Toon: The Trillion-dollar sacred bull in the room

[n2doc]

[Raster]

1. 1000 Recommends!

:kick:

[YOY]

2. Now THAT is good.

n.t.

[uponit7771]

3. Clinton did a good job at taking away the cash from that animal....

...and the Bush admin did a great job at giving it back

[happyslug]

10. He did not, he reduced the number of people in the Military, but other spending was maintained.

NO military project was canceled by Clinton, he did reduce the army by a 1/3 but then proceeded to upgrade the National Guard with M1 Tanks instead of surplus M60 the regular Army were done with (The Tradition was and is the Special Forces and Airborne get the newest equipment, followed by the Regular army,the Marines, the Israeli Defense Force, then any other ally and then the National Guard. Clinton in the 1990s speed this process up replacing the M48s and M60s the National Guard had been using with the M1. Prior to Clinton it was not uncommon for the National Guard to have 40 to 50 year old equipment, for that is how low on the equipment agenda the National Guard is. Clinton reduced the size of the Regular Military and then "Upgraded" the National Guard with the latest equipment. Clinton did this by Slashing personal costs while maintaining acquisition costs (i.e. Cut out money for the people who would be actually doing the fighting in favor of equipment even to units no one will call out except under extra-ordinarily circumstances). The GOP Congress had a huge say in that change, providing money for what many people call "Toys" as oppose to what the Military actually needed.

And for anyone who ask about the National Guard units in Iraq, most did NOT take with them any of the new equipment such as the M1 tanks. The new trucks and Humvees were shipped with the National Guard units called up, but the National Guard units were a source of personnel NOT equipment in the War in Iraq. Switching form maintaining M60 Tanks to Trucks (and even M1 Tanks) is NOT hard for most personnel, takes some time, but the same time it takes to ship the unit to and from Iraq. Thus why do we need the National Guard to have the latest piece of Military hardware? Most National Guard outfits will NOT move with their equipment and thus the new equipment will stay state side and in that case the M60 was good enough for National Guard use state side.

My point was Clinton the the GOP controlled Congress canceled NO Military program, increase spending on equipment that will NEVER be used (Most of the newer M1 tanks in use by the National Guard will be obsolete before they are ever shipped overseas). In the case of the Air Force and Navy, upgrading ALL of the F-15, F-16 and F-18 planes made no sense, since only certain units needed the upgrade for the chances of other units seeing actual combat in slim. Why do we need 12 Nuclear Carriers? Even when the Soviet Union was at its height of power the US had several conventionally powered Carriers do to the fact such carriers were cheaper to build and thus saved money for other more needed acquisitions when the conventional Carriers were built.

My point is no EQUIPMENT was canceled under Clinton. In fact Equipment cost INCREASED while personnel costs dropped. To Save money the US needs to cancel and shut down the operations of EQUIPMENT. The number of Carriers need to be cut, the number of Air Force Wings and planes need to be cut. The Nuclear forces need to be cut drastically (Why do we need 4500 Nuclear devices today, when in the 1960s 500 was determined to be enough to destroy the Military Capacity of the Soviet Union? The sheer number of Nuclear Devices and delivery systems reflect so many contingency that will NEVER occur that it is a waste of money. Remember Napoleon famous Maxim, "To Defend everywhere is to defend no where" and in many ways out purchase of equipment is an attempt to fight every where and it is bankrupting the US and has been since Eisenhower's administration. Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter and even Reagan and Bush I could cite the Soviet Union as justification for such expensive spending, Clinton, Bush II and even Obama could and can not. We have to cut back on such spending and when it is started the howling will become from all of the Lobbyists hired by the providers of Military Equipment. That was something everyone had avoided and it appears until we are bankrupt (Like the Soviet Union Found itself in the late 1980s) we will avoid it.

[Bosso 63]

11. "Why do we NEED 12 CVN' s?", is my pet peeve.

All i can figure is that Democrats fear looking "weak on defense".

During the hight of the Cold War, Ike said,

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, 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."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

But today ,if you question a defense program, you are labeled "soft on terror". So we build F-22's while the Taliban don't even have a Cessna.

[Sherman A1]

18. Precisely

You hit the nail on the head with a sledge hammer.

:toast: :toast: :toast: :toast:

[SergeStorms]

43. An Eisenhower Republican......

would be looked at, today, as a raging, left-wing, liberal tree hugger. How the times have changed, and not for the better. Cutting anything from the Pentagon's black hole budget is looked upon as a surrender to the forces of evil. Right-wing war hawks (and their MIC bosses) have framed the debate in terms good and evil. If you cut military spending, you're evil. Unfortunately a majority of Americans have bought this ridiculous presumption and cluck like Chicken Little if someone even mentions reigning in military spending. I blame our gun-crazed culture.

[truedelphi]

22. Thank you for that assesment. Good to know all of that.

Clinton was the beneficiary of the dot com boom, which didn't bust until right before he left office. So his Administration did not have to worry about where the tax revenue to pay for things was coming - millionaires were being created left and right. Landlords were charging double what they had been, so they paid more in taxes also. Restaurants and other entertainment venues exploded with new ways to entertain the newly rich.

