John Cole has it right. The current crop in Congress is positively evil:

Considering they haven’t created one job since taking office, and haven’t so much as advanced one plan to create jobs since they took office, and, mind you, presided over the worst economic collapse since the Depression, it’s pretty clear the Republicans are very serious about killing the economy: 

WASHINGTON — The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a measure to increase the government’s debt limit, acting on a vote staged by Republican leaders to pressure President Obama to agree to deep spending cuts.

Republicans brought up the measure, which was defeated 318 to 97, to show the lack of support in the House for raising the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling without concrete steps to rein in chronic budget deficits.

The preordained outcome followed several acts of odd political theater on the House floor: Republicans urged the defeat of their own measure, while Democrats — who not long ago were seeking just such a vote to raise the debt ceiling without attaching spending cuts — assailed Republicans for bringing it up, saying its certain defeat might unnerve the financial markets.

Just in case, Republican leaders scheduled the vote for after the stock market’s close, and in the preceding days called Wall Street executives to assure them that the vote was just for show, to show Mr. Obama that he would have to make concessions in budget negotiations if a debt-limit increase is to pass Congress.

Not sure why the markets care. If shit crashes, they’ll be made whole again by the taxpayers. Just like the last time.Gotta love the 80 or so Democrats who voted with the nihilists.

Who knows-that “Second Amendment solution” stuff may be right after all. If the markets tank because both the GOP and the average voter are certifiably stupid-there are definitely some excellent candidates to be hanging from lamp posts on Constitution Avenue. Starting with every member of the Tea Party Caucus.

You realize the debt ceiling is meaningless? The US is the only country with such a false premise. We did not have it until the last 50 years.  All it does is allow for more posturing among the Red and Blue teams. Nothing but fucking gamesmanship. With the economy a mess, all EITHER of them can do is play games and pander in front of the television cameras. Cocksuckers.

 It is clear in a fiscal sense that it is dangerous to keep raising the debt ceiling. But at some point refusing [to raise it] has the same consequence as raising it. So to some extend the question is, how do you balance the two?  You start with increasing revenue to get to a balanced budget-then you make intelligent cuts. A really smart cut now would be to leave Iraq and Afghanistan-today.

Do that and I will believe you fuckers are serious. Till then,  stop fucking with my hard earned savings and investments-just to appease the grifter class of teabaggers.

Now excuse me-I have to go clean some guns and buy some rags and gasoline.

I’ve been out of pocket this weekend-down in Pensacola, playing golf at AC Read, watching the boats go across the sound, and catching up with some friends. He let me in on some very sad developments happening in our Navy-which I will proceed to document later this week. This, however, being Memorial Day, I thought I would pass on something different concerning remembering the fallen-from one of my favorite authors: Hermann Wouk. In the book is a  fictional correspondent’s report, Sunset at Kidney Ridge, reflects on the decline of the British Empire; it serves roughly as the emotional midpoint of the book. While written about the path of the British Empire, I find Alastair Tudsbury’s thoughts have applicability to our situation and our continuing struggle in the War without End. I have transcribed the entire piece, word for word ,  from Wouk’s novel, War and Remembrance, Chapter 49.

Here then is Sunset at Kidney Ridge:

SUNSET ON KIDNEY RIDGE

By Alstair Tudsbury

By wireless from London. This dispatch, dated November 4, 1942 was the famous British correspondent’s last-dictated shortly before he was killed by a landmine at El Alamein. Edited by his daughter and collaborator, Pamela Tudsbury, from an unfinished draft, it is reprinted by special permission of the London Observer.

The sun hangs huge and red above the far dust-streaked horizon. The desert cold is already falling on Kidney Ridge. This gray sandy elevation is deserted, except by the dead, and two intelligence officers and myself. Even the flies have left. Earlier they were here in clouds, blackening the corpses. They pester the living too, clustered at a  mand’s eyes and the moisture in the corners of his mouth, drinking his sweat. But of course they prefer the dead. When the sun climbs over the opposite horizon tomorrow, the flies will return to their feast.

