lies the chasm between our ideals and our goals.
America has changed from a rough and ready militia ready to defend house and hearth to a spend and forget MIC ready to ensure the American lifestyle persists.
There lies the chasm between our ideals and our goals.
America has changed from a rough and ready militia ready to defend house and hearth to a spend and forget MIC ready to ensure the American lifestyle persists.
There lies the chasm between our ideals and our goals.
Yes, len.
Yes, len.
Yes, len.
Yes, len.
go for it, JTM.
go for it, JTM.
go for it, JTM.
go for it, JTM.
The MIC builds weapons of mass destruction and then has to find a way to get someone to use them to justify their purchase. People on Social Security, for the most part, are not using their efforts to destroy innocent life or the world.
I remember when I was in the service we were constantly focused on how better to destroy.
Yep, we could easily raise the retirement age and that would be more realistic, but we don’t need more weapons.
The MIC builds weapons of mass destruction and then has to find a way to get someone to use them to justify their purchase. People on Social Security, for the most part, are not using their efforts to destroy innocent life or the world.
I remember when I was in the service we were constantly focused on how better to destroy.
Yep, we could easily raise the retirement age and that would be more realistic, but we don’t need more weapons.
Meanwhile, I’d like to just say that I am totally impressed with Obama. It’s such a contrast to go from Bushisms to speeches that will actually be studied by historians for making a difference.
Increasingly, at least in the area of speechifyin’, I’m seeing the comparison to Lincoln to be more than just self promotion or hype.
And for all the folks that say “Words, just words; where’s the beef?” remember a chief exec does more by setting the tone of the administration than all the rest of his/her actions.
Meanwhile, I’d like to just say that I am totally impressed with Obama. It’s such a contrast to go from Bushisms to speeches that will actually be studied by historians for making a difference.
Increasingly, at least in the area of speechifyin’, I’m seeing the comparison to Lincoln to be more than just self promotion or hype.
And for all the folks that say “Words, just words; where’s the beef?” remember a chief exec does more by setting the tone of the administration than all the rest of his/her actions.
Meanwhile, I’d like to just say that I am totally impressed with Obama. It’s such a contrast to go from Bushisms to speeches that will actually be studied by historians for making a difference.
Increasingly, at least in the area of speechifyin’, I’m seeing the comparison to Lincoln to be more than just self promotion or hype.
And for all the folks that say “Words, just words; where’s the beef?” remember a chief exec does more by setting the tone of the administration than all the rest of his/her actions.
Meanwhile, I’d like to just say that I am totally impressed with Obama. It’s such a contrast to go from Bushisms to speeches that will actually be studied by historians for making a difference.
Increasingly, at least in the area of speechifyin’, I’m seeing the comparison to Lincoln to be more than just self promotion or hype.
And for all the folks that say “Words, just words; where’s the beef?” remember a chief exec does more by setting the tone of the administration than all the rest of his/her actions.
By the way, folks, has anyone ever asked what the impact on the economy would be if the prices for commercial software licenses were astronomical given actual production costs?
Go try to buy map data. Find out what is happening in that market, then look at the cloud architectures and ask yourself if the software industry isn’t headed for an implosion or a shakeout where suddenly the American technological industry some see as our economic salvation isn’t about to do precisely what our auto industry just did?
Tweets don’t print maps. Maps are at the core of many of the healthier startups. It isn’t the raw layers that do the work; it is the application layers but as the costs of the raw layers continue to skyrocket one wonders just how much innovation we can afford to keep those Silly Valley lifestyles at their current level.
By the way, folks, has anyone ever asked what the impact on the economy would be if the prices for commercial software licenses were astronomical given actual production costs?
Go try to buy map data. Find out what is happening in that market, then look at the cloud architectures and ask yourself if the software industry isn’t headed for an implosion or a shakeout where suddenly the American technological industry some see as our economic salvation isn’t about to do precisely what our auto industry just did?
Tweets don’t print maps. Maps are at the core of many of the healthier startups. It isn’t the raw layers that do the work; it is the application layers but as the costs of the raw layers continue to skyrocket one wonders just how much innovation we can afford to keep those Silly Valley lifestyles at their current level.
By the way, folks, has anyone ever asked what the impact on the economy would be if the prices for commercial software licenses were astronomical given actual production costs?
Go try to buy map data. Find out what is happening in that market, then look at the cloud architectures and ask yourself if the software industry isn’t headed for an implosion or a shakeout where suddenly the American technological industry some see as our economic salvation isn’t about to do precisely what our auto industry just did?
Tweets don’t print maps. Maps are at the core of many of the healthier startups. It isn’t the raw layers that do the work; it is the application layers but as the costs of the raw layers continue to skyrocket one wonders just how much innovation we can afford to keep those Silly Valley lifestyles at their current level.
Jim you are right.
If Jon’s going to be demanding an end to the MIC, he should be making the argument about “lives” or “peace” – my problem is that he always wants to act like “savings” is a big deal. And it ain’t.
It gives people the sense we aren’t going to have to seriously redo SS and Medicare. And for all the writing Jon does here – he NEVER really puts the pencil to the paper and starts cutting cuts / raising taxes.
