This made me laugh:
The Pentagon must hold down its spending and make choices that will anger “powerful people” in an era of economic strain, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in a weekend speech in Kansas.
Increasing health care costs, a top-heavy uniformed and civilian management force, and big-ticket weapons systems are swelling the military’s budget at an “unsustainable” rate, Gates said. In response, Gates said, he has ordered the Defense Department’s military and civilian leaders to find savings of 2 to 3 percent — more than $10 billion of the Pentagon’s roughly $550 billion base budget — and shift spending toward war-fighting costs.
Whatever. Our fiscal conservatives on the right never found a military expenditure they didn’t like, and the cowards on the left are too afraid of being called weak on security to do anything. Add in the lobbying and all the money that projects bring to each district, as well as our seeming need to have troops in every country in the world as well as having equipment that massively outscales the capabilities of any other military, and this just isn’t going to happen. Ever. Just try to explain why we have as many subs and carriers as we do.
It will just keep growing and growing and growing, and we’ll find more threats to justify the expense, and should the budget continue to get worse, I’m sure the fiscal discipline commission can come up with some cuts to social security and medicare to keep the war machine churning. And then very serious people on both sides of the aisle will tell us that we need to suffer, and suffer we inevitably will. But not as much as the people we bomb, so there is that.
I’m in a dark and pessimistic mood again today. Think I’ll go cut Tunch’s nails now that my day is already ruined. A little blood won’t make things worse.