Trump’s Proposed $54 Billion Increase in the Military Budget Not for National Security
 

Spin off from the post above:
[URL]http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/02/col-wilkerson-trumps-proposed-54-billion-increase-military-budget-not-national-security.html[/URL]
There is a certain "well DUH!" kind of response to the Captain Obvious headline. Unfortunately, much of the populace has trouble with the word "duh" when it comes to military spending, and they are unlikely to see such articles. It is, however, a welcome change to see someone with first-hand knowledge of procurement saying that we don't need a massive conventional build-up, but rather, an awareness of technological advances.
[QUOTE]PAUL JAY: Does America in order to defend itself need another 10% in the military budget?
LARRY WILKERSON: No. It certainly does not. It needs a substantial cut in the military budget, and that would enhance national security because it would force the Pentagon, the military, to do some of the things that they need to do to make the future better. I understand, too, that this $54 billion or whatever it is, it’s not clear whether it’s going to come out of the authorized line or going to go into the authorized line or go into OCO, the Overseas Contingency Operations slush fund, which needs to be killed entirely. That’s a big issue for me, too, is which account it goes into.

And the payers in this are just ridiculous. The EPA, State and US aid, as the bigger bill payers, and as I understand it, too, some of the safety net programs, although he’s promised to – but I don’t put much store in his promises – to keep Medicare, social security and other essential programs like that going. We simply don’t have the money to do all of this and the fact that we have a 600-plus billion dollar defense budget and, really, a 1.1 or 2 trillion dollar national security budget, when you throw nuclear weapons and the Department of Energy, the VA and all the rest of the security budget in there, is just ridiculous. We have a bigger national security budget than the rest of the world combined. It’s absurd.
[/QUOTE]

o [url=https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/28/mainstream-medias-victimhood/]Mainstream Media’s ‘Victimhood’[/url] | Robert Parry, Consortium News

o [url=https://theintercept.com/2017/03/01/trumps-use-of-navy-seals-wife-highlights-all-the-key-ingredients-of-u-s-war-propaganda]Trump's Use of Navy Seal's Wife Highlights All the Key Ingredients of U S War Propaganda[/url] | Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

o [url=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/barack-michelle-obama-sign-book-deals-981763]Barack and Michelle Obama Sign Book Deals[/url] | Hollywood Reporter. A cool $60 million for a joint autohagiography. The race to catch up with Bill Clinton in terms of post-office cashing-in and excess of one's monument-to-self in form of a hugely expensive and gaudy presidential library and dubiously charitable personal "foundation" is on. Ka-Ching!

o And a longer read suitable for the upcoming weekend:

[url=www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/03/democratic-operatives-dream-big-data-death-stars-%E2%80%A8the-case-cambridge-analytica-propaganda-tool.html]Do Democratic Operatives Dream of Big Data Death Stars?
The Case Against Cambridge Analytica As a Propaganda Tool[/url] | naked capitalism

Re. simulations - appropriately enough, the classic [i]Person of Interest[/i] S4 episode "If/Then/Else" was on WGN last night.

Jeff Sessions: Political Hired Gun as US Attorney
 

[url]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/04/jeff-sessions-legal-past-democrats-trump-administration[/url]

This article is rather complex to excerpt. Just say that there were a lot of coincidentally timed prosecutions of Democratic candidates.

[QUOTE=kladner;454233]Just say that there were a lot of coincidentally timed prosecutions of Democratic candidates.[/QUOTE]
Alexei Navalny could relate...

o [url=https://www.thenation.com/article/is-our-president-bonkers/]Is Trump Bonkers?[/url] | William Greider, The Nation
[quote]But this begs an obvious question: How did this screwball get to the White House in the first place? Put aside his odious traits and egomaniacal vanity. What explains the extraordinary success of this neophyte politician?
….
I have a theory: Trump baffled and defeated his conventional opponents because he expressed an emotional truth about the American condition that people feel in their guts. But neither Democrats nor Republicans have the nerve to acknowledge it. The “American Century” is over, Trump declared in so many words (“We never win anymore!”). The long and mostly successful saga of US triumphalism, in which Washington essentially ran the world, is finally stumbling toward a confused and chaotic conclusion. Governing elites, though, refuse to accept that reality. It would sound cowardly, unpatriotic.

Never mind the endless succession of losing wars, never mind the gargantuan US debt, meant to keep the world economy from sinking into the full catastrophe of global depression. We are still the “indispensable nation” celebrated by New York Times columnists and certain learned professors.