And so many many jobs, from graphic deign to programming, to writing gigs, were created in all the Silicon Valleys, Alleys and waysides during that boom.

However it is also true that when the Powers that Be went to Clinton and asked him to ramp up the war in Iraq (Under Clinton, our air force still bombed the occassional "munitions or chemical laboratory") but Clinton said "No!" most emphatically, about Iraqi War Round Two.

And just weeks later, the reports of nookie in the Oval Office by Monica Lewinsky surfaced and hit the airwaves all at once.

[A HERETIC I AM]

32. Clinton was simply the best President we ever had.

The best REPUBLICAN President.

And he was. He was a superb Republican President.

[jmowreader]

39. CVNs are tactically better than CVs

Conventional warships' operating range is governed by fuel load--they can steam until they run out of Navy Distillate, and then they have to be met by an oiler. Nuclear propulsion allows the ships' range to be determined by the amount of food, and jet fuel in the case of a CVN, on board.

[rhett o rick]

28. Do you have any sources, links or evidence that Clinton did what you suggest? nm

[patrice]

4. A bull that shits jobs, btw, both in and out of the military and not all "defense" related either.

All other factors being "equal" between 2 candidates for any kind of job, what effect does veteran status have? This is not a pleasant thing to say, I do not enjoy saying it and I certainly do not mean any disrespect upon veterans, but especially in certain areas of the country, I'm just sayin' . . . .

[Tansy_Gold]

6. If we didn't have the MIC. . . .

We wouldn't have so many veterans.

We wouldn't have so many wars.

We wouldn't have so many disabled veterans.

It is, you know, possible to cut the spending on the wars and not cut the spending on the veterans.

And there is, you know, a difference between "decreasing" and "stopping altogether."

But you knew all that already, didn't you.




Tansy Gold, NTY

[Tansy_Gold]

7. If we didn't have the MIC. . . .

We wouldn't have so many veterans.

We wouldn't have so many wars.

We wouldn't have so many disabled veterans.

It is, you know, possible to cut the spending on the wars and not cut the spending on the veterans.

And there is, you know, a difference between "decreasing" and "stopping altogether."

But you knew all that already, didn't you.




Tansy Gold, NTY

[patrice]

8. Yeah, it's just that being out there looking for work in a red state has me down. The best person

doesn't get the job. Getting hired these days is entirely about stuff other than your qualifications.

[Tansy_Gold]

13. It's ALWAYS been about stuff other than your qualifications

And I've been in the job market for almost 50 years.

[patrice]

14. Well, I guess I have been thinking it was also about the quality of my work. Stupid me!

[defendandprotect]

35. Think of all the really terrific jobs we could create with that money . . .

more orchestras --

More plays --

more theaters --

more college graduates --

more restored neighborhoods and housing --

less homeless --

less impoverished --

less violence --

better health for citizens --

cleaner planet --

better kharma!

[lunatica]

5. Don't mess with the sanctity of the corporate-military marriage

God has decreed thusly... That and the superiority of it to all other things...

If God didn't think this then why did he create it? Riddle me that.

[defendandprotect]

37. +1000% -- and we now have to include oil as a "national security" issue, obviously . ..

no oil -- no wars --

[Soylent Brice]

9. K&R

[Gus Gusterson]

12. "Disastrous Rise of Misplaced Power"

This is an 8pm network television commercial from the political party I dream of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRqeJcuK-A

[TBF]

15. Recommended. nt

[branders seine]

16. End the overseas occupations NOW!

Cut military spending by 80%. (We'd still be #1.)

[slay]

17. K&R - End the wars NOW.

Bring everyone home NOW.

[tekisui]

19. It is killing us.

knr.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

20. And, the bullshit produced consists of a limitless number of bogeymen we need "protecting" from.

[valerief]

21. +1 trillion and counting! nt

[laughingliberal]

23. K & R nt

[lame54]

24. It's so fucking obvious...

but you can't say anything bad about the military

[Canuckistanian]

25. It's the third rail of American politics

Anyone who touches it dies a quick, violent political death. I don't even recall any Government rep even daring to suggest it in recent memory.

Thought the "Dean Scream" was political suicide? Wait until some lonely Senator or Congress person gets up and whispers, "Could we think about maybe, kinda, sorta.....(gulp)....cutting the Pentagon budget?"

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. Ron Paul and Barney Frank are doing just that

[lunatica]

49. Alan Grayson

n/t

[ProudDad]

26. Those guys in Congress are pretty clever...

They know that it's the cash from their corporate capitalist masters that keeps them employed...

They know that the military is the handmaiden of capitalism -- without it the USAmerikan Empire couldn't loot 1/4 of the Earth's resources for 4% of its population (of which only the top 1% of the 4% reap any appreciable benefits)...

So of course they aren't going to touch the funding of the legions of Empire...

Their bosses wouldn't like it...

[wordpix]

36. well, it IS the military industrial Congressional complex, after all

something not quite portrayed in the cartoon, but accurate nevertheless, esp. in these times of legalized bribery of our representatives a.k.a "campaign donations."