NOTE: I asked a simple question, you all could answer it.
Len, I’ve licensed a bunch of map data – it wasn’t very expensive. What kind of app are you building?
Jim you are right.
If Jon’s going to be demanding an end to the MIC, he should be making the argument about “lives” or “peace” – my problem is that he always wants to act like “savings” is a big deal. And it ain’t.
It gives people the sense we aren’t going to have to seriously redo SS and Medicare. And for all the writing Jon does here – he NEVER really puts the pencil to the paper and starts cutting cuts / raising taxes.
NOTE: I asked a simple question, you all could answer it.
Len, I’ve licensed a bunch of map data – it wasn’t very expensive. What kind of app are you building?
Jim you are right.
If Jon’s going to be demanding an end to the MIC, he should be making the argument about “lives” or “peace” – my problem is that he always wants to act like “savings” is a big deal. And it ain’t.
It gives people the sense we aren’t going to have to seriously redo SS and Medicare. And for all the writing Jon does here – he NEVER really puts the pencil to the paper and starts cutting cuts / raising taxes.
NOTE: I asked a simple question, you all could answer it.
Len, I’ve licensed a bunch of map data – it wasn’t very expensive. What kind of app are you building?
@morgan: for this particular app, the landbase works with housing layers. It has to be precise.
Expense is relative to the contract but what we are seeing is double and even triple digit cost increases. To add pain, the data can’t be purchased outright. Given Google, the suppliers are switching to either bundled deals (buy stuff you don’t need) and subscription (we rent you the data, tell you what you can do with it, and claim any IP you may create as a result).
The lawyers are taking over and as a result, costs are skyrocketing. It’s become a goombah process. Software costs too much and the valley is putting itself out of business if the trends continue.
@morgan: for this particular app, the landbase works with housing layers. It has to be precise.
Expense is relative to the contract but what we are seeing is double and even triple digit cost increases. To add pain, the data can’t be purchased outright. Given Google, the suppliers are switching to either bundled deals (buy stuff you don’t need) and subscription (we rent you the data, tell you what you can do with it, and claim any IP you may create as a result).
The lawyers are taking over and as a result, costs are skyrocketing. It’s become a goombah process. Software costs too much and the valley is putting itself out of business if the trends continue.
@morgan: for this particular app, the landbase works with housing layers. It has to be precise.
Expense is relative to the contract but what we are seeing is double and even triple digit cost increases. To add pain, the data can’t be purchased outright. Given Google, the suppliers are switching to either bundled deals (buy stuff you don’t need) and subscription (we rent you the data, tell you what you can do with it, and claim any IP you may create as a result).
The lawyers are taking over and as a result, costs are skyrocketing. It’s become a goombah process. Software costs too much and the valley is putting itself out of business if the trends continue.
We actually ended building everything on google maps, and buying the data we wanted.
Anyways…
Guys you all should read this, it’s about the VA hospital system.
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=Pe9-adfujDgC&dq=%22best+care+anywhere%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=_jJDTTF3_9&sig=etf5VfVJlbdE0ca_0PNWMls0Hzo#PPP1,M1
We actually ended building everything on google maps, and buying the data we wanted.
Anyways…
Guys you all should read this, it’s about the VA hospital system.
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=Pe9-adfujDgC&dq=%22best+care+anywhere%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=_jJDTTF3_9&sig=etf5VfVJlbdE0ca_0PNWMls0Hzo#PPP1,M1
No, Morgan, it’s that you raised another straw man, because you couldn’t deal with the issue to hand. The discussion was around whether or not the MIC could be justified – which flows from the headline topic here, about foreign policy, the Middle East, and the instruments of influence – and you attempted to turn it into another, different discussion, about health care and social security. which are domestic issues. Either of those subjects is worthy of attention, perhaps in another thread, but your inability to deal with any issue you find uncomfortable by diverting it to your hobby horse subjects is a little tedious. For you to criticise Jon for avoiding a hard subject is therefore somewhat humorous.
In some ways it resembles having a discussion with a five year old:
q: “are you going to pick up your toys?”
a: “look, there’s a blue car.”
No, Morgan, it’s that you raised another straw man, because you couldn’t deal with the issue to hand. The discussion was around whether or not the MIC could be justified – which flows from the headline topic here, about foreign policy, the Middle East, and the instruments of influence – and you attempted to turn it into another, different discussion, about health care and social security. which are domestic issues. Either of those subjects is worthy of attention, perhaps in another thread, but your inability to deal with any issue you find uncomfortable by diverting it to your hobby horse subjects is a little tedious. For you to criticise Jon for avoiding a hard subject is therefore somewhat humorous.
In some ways it resembles having a discussion with a five year old:
q: “are you going to pick up your toys?”
a: “look, there’s a blue car.”
“By just requiring everyone to work until they are 75, we could build how many new schools?”
We’ll require people to work until they’re 75, we’ll continue to take Social Security that they’ll never get, and then the next gang of slimey smooth-talking shysters will steal all of their savings.
