Needlenose

The historical significance of Prince Charles

Here is what they were dancing to:

“I can’t understand why no one’s here yet… at least Hillary said she couldn’t make it because she had some other meeting, though she wouldn’t tell me what it was about… you’d think at least my political staff would be here…”

(Via the White House.)

North Korean soldier looking for Repair_Man_Jack's house

…no, just seriously stoopid.  I’ve noticed that of late, as the HuffPos and PajamaMedias of the blogosphere emerge, fewer and fewer people ‘cross over’ to visit blogs and media of the opposing camp.  With all this Tea Party noise about the deficit, I thought I’d take a peak at one of the bigger conservative blogs to see what they had to say about it, and perhaps, as a self-professed ‘balanced budget’ guy, I might find some common ground.

Quite randomly, I found this diatribe by Repair_Man_Jack on RedState with the premise that we can’t cut the U.S. Defense budget without increasing security risk.  The crux of his argument is that there are some potential flashpoints out there such as the Korean Penninsula and the recent Chinese military buildup, and that we need to keep the sea lanes open for trade.

I’m guessing Repair_Man_Jack hasn’t really his homework if he thinks all of the defense budget goes to the cordon sanitaire around N. Korea and into policing the sea lanes.  I can think of many potential cuts that we can take immediately to tip the scales back in the direction of balance.

First, what are we paying per year for Shrubya’s occupations of Iraq & Afghanistan and other misc overseas adventures?  Something like $171 Billion a year….that’s a lot of scratch!  Presumably Jack the Repair Man is still a Believer in these invasions, otherwise undoubtedly he would have seen the Elephant in the budget room.

Then there is Shrubya’s unproven ‘Missile Defense” program, a costly $18B/year!!  Beyond the fact that what few tests that have been conducted have had extremely dubious results, I’m hard-pressed to understand exactly what threat this is supposed to protect us  from – the North Korean missiles might have the range now, but their guidance is questionable.  If either China or Russia get pissed at us and decide to send missiles our way, most likely those would come out of subs off the coast, a ‘use case’ not covered by Shrubya’s Star Wars.

And what of the $8+ Billion a year we are paying to support our nuclear weapons program?  Weren’t we supposed to be decreasing the number of bombs in our stockpile? ConservObama is not just continuing Shrubya’s handouts to aerospace in this filthy industry, but actually increasing the size of the defense and energy budget to support nuclear weapons and nuclear power research.  We haven’t hit the point where the US can get rid of all our stockpile and do no further maintenance, but seriously, how many H-Bomb-equipped MIRVs do we need to wipe out N. Korea, China and Iran?  Let’s close down one of the weapons lab and pare the remaining one back to a core function of reducing our stockpile further, and maintaining a enough weapons to wipe out Jack the Repairman’s overblown threats abroad.

Anyway, I’ll spare you further commentary, just take a look at this list of astronomical military boondoggles if you want to find another trillion or so (over time) in defense spending cuts that we can safely make without provoking a N. Korean invasion of the Fatherland.

As for Repair_Man_Jack, I suggest you stick to repairing drywall.

Trumpo the Magnificent & The Palindrome in 2012!

Peter Grier of the Christian Science Monitor muses that a Trump/Palin ticket could be the GOP ‘winning ticket’ in 2012, presumably with Trumpo the Magnificent appealing to the Looney Libertarian branch of the party with Palin appealing to the Gods, Guns & Gays crowd.

Great thinking, Peter, except that they’d probably kill each other in the argument over whether it would be Trump/Palin or Palin/Trump in 2012…

Still, a great opportunity to pull out the old ‘Superhero’ creation tool

The Administration would like to keep our forces sitting around in Iraq past the current deadline in case something flares up – think of it as Obama’s insurance to avoid getting egg on his face if things suddenly spiral out of control again amongst the competing factions there.  Mookie doesn’t think that’s such a good idea.  Swopa’s old pal Sistani hasn’t weighed in on the matter yet.

I ditto Ian Fletcher’s call for import tariffs to level the playing field against unfair overseas competition.  But I don’t think his suggestion to use a tariff to make up the difference in the price of goods due to China’s currency manipulation and to compensate for other country’s foreign export rebates goes far enough.

The Capitalist Tools want us to compete by rolling back 100 years of labor reforms and eliminating environmental protections, basically a race to the bottom for the other 98% of the population so that our hard-working children and prisoners can breath the same smoggy air and drink the same polluted water enjoyed by labor in China and S.E. Asia.

To hell with that!  Let’s keep our high standards, and instead hit foreign goods with ‘carbon,’ ‘pollution’ and unfair labor practices tariffs.

Sure, the prices of goods will rise as manufacturing shifts back to well-paid North Americans…but at least we’ll have jobs and some money with which to buy them!

People warned that Terry Jones and his Fundee followers that burning the Quran would spark violent retribution in Afghanistan, putting various folks at risk.  Unapologetic, Jones must figure ‘no publicity is bad publicity for his “Dove World Outreach Center.”  I guess ‘World Outreach’ in his parlance must include an extended and rigid middle-finger pointed not only at non-Fundees around the world, but also at our own government and military, as well as the folks who struggle to make the world a better place working in harm’s way at the U.N. and various NGOs.

Doing all they can to bring about the Apocalypse.