This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

  • Military vs. domestic spending

    Fox News reports that the day after Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel proposed massive cuts to defense spending, President Obama proposed massive spending for roads and bridges, highlighting the administration’s divisive nature. When they wanted to increase costs to retirees (after they raided our $770 million healthcare surplus), they said if they didn’t, training and the active force would suffer. That didn’t work so well, so now they’re pitting national defense against domestic spending;

    The president talked about the stimulus-style plan during a stop Wednesday afternoon in St. Paul, Minn. Officials say the money, as proposed, largely would come from “pro-growth business tax reform.” But aside from the challenges in pushing tax reform, Obama could have a hard time making the sell when his military leaders, just days ago, were complaining about the budget crunch.

    […]

    “President Obama claimed that the $830 billion stimulus would spend money on shovel-ready projects that would repair our country’s infrastructure,” RNC spokesman Jahan Wilcox said in a statement. “If the president couldn’t fix our economic problems the first time, then why would we trust him with another blank check?”

    The Preamble to the Constitution reads;

    We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

    Now, what part of that covers roads and bridges? I see “provide for the common defense” right there spelled out simply. I don’t see “provide for roads, bridges and mass transit”, though. Of course, the founders didn’t anticipate that there would be roads and bridges in the future, huh? So we’ll just pencil that in.

    Oh, by the way, they plan on paying for it with the same method they used for their plan for full employment – hoping something happens. The same method they use for their energy programs – hoping unicorn farts are a good renewable source;

    The administration is calling for $150 billion from tax reform changes, combined with existing funding for road projects, to fund the plan. A White House “fact sheet” said the nation’s transportation system is facing a “funding crisis” — and needs the money for everything from highway improvements to new light rail and bus projects to mass transit ventures.

    The Highway Trust Fund finances federal highway and transit programs but is forecast to go broke as early as August.

    Funny how when discussing “tax reform” makes me think that it won’t be good for us taxpayers-the opposite of when we talk about tax reform when it’s Republicans using those same words.

  • Dempsey’s keen eye for the obvious

    The Associated Press reports that nothing that’s too obvious gets by the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, General Martin Dempsey;

    America’s top military officer said Wednesday that the impasse over a security agreement between the U.S. and Afghanistan is encouraging the enemy to take bold actions and could lead some Afghan forces to cooperate with the Taliban to “hedge their bets.”

    [,,,]

    Dempsey told The Associated Press in an interview that President Barack Obama’s order Tuesday to begin actively planning for a total withdrawal was making Afghan military leaders anxious and eating away at their troops’ confidence.

    Of course, AP and Dempsey really blame Hamid Karzai, who is partially to blame, but it’s not his job defend US foreign policy. It’s those incompetent boobs who are projecting our political power, all appointed by this administration, who are screwing this up, like they screwed up our withdrawal from Iraq. But, then, of course, their job, for this president, is write his bumper sticker slogans for the mid-term elections not to actually accomplish something that could be called a success.

  • Defense budget battle

    The Associated Press reports that the Obama Administration has a tough fight ahead if they try to adopt Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s plan to slash the Defense budget by cutting troops and aircraft that have no plan to replace;

    The skepticism from both Republicans and Democrats augured poorly for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s vision of shrinking the Army to its smallest size in three-quarters of a century and creating a nimbler force more suited to future threats than the large land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade. Tuesday’s advance of a new veterans bill also suggested Congress may be more interested in increasing military spending in a midterm election year.

    The cuts “will weaken our nation’s security while the threats we face around the world are becoming more dangerous and complex,” Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, two leading GOP hawks, said in a joint statement. “Now is not the time to embrace a defense posture reminiscent of the years prior to World War II,” they said, without outlining substitute cost reductions.

    From Fox News, the Congressional Budget Office speculates that the whole reason behind the cuts is so that the administration can spend more money on domestic programs, ignoring defense needs;

    Rep. Chris Van Hollen , D-Md., told Fox News the draw down from two wars is a logical time to save defense money. “We do not need for the defense of our country to be able to have a defense doctrine that calls for fighting two land wars at the same time,” he said.