The schools will continue to rot. It is risible to suggest that delaying Social Security payments will magically result in better schools. The money will go to Halliburton cronies in the next Great Patriotic War. Plus more tax cuts for the wealthy.
Right after that, the next gang of Morgans will declare that, for purely pious, humanitarian reasons, it is necessary that they work until they are 90.
It will be great times for the yacht industry, however.
This seems to me to be a recurring problem with our friend Morgan. He has what we used to call a one track mind.
Y’see, the thing is that it’s all about just a few words: “Consumer” and “producer,” and the real prisoner of war, “citizen.” We are taught, endlessly, to categorize ourselves as “consumers.” “We don’t have a recession from the impoverishment of the citizenry, It’s all because they aren’t spending their last bucks buying more Chinese electronic-toy shit and houses at grotesquely inflated prices and oil whose price is being pumped up by continued unregulated speculation (among other forces.)
So the MIC is about “preserving our American lifestyle?” Whose? Morgan’s? Or that of some dedicated teacher (NOT “educator”) who’s just been “furloughed” because, “we” are told, “ we” and our personal bad habits are just as responsible as Bear Stearns and AIG and Bernanke et al. for the bubble that just popped and “our” economy won’t survive until and unless “we” pump a trillion or three of debt dollars, Funny Munny, into the vacant vaults of “the financial community?” Munny that will eventually have to be “backed” by SOMETHING of an actual, put-your-hands-on-it, sort that you can eat or drink or wear or live in, to be produced WHEN, and HOW?
Maybe the MIC “preserves our American lifestyle and that magical-thinking concept, freedom” in the same way that a tapeworm doesn’t kill the infected person until after he or she has shat out enough cysts to keep the tapeworm population healthy. Tapeworm can’t live without a nice warm gut to lie up in, stealing nutrition from the “host.” It doesn’t really need a brain or lungs or even a circulatory system, it just absorbs right through its “skin” the stuff that should be turning into muscle and nerve and even brain cells in the healthy kid who might become something useful to the whole species. And the sap supporting the tapeworm doesn’t even know it’s there until the barbed “head” pokes out of his nose and he realizes that’s not just any old booger, or he happens to notice a broken-off segment or some odd-looking little white things in his excrement. In addition to the wasting of his body and that “sense of malaise.”
People here, of the liberal persuasion, are too polite. Morgan and, as he would likely say about others, his “ilk,” are like the tapeworm. They eat our energies and wealth, and emit noxious little copies of themselves and now will cyst up and wait to get ingested by more hosts, to continue the cycle. Think the “conservatives” are “defeated?” Like the tapeworm, they seem to just be programmed to go on making more tapeworms. No possible incentive to evolve to a positive-contributing species, and because of the way they hide inside our bellies, we can’t get a clear consistent view of the damage they slowly do. It takes a somewhat expensive medical test to detect tapeworms’ presence, one that a lot of insurances don’t cover and that those living on the edge and having no insurance can’t afford, and in other nations hag-ridden by their kleptocratic militarist dictators, there’s no remedy at all.
And Hugo, my schtick about the MIC is not hardly exclusive to the US of A’s version. These people are ALL sophisticated (look up the OLD definition of that word) parasites, murderers, rapists, thieves, telling the productive rest of us that we have to give up our livelihoods and “freedom” for “security” across the divides that we tribal types are only too happy to “trust” them to “defend.”
And the schools will rot for a gazillion reasons, including lack of resources bled off to build for MLB franchise owners with public money, great big fucking BASEBALL STADIUMS and such, and lousy parents and “educators,” and teaching to “standardized” tests, and whether it’s intentionally or ignorantly, the decline and destruction of teaching “citizenship” in favor of how to use a credit card. Or descent into the forms we call madrassas, teaching ritualized hatreds and perverse notions of “spirituality,” because the male chauvinist macho impulse that brings us monotheism is ascendent.
Ladies, any of you remember “Lysistrata?”
Even monkeys and typewriters sometimes produce useful text. Morgan, thanks for the cite I reproduce here, to Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours, By Phillip Longman.
I have not read the book beyond the intro yet, but as a Vietnam vet getting VA care, I have to say the premise and obvservations are exactly right.
Thanks for that nugget amidst the dross.
ROFL.
We tapeworms you silly sot are simply trying to protect our young. And while we love good old mom and dad, we’ve noticed that their 60 year old crowd certainly aren’t as hearty as the 85 yr old crowd – my grandma and grandpa.
More to the point, Jon’s boomers are the fattest parasites this country has ever seen. PERIOD. THE END. There is no difference between Jon and Bush. Politics is a false dichotomy. Same age, same sin. Obama’s only potential saving grace is lessening their death grip on our purse strings.
The GALL of stupid hippie old men acting like they are worried about the country, but NEVER really talking about what the boomers can sacrifice themselves, what they can do without is DISGUSTING.
Yes. We need to really consider a VA solution. PLEASE READ IT. And when you get done (it is short), read this discussion (all 5 pages):
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200801u/boomer-retirement-roundtable
There are some awful social effects from the aging boomer population, and it is imperative that the people having the discussion – the people making the decisions – are under 50. The older guys and gals, all of them, no matter what party, no matter what religion, need to shut up and see what the future decides.
