according to the chart we have too many old peopel that are abusing the system. why dont we allow old people to join the service once they have retired or gettign thi benefits. this would not be bad, grannies would make good nurses cause they are patient and the old guys can go target shooting to some talibans or iranians or who ever messes with us. I bet a 65 yearl old guy can shoot way better then me. im sure they are def wiser then the young guys who decide to take a piss on dead bodies!
why dont we create medicare hospitals, like the VA does for service people. this will put a cap on lawsuits and doctors can be military doctors so their pay would be less. thsi should cut medicare expenses in half. cut defence in half. if we cant use nukes becuase of war rules by the geneva convention stop making them. cut the welfare, if you dont work, you dont eat.
why dotn we do what thousands of americans do in texas, cross the border get top of the line health care service for a fraction of what hospitals charge here. i know peoepl who have doe this and buy drugs there too, and are happy that their healthcare cost is not going to send them bankrupt
From what I can gauge the right in this country overall want pretty big government. They are willing to sacrifice liberty for safety and they think having our military in areas where the public do not want us is sound foreign policy. Bottom line is things are not bad enough yet for real change.
I'll vote for Paul in our state primary. And against Obama in November.
I'm not anti-military, but having 1000 bases around the world is beyond my tolerance band. Keep Diego Garcia, keep the hospitals in Europe. But get out of Uganda, etc.
Naziism never ended. Do some research, look up Hitler and Mufti. Not only did they meet because they both wanted the Jews gone, the Mufti recruited Muslims for the SS.
So what did all our Americans die for and what did we get for all the money we spent?
The US spends about 43% of the world's military budget. I can't accept that knowing that our population is only 5% of the world's.
Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - 12:33 am:
Decent people will generally have decent responses to decent questions. Put to a ballot, how would American’s vote?
1. Should the US balance its budget...or continue to spend $1.50 for every dollar in revenue? 2. If you have to give up something, which would you rather do without: foreign wars...or domestic health and retirement benefits? 3. Should members of Congress be forced to live by the same laws as the voters? 4. What do you say to a flat 10% tax rate, on all income...across the board...? Yes or no? 5. Should the President be allowed to kill or imprison anyone he wants, without due process of law?
My guess is that the voters would do the right thing.
But they’ll never get the chance. The system is in the hands of the: Lobbyists, lawyers, connivers, chiselers, contractors, layabouts and scalawags and world-improvers — each one takes a little piece of the old republic...until there’s nothing left.
"We simply cannot continue to cut our defense budget if we are to remain the hope of the Earth,” says Mitt Romney.
According to Romney, the Earth itself longs for more US military spending.
His adversary, Newt Gingrich, says he thinks that Obama’s Pentagon cuts will make the US as vulnerable to attack as it was before World War II.
But the Pentagon won’t really have less money to spend. They’re not really talking about cutting defense spending; they’re talking about cutting projected military spending increases. Even after the ‘cuts,’ the US military will still be spending more than the next 10 biggest spenders put together.
Obama never fails to remind Americans that he was the one who ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden.
All the candidates think the American people want war. Or...what?
Actually, Americans don’t want war. The latest Pew Research polls show them more opposed to foreign military adventures than at any time in the last 15 years. They’re more interested in getting a job...and protecting their retirements. Given the choice, they would probably want to see military spending cut back and the money put into their own pockets.
But they won’t be given the choice. The system is rigged.
I'll vote for RP in our state's dog and pony show primary, then pull the lever for ABO, knowing the problems will not be solved, save for a miracle.
Buy canned food and the usual survival crap. And remember, when the crap comes down, it might have been different.
Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - 12:35 pm:
Max,
Your #2 doesn't do a very good job of fairly framing the issue.
a. The attacks against NYC and the Pentagon constitute "foreign wars"? We should only wage war on our own soil? I know you don't mean that. Reword the question?
b. The question seems to equate spending on foreign wars to that for domestic entitlement programs. One is not like the other, probably by nearly an order of magnitude. No?
Question 5 seems a straw man. The constitution clearly prohibits such power, no? But it's easy to answer nonetheless, so it's cool with me.
Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - 02:13 pm:
#2 doesn't frame it fairly. But for the great hordes, given a chance to be polled on such a simple choice, I suspect the folk would quickly vote for what they see as a plus to their pocketbooks.
#5. It's my observation that our current resident of the Offal Office has little interest in our Constitution. Sure, dropping the big one on some nasty goat fornicating traitor with US nationality hiding in his dung filled tent in Oman is one thing. BUT, and it's a big butt, this can translate to anywhere, including here, and, as my fellow conspiracy theorist (the City his self same self) points out, the jack boots are already issued at Homeland Security and Health (of all places). Me thinks the Obamster would get a tickle in his pants if he got to erase a few free thinkers on our own soil.
