Late last year, congress authorized $514 billion in baseline defense spending for fiscal year 2016. However, on top of the baseline budget, another $59 billion was authorized for the war budget, also known as the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund. These budgets combined give the pentagon a total of $573 billion to spend this fiscal year.
There is no country that is a bigger threat to the real security of ordinary Americans than is the US Pentagon and their enablers in the US Congress.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's a bit high . . . . . but, it's still only tracking at about 3% of GDP; that's not too bad.
ReplyDeleteHere's an interesting confluence of numbers; our trade deficit, our fiscal deficit, and our defense spending are all hanging out in the same general neighborhood.
3% ?
ReplyDeleteConsidering we defend Europe, Japan, South Korea etc. I'd say it's darn good value.
I'm not worried about the Pentagon attacking Idaho, but this makes me somewhat nervous -
January 18, 2016
Is North Korea Testing Iran's Nuclear Device?
By Amil Imani and James Hyde
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is yet another toothless U.N. body that is in for a whirlwind of frustration when it inspects Iran’s nuclear program sites. The provisions of the agreement negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry and his team of sycophants make Neville Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” negotiations with Hitler look like a stroke of genius.
Iran’s Islamic regime is an incredibly dangerous foe. Like ISIS (or Daesh, a moniker that group loathes), Iran has an apocalyptic view of current and near-future events. But this time around, a group of believers in Shia Iran, with tremendous resources, are intent upon forcing the issue, making the conditions so dire that they leave the reluctant Saheb-ul-Zaman, the Lord of the Age, the Mahdi, their messianic myth, no choice but to appear and assume his universal reign.
Devotees drive both, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic State, to quicken the End Times apocalypse. Iranian leaders hold to a Shia brand. ISIS leaders hold to a Sunni brand. But both are obsessed by a belief that their messiah is coming. The Iran Shiites believe they must lay the groundwork for the messiah (Mahdi) to come and build their Kingdom or Imamate. ISIS isn’t really waiting. They have propelled a jihadist storm to build the Caliphate now, so that the Mahdi will come soon.
I can't help myself, and I'm leaving to go north soon, so tolerate, but this, whether or not you agree with the sentiments, is really good political writing - :) -
DeleteThe Democratic Party’s Choice: Lenin or Nurse Ratched
But either way, the Democratic Party is the Obama Party.
January 18, 2016
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
Two haggard old Democrats took to the stage at a debate hosted by Google, NBC and the non-convicted members of the Congressional Black Caucus to argue over whether America should be run by Vladimir Lenin or Nurse Ratched.
If looks could kill, the glazed hatred in the eyes of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would have slain more Democrats than heroin and cocaine. Hillary Clinton's impossibly immobile yellow helmet of hair and impossibly immobile thin-lipped red smile framed two dead eyes filled with an implacable hatred for all human life on earth and especially in South Carolina. Bernie Sanders ranted at the camera, lips wet with saliva, hair wild, eyes unhinged behind dirty bifocals, spotlights glinting off his polished skull.
There were more three-point plans and comprehensive plans and the “most comprehensive plans” on stage at any one time since the fall of the USSR. Everyone had the most comprehensive plan for everything which was endorsed by all the experts which couldn't possibly fail. Just like all their failed plans before which also couldn't possibly fail, but somehow had.
Hillary Clinton offered an awkward opening statement comparing herself to Martin Luther King. Bernie Sanders delivered the same rambling soundbite about the 1 percent and a rigged economy that is his only platform. A rigged economy however is just another way of describing Socialism.
Martin O'Malley claimed that he was Martin O'Malley, but no one seemed interested. So he tried to claim that he was Barack Obama and no one believed him.
Hillary Clinton promised to fix all the crumbling infrastructure. Bernie Sanders promised to fix even more of the crumbling infrastructure. But the most obvious crumbling infrastructure on stage in South Carolina was Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. And the Democratic Party.
And there was no hope of fixing them.
Everyone wanted to raise the minimum wage until no one would be able to get a job. Martin O'Malley assured everyone that he really was a candidate and really was smiling at them like a child predator in a van.
Bernie Sanders, the most radical candidate on the stage, claimed he would bring America together. Then he listed all the people he hated in alphabetical order. Hillary Clinton insisted angrily that we also had too much division and that she would bring Americans together over hating the same people she hates.