I’m not being mean spirited. I’m not being harsh. I’m just the guy who will write your obituaries and you better fucking hope you leave a good impression. Because if not, when you are dead, NOTHING you’ve done will in your heyday will save you. Your great great grand children will spit on your graves when I’m done. And you won’t be around to defend yourselves. Beware.
Dan, my daughters are expected to live to be 105. So please shut up. When the next Morgan shows up and pushes retirement to 90 – so be it.
We should not be teaching people to expect to spend 10+ years at the end of their life not working. Don’t be retarded. There is a sane middle ground. A sane fairness. And soon enough, 75 years old is just about right.
Work gives people purpose. For all your proletarian bullshit, you can’t get around this fact. Work is a postive way to keep the elderly integrated in our system.
You are not their savior. You are Nurse Cratchet.
@Morgan-
You’re wrong – the banks are the fattest parasites – and getting fatter – at least so we are told…
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=alC3LxSjomZ8
Still more BS from the DC-WallStreet crowd.
“Let me ask my big question of everyone here: if you KNEW that EVERYONE in society was going to pay higher taxes for the services being provided… the Medicare, the roads, the schools, the alternative energy you want – would you still want all those things?”
Morgan we all are going to pay higher and higher taxes whether we want to or not. But yes, is my answer. You get what you pay for or as Heilein put it TANSTAAFL.
“Let me ask my big question of everyone here: if you KNEW that EVERYONE in society was going to pay higher taxes for the services being provided… the Medicare, the roads, the schools, the alternative energy you want – would you still want all those things?”
Morgan we all are going to pay higher and higher taxes whether we want to or not. But yes, is my answer. You get what you pay for or as Heilein put it TANSTAAFL.
“Let me ask my big question of everyone here: if you KNEW that EVERYONE in society was going to pay higher taxes for the services being provided… the Medicare, the roads, the schools, the alternative energy you want – would you still want all those things?”
Morgan we all are going to pay higher and higher taxes whether we want to or not. But yes, is my answer. You get what you pay for or as Heilein put it TANSTAAFL.
Yes, isn’t that the pipe dream where everyone ends up happily ever after and dancing? Oh Erehwon, my Erehwon.
Yes, isn’t that the pipe dream where everyone ends up happily ever after and dancing? Oh Erehwon, my Erehwon.
Yes, isn’t that the pipe dream where everyone ends up happily ever after and dancing? Oh Erehwon, my Erehwon.
Ah, but then, Morg, where is the choice in life? Where’s the free market, free will, that lets us each decide when and where to retire or not? Some choose the govment’s tit, other’s the Bush alternative 401 where’d my private retirement fund go but either way, for now at least, we got to choose. At least, or until, we tried to double dip from both those retirements we’d somehow earned only to find that because of some very retired fat cat politicos the rest of us no longer can even retroactively.
Meanwhile, here’s young Morgan claiming because his generation is following a long line of others, because his generation is really only concerned about itself (see JTM’s tapeworm analogy), because his generation has bought into the meme that everyone can be a million, billionaire just by wanting to be and it is really not fair (boo hoo hoo) that those that have gone before and worked their butts off for the opportunity to semi-retire at least though the god’s know our kids never let us just be should rob them of their right (?) to keep it all.
Ah, but then, Morg, where is the choice in life? Where’s the free market, free will, that lets us each decide when and where to retire or not? Some choose the govment’s tit, other’s the Bush alternative 401 where’d my private retirement fund go but either way, for now at least, we got to choose. At least, or until, we tried to double dip from both those retirements we’d somehow earned only to find that because of some very retired fat cat politicos the rest of us no longer can even retroactively.
Meanwhile, here’s young Morgan claiming because his generation is following a long line of others, because his generation is really only concerned about itself (see JTM’s tapeworm analogy), because his generation has bought into the meme that everyone can be a million, billionaire just by wanting to be and it is really not fair (boo hoo hoo) that those that have gone before and worked their butts off for the opportunity to semi-retire at least though the god’s know our kids never let us just be should rob them of their right (?) to keep it all.
rhbee, you’re gonna have to bring more than that. a market with a government tit, isn’t free.
Let’s remember, I’m not asking to retire early – you are. And the answer is… NO.
Go read the links above PLEASE – we have a real problem, it isn’t the deficit, or health care, or welfare – the core issue is baby boomers. And if we just push back benefits for them, restructure how they live their lives – the problem goes away.
rhbee, you’re gonna have to bring more than that. a market with a government tit, isn’t free.
Let’s remember, I’m not asking to retire early – you are. And the answer is… NO.
Go read the links above PLEASE – we have a real problem, it isn’t the deficit, or health care, or welfare – the core issue is baby boomers. And if we just push back benefits for them, restructure how they live their lives – the problem goes away.
rhbee, you’re gonna have to bring more than that. a market with a government tit, isn’t free.
Let’s remember, I’m not asking to retire early – you are. And the answer is… NO.
