Category: Military

Pentagon + White House = Ignore Law, Add $97.9 Billion to Budget

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❝ US defence officials previously feared that rising interest rates and growing federal debt would push the government’s net interest costs so high that they would squeeze out funding available for personnel, training, equipment, modernisation, maintenance, and more. Interest rates are now higher and the debt is now larger, but Pentagon budget officials are no longer worrying about either…

❝ The national defence budget – as well as the ‘domestic’ budget – is legally capped by the 2011 Budget Control Act. However, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget instructed the Pentagon to use the uncapped Overseas Contingency Operations account to bypass the legislated limits, which were meant to lower discretionary spending and begin lowering the US public debt. Pentagon officials said about USD97.9 billion was shifted into the unlimited OCO account.

So far.

With the Fake President in office, who cares about budgets, the rule of law or how big a bill you drop on American taxpayers?

See how little Trump cares about American Families!

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The dirty details are over here. Education, social services, healthcare, practically everything built over generations to help the American family find a better life for themselves, their children, their neighbors is dismissed out of hand by the fake president.

Apparently, he counts on military voters and, of course, all the corporations getting a bump in profits from his wartime budget. Except, most of his war is on ordinary Americans.

Pentagon To Retire USS Truman – could save $30 Billion

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USS Harry Truman

❝ Amidst rising anxiety over whether the US Navy’s thousand-foot-long flagships could evade Chinese missiles in a future war, the Pentagon has decided to cut the aircraft carrier fleet from 11 today to 10.

By retiring the Nimitz-class supercarrier USS Truman at least two decades early, rather than refueling its nuclear reactor core in 2024 as planned, the military would save tens of billions on overhaul and operations costs that it could invest in other priorities. But the proposal, part of the 2020-2024 budget plan due out mid-March, is sure to inspire outrage on Capitol Hill.

How many peace-loving Center-Left politicians from the two old parties have you ever seen embracing cuts to the dollar$ Congress pours down the so-called defense rathole?

❝ …The mid-life overhaul has been used as a bargaining chip for a larger budget in the past,” said Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain turned analyst…he said, “I doubt the Congress would allow it to go through.”

RTFA for all the detailed alternatives. Think about what you might propose as alternate uses for that funding? Say, schools, teachers, retraining programs for workers in disappearing industries, Medicare-for-all? The list goes on.

Congress and pinhead economists in Washington DC still live-and-die by a now-ancient concept that has enthralled American capitalism since WW2. Production of non-consumable goods limits inflation while providing jobs, funding the most inefficient corporate welfare. Everything from the Federal Interstate Highway Construction to the Cold War always found boatloads of support for the concept.

Pentagon admits their Humvee replacement sucks!

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❝ According to the Pentagon’s in-house watchdog, the replacement for the U.S. military’s Humvee is in serious trouble.

The new Joint Tactical Light Vehicle (JLTV) is “not operationally suitable” because of deficiencies in “reliability, maintainability, training, manuals, crew situational awareness, and safety,” a new report says. The vehicle is so bug-ridden that it requires contractors in the field to fix problems, and is so large and loud that it’s easily detectable on the battlefield…

❝ …All four vehicle types are encountering mechanical problems during field trials including, “engine wiring problems, flat and damaged tires…A “health monitoring system” designed to bring problems to the attention of maintainers is not accurate and “reduces crew and maintainer confidence in the system.” One last mechanical problem: The doors on some vehicles didn’t work.

❝ The vehicles are faulted for having a “large visual and loud aural signature, increasing detectability…troops riding inside have poor visibility and that the TOW anti-tank missile launcher, capable of destroying tanks to ranges of up to 2.48 miles, is slow and difficult to reload…the vehicles are so large fewer of them can fit on the military’s Maritime Prepositioned Force ships, cargo ships that carry floating arsenals of Army and Marine Corps equipment, ready to link up with ground troops and quickly enter battle.

RTFA for ever more silliness. How many years has our military spent designing their own vehicles – which suck? Do they ever learn how to make doors work the first time?

Toxic plume of pollution from military base poisoning groundwater, dairy farm…and more

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Click to enlarge — Don J. Usner/Searchlight New Mexico

Art Schaap and some of 4,000 dairy cows on his farm in Clovis, New Mexico. He has to kill all of them.

❝ For months, Clovis, New Mexico, dairy farmer Art Schaap has been watching his life go down the drain. Instead of selling milk, he is dumping 15,000 gallons a day – enough to provide a carton at lunch to 240,000 children. Instead of working 24/7 to keep his animals healthy, he’s planning to exterminate all 4,000 of his cows, one of the best herds in his county’s booming dairy industry.

The 54-year-old second-generation dairy farmer learned last August that his water, his land, his crops – even the blood in his body – were contaminated with chemicals that migrated to his property from nearby Cannon air force base…

❝ “This has poisoned everything I’ve worked for and everything I care about,” Schaap said. “I can’t sell the milk. I can’t sell beef. I can’t sell the cows. I can’t sell crops or my property. The air force knew they had contamination. What I really wonder is, why didn’t they say something?”

