Needlenose

North Korean soldier looking for Repair_Man_Jack's house

…no, just seriously stoopid.  I’ve noticed that of late, as the HuffPos and PajamaMedias of the blogosphere emerge, fewer and fewer people ‘cross over’ to visit blogs and media of the opposing camp.  With all this Tea Party noise about the deficit, I thought I’d take a peak at one of the bigger conservative blogs to see what they had to say about it, and perhaps, as a self-professed ‘balanced budget’ guy, I might find some common ground.

Quite randomly, I found this diatribe by Repair_Man_Jack on RedState with the premise that we can’t cut the U.S. Defense budget without increasing security risk.  The crux of his argument is that there are some potential flashpoints out there such as the Korean Penninsula and the recent Chinese military buildup, and that we need to keep the sea lanes open for trade.

I’m guessing Repair_Man_Jack hasn’t really his homework if he thinks all of the defense budget goes to the cordon sanitaire around N. Korea and into policing the sea lanes.  I can think of many potential cuts that we can take immediately to tip the scales back in the direction of balance.

First, what are we paying per year for Shrubya’s occupations of Iraq & Afghanistan and other misc overseas adventures?  Something like $171 Billion a year….that’s a lot of scratch!  Presumably Jack the Repair Man is still a Believer in these invasions, otherwise undoubtedly he would have seen the Elephant in the budget room.

Then there is Shrubya’s unproven ‘Missile Defense” program, a costly $18B/year!!  Beyond the fact that what few tests that have been conducted have had extremely dubious results, I’m hard-pressed to understand exactly what threat this is supposed to protect us  from – the North Korean missiles might have the range now, but their guidance is questionable.  If either China or Russia get pissed at us and decide to send missiles our way, most likely those would come out of subs off the coast, a ‘use case’ not covered by Shrubya’s Star Wars.

And what of the $8+ Billion a year we are paying to support our nuclear weapons program?  Weren’t we supposed to be decreasing the number of bombs in our stockpile? ConservObama is not just continuing Shrubya’s handouts to aerospace in this filthy industry, but actually increasing the size of the defense and energy budget to support nuclear weapons and nuclear power research.  We haven’t hit the point where the US can get rid of all our stockpile and do no further maintenance, but seriously, how many H-Bomb-equipped MIRVs do we need to wipe out N. Korea, China and Iran?  Let’s close down one of the weapons lab and pare the remaining one back to a core function of reducing our stockpile further, and maintaining a enough weapons to wipe out Jack the Repairman’s overblown threats abroad.

Anyway, I’ll spare you further commentary, just take a look at this list of astronomical military boondoggles if you want to find another trillion or so (over time) in defense spending cuts that we can safely make without provoking a N. Korean invasion of the Fatherland.

As for Repair_Man_Jack, I suggest you stick to repairing drywall.

Nope, no legacy peace treaty...just a stinking pile of crap!

A couple of days ago, I was joking about the Shrubya transition plan – wondering if he would leave a trashed WH and pop all the “Os” out of the computer keyboards.  But on seeing Condi’s failure to make even an iota of progress on a ‘legacy’ peace deal in the cis-Jordan, I further reflected on the transition from Clinton to Shrubya, then contrasted it with the current transition.  Clinton left Shrubya with:

* a balanced budget
* $2 billion budget surplus
* under $6 trillion national debt
* fewer Federal employees than his predecessor
* an economic boom
* high levels of unemployment
* the virtual elimination of Big Ag agricultural subsidies
* a 98% agreed-upon peace deal for the cis-Jordan involving S. Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, the occupied territories and Jerusalem with Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinians
* an anti-nuke deal with Little Kim in N. Korea

What presents have King George the Witless left for Obama?

* $400+ billion dollar budget deficit (not counting the cost of the Iraq war)
* $12 trillion national debt (doubled in 8 years)
* a surge in the number of federal employees and paid political appointees
* the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression
* 6.5%+ unemployment highest level in 14 years (since his daddy, King George the Clueless)
* unprecedented levels of corporate welfare Big Ag and Big Oil tax breaks and subsidies
* complete breakdown of cis-Jordan peace talks and 2nd intifada, massive unrest and hardship in the occupied territories and regional ‘cold war’
* Nuclear-armed Little Kim
* election of hard-liners in Iran, virtual elimination of moderate faction
* And to top all that off – a failed costly war in Iraq and a failing war in Afghanistan

And to remember King George the Witless and TurdBlossom’s biggest complaint was a few computer keyboards missing “Ws.” I never thought I’d miss Clinton.

Heading home for the holidays? Dreading the inevitable collision with that Libertarian uncle or redneck cousin where you both unavoidably launch into a heated, and family-alienating political discussion after he/she taunts you with Bush? Well, this year stay cool and stay on-message with these handy talking points on so-called conservative issues:

Fiscal responsibility:
* $1/2 trillion-dollar budget deficit and climbing, of which:
* $300 billion is pure government welfare pork
* $100-200 billion additional pork pending in the Energy and Prescription Drug bills
- Remind him/her that Clinton balanced the budget

Small government
* 12.5% growth in Federal Government last year
- Remind him/her that Gore, working for Clinton, trimmed 300K federal jobs and reduced Federal spending 3% (as share of GDP)

Fighting Terrorism
* Where’s Osama?
* Why are the Taliban operating out of Pakistan with impunity?
* Why weren’t the CIA/FBI heads and their staffs sacked?
* What happened to the 9/11 investigation?
* Why does Bush withhold information about possible Saudi complicity in 9/11
* Why is Al Qaeda still blowing things up around the world?

The War in Iraq
* War crimes (on the basis of Geneva Conventions) due to U.S. criminal negligence:
# 1,500 civilians killed in uncontrolled looting following the fall of Baghdad; insufficient forces on the ground
# 12,000 unique, priceless artifacts looted from the Iraqi Art Museum
# 1 million unique, priceless historical documents burned in the Iraqi National Library
# 8kg of uranium missing from looted Tuwaitha reactor; enough for several ‘dirty bombs’
# Thousands of Arabs ‘ethnically cleansed’ from Kurdistan
# Dozens killed in ‘reprisal’ slayings and ethnic civil war
# Destruction of houses, farms and other personal property in punative raids
# Hundreds of Iraqis being held without trial or tribunal
# Occupational Authority making significant changes to Iraqi legal system
# Occupational Authority making long term committments of Iraqi resources
*War botched:
# Where’s Hussein?
# Where are the WMD?
# 294 casualties since war ‘ended’
# Soldiers suffering dozens of daily guerilla attacks, the pace is increasing
# Guerillas have easy access to Hussein’s old arsenal
# Large political bloc militias still run free and armed
# No credible Coalition Government has been set up
# Strong-arm tactics appear to be further alienating the civilians
- Remind him/her that Clinton won the war against Serbia without a single U.S. soldier lost

Civil Liberties
* Patriot Act ‘sneak and peak’ provisions clearly unconstitutional
* DeLay used Homeland Security to spy on the movements Texas state legislators
* Why do Bush and war opponents end up on ‘no-fly’ lists?
* The FBI is spying on anti-war protestors
*The Secret Service is selectively enforcing ‘free speech areas’ – America is a free speech area!

I’m under no illusion that I can convince any of my reactionary relations to budge from their simplistic world-view, and I won’t try to persuade you that you will have any better luck. We can, however, potentially discourage them from contributing to Bush Co., and maybe, if they are lazy as well as misguided, discourage them from casting a vote next year. BTW, South Knox Bubba has a more comprehensive list of more general Bush failings that might be useful in political discussions with your non-rabid relations.