Go read the links above PLEASE – we have a real problem, it isn’t the deficit, or health care, or welfare – the core issue is baby boomers. And if we just push back benefits for them, restructure how they live their lives – the problem goes away.
Morgan-Would you stop sounding like a fucking fascist. Why don’t you just propose mandatory euthanasia?
The subject of this post was the Military Industrial Complex. Stop hijacking the posts to your own sick agenda.
I know you are just trying to be provocative, but once more you are sliding into the “SCREAMING TROLL” position on this blog.
It’s not pretty.
Morgan-Would you stop sounding like a fucking fascist. Why don’t you just propose mandatory euthanasia?
The subject of this post was the Military Industrial Complex. Stop hijacking the posts to your own sick agenda.
I know you are just trying to be provocative, but once more you are sliding into the “SCREAMING TROLL” position on this blog.
It’s not pretty.
Sorry, should have done this earlier. I don’t tend to side with those petro sheiks, I side with the person who gives all indication that he intends to resolve this “we’re right, no we’re right” tension filled drama in our actual life time. And like quite a few of our hopeful yet doubtful citizens, I want to give him every chance to succeed.
Sorry, should have done this earlier. I don’t tend to side with those petro sheiks, I side with the person who gives all indication that he intends to resolve this “we’re right, no we’re right” tension filled drama in our actual life time. And like quite a few of our hopeful yet doubtful citizens, I want to give him every chance to succeed.
Sorry, should have done this earlier. I don’t tend to side with those petro sheiks, I side with the person who gives all indication that he intends to resolve this “we’re right, no we’re right” tension filled drama in our actual life time. And like quite a few of our hopeful yet doubtful citizens, I want to give him every chance to succeed.
Sorry, should have done this earlier. I don’t tend to side with those petro sheiks, I side with the person who gives all indication that he intends to resolve this “we’re right, no we’re right” tension filled drama in our actual life time. And like quite a few of our hopeful yet doubtful citizens, I want to give him every chance to succeed.
Morg, I retired the very first day I went to work for myself and have been semi-retired ever since I didn’t even wait for your permission. I paid my dues towards a retirement as I went along and used them if the need arose. A system that allows individuals to get a share of whatever goes into making up the GD Income is what we have developed in this country. It is straining and groaning and yet surviving despite your insistence on using 65% of the national budget to fund an increasingly meaningless MIC. Deflecting the discussion from the 65% towards the 4 or 5% involved in SS and other public retirement systems is just that, a deflection. Sure the latter is important but spending that much of our tax base on the MIC is what should really be concerning your darling little tapeworm self. But I’m guessing that since you have yours, you really don’t want to lose that false sense of security you get from having the Federal Budget provide for your personal security.
Morg, I retired the very first day I went to work for myself and have been semi-retired ever since I didn’t even wait for your permission. I paid my dues towards a retirement as I went along and used them if the need arose. A system that allows individuals to get a share of whatever goes into making up the GD Income is what we have developed in this country. It is straining and groaning and yet surviving despite your insistence on using 65% of the national budget to fund an increasingly meaningless MIC. Deflecting the discussion from the 65% towards the 4 or 5% involved in SS and other public retirement systems is just that, a deflection. Sure the latter is important but spending that much of our tax base on the MIC is what should really be concerning your darling little tapeworm self. But I’m guessing that since you have yours, you really don’t want to lose that false sense of security you get from having the Federal Budget provide for your personal security.
Morg, I retired the very first day I went to work for myself and have been semi-retired ever since I didn’t even wait for your permission. I paid my dues towards a retirement as I went along and used them if the need arose. A system that allows individuals to get a share of whatever goes into making up the GD Income is what we have developed in this country. It is straining and groaning and yet surviving despite your insistence on using 65% of the national budget to fund an increasingly meaningless MIC. Deflecting the discussion from the 65% towards the 4 or 5% involved in SS and other public retirement systems is just that, a deflection. Sure the latter is important but spending that much of our tax base on the MIC is what should really be concerning your darling little tapeworm self. But I’m guessing that since you have yours, you really don’t want to lose that false sense of security you get from having the Federal Budget provide for your personal security.
Morg, I retired the very first day I went to work for myself and have been semi-retired ever since I didn’t even wait for your permission. I paid my dues towards a retirement as I went along and used them if the need arose. A system that allows individuals to get a share of whatever goes into making up the GD Income is what we have developed in this country. It is straining and groaning and yet surviving despite your insistence on using 65% of the national budget to fund an increasingly meaningless MIC. Deflecting the discussion from the 65% towards the 4 or 5% involved in SS and other public retirement systems is just that, a deflection. Sure the latter is important but spending that much of our tax base on the MIC is what should really be concerning your darling little tapeworm self. But I’m guessing that since you have yours, you really don’t want to lose that false sense of security you get from having the Federal Budget provide for your personal security.
And then there’s this, to contemplate as the discussion, talk talk talk talk, goes on.
And then there’s this, to contemplate as the discussion, talk talk talk talk, goes on.
And then there’s this, to contemplate as the discussion, talk talk talk talk, goes on.
And then there’s this, to contemplate as the discussion, talk talk talk talk, goes on.