    But history is filled with hard lessons in disarmament. Churchill warned a pacifist Britain, worn out from massive loss of life in World War I, of its unpreparedness for war with Germany as early as 1934. In 1936, he said in a speech to a disinterested Parliament, “A lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes… until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong… these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”

    McKeon offers a contemporary reprise of Churchill’s words. “The price is going to be paid for this whether it’s in the Middle East, whether it’s in the Pacific, whether it’s in Europe,” he said. “I don’t know where. I don’t know when. I don’t know how, but some bad actor is going to challenge us.”

    The capability for fighting two land wars existed long before 9/11, it existed because we had an enemy that was a global threat, much like the threat, on a smaller scale of al Qaeda which is gaining ground in the middle east and fighting, with some success in Africa. They’ve already secured portions of Iraq and Afghanistan isn’t far behind, as well as Syria. Did I mention that Iran is flexing it’s puny muscles off of our coast?

    My Obama apologist friends on Facebook tell me that this proposal from the Obama Administration isn’t his fault – that he’s getting bad advice from his generals who are secretly working for the defense industry. I’d almost believe it if they could show me just one instance when Obama ever listened to his generals in regards to anything. Well, that and the fact that I predicted this very scenario way back in 2008 before Obama ever took office.

  • Obama threatens to take ball, go home

    Ex-PH2 sends us a link to the Associated Press which reports that President Obama called the Taliban’s chief propagandist, Hamid Karzai, for the first time since last summer and threatened to pull all US troops out of Afghanistan if the nation doesn’t sign the agreement that the two parties had negotiated last year for a continued presence of Americans there;

    “We will leave open the possibility of concluding a (security agreement) with Afghanistan later this year,” the White House said in a statement following the call. “However, the longer we go without a (deal), the more challenging it will be to plan and execute any U.S. mission.”

    Obama’s attempt to minimize Karzai’s importance to U.S. decision-making underscores how fractured the relationship between the two leaders has become. Tuesday’s phone call was the first direct contact between Obama and Karzai since last June. The Afghan leader has deeply irritated Washington with anti-American rhetoric, as well as with his decision this month to release 65 prisoners over the objections of U.S. officials.

    The White House insists it won’t keep any American troops in Afghanistan after December without a security agreement giving the military a legal basis for staying in the country.

    So, who is surprised that setting an arbitrary withdrawal date to force Afghanistan to take responsibility for their own security is causing all of these problems? I mean, it was Joe Bite Me’s idea, so why isn’t it working?

  • Obama has a hissy when governors address NG cuts

    Pinto Nag sends us a link to NBC News which gives South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s account of the one way conversation the governors had with President Obama in regards to National Guard cuts. According to Governor Haley, the mood was genial until the cits were mentioned and the President’s demeanor changed;

    “It automatically went into an aggressive nature by him, implying that, ‘Many of you have asked for cuts, this is what you said you wanted. Don’t start coming and now complaining that these cuts are now affecting you because you said you wanted it, now you’re going to get it and have to live with it,’” Haley said of the exchange, apparently toward the end of the meeting.

    “It really is a slap in the face to anyone who has served multiple times over the past decade and left their life to do this,” added Haley, whose husband is a reservist who recently returned from a stint abroad.

    Yeah, “many of you” refers to the Tea Party members of the Governors, it’s like saying “you people”. And I’m pretty sure that conservative Republicans didn’t expect all of the cuts would happen to defense. While I’ll be the first to say that there areas of defense that can be cut, as I’ve always said, the waste and abuse isn’t what is getting the axe. It’s the easy stuff, the stuff that won’t affect the right kind of voters.

  • Governors talking to Obama about NG cuts

    Reuters reports that the nation’s governors planned to ask the President to leave current force structures for the National Guard and not return to pre-9/11 levels;

    “In downsizing the military, we want to make sure that reserve and National Guard is protected in our country,” Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

    “I’m going to have that discussion with the President tomorrow,” Malloy, a Democrat, said.