DeleteHillary claimed that she can work with Republicans to tepid applause from Democrats. Then she accused Republicans of an assault on voting rights, women's rights and all the rights. Bernie Sanders hoarsely screeched that Democrats and Republicans hating each other is "media mythology" created by a vast conspiracy of billionaires living on the moon.
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton argued fiercely over which of them hated the Second Amendment and police officers more. The results were inconclusive. But Bernie Sanders spewed more hateful saliva at the camera enabling him to win the round on hygiene points.
Hillary Clinton claimed that the justice system was racist because black people go to jail for crimes that white people don't go to prison for. And that's true. If Hillary Clinton had been born a poor black boy, she would have gone to jail for abusing classified information.
Hillary insisted that there should be "no individual too important to jail". We’ll see if the FBI agrees.
Bernie Sanders demanded equal time to pretend to be an angry black man, then he claimed that Donald Trump was his "good friend" and that black people don't like him because they haven't heard him of yet.
Google, which was co-sponsoring the debate, promoted its search engine and its YouTube video site by making the candidates respond to confused diatribes by Vloggers. Because the only thing that could make a Democratic debate worse was bringing in YouTubers to interrupt it with webcammed idiocy.
But at a Democratic debate, there is never an idiot shortage.
"We have to move away from treating the use of drugs as a crime," Hillary Clinton insisted. Bernie Sanders blamed the pharmaceutical industry for heroin and called for a mental health revolution. Sadly such a revolution would probably come too late to help him.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both claimed to have been fighting for universal health care all their lives. Martin O'Malley tried to attract some Congressional Black Caucus members into his van with candy.
.
Hillary Clinton blamed ObamaCare on Harry Truman. Martin O'Malley claimed that Republicans and Democrats "made me their leader". Bernie Sanders called her disingenuous, lost his voice and claimed "nothing real will get happen". He kept raising his finger as if he were hailing a cab in midtown traffic. Someone booed him for not taking speaking fees from big banks.
DeleteBernie Sanders promised to give everyone free things by taking money from Wall Street and raising taxes on the middle class. "It's a pretty good deal," he insisted, as if he were filming an ad for discount electronics. Except this deal would destroy the finances and health care of most working Americans.
Martin O'Malley and Bernie Sanders accused Hillary Clinton of taking speaking fees from big banks. Hillary Clinton could have pointed out that she also took money from foreign governments and every special interest group and lobby on the planet. Instead she claimed that her financial plan was backed by Barney Frank and Paul Krugman, which is like boasting of support from two of the three stooges.
Since it was a Democratic debate, the great threat of the Global Warming Flying Monster came ahead of any silly talk about national security and Islamic terrorism.
After the attack on American sailors by Iranian forces, Bernie Sanders called for "as aggressively as possible normalizing relations with Iran". That's the closest to being aggressive with Iran's terrorism that anyone on stage got.
Bernie Sanders did however say that he "disagreed" with Iran. He didn’t clarify whether he disagreed with Iran taking American hostages, killing hundreds of Americans or trying to destroy Israel. That was playing it safe since the audience probably supported at least two out of three of those.
Hillary Clinton refused to promise not to hand Putin another "Reset Button", but did admit that the Russian dictator has a "mixed record". Bernie Sanders called for ending the Cold War, but refused to promise not to bring back the USSR.
Everyone on stage endorsed Obama's failed policies which created ISIS and had no new plans to offer except to ask the Muslims, or as Bernie Sanders called them the "Moozlims", to do it. Like good Democrats, everyone on stage was in favor of someone else destroying ISIS and getting someone else to pay for it. And none of them had a plan for making it happen.
Instead of answering a question about fighting “lone wolf terrorism”, Bernie Sanders began ranting about corporations. But Bernie Sanders rants about corporations when he puts on his pants or burns his toast. He hates corporations a lot more than he hates Islamic terrorists. So do the rest of his party.
DeleteThe murder of Americans in San Bernardino by Islamic terrorists just didn't matter to Bernie Sanders.