Jon, you see?
Look at how rhbee thinks US funds are spent! It is the REAL problem. And you cause this problem because you act like the cutting the MIC is the budget solution. You cause this problem because you act like taxing the rich is even mildly enough to save us from the boomers. Look at what he thinks!
I told you in my first comment above – your one sided analysis of the budget, the constant focus you have here on marginal issues, causes your readers to misunderstand the source of the problems we face.
Pushing back SS retirement age is coming. Write passionate blogs encouraging it! It is a small step but you can do it! Don’t wait for a NYT article to come out before you put pen to paper. Find some graphs, and convince all your readers to wait a couple more years for their SS check. You are supposed to help Obama get it done.
Then please, GO READ the VA hospital stuff, it is your best possible argument for fixing Medicare.
I’m not a troll. I’m not a fascist. I’m just a guy not willing to help the boomers rape their young. So, please stop bitching at me for pouring reality on your blog.
Look you are a 60+ liberal guy talking to lots of 60+ liberal guys… man up, and start talking about how the 60+ crowd can consumes less social resources. Blaming the MIC and the fat cats is cowardly. Cowardly. I know you love your kids, and I’m stealing from McCardle, but if your blog was a t-shirt is would read:
“We’re spending our kids inheritence”
Jon, you see?
Look at how rhbee thinks US funds are spent! It is the REAL problem. And you cause this problem because you act like the cutting the MIC is the budget solution. You cause this problem because you act like taxing the rich is even mildly enough to save us from the boomers. Look at what he thinks!
I told you in my first comment above – your one sided analysis of the budget, the constant focus you have here on marginal issues, causes your readers to misunderstand the source of the problems we face.
Pushing back SS retirement age is coming. Write passionate blogs encouraging it! It is a small step but you can do it! Don’t wait for a NYT article to come out before you put pen to paper. Find some graphs, and convince all your readers to wait a couple more years for their SS check. You are supposed to help Obama get it done.
Then please, GO READ the VA hospital stuff, it is your best possible argument for fixing Medicare.
I’m not a troll. I’m not a fascist. I’m just a guy not willing to help the boomers rape their young. So, please stop bitching at me for pouring reality on your blog.
Look you are a 60+ liberal guy talking to lots of 60+ liberal guys… man up, and start talking about how the 60+ crowd can consumes less social resources. Blaming the MIC and the fat cats is cowardly. Cowardly. I know you love your kids, and I’m stealing from McCardle, but if your blog was a t-shirt is would read:
“We’re spending our kids inheritence”
Jon, you see?
Look at how rhbee thinks US funds are spent! It is the REAL problem. And you cause this problem because you act like the cutting the MIC is the budget solution. You cause this problem because you act like taxing the rich is even mildly enough to save us from the boomers. Look at what he thinks!
I told you in my first comment above – your one sided analysis of the budget, the constant focus you have here on marginal issues, causes your readers to misunderstand the source of the problems we face.
Pushing back SS retirement age is coming. Write passionate blogs encouraging it! It is a small step but you can do it! Don’t wait for a NYT article to come out before you put pen to paper. Find some graphs, and convince all your readers to wait a couple more years for their SS check. You are supposed to help Obama get it done.
Then please, GO READ the VA hospital stuff, it is your best possible argument for fixing Medicare.
I’m not a troll. I’m not a fascist. I’m just a guy not willing to help the boomers rape their young. So, please stop bitching at me for pouring reality on your blog.
Look you are a 60+ liberal guy talking to lots of 60+ liberal guys… man up, and start talking about how the 60+ crowd can consumes less social resources. Blaming the MIC and the fat cats is cowardly. Cowardly. I know you love your kids, and I’m stealing from McCardle, but if your blog was a t-shirt is would read:
“We’re spending our kids inheritence”
No it would read “Stop the MIC from spending our kids inheritance.” And the backdrop picture would be a giant aircraft carrier with a deck stacked with F 22′s.
No it would read “Stop the MIC from spending our kids inheritance.” And the backdrop picture would be a giant aircraft carrier with a deck stacked with F 22′s.
No it would read “Stop the MIC from spending our kids inheritance.” And the backdrop picture would be a giant aircraft carrier with a deck stacked with F 22′s.
rhbee, Jon lies to you.
rhbee, Jon lies to you.
rhbee, Jon lies to you.
Morgan you lie to yourself.
Federal Budget for 2009
“Current Military
$965 billion:
• Military Personnel $129 billion
• Operation & Maint. $241 billion
• Procurement $143 billion
• Research & Dev. $79 billion
• Construction $15 billion
• Family Housing $3 billion
• DoD misc. $4 billion
• Retired Pay $70 billion
• DoE nuclear weapons $17 billion
• NASA (50%) $9 billion
• International Security $9 billion
• Homeland Secur. (military) $35 billion
• State Dept. (partial) $6 billion
• other military (non-DoD) $5 billion
• “Global War on Terror” $200 billion [We added $162 billion to the last item to supplement the Budget’s grossly underestimated $38 billion in “allowances” to be spent in 2009 for the “War on Terror,” which includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan]
Past Military,
$484 billion:
• Veterans’ Benefits $94 billion
• Interest on national debt (80%) created by military spending, $390 billion
Human Resources
$789 billion:
• Health/Human Services
• Soc. Sec. Administration
• Education Dept.
