Pretty soon you’re talking real money
If you’re anything like me — and you know you are — you stay up nights worrying that the United States just doesn’t spend enough money on its military. America is only just barely spending as much money as the entire rest of the world combined; how can we possibly expect to be kept safe in the face of the overwhelming existential threat of border skirmishes thousands of miles inland on the other side of the ocean? Clearly our wonderful armed forces require a major overhaul, and I’m pleased to report that it’s only projected to cost a trillion dollars to do so. What a relief!
The price tag to rehabilitate the military after about 15 years of war and relentless overseas operations would be about $1 trillion over a decade, according to the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee…
A $1 trillion increase would require obliterating spending limits passed by Congress and doling out an average of an additional $100 billion each year on the military through 2027.
Oh, a trillion dollars spent over ten years would average a hundred billion a year? I had no idea! Since I was educated in the government schools, this kind of complex mathematical operation vastly overwhelms my tiny peanut brain. Thanks for helping, Stars and Stripes!
There are also critical shortages of equipment such as aircraft, which are being pushed into the war against the Islamic State group while troops at home try to make due, committee staff told Stars and Stripes. At Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, the committee said an F-16 squadron had 30 pilots with only four aircraft flying.
What? Oh no! That’s obviously far too few F-16s to defend South Carolina from the dread threat of international outlawry! When the Red Army invades Charleston, what do you peaceniks expect us to do? And don’t say we’ll reinforce them with F-35s; there’s a minor technical problem with that:
An F-35A caught fire during an exercise at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, the Air Force confirmed to Defense News…
It’s also unknown if there is a connection to a recent problem with the F-35A’s coolant line insulation that caused the flight operations of 15 joint strike fighters to be suspended…
The insulation issue also impacts 42 F-35s on manufacturer Lockheed Martin’s production line. When the problem was made public last Friday, JPO officials said they were certain no other planes had been affected.
So other than those 58 defective aircraft, we’re completely sure there are no problems? Aces. At least the American taxpayers only spent a trillion and a half dollars on those. Spend another trillion "modernizing" them, and I’m sure they’ll stop catching on fire just in time to retire them!
Besides, what else could we do with a trillion dollars? Nothing productive that would create jobs, or so Wolf Blitzer tells me. Best just to keep dumping it down the endless money hole that is the United States military, so they can make more defective aircraft and busy themselves fixing what ain’t broke:
Unlike traditional grenades, the Enhanced Tactical Multi-Purpose (ET-MP) hand grenade is designed to be thrown with either the right or left hand.
"Current grenades require a different arming procedure for left-handed users," said a statement by the US Army.
One of the project’s managers, Matthew Hall, added that another benefit was the use of an electronic component to set off the explosion.
Well, that doesn’t sound very socially just to me. We need grenade equality! Equal grenade opportunity! Besides, what, you expect our heroes in uniform, operating in a combat environment, to remember whether they’re left- or right-handed? That’s complicated! Better replace that potential human error with an electronic selector, which couldn’t possibly ever fail!
"Soldiers will not need to carry as many types of hand grenades," added the unit’s Jessica Perciballi.
"They are currently carrying one M67 grenade that provides lethal fragmentation effects."
Well, that’s just a ridiculous number of grenades to carry at one time. I’m sure the new version will cut that right in half! For the low, low price of only a trillion dollars, this is an absolute steal.
In Soviet Union, Trump votes for you!
Get a load of this:
That’s the actual, for-reals logo being used by the Putin-Trump Project, a truly ridiculous scare site set up by Rob Glaser’s "Progress for USA" PAC, and, yes, your eyes are working correctly: that logo really is a hammer and sickle made out of the letters T and P. Your humble narrator doesn’t wish to sound as though he’s accusing all progressives of having lost their minds, but, at this point, it’s impossible to rule it out:
What is behind Trump’s unprecedented dalliance with a dictator? Why would he give a free pass to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and possible moves against the Baltic States who are members of the NATO Alliance? …
Through unknowing manipulation, or by direct support, Trump will become an accessory to the continual expansionism committed by Putin.
Might does not equal right — and it never has for Americans — but Putin’s Russia plays by different rules. Or maybe no rules at all.
Take a moment to reflect upon the fact that someone, somewhere, was paid to write that. Briefly ignore the bizarre, divorced-from-reality content, and just focus on the extremely unlovely prose. I originally had one of my bitingly sarcastic [sic]s on the antiquated "the Crimea," but then it occurred to me that this strange usage from days long past dovetails nicely with the insane cold-warrior mindset behind the entire project. Hey guys: the Cold War is over, and the Soviet Union no longer exists. You’re not any more in touch with reality than are your friends who are apparently still fighting World War II against the evil Donald Hitler.
More to the point: given president Obama’s recent veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which was passed unanimously by both houses of congress, and would allow the families of those killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks to sue the Saudi government for its rather important role as sponsor, planner, and director of the attacks, and given the Obama administration’s continued sweetheart arms deals with the house of Saud, it’s quite perverse for progressives to describe Trump’s comment that he could "get along" with Putin as "unprecedented dalliance with a dictator."
Of course, this is exactly the type of sloppy thinking we should expect from Rob Glaser; Glaser, of course, is the man who brought us RealPlayer, so it should come as no surprise that his PAC is like a half-finished version of a real PAC, and seems obsolete as soon as it launches.
Last Week in Gary Johnson
I’m aware that I often accuse Gary Johnson of making absolutely no sense. I’m also aware that I often accuse libertarians supporting Gary Johnson — a man roughly as libertarian as Hillary Clinton — of making no sense. So, with that in mind, I’d like to point out that this thing Gary Johnson did in an MSNBC interview made no sense.
Yes, friends, your Libertarian Party presidential nominee just explained that the reason he won’t be allowed to debate is because, if he were included in the presidential debates, he would win the election regardless of anything he does on the stage. Then, just as if to challenge people to care about anything he does, he then stuck his tongue out and babbled incoherently for fifteen seconds with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Credit must be given to the professional Hillary interns who staff MSNBC; their reactions after the segment were perfect. The one who just stared at the camera and blinked for a while was my favorite.
I wonder why nobody takes libertarians seriously. Any of you guys have any ideas? I expect it’s because they’ve conducted a deep and reasoned study of libertarian philosophy.
Please disperse. Nothing to catch here.
And now, to give people even more of a reason not to take libertarians seriously, it’s time for Pokémon Go!
That scene is from Tokyo this past week, as the rare Pokémon Lapras spawned in the middle of the Odaiba district, causing a massive influx of trainers desperate to catch the popular monster. In response to this, of course, the police were sent in to make sure nobody was actually having any fun, and then a sternly-worded letter was sent to Niantic, telling those cotton-picking kids to make sure to keep their Pokémons off of the cotton-picking lawn. I don’t have even the faintest ability to translate from the Japanese, so we’ll just rely on machine translation for this, which will be funnier anyhow:
Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is "not could lead to an accident, so very dangerous, in terms of the safety caution when to play, enjoy want you to observe the rules," You are.
I think there’s a lesson in there for all of us.