       Here not only did these German and British soldiers die, who litter the ground as far as the eye can see in the fading red light. Here at El Alamein, the Afrika Korps died. The Korps was a legend, a dashing clean- cut enemy , a menace and at the same time a sort of glory; in Churchillian rhetoric, a gallant foe worthy of our steel. It is not known if Rommel has made good is escape, or whether his straggle of routed supermen will be bagged by the Eight Army. But the Afrika Korps is dead, crushed by British arms. We have won here, in the great Western of Africa, a victory to stand with Crecy, Agincourt, Blenheim, and Waterloo.

        Lines from Southey’s “Battle of Blenheim” are haunting me here on Kidney Ridge:

They say it was a shocking sight

After the field was won,

For many thousand bodies here

Lay rotting in the sun

But things like that, you know, must be

After a famous victory.

        The bodies, numerous as they are, strike the eye less than the blasted and burned out tanks that dot this weirdly beautiful wasteland, these squat hulls with their long guns, casting elongated blue shadows on the pastel grays and browns and pinks of the far-stretching sands. Here is the central incongruity of Kidney Ridge-the masses of smashed twentieth-century machinery tumbled about in these harsh flat sandy wilds, where  one envisions warriors on camels or horses, or perhaps the elephants of Hannibal.

        How far they came to perish here, these soldiers and these machines! What a bizarre train of events brought youngsters from the Rhineland and Prussia, from the Socttish Highlands and London, from Australia and New Zealand, to butt at each other to the death with flame- spitting machinery in faraway Africa, in a setting as dry and as lonesome as the moon?

       But that is the hallmark of this war. No other war has ever been like it. This war rings the world. Kideny Ridge is everwhere on our small globe. Men fight as far away from home as they can be transported, with courage and endurance that makes on proud of the human race, in horrible contrivances that make one ashamed of the human race.

         My jeep will take me back to Cairo shortly, and I will dictate a dispatch about what I see here. What I am looking at, right now as the sun touches the horizon, is this. Two intelligence offices, not fifty yards from me, are lifting the German driver out of a blasted tank, using meat hooks. He is black and charred. He has no head. He is a trunk with arms and legs. The smell is like gamy pork. The legs wear good boots, only a bit scorched.

          I am very tired. A voice I don’t want to listen to tells me that this England’s last land triumph; that our military history ends here with a victory to stand with the greatest, won largely with machines shipped ten thousand miles from American factories. Tommy Atkins will serve with pluck and valor wherever he fights here after, as always; but the conduct of the war is slipping from our hands.

          We are outnumbered and outclassed. Modern War is a clangorous and dreary measuring of industrial plants. Germany’s industrial capacity passed ours in 1905. We hung on through the First World War by sheer grit. Today the two giants of the earth are the United States and the Soviet Union. They more than outmatch Germany and Japan, now that they have shaken off their surprise setbacks and sprung to arms. Tocqueville’s vision is coming to pass in our time. They will divide the empire of the world.

          The sun going down on Kidney Ridge is setting on the British Empire, on which-sp we learned as schoolboys-the sun never set.  Our Empire was born of the skill of our exploreres, the martial prowess of our yeomanry, the innovative genius of our scientists and engineers. We stole a march on the world that lasted 200 years. Lulled by the long peaceful protection of the great fleet we built, we thought it could last forever. We dozed.

          Here in Kidney Ridge we have erased the disgrace of our somnolence. If history is but the clash of arms, we now begin to leave the stage with honor. But if it is a march to the human spirit toward world freedom, we will never leave the stage. British ideas, British institutions, British scientific method, will lead the way in other lands, in other guises. English will become the planetary tongue, that is now certain. We have been the Greece of the new age.

      But you object, the theme of the new age is socialism. I am not so sure of that. Even so, Karl Marx, the scruffy Mohammad of this spreading economic Islam, built his strident dogmas on the theories of British economists. He created his apocalyptic visions in the hospitality of a British Museum. He read British books, lived on British bounty, wrote in British freedom, collaborated with Englishmen and lies in a London grave. People forget all that.

