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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Repub Grifters Gonna Grift… To Infinity, and Beyond!

Repub Grifters Gonna Grift… To Infinity, and Beyond!

by Anne Laurie|  August 20, 201811:21 pm| 20 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Dolt 45, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Space, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?

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“I mean, this is about money.” https://t.co/6Cvsx67LWa

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) August 18, 2018

Should’ve known there was more to Lord Smallgloves’ sudden emotional investment in SPACE! FARCE! than selling a few branded tchotches. Per the LA Times:

… The concept had been pushed unsuccessfully since 2016 by a small group of current and former government officials, some with deep financial ties to the aerospace industry, who see creation of the sixth military service as a surefire way to hike Pentagon spending on satellite and other space systems.

Still, when Trump abruptly embraced the idea at Miramar — and began promoting it to wild applause at other rallies — a moribund notion opposed by much of the Pentagon hierarchy and senior members of the Senate became a real possibility.

A few days after the San Diego speech, Trump took a phone call at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida from Rep. Mike D. Rogers, an Alabama Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces. He had been promoting the space force to Trump and his advisors for months.

“This is something we have to do,” Rogers said he told Trump. “It’s a national security imperative.”

“I’m all in,” Trump replied, according to Rogers. “We are going to have a space force.”…

Last summer, Rogers and Cooper inserted an amendment in the annual defense policy bill to create a separate service they called the space corps. It would be part of the Air Force, just as the Marine Corps is technically in the Navy.

But Rogers worried that putting it in the Air Force might not fly. The Air Force is dominated by fliers more interested in warplanes than in outer space, he noted in a speech last year, explaining Air Force opposition to a separate service…

Rogers, who was first elected to Congress by a razor-thin margin in 2002, has solidified control of his rural district, with a campaign war chest swelled with money from the aerospace industry. Defense industry firms have contributed $395,000 to his campaign committee and leadership PAC since 2017, becoming by far his largest industry donor, according to Open Secrets, a campaign spending database.

Also key in pushing for the space corps was Douglas L. Loverro, a retired Air Force officer and the former executive director of its Space and Missile Systems Center in El Segundo. Loverro said in an interview that a dedicated corps of space experts would be necessary to ensure a space force could fulfill its mission…

The aerospace industry, which was initially cool to the plan, began to come around as well, seeing it as a lucrative avenue not just for expensive new space systems but potentially for uniforms, constructions projects, support services and other trappings of a new military service

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called a space force “an excellent way to bypass the bureaucratic resistance President Trump would have faced had he tried to push our terrestrial service branches into focusing resources outside the atmosphere.”

Gingrich, a space enthusiast and informal Trump advisor, credited Trump’s marketing instinct with turning the space corps into the space force. “The genesis of the name was him writing it into a speech,” he said in an interview…

Vanity project for a Potemkin president.

Two weeks ago Trump made a comment that Boeing should really like him–just before the announcement. Boeing has facilities in Alabama & Rep. Mike D. Rogers is chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces. Pork for AL & FL so Trump can brag about funding.

— Kay Shan (@KHShan) August 18, 2018

(Nick Anderson via GoComics.com)
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Reader Interactions

20Comments

  1. 1.

    Doug R

    August 20, 2018 at 11:23 pm

    He’s a toy.

  2. 2.

    Patricia Kayden

    August 20, 2018 at 11:23 pm

    Grifter-in-Chief. You’d think a billionaire wouldn’t need to always be looking for ways to make money. Sheesh!!

  3. 3.

    Adam L Silverman

    August 20, 2018 at 11:29 pm

    @Patricia Kayden: Always be selling.

  4. 4.

    stinger

    August 20, 2018 at 11:35 pm

    I’ve pre-ordered BJ’s own Dorothy Winsor‘s The Wind Reader — can’t wait! September 28 seems a long way off! Her earlier books, Finders Keepers and Deep as a Tomb, are highly recommended.

  5. 5.

    Major Major Major Major

    August 20, 2018 at 11:36 pm

    I still sometimes have a hard time believing this is all happening. And for once in my life that feeling is a sign of sanity.

  6. 6.

    Mike J

    August 20, 2018 at 11:40 pm

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meBXuuy9xto

  7. 7.

    Mike in NC

    August 20, 2018 at 11:43 pm

    Fucking Gingrich promised to have built a colony on the moon before the end of his second term, but apparently nobody else agreed.

  8. 8.

    NotMax

    August 20, 2018 at 11:49 pm

    But Dolt 45 stated it is his idea. Don’t tell me he might (gasp) lie?

    Can save beaucoups bucks if we use the already extant anthem.

    Ride through the stars to the rescue in a hurry
    Ready to defend any Tom, Dick or Murray

    :)

  9. 9.

    Urlhix

    August 20, 2018 at 11:50 pm

    Aerospace is an Alabama tradition, fwiw. Von Braun and all that.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    August 20, 2018 at 11:52 pm

    @NotMax

    Bad linky. Fix.

    But Dolt 45 stated it is his idea.

  11. 11.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    August 20, 2018 at 11:52 pm

    @Patricia Kayden:

    You’d think a billionaire wouldn’t need to always be looking for ways to make money.

    Maybe he’s not really a billionaire.

  12. 12.

    lol chikinburd

    August 20, 2018 at 11:57 pm

    Open thread: Madison, WI is flooded. I am temporarily flooded out of a way home. Home is across the street. It’s absurd.

    Anybody sees a bony guy in a cloak wave their boat toward this retail parking lot

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    August 21, 2018 at 12:05 am

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: He probably has billions in debt, does that count?

  14. 14.

    Adam L Silverman

    August 21, 2018 at 12:12 am

    @lol chikinburd:

  15. 15.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    August 21, 2018 at 12:49 am

    @dmsilev: Guess it might, though it’s not the traditional meaning of the word.

  16. 16.

    lol chikinburd

    August 21, 2018 at 1:01 am

    @Adam L Silverman: I had mercifully forgotten that song and much of that era.

    After waiting, and wading, I did get home, and my car (in a lot across the street, and not in the building’s parking aquarium) still starts, and I’m ecstatic about that. Worst I should face is some storage and some damage to a pair of shoes, so I’m lucky. Reports say everyone in the area who needed water rescue has thus far got rescued, so that’s also better than it could be.

    Tip your ferryman; be nice.

  17. 17.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    August 21, 2018 at 2:33 am

    I am still convinced it will come out this Space Command will be staffed by the latest of Prince’s Mercs.

  18. 18.

    sukabi

    August 21, 2018 at 3:39 am

    @Adam L Silverman: pretty sure dolt and his crew use “Always be stealing” as their rule of thumb.

  19. 19.

    Citizen_X

    August 21, 2018 at 7:49 am

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: Good. They can end up getting blown up or spaced by riding Trump-quality spacecraft.

  20. 20.

    Tehanu

    August 21, 2018 at 2:58 pm

    I thought there was some kind of treaty about not militarizing space? Not that I expect Dolt 45 and his lackeys* to pay any attention to treaties, of course, but shouldn’t somebody at least mention it?

    * “Minions” are too nice to be lumped in with the kind of servile tools he’s got surrounding him.

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