COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, October 10, 2011

"Time to start looking out for America and Americans first."

The End of Pax Americana?


WASHINGTON, D.C. — Observing the correlation of forces in this city and the intensity of conviction in the base of each party, the outcome of the ongoing fiscal fight between Barack Obama and the Tea Party Republicans seems preordained.
Deadlock. There will be no big jobs-for-taxes deal. The can will be kicked down the road into the next administration.
A second truth is emerging. When the cutting comes, as it shall, the Pentagon will be first to ascend the scaffold.
Why so? Consider.
The Republican House cannot agree to tax increases without risking retribution from the base and repudiation by its presidential candidates. All have pledged to oppose even a dollar in tax hikes for 10 dollars in spending cuts.
For his part, Obama has refused to lay out any significant cuts in the big Democratic entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare.
As for the hundreds of billions in Great Society spending for Medicaid, food stamps, Head Start, earned income tax credits, aid to education, Pell grants and housing subsidies, neither Harry Reid’s Senate nor Obama, in trouble with his African-American base, will permit significant cuts.
That leaves two large items of a budget approaching $4 trillion: interest on the debt, which must be paid, and national defense.
Pentagon chief Leon Panetta can see the writing on the wall.
Defense is already scheduled for $350 billion in cuts over the decade. If the super-committee fails to come up with $1.2 trillion in specified new cuts, an automatic slicer chops another $600 billion from defense.
House Armed Services Committee Chair Buck McKeon has issued an analysis of what that would mean: a U.S. Army and Marine Corps reduction of 150,000 troops, retirement of two carrier battle groups, loss of one-third of Air Force fighter planes and a “hollow force” unable to meet America’s commitments.
Also on the chopping block would be the Navy and Marine Corps versions of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. If the super-committee trigger has to be pulled, says Panetta, “we’d be shooting ourselves in the head.”
That half defense-half domestic formula for automatic budget cuts was programmed into the slicer to force Republicans to put tax hikes on the table. They will refuse. For tax hikes would do more damage to the party than the slicing would the Pentagon.
Thus America approaches her moment of truth.
Thanks to the irresponsibility of both parties, of the Bush as well as Obama administrations, we are facing unavoidable and painful choices.
We are going to have to reduce the benefits and raise the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare. Cut and cap Great Society programs. Downsize the military, close bases and transfer to allies responsibility for their own defense. Or we are going to have to raise taxes — and not just on millionaires and billionaires, but Middle America.
And if our leaders cannot impose these sacrifices, the markets will, as we see in Europe, where the day of reckoning is at hand. Ours is next.
But if defense cuts are unavoidable, where should they come? What should our future defense posture be? Which principles should apply?
Clearly, the first principle should be that the United States must retain a sufficiency, indeed, a surplus of power to defend all of its vital interests and vital allies, though the defense of those allies must be first and foremost their own responsibility. They have to replace U.S. troops as first responders.
During the Cold War, America was committed to go to war on behalf of a dozen NATO nations from Norway to Turkey. Eastern Europe under Moscow’s boot was not considered vital.
Thus we resisted the Berlin Blockade, but peacefully. We did nothing to rescue the Hungarian revolution in 1956, or the Prague Spring in 1968, or the Polish Solidarity movement in 1981, when all three were crushed.
Now that the Red Army has gone home, Eastern Europe is free, and the Soviet Union no longer exists, what is the argument for maintaining U.S. Air Force, Army and naval bases and thousands of U.S. troops in Europe?
Close the bases, and bring the troops home.
The same with South Korea and Japan. Now that Mao is dead and gone and China is capitalist, Seoul and Tokyo trade more with Beijing than they do with us.
South Korea has 40 times the economy and twice the population of North Korea. Japan’s economy is almost as large as China’s. Why cannot these two powerful and prosperous nations provide the troops, planes, ships and missiles to defend themselves? We can sell them whatever they need.
Why is their defense still our responsibility?
In the Persian Gulf we have a strategic interest: oil. But the oil-rich nations of the region have an even greater interest in selling their oil than we do in buying it. For, without oil sales, the Gulf has little the world needs or wants.
Let the world look out for itself for a while. Time to start looking out for America and Americans first. For if we don’t, who will?
Patrick J. Buchanan is a TAC founding editor and the author, most recently, of Suicide of a Superpower. A preview from the Suicide of a Superpower audiobook, read by the author, can be heard here, courtesy of Macmillan Audio:

