Gettin' It Done - 33

Defend what's really worth defending - and defend it against threats that are real.

It's easy to see Iran and N Korea as nothing more than The Paranoid Insular Regimes du Jour.  It's also pretty easy to be dismissive, and to see Kim and Ahmadinejad as petty tyrants we could squash like gnats.  But guess what - it ain't about Iran or N Korea.  It's about countering China's ability to use Iran and N Korea as surrogates to project power.

33. Trimmed and Reoriented Missile Defense: Cut the Reagan-era “Star Wars” missile defense budget, saving $1.4 billion in 2010, and canceled plans to station antiballistic missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic in favor of sea-based defense plan focused on Iran and North Korea.

I don't claim any special knowledge or expertise about US Foreign Policy, but I'm not about to vote for Romney when he tries to tell me our greatest "enemy" in the world is Russia.  Even at the height of the Cold War, we were kinda "back-channel allies" with the Soviets where China was concerned because they were always so scared Mao would try to pull something on their eastern flank - the Ruskies came in pretty handy helping us keep the Chinese bottled up.  Pretty smart play - using one major component of The Red Menace to contain the power and influence of The Red Menace.  So let's not go out of our way to piss off the Russians when it's more than a little likely we're gonna need 'em.

Mr Deity

Mormons are funny in some very interesting ways.

Mr Smooth

I never get tired of listening to smart people talk about important stuff.

Jesus For President

He'd never stand a chance in a Repub primary.

Today's Cartoon

Gettin' It Done - 34

I'm a small c conservative on things like Defense and National Security.  I want an Intel system that knows what's going on in the world, and I want military capabilities that make it very painful for bad actors to fuck with us.  Also, I don't mind so much that the defense industry makes for a bunch of decent jobs.

Unfortunately, that's not what we've got now.  If you've paid any attention at all, you have to know what a horrendous boondoggle it's become - a lot of it anyway.  It actually kinda surprises me that the Right Radicals haven't been more snarly about Obama's moves on this subject:

34. Began Post-Post-9/11 Military Builddown: After winning agreement from congressional Republicans and Democrats in summer 2011 budget deal to reduce projected defense spending by $450 billion, proposed new DoD budget this year with cuts of that size and a new national defense strategy that would shrink ground forces from 570,000 to 490,000 over the next ten years while increasing programs in intelligence gathering and cyberwarfare.

Well Well Well

Maybe this one should be filed under: About Fuckin' Time, Dude.

via The Agonist, a story out of New York's Office of the AG with the beginnings of details on pending prosecution of some of the crooks at JP Morgan:

Earlier this year, JPMorgan’s reckless trading strategy cost investors $5.8 billion. The embarrassment from investor losses was compounded by Morgan’s vast understatement of the original amount of the losses.. Chairman Dimon commented, “We learned a lot. I can tell you this has shaken our company to the core.” Apparently, there’s a prosecutorial learning curve in place regarding the broad pattern of civil and potentially criminal violations by JPMorgan and the other made men of The Money Party.

A recent survey of trust in financial institutions showed just 23% of the public trusted the big banks like Morgan and only 15% had any trust in the stock market. Schneiderman should have a favorable audience with just about any jury he chooses. The low opinion of big banks and the latent anger at the lack of prosecutions for those who caused the financial collapse will explode given the slightest opportunity.

Even before this indictment, Janet Novack of Forbes characterized the most recent culprit in the title of her Forbes article, America’s Trust in Banks Falling: Thank You, JPMorgan.” JPMorgan’s record and reputation precede the firm into any court.

Another distinct advantage for the AG is the law used to prosecute Morgan.

And remember that these high-level prosecutors almost never bet on anything that isn't real close to a sure thing.

99 Problems

It's brutal.  And, I think, pretty honest.  And it goes a long way to voicing some of my frustration with this election - or any other election for that matter.

There must be at least a half-dozen good reasons not to vote for Obama.  But the fact remains that those other guys are just too fuckin' looney, and the reasons they try to come up with are total crap.  Besides, I sent him up there to do a job, and he ain't done yet.

(hat tip = Balloon Juice)

Spin Doctoring

This is not new.  it just bears repeating.  And repeating. And Repeating.

From DecodeDC:

Gettin' It Done - 36 & 35

Not sure what I think about cutting back on the space stuff.  An awful lot of good things come out of the pure science that has to be done to put people and hardware into space, so in some ways, it feels a little like Walter Mondale saying we should dump the Apollo program and spend the money on social needs.  At the same time, I'm not convinced we should be making it a big priority to put a permanent base on the moon.

35. Let Space Shuttle Die and Killed Planned Moon Mission: Allowed the expensive ($1 billion per launch), badly designed, dangerous shuttle program to make its final launch on July 8, 2011. Cut off funding for even more bloated and problem-plagued Bush-era Constellation program to build moon base in favor of support for private-sector low-earth orbit ventures, research on new rocket technologies for long-distance manned flight missions, and unmanned space exploration, including the largest interplanetary rover ever launched, which will investigate Mars’s potential to support life.

This one I can get next to:

36. Invested Heavily in Renewable Technology: As part of the 2009 stimulus, invested $90 billion, more than any previous administration, in research on smart grids, energy efficiency, electric cars, renewable electricity generation, cleaner coal, and biofuels.

Today's Pix

Mandelbrot Set

Republican Jesus 2.0

The Bull Finally Wins One

Wonder How That Happened

From iSideWtith.com

Try it - you'll like it.  (hat tip = The Agonist)

You can see how you matchup with the candidates:

And you can check how users from networking sites match up:

The Ring Of Truth

From Addicting Info:

The economy is hiding the fact that employers are not getting their way as often as they’d like. With four jobless applicants for every open position, companies can pick and choose. But they are choosing older and older workers, which is creating for them a long-term problem as these workers will not be available in another 10-20 years. And they know this.

But the Republican candidates clearly do not. To Paul Ryan, through his Ayn Rand tinted glasses, the new generation needs to be in the workplace slaving away for their corporate overlords for just enough money to pay for scraps of food and a run down apartment. They should be grateful for the scraps that fall from the table of the élite. And their lack of gratitude is a moral failing in Ryan’s world view.

Those darned kids.

Does The Moon Also Fall?

Here's your homework assignment for this week.  But if you're anything like me, it'll take you a good while longer than a week to get it all internalized.



Thinking about things like String Theory and other Quantum-y stuff usually gives me a pounding headache.  So, I try instead to think about what was going on in people's heads in the 17th century when Newton was trying to introduce his new ways of doing things.  And it occurs to me: the TeaBaggers of that time resisted all this revolutionary thinking the same as they do now.  It's not much to hang onto, but I have to remember that time is actually on our side.  Evolution doesn't care if you "believe" in it or not.  The surest path to extinction is to defy the natural order of cause and effect.  Adapt; Improvise; Overcome.  If you don't learn, you don't change.  And if you don't change, you die.

The News From Afghanistan

As of today, in wars supposedly intended to get us a little payback, we've now gotten almost 3 times as many Americans killed as died on 9/11.  

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The killing of an American serviceman in an exchange of fire with allied Afghan soldiers pushed U.S. military deaths in the war to 2,000, a cold reminder of the perils that remain after an 11-year conflict that now garners little public interest at home.

When do we get it thru our thick skulls that none of this makes any sense at all?