         The sun has set. It will get dark and cold quickly now. The intelligence officers are beckoning me to their lorry. The first stars spring forth in the indigo sky. I take a last look around at the dead of El Alamein and mutter a prayer for these poor devils, German and British, who turn and turn about sang Lili Marlene in the cafes of Tobruk, hugging the same sleazy girls. Now they lie here together, their young appetites cold, their homesick songs stilled.

“Why twas a very wicked thing!”

Said Little Wilhemine

“Nay, nay my little girl”  quoth he-

Pamela Tudsbury writes: The telephone rang just at that moment, as my father was declaiming the verser with his usual relish. It was a summons to the interview with General Montgomery. He left at once. A lorry brought back his body the next morning. As a World War I reserve officer, he was buried with honors in the Brisitsh Military Cemetery outside Alexandria.

The London observer asked me to complete the article. I have tried, I have his hand written notes for three more paragraphds. But I cannot do it. I can however, complete Southey’s verse for him. So ends my fathers career of war reporting-

“It was a famous victory”

*     *       *

Yes it is a piece from an American novel, with a British slant. However I think if you try, you can substitute American battles, American names, and American cities and see the analogies to our present day. It is true that not all of the comparisons are apt-the Soviet Union is no more and it is pretty clear socialism has been discredited-however substitute “Globalization and rampant unregulated profit taking” and Tudsbury’s prediction holds true. And I would also point out-as much as so many people try to deny it, whatever we Americans have in the way of honor and virtue, we learned it from the British.

If we seek to honor the sacrifices of the brave Soldiers, Sailors, Airman and Marines who have fallen today-we must also ask ourself what are we doing to make this country a better place to live for their children and their families. For in the end, that was what they were fighting to defend, a free society that improves itself, not simply falls back into the evils they fought so hard to protect us from.

Andrew Bacevich wrote recently:

Americans once believed war to be a great evil. Whenever possible, war was to be avoided. When circumstances made war unavoidable, Americans wanted peace swiftly restored.

Present-day Americans, few of them directly affected by events in Iraq or Afghanistan, find war tolerable. They accept it. Since 9/11, war has become normalcy. Peace has become an entirely theoretical construct. A report of G.I.s getting shot at, maimed, or killed is no longer something the average American gets exercised about. Rest assured that no such reports will interfere with plans for the long weekend that Memorial Day makes possible.

You should find that trend very scary-I know I do.

Our boy Allen West is at it again-wading knee deep in to the mud of hypocrisy.

The House on Thursday narrowly shot down an amendment to scale back military operations in Afghanistan, highlighting growing congressional opposition to the war.

In a close 204-215 vote, the House rejected a bipartisan amendment from Reps. James McGovern (D-Mass.) and Justin Amash (R-Mich.) that would have required the Department of Defense (DOD) to develop a plan for an “accelerated transition of military operations to Afghan authorities.”

Twenty-six Republicans voted in favor of the accelerated transition, and all but eight Democrats supported the amendment, which supporters stressed was a plan to speed up the withdrawal, not an immediate requirement to withdraw forces.

Rep Allen West (Jackass-FL) seemed to think that his fellow Congressman need remedial training:Asked about efforts to curb U.S. involvement, West said, “I would take these gentlemen over and let them get shot at a few times and maybe they’d have a different opinion.”

Really? Do the get to go over there the way West did-as a highly paid contractor?  ( His Army career having come to a quick and ignomius end.). Or do the go as a not paid well enough American soldier?

I’m not sure how that changes anyone’s mind-it might actually make more people vote against the war, to keep other Americans from getting shot at for no purpose.

Allen West is an idiot. Somewhere there is a sentence with the words, “Go” and “yourself” just dying to get out-in reference to our boy Allen.

I have been watching with considerable interest, the generally unhinged reaction of many prominent mil-blogs and other commentaries about President Obama’s speech last Thursday regarding Israel and the Palestinians. It would be funny, if the consequences were not so serious.