47 comments:

  1. I've always been a Pat Buchanan lesbian, paleo-conservative rather than neo-conservative. Fortress America. No overseas empire. A belt of Army bases across the land border with Mexico, each one five miles apart, with live-fire exercises every night and ceaseless patrols with night-vision goggles looking for trespassers from the south. A No Fly List that automatically excludes people from Muslim countries unless they have a damn good reason for coming here, like a UN ambassador maybe. Tougher sanctions for US employers who ignore the No Work List. A crash program to harden the US from EMP attack. No more welfare for any country, and especially those that export arms or revolution, like ****** or Pakistan. No more turning things upside-down, so our allies are our enemies, and our enemies someone to literally bow down to.

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  2. xen·o·phobe (zn-fb, zn-)
    n.
    A person unduly fearful or contemptuous of that which is foreign, especially of strangers or foreign peoples.

    aka Teresita

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  3. xen·a·phobe (zn-fb, zn-)
    n. A person duly afraid of Warrior Princesses

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  4. .

    Ash, your back.


    You know I was just kidding in my last post to you.

    And, I didn't really care if Vancouver won the Stanley Cup (although Sundin did come off as kind of arrogant.)


    .

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  5. Ms T: No more welfare for any country, and especially those that export arms or revolution, like ****** or Pakistan.



    I guess Ms T's ****** refers to the "zionist entity"


    Man, she is a ball-less warrior....

    America should cut all aid to all enemies 1st.

    Then America should cut all military aid to those that can support themselves.

    But what America should not do is give 1 trillion to America's enemies in oil dollars and sell those same enemies weapons and then bitch that we give 2.5 billion a year in military aid to offset that ONE THOUSAND BILLION we transfer to the hostile nations in the 1st place...

    We also provide (for free) freedom in travel for oil in the middle east.

    That is aid...

    so if all things were transparent we could cut all sorts of economic and military aid to many nations...

    Pakistan? has 100 nukes, is a radical islamic nation that hosted America's most wanted.... and we give them billions...

    Hamas? a terror organization and Obama gave them 1 billion, Hezbollah? 300 million in military aid. Fatah/PA BILLION...

    Then add in what we spend in afpak and Iraq. well alot of wasted coin....

    So want to solve the issue?

    Let the arab world starve...

    Bankrupt OPEC.

    Make oil worthless, like it was just 10 years ago when it was 12 dollars a barrel.

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  6. Was is a crime to serve in the Armed Forces during Reagan's tenure and be a practicing homosexual?

    Especially if one had security clearance?

    Sounds like a crime to me....

    Violation of all sorts of laws....

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  7. Pat Buchanan's day in the sun is arriving.

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  8. What is "Occupation" said... Was is a crime to serve in the Armed Forces during Reagan's tenure and be a practicing homosexual?

    I joined the Navy in 1984 when I was almost nineteen.

    I haven't been a "practicing" homosexual since I turned seventeen, since 1982 was the year I got so damn good at it.

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  9. Teresita said...
    What is "Occupation" said... Was is a crime to serve in the Armed Forces during Reagan's tenure and be a practicing homosexual?

    I joined the Navy in 1984 when I was almost nineteen.

    I haven't been a "practicing" homosexual since I turned seventeen, since 1982 was the year I got so damn good at it.



    So you violated your oath?

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  10. 91. f47 Are you a buchananite anti – jooooooooooooo [like victor]?

    I am against borrowing money from China and giving it away in military aid to the fourth largest arms exporter in the world, and the strongest power in the Levant. This is because I view debt as the ultimate form of taxation without representation. Our children and grandchildren will pay for the fun we have today.

    On the other hand, selling bunker buster bombs to the regional superpower in the Middle-east is perfectly okay. Kudos to Obama, even if he is trying to get Ed Koch off his back.