Hillary Clinton promised to send Bill around the country as a "goodwill emissary" to find the "best ideas". Sending Bill Clinton around the country is likely to accomplish a lot of things, most of them involving envelopes of money and indecent exposure, but finding good ideas isn't one of them.
Still at least Hillary Clinton has a plan to keep her husband as far away from the White House as possible.
Ultimately these weren’t debates; they were exercises of empty political theater. No one on stage was really willing to press Hillary Clinton about the flood of special interest money into her campaign.
Their closing statements were as hollow as their political programs.
"We are on the threshold of a new era of American progress," Martin O'Malley beamed before having to return to his planet. Hillary Clinton boasted of "going on a TV show" to express her outrage about Flint. Bernie Sanders, glaring through his bifocals, demanded a political revolution. Demanding a revolution has been his solution to everything for fifty years. It’s his self-righteous way of doing nothing.
There was no substance to any of it. All of the candidates on the stage were just there to continue the Obama project, which has wrecked the country, by another name. Indeed the most devastating attack of the debate was not Bernie Sanders mentioning Hillary’s dirty money, but Hillary Clinton accusing him of trying to find a candidate to primary Obama in front of a heavily black audience.
The Democratic Party is married to Obama and his disastrous two terms in office. There can be no revolution and no new era of progress. Only fake outrage on TV shows and TV debates.
The debate made it clear once and for all, that the Democratic Party is the Obama Party.
:):):)
DeleteLater....
TRIPP WARNS: BILL HAD 1000S OF WOMEN ....Drudge
DeleteLater....
:):):O)
.
DeleteThe man states the obvious in an especially snarky way. All right for someone writing here, but rather self-demeaning for someone who would actually call himself a 'journalist' (if that's what they call themselves at the AT).
The only advantage he has is he could plug in the names of Trump, Cruz, and Rubio and sell the same piece over at Salon.
Good political writing? No, merely cheap agitprop.
The guy sounds like he is trying to imitate
Triumph The Insult Comic Dog
but he lacks Triumph's charisma.
.
lag·gard
ReplyDeletenoun: laggard; plural noun: laggards
1. a person who makes slow progress and falls behind others.
He seems to prefer that to boobie.
DeleteThe reference is to hanging around with you morons, you morons.
DeleteYou claim to be behind the learning curve, Laggard.
DeleteWe all acknowledge the truth of that.
SOUTHWEST ASIA, January 18, 2016 — U.S. and coalition military forces have continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.
ReplyDeleteOfficials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.
Strikes in Syria
Attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 10 strikes in Syria:
-- Near Ar Raqqah, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL underground facility.
-- Near Al Hasakah, one strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL building and wounded an ISIL fighter.
-- Near Ayn Isa, one strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle and an ISIL mortar system.
-- Near Manbij, three strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed seven ISIL vehicles and wounded five ISIL fighters.
-- Near Mar’a, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and an ISIL headquarters building.
Strikes in Iraq
Attack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 25 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:
-- Near Kisik, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL fighting position.
-- Near Mosul, 10 strikes struck four separate ISIL tactical units, an ISIL communications facility, and an ISIL-used culvert and destroyed five ISIL fighting positions, two ISIL assembly areas, two ISIL weapons caches, and an ISIL excavator.
-- Near Ramadi, eight strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle-borne bomb, an ISIL vehicle, an ISIL tactical vehicle, an ISIL command and control node, an ISIL building, cratered two ISIL-used roads, and denied ISIL access to terrain.
-- Near Sinjar, one strike destroyed an ISIL vehicle.
-- Near Qayyarah, three strikes struck two ISIL-used culverts and denied ISIL access to terrain.
The three newly kidnapped Americans are all naturalized Americans of mixed Arab/moslem background.
ReplyDeleteSome are guessing they were kidnapped by Shia on orders from Iran, giving the USA the dirty finger once again.
Who knows ?
Who is guessing that?
DeleteWhat are their names, or is it limited to Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson's fictional niece?
What really got The Bern going last night was the damned pharmaceutical companies, and price of lithium.
ReplyDeleteHe's right too. Low lithium prices are the basis of western democracy....
ISIS ?
DeleteNot even mentioned.
But low lithium prices are essential.
They keep the rats in their basements, folks like Ash off the streets.....
Remember lithium when casting your ballots this time around...