Only, Americans at large aren’t buying it any more. Odd as it sounds, ordinary people came to a clear understanding of our national predicament long before the power elites and most of the economics profession, and especially before the data wizards of our major political parties.[/quote]

o More on the "ordinary people have sussed out what ails us" theme -- NC's Lambert Strether put together an exhaustively researched 2-part series this week analyzing the root causes of the Clinton campaign's failure - very lengthy, very wonkish, but I want to quote just this "nutshell" summary from [url=http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/03/political-misfortune-anatomy-democratic-party-failure-clintons-campaign-2016-part-ii.html]Part 2[/url]:
[quote]“It’s the economy, stupid!” was, of course, the catchphrase James Carville used to keep his campaign team focused in the 1992 election that first elected [Bill] Clinton. So, it’s ironic that the Clinton campaign of 2016 forgot Carville’s motto, but the matrix of failure shows us why. The Clinton campaign faced a fundamental contradiction. On the one hand, they were deeply committed (personally, and by their funders) to the idea of TINA: There Is No Alternative to the (neoliberal, austeritian) policies practiced by Democrats. On the other, they had to run on Obama’s record, which to voters in the flyover states just wasn’t that great, as the quotes above, many reports, and your own eyes (if you live in one, as I do) show. Obama’s economic record includes job creation [i]exclusively[/i] in part-time, precarious jobs (see the comment on warehouse jobs from Pennsylvania). Obama’s tenure has been marked by rising mortality rates, an AIDS-level epidemic of excess “deaths from despair” due in part to an opioid epidemic. These are all economic issues, and Obama’s record is terrible. Clinton attempted to wriggle out of the contradiction in two ways: First, she began by proffering incremental changes and endless bullet points, and then shifted to focusing on Trump’s flaws as a candidate and a man.[4] In either case, it was crystal clear she had no sense of how bad it was out there, or any real idea of what to do (unlike Sanders, who explicitly framed his program as an economic one). Trump’s slogan: “Make American Great Again.” Clinton’s riposte: “America is already great!” Really? The counties that voted for “hope and change” in 2008, and gave Obama a second chance in 2012, weren’t buying it, nor should they have. They decided to vote for “change” again in 2016. And why wouldn’t they?[/quote]

o [url=http://m.truthdig.com/report/item/donald_trumps_greatest_allies_are_the_liberal_elites_20170305]Chris Hedges: Donald Trump’s Greatest Allies Are the Liberal Elites[/url] | Truthdig
[quote]The liberal class, ranging from Hollywood and the Democratic leadership to The New York Times and CNN, refuses to acknowledge that it sold the Democratic Party to corporate bidders; collaborated in the evisceration of our civil liberties; helped destroy programs such as welfare, orchestrate the job-killing North American Free Trade Agreement and Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, wage endless war, debase our public institutions including the press and build the world’s largest prison system.[/quote]
NC reader 'Katniss Everdeen' (name of a character from a recent popular film) [url=http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/03/links-3717.html#comment-2779329]makes a good comment[/url]:
[i]
Good, accurate article, but pretty much preaching to the choir at this point. Those who are going to be convinced already have been.

The dem establishment has made its choices, and they are pelosi, schumer, perez and Russian hysteria. The noise is only getting louder. And those making all that noise show no inclination toward honest assessment of their failures or willingness to change direction. They’ve become shameless allies of the surveillance state, fer chrissakes!

Even the much vaunted #Resistance strikes me as ill-advised. It’s purely reactive, when the only way out of this is to be proactive, meaning a completely new party. This party is just committed to doubling down on the failed clinton strategy of waiting for Donald Trump to eff-up and then claiming the “win.” And their clumsy attempts to create Trump screw-ups on which to capitalize just make them seem more loathsome and inept.

To the extent that Hedges is a powerful progressive voice, I wish he’d just acknowledge those facts. It wouldn’t hurt for Bernie to come around to the obvious as well. Time’s a wastin’.[/i]

o [url=www.salon.com/2017/03/11/how-the-dudebros-ruined-everything-a-totally-clear-headed-guide-to-political-reality/]How the DudeBros ruined everything: A totally clear-headed guide to political reality[/url] - Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

o [url=http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/03/trump-fires-preet-bharara-and-45-other-us-attorneys-media-hysteria-ensures.html]Trump Fires Preet Bharara and 45 Other US Attorneys, Media Hysteria Ensues[/url] | naked capitalism

One for the 'Media Watch' files - Long story short, said practice first became normal under none other than Bill Clinton. The comparative analysis of the MSM coverage is interesting. Author was a Harvard Law classmate of Obama.

Round and round with Tom Tomorrow
 

.

o [url=www.cnn.com/2017/03/21/opinions/judge-gorsuch-the-frozen-truck-driver-opinion-callan/index.html]Judge Gorsuch and the frozen truck driver (Opinion)[/url] - CNN.com

[I wish the article writer could have chosen someone other than Dianne "The Queen of Mass Surveillance and Secret Law" Feinstein to quote here as some kind of "law must above be applied humanely" moral authority, but the facts of the case speak pretty clearly.]

o [url=thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/325648-trump-was-right-after-all-on-the-obama-wiretapping]Trump was right after all about the Obama administration wiretaps[/url] | Jonathan Turley, The Hill

o [url=https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-24/trump-dares-gop-into-high-stakes-vote-on-troubled-health-bill]Trump Dares GOP Into High-Stakes Vote on Troubled Health Bill[/url] | Bloomberg