The most unhinged reactions I have read to date-have come from several sources, retired military officers ( many of whom ought to know their history better), hysterical Fox News commentators,  and today’s outraged column in the Wall Street Journal. Obama hates Israel. Obama is picking on poor little beleaguered Israel. The Palestinians are thugs and terrorists and have no right to settle in the holy land of Zion. Why can’t Obama just leave Israel alone?

This of course leads, in the American context, to the not so subtle innuendo’s from all of the usual suspects. Obama must be a Muslim not to support America’s best buddy in the whole world, he’s obviously arrogant, and he’s throwing Israel under the bus.  Israel, in their eyes, has done nothing wrong. Those settlements in the West Bank?  Just good business-not colonization of in support of the goal of Yeretz Israel. Don’t even think about calling it an occupation! Bibi says so.  Israeli-and more specifically Likud obstructionism to any settlement with the Palestinians? Just plain good faith diplomacy.

Now I will put my cards on the table-if I had my way, a third party along the lines of the British (preferably Britain) and their mandate would administer Palestine-just as was done in the years prior to World War II. I base that wish on the fact that for the long term I: 1) Do not believe a Palestinian state is viable along the West Bank and 2) I don’t think that Israel wants or can, come to a long term settlement with Palestinian authority.

Of course that is just nostalgic and wishful thinking on my part. It’s not going to happen-nor is it representative of what the current situation on the ground,  its sheer historical fantasy on my part.

And fantasy is what it seems Americans love to indulge in when it comes to Israel. Commentators over at OPFOR-when they are not attacking anyone who supports Obama’s speech as a raging anti-semite, are indulging in some historical fantasies of their own.

Fantasy #1.

Obama’s statements differ from previous US presidents. Flash traffic sports fans-they don’t.

But on substance, what did we learn yesterday? Certainly not that a Palestinian state must be “based on” the 1967 borders. Why this has been described as some kind of radical betrayal of Israel (“thrown under the bus”, in Mitt Romney’s words), is utterly beyond me. When Bill Clinton pushed the same thing, Aaron David Miller said America was acting as “Israel’s lawyer”. George W. Bush, whom Israelis saw as a staunch supporter, said the same. According to my colleague in Jerusalem, the innovation seems to have been the invocation of “1967″ in so many words. Why this is substantial is a mystery to me.

As the same colleague also mentions, there was an innovation, one not of substance but of sequencing—always close to the heart of these negotiations, since everyone knows what the substance must be. Mr Obama talked about settling borders and security first, and refugees and Jerusalem later. The more intransigent Israelis and their American supporters dislike this; they want a comprehensive settlement or nothing. But it’s not clear to me why this is the best option, even from their point of view. Israel is going to give up most of the West Bank in any settlement, and will and must only do so with security guarantees, as Mr Obama reiterated today. Land-for-peace would be most of what Israel wants. Meanwhile the status quo on refugees and Jerusalem favour Israel, which has its way on both at the moment.

Fantasy#2

The 1967 borders are indefensible. First of all-this statement presumes that Israel will actually end up back at the 67 borders. The odds of that happening are slim to none. For one thing-there is no way on God’s green earth that Israel will ever give up East Jerusalem, and there is no opposing Army that would even have the gumption to try. What part of “mutually agreed land swaps” did you not understand? ( or care to listen to). Since most folks are learning impaired when it comes to Israel, let me show you a visual aid that will show you why the 67 borders have to be the starting point for a final settlement:

If you have ever been to Israel and to the West Bank, as I have, you will know right away why Israel has the land to the East in the West Bank-that’s where the flat farmland is. The territory rises in elevation as you head west towards Jerusalem. Furthermore, the big takeaway from that graphic is that “Palestinian living space”, such as it is-is an archipelago of distinct ghettos. I guess I am the only person who appreciates the irony of a state that was formed as a result of outrage about rounding people up into ghettos and placing movement restrictions on them-doing the same thing to other people 40+ years later. The reason the territory is so chopped up? Jewish settlements that Israel was never supposed to allow in the first place, but did as a way to appease its orthodox population.”The settler movement could put down settlements in much of the sparsely populated south of Israel proper with no problem. Instead, they insist on taking Palestinian land. They are not colonizing the West Bank only to make it more ‘secure’ (they are making it less so), but rather out of greed, ambition, and expansionism. It is not about defense, it is about offense.”  (and water availability).