Hey Rufus, are you going to see "13 Hours"?
ReplyDeleteOn at a theatre near you now.
If you can't afford it, tune into "The Kelly File" on Fox tonight.
I recall you saying Benghazi would be forgotten about in a couple of months.
That was long ago.
The truth is coming out and it's killing your gal pal Hillary.
Bet you believe Micheal Bay's "Transformers" was a documentary, too.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of it, Jack.
DeleteI like reality.
You enjoyed it ?
Maybe it's where you got your idea for your super secret CIA, NSA, Defense Department backed project off the shores of Panama ? The one that is critical to our national security ?
How that's going ?
Any progress ?
Never heard of Michael Bay or his biggest series of movies?
DeleteYou really are far behind the learning curve.
As for 'infrastructure', I thought we poured a couple trillion into 'shovel ready' infrastructure jobs about seven years ago.
ReplyDeleteWhat ever happened to that ?
One would think all the 'infrastructure' would have been all fixed up by now.
Heading back to Fox.
ReplyDeleteThink I'll go see this movie tomorrow.
The guests on "The Kelly File" seem persuasive enough.
You are going to be disappointed, Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson, Hillary's name is not even mentioned in the movie.
ReplyDeletehttp://deadline.com/2016/01/13-hours-box-office-michael-by-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-republicans-1201684874/
For a movie that focused on the challenges that the commandos faced on the ground as they squared off with Islamic militants, Clinton’s name wasn’t even uttered in the film.
Delete.
DeleteWhich is the point I've always had about the whole affair. The GOP focus is on who knew what when.
Mine has always been, when the security people on the ground asked for additional support, and given what was going on in Libya at the time, I found it passing strange that Hillary was nowhere to be found though she was SOS.
.
Hillary has said that the families of the deceased to whom she spoke concerning the event are now, in effect, lying about it.
DeleteShe really is some kind of devil isn't she ?
A 95-year-old former paramedic at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz will go on trial in Germany next month on charges of being an accessory to the murder of at least 3681 people a German court announced on Monday.
ReplyDelete...
Two other cases involving death camp employees are pending trial in German courts. In the town of Detmold, Reinhold H. is accused of being an accessory to the murder of 170,000 people in Auschwitz and has been deemed fit for trial.
In the northern city of Kiel, a 91-year-old woman is accused of the same charges in the case of 260,000 people. In her case, the defence maintains that the accused is unfit for trial and a final court ruling on this is expected in early 2016.
If Bernie should be elected, against all the odds, American corporations, businesses, money folk, entire industries and manufacturing would immediately head for the exits, looking to the possibilities overseas.
ReplyDeleteWe'd collapse.
We can't be that dumb, can we ?
Some speculation has it that Hillary's current praising of all things Obama is caused by the concern over the possible indictment, and the hopes of heading it off.
She really is a devil of some kind, isn't she ?
OOoooo I hope she gets hers in this life, so some of us can enjoy the show, as some wayward Christrian thinker of yesteryear thought the Saints would enjoy, uncharitably, the torments of the devils in hell.
And wouldn't it be wonderful if Bill, even Chelsea too, got theirs for corruption concerning the Bill, Hill and Chelsea Foundation ?
Yes, it would be.
I got to say this election cycle is at least interesting....so many egos, so many crimes, so much struggling, so much vanity...
Who is The Donald going to have by his side tomorrow in Iowa - Falwell Jr. or......Sarah Palin ????
ReplyDeleteSarah, of course.
How do some of these old demented like The Bernie get the glassy shine on their foreheads ?
ReplyDeleteIs that from brain cells dying in a burst of light, or what ?
Or do they use a shoe polisher ?
What Would It Take To Turn Red States to Blue
ReplyDeleteStates? (and, vice versa)
By AARON BYCOFFE and DAVID WASSERMAN
Change the settings below to see how shifts in party preference and turnout by different demographic groups would affect the 2016 presidential election. Read more »
PUBLISHED 2:00 PM EST | DEC 3, 2015
How Demographics Will Shape The 2016 Election
By DAVID WASSERMAN
Republicans contend that the 2016 election will be about Americans’ desire for change after eight years of a Democratic president. Democrats hope the election will tell a different story of change: a continued march toward a more diverse electorate that is ever more hostile to the GOP’s Electoral College fortunes.
