A Meaningless Midterm and my own poll...

In the video I reference the following message that Rusty Shackleford sent me after casting his vote:

"Regardless of whether or not you believe in this (and you know my stance on this), assimilation into the military-industrial complex is REALLY far down on the list of priorities for trans rights.  If you want to buy into this neoliberal nonsense, whatever, but I'm going to be heavily side-eying your priorities if this is where you choose to focus your energy.  Liberation, not assimilation.  Don't feed the military more victims and call them "free" for having the privilege of dying for some rich cis-het assholes."

Also, if anyone is interested n seeing the original discussion between myself, Rusty and Princess Bitchface Androgyne Anode, you can find it in the comments section, here. (Assuming MMFA didn't remove any of it.)

And my sincerest apologies to KRISTEN BECK, (not "Christine Speck") who's name eluded me during the video.  I really should have had all of my notes in order: I'm sorry about that!

And it only gets worse...

NPR's story about Women in the Military continued today, focusing on Sexual Assault for the second day.  For the record, Sexual Assault is only a small part of a much larger look at the lives and roles of women in the Military, but considering the magnitude of the crimes, and the repeated systematic cover-ups that have been going on for decades now, over Tens of Thousands of cases, according the the Pentagon's own  research, this is NOT a issue that deserves to disappear after the overall story is finished.

This segment focused on Myla Haider, who had been raped and did not report it.  Well into a successful career and serving in the Military Police, a case was brought against the officer who raped her. There were dozens of women on this case, most of whom were raped AFTER she was. So she testified. And after that? Here career was over. The next time she testified - in an unrelated case - the defense tainted her testimony with what was essentially an ad hominen attack: "You were a rape victim yourself correct?"

Suddenly Commendation turned into Reprimands and she was forced out.  This is unfortunately the RULE, rather than the exception: NO ONE gets to report thier rape AND keep their career. It's utterly sickening.
And the officer that raped her and so many others? Was not convicted.

The most extreme example was in the Aviano Case, in which the presiding General single-handedly threw out a JURY CONVICTION, and lessened the offense.

The story quoted this "brilliant" response from Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is also a lawyer in the Air Force Reserve, says Aviano is an extremely rare case — and the system shouldn't change.


"We have generally held the view that the one person that has the power to determine good order and discipline is the military commander," Graham said.

Well, I have a proposal for The Right, Honorable Senator Graham...

I say we lock him in a room with a large, violent felon; a prisoner with a long history of sexual assaulting other inmates.  Then, when The Senator complains, we so thoroughly impugn his word, judgement and honor that he is no longer capable of functioning in the Senate, and is forced to leave his career behind. The, at trial, even after his rapist is convicted, we'll give some "Liberal," "Activist" Judge carte-blanche to throw out the Conviction, whole cloth. Which he will do.

And THEN, perhaps after offering the Good Senator some ointment, we can ask him how he feels about the Military's system of Justice when it comes to handling Rape cases.

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A quick side note... I should say that moments like this are why Lindsey Graham is like the lowest ranking person on my "List of Republicans that I still like."  Compared to so many others, I think Lindsey Graham is generally a decent and compentant Senator. There are SO MANY TIMES I've heard him say something and and have thought, "WOW! He's so right! I wish more Republicans thought like this guy!" And then like five seconds later he RUINS it by saying something completely fucking stupid.  So, yeah, I still like him. But it's like a 51% to 49% judgement. He's bascially the CUTOFF, the guy on the bubble (as opposed to IN IT) in terms of my being able to tolerate Republicans. 

(If any anonymous posters are curious, some of the others over the years would include Arlen Spectre, Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, John McCain (not since ~2000 though) Lincoln Chafee, George H.W. Bush, and Colin Powell (pre-U.N. Speech). And, more historically, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower were very good Presdients as well.)

Taking Filibustering to a Whole New Level - Update

Congratulations, Republicans.  You've finally come around to abandoning the troops in time of war.  And all to pander to own personal prejudices and put your political interests ahead of your country.

To every Repunblican, as well asArkansas Demcorats Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor:

You are liars.  You are biggots.  You are panderers. You are hypocrites, bigtime. And you are traitors:

America stands for tolerance, not bigotry.
America stands for religious freedom, not Christian theocracy.
America stands for equality, not discrimination.
America stands for freedom and liberty, not the Government climbing into your bedroom.
America stands for women's rights, not coerced rape.
and up until now Republicans talked a pretty good game when it came to military readiness and cutting wasteful spending.