Those orange spots are not a way to create a viable state-and Netanyahu knows it. And that’s perfectly fine with him. But it shouldn’t be for any thinking American. The 1967 lines dividing Israel from the West Bank and from Gaza have always  been Washington’s point of departure for a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But now, for the first time, the four digits have become formal American policy.

Now that position has a pretty firm basis in international law-but this is where the irrational factor comes into play with American supporters of Israel. They don’t care-they just want the Palestinians to go away and die. After all, in the eyes of some wild eyed conservatives-they are all terrorist savages anyway.

There are only a couple of problems I can think of with this line of thinking. 1) They are not going away and dying-they are breeding like rabbits. and 2) they have no place to go. Any chance for them to go someplace else evaporated in 1988 when Jordan ceded its claim to the West Bank to the PLO.  The Oslo accords formalize that by paving the way to a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. That peace treaty recognized the Mandate border between Palestine and Jordan, but specifically makes note that the treaty does no prejudice the status of the territories occupied( there is that pesky word again) by the Israeli military. Don’t forget too, that in 1987, Jordan and Israel actually tried to negotiate giving the West Bank ( but not East Jerusalem) back to Jordan, but the deal was nixed by Yitzak Shamir. So like it or not-Jordan is not a part of this picture anymore.

Fantasy #3

‘Jordan is Palestine’. Good luck with that. King Abdullah is not that stupid-and it also ignores the reason Britain broke Jordan away from the Palestine to begin with.  See Fantasy 2 above.

Fantasy #4

Israel is ringed by enemies on all sides, so it has to take drastic action to defend itself. Oh really? Those peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt don’t mean anything? And last time I checked-the Syrian military is a little busy right now trying to keep Al Asad in power. A better way to describe the situation is “Israel is ringing a lot of really pissed off people with no place to go“. And why not? Half of Palestinians in Gaza are unemployed and Israel will not allow them to export what they produce  and deeply restricts imports.  Restrictions within the West Bank make it difficult for Palestinians to commute to their places of employment and for goods to be transported to where they are needed. This has increased the costs of transportation and has thus led to lower profits for companies operating in the territories. Any wonder they are all pissed off?

It’s probably also a great time to point out that Israel is the only nation in the Levant with nuclear weapons and a military that outclasses any military,  with the sole exception of the United States.

However-Israel’s security rests on achieving a deal with the Palestinians. Because right now they are facing two ticking time bombs they can’t control. One is the “Arab Spring”:

Netanyahu ignored a very important historical reality on Friday in Washington, that Israel’s intractable enemies are always replaced with something worse. The PLO was replaced with Hezbollah in Lebanon and supplanted by Hamas in Gaza. There is a very real possibility that Hamas could be overtaken by an al-Qaeda inspired or affiliated group in the near future. Waiting for a more agreeable negotiating partner is an exercise in folly, if only because one has never appeared before.

On the other hand, I could be wrong. Problematically, that could be even worse for Israel. That would be widespread blooming of democracy in the Arab world. There is no reason to believe that democratic Arab governments would demand anything less than their autocratic ones do now. But they would have a great deal more credibility with the international community generally, and the United States in particular.

It should be remembered that America’s great democratic ally, Iraq, does not recognize Israel, nor does it denounce Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations. There is no reason to believe that any other democratic Arab government would behave any differently, but their positions might seem a tad more reasonable when unattached to names like Bashir Assad or Saddam Hussein.