Willingness to walk away from a deal-under-negotiation is a tactic much-touted by Trump in [i]The Art of the Deal[/i], so one wonders if the aforementioned ultimatum is an example of just this. I see a possible silver lining in the failure of the GOP's version of the "Republican health unsurance plan" (as contrasted with the Obama "Republican health unsurance plan" - a.k.a. the ACA, which was based on Romneycare in Massachusetts). Both plans are long-term unviable as they do zilch to bring down already-outrageous healthcare costs in the U.S., which ACA proponents like to obfuscate by making a false equivalence between possession of health *insurance* with access to health *care*. Failure of the even-more-inane GOP plan means the ACA continues its death spiral and thus hopefully hastens the only truly viable scheme, namely single-payer, a.k.a. Medicare for All, a.a.k.a. socialized medicine. All the talk about "budget impact" is bogus since the U.S. is a monetary sovereign and thus can create ex nihilo fiat money to fund such programs, if it so desires. There is never any lack of willingness to deficit-spend to fund imperial warmongering, so how about using such spending to actually achieve some social good? Crazy talk (in terms of an establishment perspective), I know - thus I was doubly surprised to see [url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/upshot/health-insurance-medicare-obamacare-american-health-care-act.html]this piece[/url] in that establishment rag that is the NYT raise the same possibility. As NC's Lambert Strether [url=http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/03/200pm-water-cooler-3242017.html]opines[/url] in his take on the NYT piece:

[i]In an earlier column, I suggested that Mr. Trump has the political leverage, which President Obama did not, to jettison the traditional Republican approach in favor of a form of the single-payer health care that most other countries use.” As I’ve been saying for a long time, I don’t think this will happen. At the same time, Trump is the only politician I can even imagine reversing course like this. And if Trump wants to (a) cement Republican power for a generation, (b) throw the Democrats into utter disarray, (c) own Paul Ryan like a boss, and (d) cripple those obstructionist weasels in the “Freedom Caucus” [b]and[/b] stick it to their higher-on-the-food-chain squillionaire backers, the Koch Brothers, he’d do it. Only Nixon can go to China. Oh, (e) win the thanks of a grateful nation.[/i]

o [url=http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/23/crusader-in-chief-the-strange-rehabilitation-of-george-w-bush/]Crusader-in-Chief: the Strange Rehabilitation of George W. Bush[/url] | Counterpunch
[quote]Nearly a decade and a half later, the former crusader-in-chief, now fashions himself a painter. And he has found an odd and surprising new fan club amongst liberals. Liberals have sought to revive his image in order to turn him into an anti-Trump. We are told that Bush is everything Trump is not. Unlike Trump, he never embraced Islamophobia, respected the media and liberal constitutional norms and tolerated dissent.
...
And somewhere in the space blended together, Bush’s crusade erected a regime of torture, detention, and disappearance.

To praise Bush now is to erase these victims, and all in the name of an impotent strategy. Trump’s success depends on his ability to convince his supporters that he isn’t like the George Bushes of the world. And by legitimizing Bush, we legitimize in part some of the worst potential policies of a Trump administration. To put it simply, it is difficult to lament Trump’s desire to bring back torture while praising as his foil the man who implemented the very regime of torture Trump wishes to resurrect.
...
[In exploiting] a tragedy like 9/11 for a consolidation of power, Bush’s actions in its aftermath go far beyond the pale of what anyone could imagine. Bush subsequently invaded Afghanistan, but sought and received a Congressional authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) that never mentioned the country by name. This is because instead of arguing for military force against a single national, Bush proclaimed a global war, a war in which every corner, of every country is a battlefield.

The ramifications of this are profound. To date, between both Bush and Obama the authorization for military force in question, which is still in effect, has been cited 37 times to justify military actions in 14 countries.
...
How did we get to a point in time when such a revisionist view of Bush can triumph? Bush can thank, in part, Obama for his rehabilitation. Obama as president embraced and expanded the worst aspects of Bush’s global war. Although he had earlier stated the AUMF should be repealed, Obama would cite it 19 times, compared to Bush’s 18, to justify foreign military action. He would also seek statutory codifications of the President’s right to detain individuals indefinitely.
...
And media revelations from the Bush era about NSA spying paled in comparison to the Snowden revelations. In short, Obama helped to normalize some of the worst aspects of the Bush Administration, which is why it is now easy to paint Bush as reasonable or respectable.[/quote]

Theee orange clown know as POTUS try to tackle another issue : Obama's clean power plan : [url]http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/28/trump-is-killing-obamas-clean-power-plan-the-hard-part-comes-next.html[/url]
[URL]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/27/science/what-to-know-about-trumps-order-to-dismantle-the-clean-power-plan.html[/URL]

Oh, boy - Trump administration conducts 'limited' air strikes on airfield allegedly used by Assad regime in yesterday's chem-weapons attack ... I still await a shred of credible evidence that it was in fact the regime which used said weapons.

But the neocons talking heads on the TeeVee sure like it! All we need is another Hillaryesque 'we came, we saw, he died [chortle, smirk]' soundbite.

I've only heard reports (from people who were present at the attack) that the attack was initiated from an airplane. Who else, aside from Assad, could have conducted the attack? (Serious question)