You are not the party of American values, you aren't the party of ANY values.  And you have betrayed the soldiers who protect this country. 

Everyone of you put your right hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution.  And every one of you acted today as if it were the other way around. 

You are all a disgrace and an embarrassment.

And you are profoundly un-Patriotic and un-American.

Taking Filibustering to a Whole New Level

I can’t believe I ever liked, or respected, John McCain. (What can I say? It’s been a long decade!) The latest atrocity committed by this senile, old bigot is his filibustering of the “repeal” of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Now a politician can filibuster whatever he wants. For better of worse, that’s part of the job. I’d still disagree with his position, but there are some key facts here that motivate to seriously (and venomously) call “bullshit,” “liar,” and “hypocrite” on the Senator’s position now:

1) The policy does not, in fact, repeal DADT. All it does is authorize the Pentagon to do so, upon completion of a study on how this can be implemented without affecting readiness or morale.

2) McCain is filibustering because he wants the Pentagon to finish it’s study to determine if it’s even a good idea. Problem is? That was never the point of the study. The study is a question of HOW, not IF. So it’s McCain that’s out of step with the military here, not the President as he’s claimed.

3) What John McCain is doing is not even a true filibuster. A filibuster is used to prevent the ENDING of debate on the matter. And that’s fine. Although I need not point out how this practice has been absurdly abused by Republicans, we can all agree that a healthy and robust debate on any matter is necessary for a healthy robust democracy. The problem is, what Senator McCain is blocking here is the BEGINNING of the debate! He filibustering bringing the bill up FOR DEBATE. Blocking to end debate is one thing, but blocking to START the debate is profoundly un-American.

So right off the bat, Senator McCain is a liar, a hypocrite (for having criticize Democrats in the past over their proper use of the filibuster, and an traitorous obstructionist for putting his own political interests above (1) the American values of equality and non-descimination, (2) the American value of the separation of church and state (because the radical Christian funny-mentalist agenda is what’s at the heart of all anti-gay issues) and (3) – this is the big one: MILITARY READINESS IN A TIME OF WAR!!!

There. I’ve just “swift-boated” John McCain. The only difference being, unlike the swift-boat veterans, I’M TELLING THE TRUTH.

Now before we take a look at the policy that the Republican crypt-keeper is selling out his country’s values and military interests to protect, I suppose I should disclose some of my own personal positions on the matter. DADT? Its repeal is a no-brainer. Gay-Marriage? Allowing that is a no-brainer. Workplace discrimination against Gays? Again, prohibition of this is a no-brainer. And hate-crime legislation, classifying gays as a potential target group? Um…. DUH! In short, I have yet to hear any part of the so-called “radical gay agenda” that I don’t support. Of course, most of the actual, ‘radical’ stuff exists only in the wet-dream nightmares of the Religious Right. Everything that they gay community has actually asked for is very much in line with everything that America stands for… at least for those who have any idea what that really is! (Namely tolerance, equality, liberty, freedom… basically everything the radical Christian funny-mentalist and there Republican meat-puppets are against.) So obviously I have little patience for these un-American Christian whack-jobs and their anti-gay Jack-Chick propaganda. In any case, beyond what should be painfully obvious to any REAL American, here are some key facts that go beyond the opinions who’s validity I hold to be self-evident:

It’s expensive and has impaired readiness.

It has resulted in blackmail, harassment and rape of female service members.

So there you go. The dishonorable Senator from Arizona is doing everything he can to PREVENT DEBATE (the opposite of ‘prevent its closure’) on a bill that would allow the Pentagon to do exactly what he says they need to do in the first place, in order to protect unnecessary, wasteful spending; key positions in the military from being staffed; sexual harassment and blackmail coerced rape.

Senator McCain? You are a bigot, a liar, a hypocrite, a disgrace to your country and to the uniform you wore, and you a traitor to American values and Military interests.


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Note: I do realize that Mitch McConnell has also been really outspoken about this, and also mis-represented to the public exactly what the Pentagon is studying here - also claiming that it's about IF as opposed to HOW.  But I left him out because I've never liked Mitch McConnell.  At one point in my misguided youth, I'd have expected better of John McCain.

Defense Spending and the Deficit

I don’t want anyone to think that I’m anti-military or anti-defense spending. Despite its long history of misuse, I still believe that our strong military CAN be a force for good in the world. And as I’m a Keynesian (or as I like to say, “Educated”) I still realize that ANY reduction is Government spending will not only destroy jobs, but do more harm that then equivalent tax increases would cause. However, I wanted to look at one area of Government Spending, and judge it as “wasteful” just on the basis of necessity. BTW, “wasteful” is not a word I like to use, as there is really almost no such thing as wasteful spending, but we’ll save that for another time. In this case I’m judging it against its stated purpose, NOT against the economic impact.