Add to that the possibility that the Palestinians might have learned from their mistakes and come to understand that violent resistance isn’t going to get them anywhere. A peaceful intifada might be an irresistible force in the international community and could very well isolate Israel, especially an Israel with a hardline Likud government. There’s no way of knowing how even Israeli public opinion would react to demonstrations like the ones in Tahrir square, but it’s virtually certain that the American consensus in support of Israel would fracture.

 

 

 

 

The other is, the fact that for a population that hates sex-Palestinians sure seem to f*ck a lot:

The most likely outcome of Israel’s present course is a one state solution, achieved over decades, with much heartbreak and violence and ruined lives in the meantime. The Jews of Israel will likely end up like the Maronite Christians of Lebanon. France created Lebanon in 1920 for a then Christian majority, but Christian out-migration and rapid Muslim population growth reduced the Maronites to only about 22 percent of the population today if we count children. Likewise, Israeli Jews have already lost their majority among first-graders in what was Mandate Palestine in favor of Palestinians and Palestinian-Israelis. Current demographic trends will likely produce an Israel that is a third Arab by 2030 and that is not even counting the Occupied Territories. The instability in the Arab world and the Greater Middle East, which is growing, could well over time increase Jewish out-migration (out of sheer nervousness) so that it outstrips in-migration of Jews. I can’t see a way for Israel to escape this demographic and geopolitical fate and remain viable as a nation-state. Plans on the Israeli right to denaturalize and expel the 1.5 million Palestinian-Israelis are unrealistic and do not reckon with the likely backlash from the Arab world, which won’t remain weak and abject forever.

In summary-a whole lot of Americans would do well to look at Israel as it really is-not as they think it is. It’s not a Jewish version of America. It is a complicated society with some very unique things foisted upon because its foundation based on a religious basis and not a national one. More importantly, Israeli and American interests are not always aligned. None of this is to suggest that Washington should turn its back on the Jewish state. But this is also a time when a more evenhanded position on the conflict is desperately needed. That’s what Obama is trying to do-and if he has to kick Bibi in the nuts to do it-well I won’t cry salt tears. You know who told me that? David Petreaus:

“Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples [in the region].” His statement provoked controversy in Washington, but ask any seasoned Middle East observer and you’d be hard-pressed to find one who disagrees with the general’s assessment. It is not Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya which is the greatest source of anti-American attitudes in the Arab world — it is the continued lack of resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the view of many in the region that the United States has its thumb on the scale in favor of Israel.

At some point, you have to ask yourself the legitimate question of who is looking out not for Israel’s interests, but America’s. It certainly wasn’t the slobbering idiots on the floor of the US Congress today.

John Cole describes Paul Ryan’s evil and disgusting budget proposal:

Medicare costs are increasing too fast, so in order to get those costs in line, we’ll use the Ryan plan! We’ll give trillions away in tax cuts and then… stop paying for Medicare. Voila! Problem solved!

Try that shit at home, folks. Your significant other comes to you, concerned that food prices are going through the roof and you all might not be able to pay your food bills. Offer up this snappy plan- tell them you are going to spend a shitload of money on hookers, gambling, and beer, and then stop paying the grocery bills. See the genius in it? Problem solved! Report back to me the reception this gets at home- I’m betting it is much like the reception the Ryan plan is getting everywhere outside of Reason HQ and Paul Ryan’s office.

Good luck with that. ( Although hookers, gambling and beer seem a better alternative than Mr. Ryan offers us).

Three years ago. ( three years! That alone is appalling)-when I was contemplating my expulsion from paradise and the reality of having to take up residence in Gehenna on the Tennessee, a commenter here posted this tidbit of advice:

“If you come home and find her watching Oprah and eating twinkies-get her ass on the first plane back to Japan!.”

Wise man-because he recognized the lesson, that so many of the rest of us have discovered that once you take the woman out of Nihon-they start unlearning all the wonderful, Japanese, things that made them attractive to begin with. Protracted periods in the USA have the effect of corrupting their inner being.