• Food/Nutrition programs
• Housing & Urban Dev.
• Labor Dept.
• other human resources.
General Government
$304 billion:
• Interest on debt (20%)
• Treasury
• Government personnel
• Justice Dept.
• State Dept.
• Homeland Security (15%)
• International Affairs
• NASA (50%)
• Judicial
• Legislative
• other general govt.
Physical Resources
$117 billion:
• Agriculture
• Interior
• Transportation
• Homeland Security (15%)
• HUD
• Commerce
• Energy (non-military)
• Environmental Protection
• Nat. Science Fdtn.
• Army Corps Engineers
� Fed. Comm. Commission
• other physical resources”
According the WRL, these are the true dimensions of our current budget. Note that Homeland Security, which I consider part of the MIC, claims 15% portions of three different sections of the total budget.
Morgan you lie to yourself.
Federal Budget for 2009
“Current Military
$965 billion:
• Military Personnel $129 billion
• Operation & Maint. $241 billion
• Procurement $143 billion
• Research & Dev. $79 billion
• Construction $15 billion
• Family Housing $3 billion
• DoD misc. $4 billion
• Retired Pay $70 billion
• DoE nuclear weapons $17 billion
• NASA (50%) $9 billion
• International Security $9 billion
• Homeland Secur. (military) $35 billion
• State Dept. (partial) $6 billion
• other military (non-DoD) $5 billion
• “Global War on Terror” $200 billion [We added $162 billion to the last item to supplement the Budget’s grossly underestimated $38 billion in “allowances” to be spent in 2009 for the “War on Terror,” which includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan]
Past Military,
$484 billion:
• Veterans’ Benefits $94 billion
• Interest on national debt (80%) created by military spending, $390 billion
Human Resources
$789 billion:
• Health/Human Services
• Soc. Sec. Administration
• Education Dept.
• Food/Nutrition programs
• Housing & Urban Dev.
• Labor Dept.
• other human resources.
General Government
$304 billion:
• Interest on debt (20%)
• Treasury
• Government personnel
• Justice Dept.
• State Dept.
• Homeland Security (15%)
• International Affairs
• NASA (50%)
• Judicial
• Legislative
• other general govt.
Physical Resources
$117 billion:
• Agriculture
• Interior
• Transportation
• Homeland Security (15%)
• HUD
• Commerce
• Energy (non-military)
• Environmental Protection
• Nat. Science Fdtn.
• Army Corps Engineers
� Fed. Comm. Commission
• other physical resources”
According the WRL, these are the true dimensions of our current budget. Note that Homeland Security, which I consider part of the MIC, claims 15% portions of three different sections of the total budget.
Morgan you lie to yourself.
Federal Budget for 2009
“Current Military
$965 billion:
• Military Personnel $129 billion
• Operation & Maint. $241 billion
• Procurement $143 billion
• Research & Dev. $79 billion
• Construction $15 billion
• Family Housing $3 billion
• DoD misc. $4 billion
• Retired Pay $70 billion
• DoE nuclear weapons $17 billion
• NASA (50%) $9 billion
• International Security $9 billion
• Homeland Secur. (military) $35 billion
• State Dept. (partial) $6 billion
• other military (non-DoD) $5 billion
• “Global War on Terror” $200 billion [We added $162 billion to the last item to supplement the Budget’s grossly underestimated $38 billion in “allowances” to be spent in 2009 for the “War on Terror,” which includes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan]
Past Military,
$484 billion:
• Veterans’ Benefits $94 billion
• Interest on national debt (80%) created by military spending, $390 billion
Human Resources
$789 billion:
• Health/Human Services
• Soc. Sec. Administration
• Education Dept.
• Food/Nutrition programs
• Housing & Urban Dev.
• Labor Dept.
• other human resources.
General Government
$304 billion:
• Interest on debt (20%)
• Treasury
• Government personnel
• Justice Dept.
• State Dept.
• Homeland Security (15%)
• International Affairs
• NASA (50%)
• Judicial
• Legislative
• other general govt.
Physical Resources
$117 billion:
• Agriculture
• Interior
• Transportation
• Homeland Security (15%)
• HUD
• Commerce
• Energy (non-military)
• Environmental Protection
• Nat. Science Fdtn.
• Army Corps Engineers
� Fed. Comm. Commission
• other physical resources”
According the WRL, these are the true dimensions of our current budget. Note that Homeland Security, which I consider part of the MIC, claims 15% portions of three different sections of the total budget.
I like the Warstler approach to this cyberplace — “Daddy, please make him stop! What he says is not what I believe! And I am ENTITLED to all the fruit and milk and honey all you old guys are taking right off the plate that you bought for me in the house you built for me, as I live and breathe sitting here in the clothes you made for me! It’s MINE, I tell you, ALL MINE! Now be a good little ancestor, and go die before you eat another mouthful of the cereal you earned!” “Make” your software, and see if you can get someone to trade it for food.