But, that's just me.
My libertarian past has left an anomaly in my DNA, a lingering thought process glitch that takes that detour in many things political. Now, when I first read How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, by Harry Browne, one time a candidate for prez on the libertarian ticket, I did not agree whole heartedly with his entire philosophy. Same with the good Brother Paul, he of two Baptist minister brothers, married to the same woman over these many years, against abortion, and, to me, the epitome of a decent Christian man who has seen our country's involvement in war become perpetual.
If one finds a copy of Types of Drugs Under International Control, printed in Europe in 1988, you'll find my name on the acknowledgements page. I donated the photos taken in Afghanistan and edited the English sections. Bring our boys home. Give the country back to the poppy growers and teach young our people about the dangers of drugs with graphic movies in school, like the bloody wreck flix they used to show in driver's ed back in my day.
Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - 03:07 pm:
As usual your argument is convincing and thought provoking.
Maybe the best approach is to pull out and if and when attacked, go whole hog bloody war on the islamists, a Pearl Harbor redux. But wasn't that 9/11? Limited warfare just doesn't work against an insurgency.
Two other concerns:
Honor. We said we'd clean up the place and leave it civilized; didn't we?
Iran. I see what appears potentially much worse than Hitler or Stalin with nukes and little aversion to using them.
Make it clear to the mullahs that Mecca, Medina, and all of Iran are targeted by our megaton hydrogen civilization enders? Deterrence?
Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - 03:16 pm:
By the way, Nancy Pelosi says she has just the gene splice to fix that anomaly in your DNA. You merely lack the grossly mutated compassion gene known as the self-loathing gene. Once you have that, the beauty of punitive progressivism will become perfectly clear.
Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - 03:32 pm:
I have always believed that "tactical" engagements are foolish.
If you are going to wage war, make it as horrible as possible. Men, women, children, livestock, houses, factories, farms, schools, everything....
Gone.
A touchy, feely enemy doesn't "win hearts and minds". Fear, terror, a desire to make it stop wins hearts and minds. While I don't condone the use of nuclear weapons, the use of them in Japan accomplished exactly what I am describing.
The Japanese people give up the will to fight.
Japan was also a lesson to other would be aggressors.
If we are going to go to war, take the dog off the chain. Unleash the "highway of death" until the entire population cries uncle. If they refuse to cry uncle, keep killing them until they do or they are dead.
Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - 05:47 pm:
Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being. ~May Sarton
Cheap filler, that; no purpose.
>>>and leave it civilized;
Not possible by any stretch of the imagination of the most PC, crystal stapled to the forehead, chronic do-gooder globalist touchy-feely Democrat. Grudges last for centuries amongst the lesser species. They are closer to the days of Mo'hammad than today.
>>>Iran
Persians see themselves still the rightful owners of the 2500 year old empire from Macedonia to the Indus River, from the Caucasus to Libya. It's much like our modern Turks miss the era of the Ottoman Empire. Or how some of our own countrymen browbeat us about the dirt under our feet being stolen from past native American empires. People display an amazing propensity for not being able to "live in the now," Fear and superstition of old, fear, superstition and grudges through old news through today.
Our troubles in Iran started in 1953 when Teddy's grandson, Kermit Roosevelt, orchestrated Operation Ajax. The Persian long memories lead to the overthrow of the shaw in 1979, initiated as much by Jimmy Peanut as much as that Ayatollah.
We had a way to deal with our former pals Al Queda, who wanted no Westerners on muslim soik, not in Aghanistan, not anywhere. Sheik Massoud, The Lion of Pashtu, was killed just before 9/11 after warning our side about an impending attack involving aircraft. He was about as decent a resource as we'd find in the whole country. Just like our man Vang Pao, Hmong warlord, loyal to the King of Laos, who fought for 15 years against the Pathet Lao and N until the surrender of Saigon and his people's abandonment by Washington DofC.
Now, we'll skip a rock over a bit of Lao history: There was an American in Thailand about 1958, married to a Thai, who was charged with training a "special force" of Royal Thai Border Patrol Police known as the PARU. Later, he took the PARU to Laos and trained forces loyal to Bang Pow, er, Vang Pau. This American ran things at Long Tien, but danged if I can find his photo anymore. Point being, he and Pau ran an army of 50,000 for 15 years, quite successfully mind you, until the Yanks pissed backwards in the early 70s, left the Hmong to fend for themselves, and our Ami went home to Texas and drove a truck for a living.