So it was with that quote in mind that I cringed when this morning, as I was getting ready for work, that the S.O. asked me to make sure the DVR was set up-so she could make sure she didn’t miss Oprah’s last show.

Now besides the fact that she still cannot figure out how to use the DVR-despite being shown on numerous occasions-the fact that she has turned into a watcher of Oprah is more than a little disturbing. Fortunately, I searched the pantry for twinkies-but found none.

But I am calling the ANA or United ticket office right away.

This post is dedidcated to commenter Stu.

What does it say about today’s Republican party that a Presidential candidate cannot state the truth about Paul Ryan’s budget plan without immediately being pummeled into submission?

Here’s what Gingrich said:

 I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering.  I don’t think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate.  I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare system with more choices for seniors.  But there are specific things you can do.  At the Center for Health Transformation, which I helped found, we published a book called “Stop Paying the Crooks.” We thought that was a clear enough, simple enough idea, even for Washington.  We–between Medicare and Medicaid, we pay between $70 billion and $120 billion a year to crooks.  And IBM has agreed to help solve it, American Express has agreed to help solve it, Visa’s agreed to help solve it.  You can’t get anybody in this town to look at it.  That’s, that’s almost $1 trillion over a decade.  So there are things you can do to improve Medicare.

MR. GREGORY:  But not what Paul Ryan is suggesting, which is completely changing Medicare.

REP. GINGRICH:  I, I think that, I think, I think that that is too big a jump.  I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you suddenly impose upon the–I don’t want to–I’m against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.

And right after he said that-all the devils from hell came swarming out. Conservatives excoriated him. In Iowa, television cameras captured a humiliating exchange with a voter who denounced his attack on Ryan and urged him to ”get out before you make a bigger fool of yourself.” On Tuesday, Gingrich called Ryan and apologized. Now why did he have to do that? Especially when the concerns he expressed are quite valid.

Because that’s what you have to do in the GOP when a man has been anointed as “serious” about the budget. To criticize the author of that budget as being a soulless and uncompassionate man-which Ryan’s budget is, completely uncompassionate-is somehow “ ideologues bent on heated rhetoric”.  People criticized Gingrinch again and again, because in today’s GOP it has now become an article of faith that Paul Ryan’s budget is Holy Writ. To even ask questions about it is considered blasphemy somehow. Never mind that Ryan’s budget doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing-and many Republicans are starting to back away from it themselves-Mitch McConnell is letting it slowly twist in the wind in the Senate-Ryan’s budget is now a litmus test of “seriousness”.

Joshua Green of the Atlantic has probably stated it correctly that the world has been turned upside down-and GOP presidential candidates have to now genuflect to seven term hack from Wisconsin who idolizes Ayn Rand.

The budget is important because it distills and defines what had previously been a powerful but amorphous force. For two years, the Tea Party has shaped Republican politics, lifting upstarts like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and Christine O’Donnell over establishment favorites in primaries, and fueling the antipathy to government spending that has become the party’s defining characteristic. Ryan’s budget translated this principle into policy, setting out to slash spending and privatize popular entitlement programs like Medicare. Not long ago, such measures would have terrified most politicians. But Republicans seeking to keep faith with the Tea Party — as most were — understood that they had better cast their lot with Ryan.

Most Republicans in Congress come from safely gerrymandered districts and risk little by supporting Ryan’s budget. (The greater risk for many would be not supporting it.) But that isn’t the case for the presidential hopefuls, whose appeal must extend beyond the conservative base if they are to have any hope of defeating President Obama. To them, Paul Ryan poses a problem.

Ordinarily, when the presidential primaries heat up, national candidates assume the role of party leaders and set the agenda. But since none commands much support, none has anything approaching Ryan’s influence. This has created an unusual situation in which the presidential aspirants are essentially bystanders and Republican politics are being driven by governors and congressmen. As one adviser to a presidential candidate put it to National Journal’s Ronald Brownstein in March, ”This is the tail wagging the dog.” Brownstein suggested that some of the extreme positions being imposed on the GOP presidential field — intense opposition to collective-bargaining rights for public-sector unions; support for hardline anti-immigration laws like Arizona’s — could harm the party’s nominee in the general election since President Obama and the Democrats will likely exploit them.