Go peddle your crybaby me-me-me diaper-load somewhere else — you know you have plenty of company in your alternative universe. And don’t come on down here to FL, where we have this fun stand-your-ground statute that says we can shoot somebody we feel threatened by, free from any civil or criminal liability.
I like the Warstler approach to this cyberplace — “Daddy, please make him stop! What he says is not what I believe! And I am ENTITLED to all the fruit and milk and honey all you old guys are taking right off the plate that you bought for me in the house you built for me, as I live and breathe sitting here in the clothes you made for me! It’s MINE, I tell you, ALL MINE! Now be a good little ancestor, and go die before you eat another mouthful of the cereal you earned!” “Make” your software, and see if you can get someone to trade it for food.
Go peddle your crybaby me-me-me diaper-load somewhere else — you know you have plenty of company in your alternative universe. And don’t come on down here to FL, where we have this fun stand-your-ground statute that says we can shoot somebody we feel threatened by, free from any civil or criminal liability.
I like the Warstler approach to this cyberplace — “Daddy, please make him stop! What he says is not what I believe! And I am ENTITLED to all the fruit and milk and honey all you old guys are taking right off the plate that you bought for me in the house you built for me, as I live and breathe sitting here in the clothes you made for me! It’s MINE, I tell you, ALL MINE! Now be a good little ancestor, and go die before you eat another mouthful of the cereal you earned!” “Make” your software, and see if you can get someone to trade it for food.
Go peddle your crybaby me-me-me diaper-load somewhere else — you know you have plenty of company in your alternative universe. And don’t come on down here to FL, where we have this fun stand-your-ground statute that says we can shoot somebody we feel threatened by, free from any civil or criminal liability.
I like the Warstler approach to this cyberplace — “Daddy, please make him stop! What he says is not what I believe! And I am ENTITLED to all the fruit and milk and honey all you old guys are taking right off the plate that you bought for me in the house you built for me, as I live and breathe sitting here in the clothes you made for me! It’s MINE, I tell you, ALL MINE! Now be a good little ancestor, and go die before you eat another mouthful of the cereal you earned!” “Make” your software, and see if you can get someone to trade it for food.
Go peddle your crybaby me-me-me diaper-load somewhere else — you know you have plenty of company in your alternative universe. And don’t come on down here to FL, where we have this fun stand-your-ground statute that says we can shoot somebody we feel threatened by, free from any civil or criminal liability.
rhbee, thats a pittance of the budget. The real costs are:
- Medicaid
- debt service
- soc sec
All the shit you listed is just discretionary spending – that why defense is a pittance. Jon isn’t focusing on THOSE 3, and thats where all the spending is…
rhbee, thats a pittance of the budget. The real costs are:
- Medicaid
- debt service
- soc sec
All the shit you listed is just discretionary spending – that why defense is a pittance. Jon isn’t focusing on THOSE 3, and thats where all the spending is…
rhbee, thats a pittance of the budget. The real costs are:
- Medicaid
- debt service
- soc sec
All the shit you listed is just discretionary spending – that why defense is a pittance. Jon isn’t focusing on THOSE 3, and thats where all the spending is…
rhbee, thats a pittance of the budget. The real costs are:
- Medicaid
- debt service
- soc sec
All the shit you listed is just discretionary spending – that why defense is a pittance. Jon isn’t focusing on THOSE 3, and thats where all the spending is…
Again guys go read this:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=Pe9-adfujDgC&dq=%22best+care+anywhere%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=_jJDTTF3_9&sig=etf5VfVJlbdE0ca_0PNWMls0Hzo#PPP1,M1
If you’re trying to craft a universal care plan here are some good market based guidelines:
1. VA style care for the masses. VA style care = rationing, no choosing your own doctor, centralized record keeping. This WILL work.
2. Have some small incremental tax on usage to discourage usage of medical care by the lonely. I’m not being rude. It is a problem.
3. Expect there to be a private more costly solution for the upper middle class. Expect this to be cover the top 20%+ of earners. Don’t make it tax deductible.
4. Have the government subsidize medical students who agree to be general practitioners and nurses. We need MORE doctors to drive down costs.
5. DRAMATICALLY limit malpractice awards. With everyone going to VA style care, you can’t be suing the system to death.
6. End the medical cartel, make it much easier for a person to prescribe non-narcotic medicine.
Morgan, you continue to use fatuous, childish taunts in place of arguments.
We’re all tired of you once again shifting into full troll mode.
On the subject of what a screwed up species we are, did anybody see the cover of this week’s New Yorker? They continue to come up with funny but achingly sad cartoons that cut to the heart of the matter.
https://magazine.newyorker.com/ecom/subscribe.jsp?oppId=1100267&tgt=/atg/registry/RepositoryTargeters/NYR/NYR_global_header&placementId=1200056&logOppId=true
Morgan,
If I recall correctly, you have described yourself as an employer (past and/or present). I wonder how many of the 65-75 year old set you currently employ? It’s easy to say “keep working”, but at what exactly?