    My position results in constant accusations from the person who posts here as "Pork Rinds from Allah" that I am anti-Semitic. Well, Semites include the Arabs too. And so he specifically accuses me of hating Jews. I hate no one. John Boanerges said, "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

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  12. Don't Ask Don't Tell was shorthand for the policy of allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the US military without fear of a witch hunt (Don't Ask) so long as they never admit to being gay or lesbian (Don't Tell). The basis for this policy was the following:

    1. Gays and lesbians risk losing their security clearance.

    2. Unscrupulous persons often attempt to blackmail gays and lesbians into revealing classified information rather than have their sexual orientation revealed to their commanding officer in a letter.

    3. If the commanding officer learns of their sexual orientation in a letter this would result in the loss of their security clearance, lest they continue to have access to classified information which they might reveal to a blackmailer.

    4. See part 1. Lather, rinse, repeat.

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  13. I think I violated my oath late Saturday nite.

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  14. And probably shouted an oath while doing it.

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  15. .

    Obama wanted to be president. He got his wish. For three years he has tried to blame the current economic crisis on George Bush, but as Joe Biden admits, the Obama administration "now owns the problem." And Obama will suffer the consequences.

    However, the following two articles (kind of long but interesting) point out that

    1. Financial crises have their own dynamic and are much different and more severe than regular economic downturns, and

    2. Because of economic and political realities it is unlikely we would be in a very different place today no matter who was in the White House.

    I tend to agreee with the analysis.

    "If you ask political scientists what decides elections, they won't say the unemployment rate. It's actually hard to find a particularly tight relationship between the unemployment rate and election outcomes. Nor will they simply say the economy, as that's too broad to be of much use. They'll say the "change in real disposable income." Which makes sense. We talk about people voting their pocketbooks. Well, the change in real disposable income measures whether the average pocketbook has gotten lighter or heavier.

    At least some members of the administration know that literature, and they must have felt a cold chill reading Robert Pear's summary of a new report by two Census researchers. "Between June 2009, when the recession officially ended, and June 2011, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent, to $49,909," writes Pear. And if you add in the direct hit from the recession, incomes have dropped almost 10 percent. It's the worst blow to incomes in decades.

    I've spent the last few months asking pretty much everyone I could think of whether it had to be this way. Whether, to borrow a framing device from Carmen Reinhart and Vincent Rogoff, this time could have been different. And the answer, as far as I can make it out, is, well, maybe. Probably. A bit different, certainly. But probably not that different. Probably not as different as we would like..."

    What Should We Have Done?

    .

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  16. .

    This article is pretty long and goes into the things we did and why they didn't work as well as the things that might of been done and the reasons they weren't.

    Again it's hard for me to disagree with the analysis.

    Economists studied the policies adopted in 31 countries for responding to the financial crisis of 2008-2009 and found the following:

    Perversely, the very size of the package is part of its problem. With something extraordinary that is nevertheless not enough, the economy deteriorates, and the government sees its solutions discredited and its political standing weakened by the worsening economic storm. That keeps it from doing more.

    Meanwhile, the opposition’s capacity to do more is arguably even more limited, as it has turned against whatever policies were tried in the first place. Add in the almost inevitable run-up in government debt, which imposes constraints in the eyes of the voters and, in some cases, in the eyes of the markets, and an economy that started by not doing enough is never able to get in front of the crisis.

    These sorts of economic crises are, in other words, inherently politically destabilizing, and that makes a sufficient response, at least in a democracy, nearly impossible.


    What Could We HAve Done?

    .

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  17. Ms T:

    My position results in constant accusations from the person who posts here as "Pork Rinds from Allah" that I am anti-Semitic. Well, Semites include the Arabs too. And so he specifically accuses me of hating Jews. I hate no one.



    Yawn... She just hates Israel, Zionism, the faith called Judaism.

    As for her arabs are semites too line...

    Spoken like a historic anti-semite. (jew hater)

    Ms T's HUNDREDS of posts makes it clear. SHe dislikes, hates, disrespects, whatever you wish to call it Israel, Zionism and Judaism.

    She posts replacement theology nonsense and is quite regular about her views about Jews, Israel and Zionism.

    Make no mistake.. She aint no friend of Israel, jews or Zionism.

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  18. .