So, that's how you run a war in the middle of no place. Our Texan could have done the same in the Middle East, but no. Not counting Air America, there were very, very few Americans involved. I was a simple "missionary," with a radio up country. My two bodyguards, Kai and Moun live in Seattle now. A pot of pepper tripe soup, for old times' sake, is in order whenever I visit.
Another thing is to operate a psychological war. Now, know first that a psychological war can be contrived in a "positive" way. This is what worked in Laos until the rug was pulled. Build people up, train people, give incentives, take care of families, reward those who support YOUR leader. Improve their situation, the reward can't be bought.
As for negative psychological warfare, say, for example, the Russians have invaded a country to, say, support a Marxist government under duress. Um, like Afghanistan in the 1980s. It's a demoralizing circumstance for unworldly young soldiers away in a nasty guerrilla warfare theater. Say some folks from outside collect pressed loaves of heroin in the country, transport it to India to a pharma plant for conversion to morphine, pack it back and serve the medical facilities for the guerrilllas. And lets turn back the play book to Vietnam, where SE Asian drugs were more common and more readily available than soda pop. Now, remember, in the drug trades, the first one is free. Demoralizing, and it makes soldiers less than effective.
For 9/11, carpet bombing the area around the known Al Queda camps would have been okay with me, within a week, just for the punctuation mark it gives to the conversation. Then bring in a Texan type to take up the formation of what we already had with Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Lord, don't that man ramble.... anyway, surreptitious activities on the ground with air power or cruise missiles as needed. The fewer Amis the better, except to fly the planes. The main players are local. Cheaper by far.
But when the sacks of living dog poop in Congress tell you not the be beastly to the enemy, then vote you off the island, don't be surprised if your friends are left to fend for themselves.
I heard Bobby Kennedy give a campaign speech on campus in 1968, a tipping point for the Vietnam debacle and just a month before (internationalist) Walter Chronkite surrendered to the North Vietnamese live on the evening news from his bunker in Hue. I stopped listening when I heard with my own two ears, of Kennedy's plan to send blood to North Vietnam as a "medical mercy mission" spiff, not to the Vietnamese, but to the throng of young college lefty voters listening to him. In the end, I never got my chance to vote against him. That is NOT how you win a war.
Posted on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 - 08:27 pm:
A "libertarian" story in an economic newsletter today, in the spirit of RP:
We had lunch with an old friend last week. We hadn’t seen him since our school days in the ’60s. He told us the following story.
“It’s amazing. I’ve lived there all my life. But I’m a little different, I guess. My brothers are doctors and lawyers. I did them a favor by being the black sheep of the family. So they didn’t have to be.
“I live in a rich neighborhood. But I don’t work much. I can’t work at all now, since I had my motorcycle accident. And I guess people wonder how I could live in such a place. Well, the answer is simple. My father was an eye surgeon and he bought it in 1941 and gave it to his children when he died.
“Well, somehow, the idea got out that we were drug dealers. The police started keeping an eye on us. There was an old van parked on the property. They figured it was for transporting drugs. And then, I had a couple of Mexicans helping me on the farm. They figured those guys must be drug runners. I don’t know how it all happened, because I’ve been there for more than 60 years...and anyone could have asked me what was going on.
“But one night, I’m in bed and these guys in combat gear bust down the door and point rifles at me and my wife. It was a SWAT team of some sort. And then my son came home. They asked him what he was doing there. He told them he lived there. So they arrested him too...
“Of course, the door wasn’t even locked. They could have just turned the doorknob. But I guess that wouldn’t have been so exciting...
“They let me out of jail in a matter of hours...but only after signing a paper saying we wouldn’t sue the police for false arrest, etc. If I didn’t sign the paper they said the arrest would be on my son’s record for life...”
How do things like that happen? How do the police and drug enforcement agencies make such a mistake?
Well, there’s a lot of money in the drug trade...and not just for the people who traffic in drugs. The drug dealers make money. The drug fighters make money too. In short, the illegal drug industry has been zombified.
The dealers make money because the drug fighters restrict supply, keeping prices, and profit margins, high. The drug fighters make money because they are on the front lines in the war against drugs! They put on uniforms and pretend to be combating serious crime. They get jobs, helicopters, cars, guns, sophisticated machinery...and much more.
And then, when they actually catch someone with drugs, the lawyers come into the picture...and the prosecutors...and the prisons. Guess what is said to be the most powerful single lobbying organization in the state of California? Prison guards! The whole thing is immensely profitable. Everyone wants a piece of it.
The war on drugs may be a colossal waste of money and a stain on America’s escutcheon, with millions of dollars wasted and thousands of people sent to prison for no good reason. But neither the drug dealers nor the drug fighters want to see it come to an end.