    […]

    Another governor, Republican Scott Walker of Wisconsin, echoed Malloy’s comments on “Fox News Sunday.”

    “We’re going to talk about the National Guard,” Walker said when asked what he planned to discuss with the president.

    “I think there is common agreement amongst all 50 governors that we shouldn’t go back to pre-9/11 standards when it comes to the National Guard,” he said.

    Yeah, well, good luck with that. When you ask this President not to do something, he smiles and nods his head and then considers it a challenge to his authority and does it anyway. Ask veterans. It’s the States’ fault any-damn-way. If they raised their own money to pay for their own National Guards, they wouldn’t have to worry about the Presidential whims and come with their hats in their hands and beg for money like a band of vagrants.

  • Intractable Rice doesn’t regret lies

    Remember when Susan Rice was the US ambassador to the UN and she lied on a number of Sunday shows that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was because of a poorly written and poorly acted video on YouTube? Well, she’s been proven to have been a liar countless times since, but she’s still just as stubborn when confronted with the truth that she and the current administration conspired to deceive the American voting public in the weeks leading up to the 2012 election, as quoted by Fox News from interviews she conducted yesterday, returning to the scenes of her crime;

    “What I said to you that morning, and what I did every day since, was to share the best information that we had at the time,” Rice told NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator David Gregory on Sunday. “The information I provided … was what we had at the moment.”

    Rice said “No,” when Gregory asked whether she had any regrets about her statements.

    She also said nobody in the administration intended to mislead the public but acknowledged some of her information was inaccurate.

    No, why would she regret her lies? Her guy is the President and she got promoted despite the misinformation campaign. What’s to regret?

  • Hagel proposes to shrink Army to pre-Pearl Harbor numbers

    Ex-PH2 sends us a link to MSN which refers to a New York Times article published yesterday which gives a peek into Chuck Hagel’s plan to ask Congress to cut the numbers of the Army to pre-1940 size.

    The proposal, described by several Pentagon officials on the condition of anonymity in advance of its release on Monday, takes into account the fiscal reality of government austerity and the political reality of a president who pledged to end two costly and exhausting land wars. A result, the officials argue, will be a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for protracted foreign occupations.

    The officials acknowledge that budget cuts will impose greater risk on the armed forces if they are again ordered to carry out two large-scale military actions at the same time: Success would take longer, they say, and there would be a larger number of casualties. Officials also say that a smaller military could invite adventurism by adversaries.

    Yeah, well, I guess we figure that everyone on the planet is so impressed with Smart diplomacy that we’re no longer a target. I remember when we cut the number of troops in the early 90s, operational tempo (OpTempo) didn’t decrease along with the numbers. In fact, the administration that depended heavily on the use of cruise missiles to project our political goals was able to deplete our stocks of missiles without replacing them. I also remember an MP company at Fort Hood which had no training ammo for their M9s.

    There are History Channel documentaries which show US troops in the 1940s training with wooden rifles because there weren’t any real rifles available. Of course, the US was able to call up troops to swell it’s ranks quickly in 1942 because we had a draft, not an advantage Hagel could draw upon in this day and age.

    How ’bout we draw the EPA down to pre-Nixon numbers, or we reduce the Education Department to pre-Carter days? Or Health and Human Services Department to the pre-Johnson era? Makes about as much sense to me.

    From Fox News;

    Officials told the Times that Hagel’s plan has been endorsed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and protects funding for Special Operations forces and cyberwarfare. It also calls for the Navy to maintain all eleven of its aircraft carriers currently in operation. However, the budget proposal mandates the elimination of the entire fleet of Air Force A-10 attack aircraft, as well as the retiring of the U-2 spy plane, a stalwart of Cold War operations.

    Good. We should reduce the Joint Chiefs to pre-1940 numbers, too, if they truly think that this is maintaining our defensive posture.