    Pat Buchanan's day in the sun is arriving.



    Well, let's not go crazy Ruf.

    .

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  20. People are really going to be pissed this time next year, Q. I mean, Really pissed.

    I hate to say it, but, Buchanan will resonate.

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  21. 102. Annoy Mouse But if ****** is not a religious state, then exactly why is it if you are not for borrowing money from China and giving it to ****** that you are an anti-Semite? Isn’t that having it both ways?

    David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir were outright atheists. In 1991 we ended up paying ****** $13 billion to resettle their Russian immigrants in return for them NOT helping us hunt for Scuds in Iraq, which would have shattered the coalition, and forced us to throw Saddam out of Kuwait without the couple three Saudi F-15s and handful of Qatari platoons along for the ride. Nice work if you can get it. Pock-ee-ston has adopted the same business model.

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  22. By the way, those were two Great articles. For those not familiar with Reinhart-Rogoff, go Here.

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  23. .

    You’ve heard the calls all year from politicians and the public: Government needs to go on a diet. The Obama administration says it is reining in waste. Republicans itching to run Washington say they’ll rein it in more.

    They haven’t met Stephen Patrick.

    Patrick, 43, used to have one of the federal government’s more arcane jobs: driving nuclear materials around the country in unmarked convoys to support the nation’s weapons stockpile. He makes $47,000 a year. He is a former cop and Marine who rides a BMW motorcycle — and does not like bureaucracies too much.

    After he broke the rules on driving government vehicles, he appealed a suspension, and his bosses tried to sack him. He fought back — and won.

    That was more than four years ago. For three of them, Patrick has been paid to sit at home or sit at a desk doing nothing.

    It has taken that long for his supervisors and top brass at the Energy Department to debate whether Patrick could continue in his job as a nuclear courier for the National Nuclear Security Administration.

    They still haven’t decided...


    Deciding is Hard (and Time Consuming) Especially When It's Not Your Money Being Wasted

    .

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  24. I haven't been a "practicing" homosexual since I turned seventeen, since 1982 was the year I got so damn good at it.



    Touche

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  25. .

    People are really going to be pissed this time next year, Q. I mean, Really pissed.

    I hate to say it, but, Buchanan will resonate.



    You could be right, Ruf.

    And I have no problem with the analysis he laid out in Deuce's post. Obama has shown no reluctance to spend on the military. The GOP candidates all seem to be willing to continue military spending at current levels or increase them.

    However, as Buchanan points out they have put themselves in a box with regard to the budget. Like Buchanan, I doubt the Supercommittee will agree on anything. That means the military will suffer massive cuts.

    All that being said, some of Buchanan's other views, well...

    .

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  26. .

    Not that PB ain't a likeable guy.

    .

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  27. Well, yeah, that's the problem. It's hard to disagree with anything in this particular missive. Hell, it's almost "word for word" to most of the stuff I've been bitching about for two years.

    But, like you said, it's that other stuff. :0

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  28. And, I really hate to admit this, I've "come around" to some of this thinking, especially on trade.

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  29. .

    Actually, I really like the guy and I agree with about 90% of what he says, that's a lot more than with most.

    However, I don't always agree with the way he says it.

    And then there are things like this:

    "Celebrating Earth Day is like worshipping dirt."

    and

    "We should annex Greenland."


    :)


    You gotta love the guy.


    .

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  30. "Annex Greenland?"

    :)


    That's one I hadn't heard.


    Greenland . . . . .

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  31. Do we, like, use "guns," and stuff in this . . . . . . er, annexation?

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  32. .

    According to Pat, Greenland lacks the requisites for nationhood.

    We should first pull them under our defensive umbrella and then eventually annex them. One assumes peacefully since they will be so grateful for our interest.

    It's in one of his books. I would have to read the chapter to get the details.

    There is a certain inconsistancy in his thinking (in my opinion). On the one hand, he says forget about our current relationships with SK and Japan, and then on the other hand annex Greenland.

    .

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  33. Rachel Maddow likes ol' Pat enough to get him to be counterpoint from the right hand of the spectrum on her show. And Pat likes Maddow too. She says she has to side with the Democrats because her sexuality is not a choice, but her politics is a choice, and the GOP consistently chooses to take the whip to LGBT hide.