We’ve built an interactive tool to help you draw your own conclusions about whether, as is often said, demographics truly are destiny. You can use it to see how changes in turnout and partisanship within five demographic groups would affect the outcome of the 2016 election. Paying homage to the BBC’s iconic tracker of vote swings in British parliamentary elections, we’re calling it the 2016 Swing-O-Matic. Check it out:
To build a baseline model of the 2016 presidential election, we started with the results of the 2012 election, looking at support for Mitt Romney vs. President Obama by five demographic groups: whites with college degrees, whites without college degrees, African-Americans, Latinos and Asians/others. We then adjusted the size of those demographic groups based on four years of population change.1 From there, you can choose your own adventure: When you adjust each group’s national turnout and party breakdown, the Swing-O-Matic automatically recalculates each state’s election results, along with the outcome of the Electoral College and national popular vote.
A bit of background and three initial takeaways
DeleteThere’s no question that recent demographic trends have aided Democrats enormously. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won 56 percent of all white voters and won election in a 44-state landslide. In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney carried 59 percent of all white voters yet lost decisively. What happened? African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and other non-whites — all overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning groups — rose from 12 percent of voters in 1980 to 28 percent in 2012.
Yet analyses that focus only on race and ethnicity ignore an even more rapid demographic shift driving Democratic success: educational attainment. This is why we have split non-Hispanic white voters into two groups.
In both 2008 and 2012, Republicans’ best group by far — of the five we examined — was white voters without college degrees. The GOP carried that group by 14 percentage points in 2008 and a whopping 26 points in 2012. However, these voters — who skew older and more rural — decline 3 percentage points every four years as a share of the overall electorate. In contrast, white degree-holders — who still lean Republican but are much likelier to support Democrats than whites without a degree — rise a percentage point every four years.
In other words, Democrats’ coalition of non-white, young and well-educated voters continues to expand every election, while Republicans’ coalition of white, older and less-educated voters keeps shrinking. It’s no wonder that some pundits have suggested Democrats have an emerging “stranglehold on the Electoral College” because of favorable trends in states like Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and Virginia, right?
It’s true that if every demographic group were to carry its 2012 levels of turnout and party support into 2016, Democrats’ lead in the national popular vote would expand from 3.9 percentage points to 5.1 points based on population trends alone. But, as FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver and others have argued, Democrats’ advantage in the Electoral College is much more tenuous than it’s often portrayed. Here are a few initial takeaways from our interactive (let us know what else you find @FiveThirtyEight):
1) A small shift in the national vote is all it would take for Republicans to break through Democrats’ supposed “Blue Wall.” If all five of our groups were to shift just 3 percentage points toward the GOP in 2016, Republicans would “flip” Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin and win 315 electoral votes — almost a mirror image of the 2012 outcome.
ReplyDelete2) The power of the Latino vote is frequently overstated. Even if Latino and Asian/other turnout were to plummet to zero, Democrats would still win the Electoral College 283 to 255 — despite losing the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points. That’s because Latino and Asian voters are heavily concentrated in non-competitive states like California, New York and Texas.
3) Sky-high African-American support and engagement is crucial for Democrats. Suppose African-American voters were to return to pre-Obama, 2004 levels of turnout and partisanship (turnout down from 66 percent to 60 percent and support for Democrats down from 93 percent to 88 percent). In that scenario, Democrats would lose Florida, and their overall margin of victory would be cut by more than half in Ohio and Virginia, giving them almost no room for error with other groups.
538 Blog
And, Here is the Handy-Dandy Demographic, State Electoral Vote Calculator
DeleteIt's a thing of beauty.
The surprise, for me, was College-educated Whites.
Delete"In 2012, Barack Obama performed 6 percentage points better among white voters with college degrees than those without them, up from a 5-point gap in 2008. Most prominent in suburbs and in swing states like Colorado, Minnesota and Virginia, this growing segment turns out to vote much more reliably than any other group, and Democrats have been on the upswing with these voters. In 2012, Obama carried 257 of the 673 majority-white counties where over a third of residents ages 25 and older hold at least a bachelor's degree. In 2000, Al Gore carried just 169 of these same counties."