[Overseas]

27. K&R. I agree.

When Clinton had the chance to redesign the military budgets for the post cold war era we got distracted by the Republicans' vitally important quest of investigating him for something to impeach him on.

When Democrats neglected to impeach Bush and Cheney for their misuse of our military resources and torture, we lost a great chance for a groundswell to seriously adjust our national security spending and strategies again.

I find it rather repulsive that we've got a deficit commission looking to further restrict social spending for the poor and elderly instead of cutting out the billions of waste in our recklessly privatized military budget.

[L0oniX]

30. Want to fix the debt problem ...reduce the fucking defense spending!

For fucks sake ..the fucking Russians are spending 50 billion total this year ...WTF ...there is no justification for the US spending over a fucking trillion dollars on defense. Fuck them and fuck everything they fucking stand for!

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/mo-...

Russia's budget spending on state defense orders will amount to 1.2 trillion rubles ($46.8 billion) in 2009, first deputy prime minister Sergei Ivanov said on 12 September 2008. The spending figure is outlined in the Russian budget for 2009-2011 which was due to be considered by Russia's lower house of parliament, the State Duma, on September 19. The three-year budget envisaged additional spending of 170 billion rubles ($6.63 billion) in comparison to previous annual programs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_Uni...

When the budget was signed into law on October 28, 2009, the final size of the Department of Defense's budget was $680 billion, $16 billion more than President Obama had requested.<3><4> An additional $33 billion supplemental bill to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was expected to pass in the spring of 2010, but has been delayed by the House of Representatives after passing the Senate.<5><6> Defense-related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense constitute between $216 billion and $361 billion in additional spending, bringing the total for defense spending to between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion in fiscal year 2010.

Talk about screwing us out of our SS retirement ....your fucking pyramid scheme. Ship our good mother fucking jobs over seas and hire illegals to work for slave wages. Make sure we don't see what atrocities our military is committing in the name of the MIC. Lie to us during your propaganda election campaigns you sons of the devil. Take the blood money from these sociopath corporations for your government jobs.

Get the fuck out of all the Islamic countries ...you will never stop them from driving out the infidels (us). They will fight us down to the last person. Ya know what ...GO FUCK YOURSELF YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES WHO WANT TO SPEND THIS MONEY ON WAR AND KILLING!

:mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[RandomThoughts]

31. I totally agree, war is dumb, I think it is far better to travel and

spend time having beer with friends.

Some people like war, personally I don't like war, so I just play music and movie clips.

[defendandprotect]

33. [phone]% . . . money and freedom at stake . . . for the world!!

[wordpix]

34. Yeah and that bull never gives any milk or cream, either

It's just a huge eater that never does anything but screws the cud-munching cows (a.k.a. the sheeple)

[LawnKorn]

46. It gave us the Global Positioning Satellite system

Crude computer networking initiated by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) eventually led the the medium we use today called the Internet. The military wanted a distributed processing, multi-path communications network that would continue to function even if connection nodes were destroyed in a nuclear attack.

Life flight emergency rescue evacuation started from Army research in helicopters during WWII and brought to practical use during the Korean conflict.

One or two people have had their lives saved by taking a helicopter ride guided by GPS from an automobile accident to the hospital where the doctor used the internet to check for information before undertaking emergency procedures.

[anarch]

47. indeed. and imagine the advances we could make if such ingenuity and enterprise

was applied to peaceful purposes. The space program, an ostensibly peaceable enterprise, also brought us a great many technological advances. And if your contention is that it takes an emergency stance to foster such inventive creativity, I'd remind you that the entire planet is facing several crises of a potentially civilization-ending nature, which will cause untold suffering if we don't pull together to deal with them in the next couple of centuries. If we repurposed even a fourth of the resources we spend today on propping up the MIC and futilely attempting to maintain our empire, we could mitigate a tremendous amount of the risk relative to our energy needs, our health and welfare, and the basic infrastructure of our society.

Of course, that won't happen until somebody besides the MIC is calling the shots.

[AlbertCat]

38. The MIC is just welfare for government contractors.

[CLANG]

40. So true, so true... yeah.... true

[inna]

41. Instead, "defense" budget keeps growing and growing...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States

[Norrin Radd]

42. kr

[liberal N proud]

44. No shit

[HughBeaumont]

45. The U.S. Cannot Kick Militarism.

Everyone should read this book.

[badgerpup]

48. K & R

:pals: thanks, as always, n2doc!

:kick:

[booley]

50. Unfortunately the MIC knows how to manipulate voters too

Unfortunately the defense industry figured out how to manipulate both politicians and the people they vote for.
They spread out their factories so the parts get made in several districts.
So most politicians know if they cut defense spending, it will get their constituents screaming about lost jobs in their precinct. & voters are too scared of losing jobs to tolerate it no matter how bad it is for the country as a whole. Especially when there seems to be nothing else to replace those jobs.

The military has in a sense become the new welfare state. IF you are poor with no education and little hope, it's about the only place left to go.