I came across the following graph from http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending:

Granted, it’s a couple of years old, but as it’s expressed in percentages rather than actual dollars, I would think the overall proportions will have remained pretty close. The US accounts for 41.5% of the World’s Military Spending. The other four permanent members of the UN Security Council account for only 18.8%. The next ten countries combine for only 21.1%. So were spending a little more than our fourteen biggest allies and enemies COMBINED. The rest of the world accounts for the other 18.6%.

Now… you hear the proposal kicked around form time to time that we should cut our defense spending by something like 5-10%. Conservatives (and some hawkish Democrats) always howl in protest over this, but I think it’s pretty clear that we’ll still be able to keep out the invading hordes, even with these cuts. What this graph tells me is that we could make 50% cut in spending and still be spending more that England, France, China and Russia combined. COMBINED! That’s just crazy! You’d probably need to add the top 1 or 2 of the next 10 countries to the list just to make it EVEN. If you think about that, it’s staggering, so I’ll say it again: With a 50% cut in defense spending we’d still be spending TWICE AS MUCH as Russia and China COMBINED, and AS MUCH (more, actually) as Russia, China, France and Great Britain… COMBINED!

Now… let the awesome reality of that sink in for a moment before moving on.

Now, using FY2010 as an example, our federal budget is about $3.55 trillion. Without pointing any fingers, the federal DEFICIT was about $1.42 Trillion. $663.7 billion of that was Defense Spending. Now… as I’ve stated before, we could cut our defense spending in HALF and still be outspending our four biggest enemies and allies combined. This would save us about $332 Billion. In other words – we could knock 23% off of the Federal Deficit in one single action and still single handedly account for about a fifth of the world’s military spending all by ourselves. Again, more than our two biggest “enemies” and two biggest allies COMBINED. (I’m sorry I keep restating that, but I’m just so utterly gobsmacked by the enormity of it!)

Now… am I advocating for such a reduction? Not necessarily. There would be significant job losses in terms of Soldiers, Defense Contractors, Arms Manufacturers, as well as many Civilian Business that have nothing to do with War or Defense, but still do business with or on Military Bases. So cutting these funds would have an ECONOMIC impact many times as big as any security concerns. But that’s true of ANY reduction in spending. And that’s really the problem with the reckless deficit spending that the Republicans have pursued over that last 30 years – out of VICE, rather than NECESSITY as the Democrats have done. And for the country, it’s like an addiction because fixing it - no matter HOW you fix it - HURTS. It causes HARM. Whether it’s though tax increases or spending cuts, there WILL be pain.

And remember: Republicans are still advocating for Tax CUTS, so don’t believe ANYTHING they say about the deficit! Their aim is to ‘reduce the size of Government’ by BANKRUPTING it. If they really cared about the deficit and National Debt, they’d be calling for tax increases as well, just smaller ones than the liberals are, while advocating for larger spending cuts than the liberals do. Not to mention that they CAUSED the problem. They CREATED the culture of borrow-and-spend which replaced the more responsible model of tax-and-spend. Regan kicked it off, Bush’41 continued it. Clinton put an end to it, but Bush’43 couldn’t have that, so he kicked it into high gear! Obama has so far mostly inherited these problems. To be fair, he has added to the deficit, but with the economy he inherited that was almost inevitable – a matter of necessity rather than choice.

Moving foreword, we’ll see. In any case, you can’t cut a Trillion+ dollars in spending or raise a Trillion+ dollars in taxes overnight with causing some serious economic pain. That’s beyond dispute. So I don’t put this up as any sort of deficit-cutting silver bullet. But it’s certainly interesting food for thought regarding where our National Priorities are, and where our money goes. We should consider these facts before we talk about how we CAN’T provide health care, and CAN’T provide social safety nets and CAN’T support public education, CAN’T, CAN’T, CAN’T... Because if there was ever an attitude that sums up everything that America is all about, it’s “YES WE CAN.”

Maybe it’s not about spending LESS, but about spending it MORE WISELY.

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BTW… I had this graph, from http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258, but the wiki article pretty much had all the numbers I needed. But here’s tabulation, in case you want to cross-reference anything, or just wanted another breakdown.