❝ There is plenty the air force could have said. It has for decades been aware that PFAS chemicals are toxic to humans, animals and the environment. By 2000, industry scientists and the Environmental Protection Agency had meticulously documented that they persist in the environment for millennia. They are linked to cancer, liver damage, thyroid disease, lowered immunity and high cholesterol, among other serious health problems.

They have poisoned the groundwater at 121 military bases across the US…

Read the stinking details. Please. The Pentagon, Federal Government, State Governments – have all known about the danger and like all tidy criminals didn’t do a damned thing about it. Civilians, urban and rural alike, have had to sue the military every time this crap comes up to get any compensation.

The ideology of a permanent warfare state demands that civilians matter least, the military and whatever they say they need is the highest priority in these United States.

New Mexico governor yanks National Guard from the border

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Click to run video

❝ Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) on Tuesday ordered the withdrawal of most New Mexico National Guard troops assigned to the state’s southern border.

Lujan Grisham said some troops would remain in the southwest part of the state to provide humanitarian aid assistance for migrants and asylum-seekers who have arrived in recent weeks.

❝ “I reject the federal contention that there exists an overwhelming national security crisis at the southern border, along which are some of the safest communities in the country,” said Lujan Grisham in a statement Tuesday. “However, I recognize and appreciate the legitimate concerns of residents and officials in southwestern New Mexico, particularly Hidalgo County, who have asked for our assistance, as migrants and asylum-seekers continue to appear at their doorstep.”

❝ In addition to withdrawing the majority of troops, the governor asked Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Wisconsin to pull out their troops who were ordered to the border by President Trump in October.

Maybe the national Democratic Party should ask NM Dems how to run a campaign against Republicans who kiss Trump’s sacred butt. They performed in mediocre fashion the last 8 years. Got Liberal/Progressive religion and backed Michelle Lujan Grisham against a Republican who brought in Trump and ran out a platform slightly to the Right of Attila the Hun. MLG won!

U.S. Navy Wants Killer Robot Ships

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❝ Defense News reports that the U.S. navy is planning to unleash unmanned surface combatants — military robot warships, basically — to accompany other boats that are controlled by a human crew.

Last year’s naval National Defense Strategy — when it was announced at the beginning of 2018 — was focused on backing up existing aircraft carriers and bolstering peacekeeping efforts. The new focus differs: smaller surface combatants, many of which will be unmanned, and equipped with state-of-the-art sensors.

The idea is to overwhelm the enemy and make it difficult for them to track a large number of smaller ships. Having a larger number of autonomous ships will also make sensor data collection more reliable and accurate.

❝ One such autonomous warship has already made headlines in the past: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Sea Hunter is a submarine-hunting warship that can operate without humans on board for 60 to 90 days straight. Details are becoming more sparse about the Sea Hunter since the Navy recently classified any information about its future.

Might be nice if the Feds and our military didn’t just pour taxpayers dollar$ into the ocean like so much laundry detergent. Proof of concept, prototyping, pilot projects are accepted as useful in any industrial project that doesn’t involve someone in a uniform with lots of stars on his hat.

Someday, an American government will grow cojones big enough to tell the military industrial complex to go raise their own money. Have a bake sale or something. Leave taxpayer dollar$ for healthcare, education, the legitimate needs of the whole populace.

Army unit cancels ban on “rubbing, humping, grinding” for sexual gratification

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❝ For nine harrowing days, one Grafenwöhr, Germany-based Army unit was barred from engaging in a laundry list of sexual acts and forms of physical contact, all in the name of vehicle and equipment upkeep…

❝ “Effective immediately, personnel are prohibited from engaging in sexual intercourse, acts that are sexual in nature, or acts that are done with the intent to sexually gratify any person in the Grafenwoehr Training Area,” according to the memo, which specified “agricultural cleaning and preparing our vehicles, equipment, and personnel to return to Fort Hood, Texas” as the reason for the coitus crackdown…

❝ It remains unclear whether this was a problem before. Could this battalion — the identity of which was redacted in the memo — have so severely neglected basic duties in favor of sexual escapades that a 17th century Quaker abstinence policy was warranted?

And why are other sex-having service members around the world perfectly capable of performing these bare essentials?

No doubt, having sex with anything from mules to motor vehicles would have been acceptable once they returned to Texas.

A dog’s service is never done

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❝ Sully, the service dog of former President George H.W. Bush, spent Sunday night lying before Bush’s flag-draped casket in Houston.

Jim McGrath, spokesman for the Bush family, tweeted out a photo on Sunday night, captioning it “mission complete…”

❝ Sully became the late president’s service dog in June, a couple of months after former first lady Barbara Bush died.

The yellow Lab was trained by America’s VetDogs, which places service dogs and guide dogs with veterans, active-duty service members and first responders.

Our fake president would likely forbid such dedication — if he thought he could get away with it.