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  34. Ah, one of my favorite assignments , Thule Greenland. Can't say I ever thought about an annexation. How it was on about as remote a trop site as you can get. The night skies would make you dizzy and the northern lights unworldly.
    You had to love being part of AFCS.

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  35. "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on homosexuals serving in the military from December 21, 1993 to September 20, 2011


    Ronald Reagan was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989),

    Teresita said...

    I joined the Navy in 1984 when I was almost nineteen.

    Teresita said...
    Don't Ask Don't Tell was shorthand for the policy of allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the US military without fear of a witch hunt



    "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on homosexuals serving in the military from December 21, 1993 to September 20, 2011


    So basically you lied, under oath, to the United States Armed Forces about your being a homosexual.

    wow.. what a stunning admission....

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  36. Homosexuals are allowed to serve openly in the United States military. Military policy and legislation previously prohibited openly gay individuals from applying, but this policy was ended in September 2011 after the U.S. Congress voted to repeal the policy.
    Homosexuals were officially prohibited from serving in the United States throughout its history. The first time "homosexual" people were differentiated from "normal" people in the military literature was in revised army mobilization regulations in 1942. Additional policy revisions in 1944 and 1947 further codified the ban. Throughout the next few decades, homosexuals were routinely discharged, regardless of whether they had engaged in sexual conduct while serving. In response to the gay rights movements of the 1970s and 1980s, the Department of Defense issued a 1982 policy (DOD Directive 1332.14) stating that homosexuality was clearly incompatible with military service. Controversy over this policy created political pressure: socially liberal efforts to repeal the ban and socially conservative efforts to enshrine it into law.

    from wikipidia..


    So basically Ms T broke MANY laws for MANY years while collecting a government paycheck.

    Sounds like a pattern here....

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  37. Was lying about your homosexual nature a felony?

    Sounds like it would have gotten you a dishonorable discharge at a minimum....

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  38. Give it a rest, Wio; no one's interested.

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  39. Rufus II said...
    Give it a rest, Wio; no one's interested.


    It's an important legal question...

    But you are only interested in what you are interested in...

    I am interested in the fact that our very own Bartender is an unconvicted felon and this time we are not talking about Rat, but another bartender...

    That makes 2 bartenders with dubious legal status...

    hmmm...

    Now if you are not interested? Great..

    Love your selective "Give it a rest".....

    Kiss my ass yankee...

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  40. BTW, it's interesting what Reinhart-Rogoff have to say about spikes in Commodity Prices, and Government Defaults over the "800 yrs," encompassed in their study.

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  41. Wio, you are so far out of your element when you talk about the US military. You didn't get a dishonorable discharge for homosexuality. It seems to me that T served her country well, as did many gays in the military and mostly no one cared.
    There were always gay bars and clubs around most military bases, US and foreign.

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  42. Deuce said...
    Wio, you are so far out of your element when you talk about the US military. You didn't get a dishonorable discharge for homosexuality. It seems to me that T served her country well, as did many gays in the military and mostly no one cared.
    There were always gay bars and clubs around most military bases, US and foreign.


    Last I checked you are not an Official of the United States Armed Forces, last I checked up until DADT it was not accepted practice to be an open homosexual in the military.

    All information on line that the military put out confirms that.

    The question is not for you to answer about T's service to our nation, but rather her's to answer if she LIED when enlisting and doing HER service.

    Interesting, you defend Ms T's obvious lies, you defend Rat's cryptic statements about HIS illegal activities....

    Your choice of Blog Bartenders seems to get odder by the day...

    But must not show the anti-semites to be liars now should we??????

    Not possible your judgement might be a tad bit off?

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  43. What is that old statement?



    feet of clay



    yep....

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  44. Just bar this silly sonofabitch and get it over with.

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  45. Rufus II said...
    Just bar this silly sonofabitch and get it over with.



    yep censor me...

    go for it....

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  46. I love the smell, the noise, the dust, the grit of manufacturing plants with hard-handed men and woman having a cigarette and a cup of coffee of the back of a lunch truck or from a lunch bucket. Bethlehem Steel

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