People are now using words like “implode” and “self-destruct” to describe Gingrich’s campaign, but let me ask a question: what did Gingrich say that was really wrong? Medicare is a popular program that benefits a lot of people-its a great leap forward from what the situation was before it came into being. Conservatives, as Gingrich points out, detest social engineering-yet Mr. Ryan through the combination of draconian cuts and his voucher program for Medicare ( an early Christmas present for America’s giant insurance companies) are seeking to turn back the clock to 1926 if not earlier. Of course it needs fixes-but as I have pointed out repeatedly over the last three years-the money is out there, provided we have the will. I’d rather take care of Grandma than Shell Oil.

For me-the fact that one has to accept Paul Ryan’s positions without question, without even taking the time to attack him for the underlying thinking behind them-is just another low water mark for a party that once supported most of the ideas that were in both health care reform and deficit reduction. Fifteen years ago most prominent Republicans supported mandates, they recognized that supply side economics didn’t work-and that the party of Reagan had room for many diverse views.  That party is dead and has been for several years-the Tea Party purge has killed it. Gingrich is just the latest victim of their stupidity.

The face of conservatism used to be a happy face, a confident face, an optimistic face. I suppose its easy to be happy if you are winning elections but there was more to it than that, more to it than even the fact that the naturally sunny disposition of Ronald Reagan was at the head of the movement. That optimism and happiness was born in the give and take of debate when Big Ideas – consequential, important ideas – were the stuff of bull sessions, conferences, panel discussions, and papers published at the various think tanks. All factions of conservatism had their say. There was passionate disagreements over everything. But somehow, we never lost sight of the goal – building a conservative movement where ideas translated into government action.

Somewhere along the way, we gave into the temptation to use conservative ideas to divide rather than unite. This tactical decision brought electoral success but at a price. It gave social conservatives and their splenetic base a platform to dominate the movement and the Republican party. The price for that mistake is still being paid.

 

If the world is ending tomorrow-why do I have to go to work today?

I should have gotten on a plane a week ago and been spending this week on an Asian beach somewhere-with drinks and companionship. Instead I am heading to the car to go beat my head against the wall. That hardly seems fair.

Plus its Friday-and the weather is beautiful outside. I think I will have to take a long lunch in the park today…………

Lenny Bruce is still calm though:

Why can’t we just catch the contracting officer in a compromising position? It’s got to be easier to blackmail your way into a successful bid than this shit:

I realize with Arnold banging his housekeeper, its hard to focus on anything else ( don’t people use condoms anymore?). But one United States Senator has his eye on the ball:

U.S. Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Jim Webb (D-Va.) have issued a statement declaring that the 2006 U.S.-Japan realignment agreement is “unrealistic, unworkable, and unaffordable.” That includes the controversial relocation of Okinawa’s U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.

Can we have an amen? Webb is right and the GWB and his adminstration was wrong when it misread Japanese intentions in agreeing to the Japanese Base Re-aligment in 2005. The dumbest part of that agreement-the relocation of CVW-5 from Atsugi to Iwakuni, meets all of Webb’s criteria above. Regular readers of this blog know I have been screaming about how stupid that is-since 2006.

As for the focal point Futenma-Webb’s got that one right too:

Moving the Marines off Okinawa was the linchpin of a 2006 U.S.-Japan agreement to lessen the impact of the U.S. military presence on Okinawa, where U.S. bases take up approximately 20 percent of the island’s land. The pact also included the plan to shutter Futenma and build a runway at Camp Schwab, in Okinawa’s less populated north, which Webb derided Wednesday as unfeasible.
“This would be a massive, multi-billion dollar undertaking, requiring extensive landfill, destruction and relocation of many existing facilities, and in a best-case scenario, several years of effort – some estimate that the process could take as long as ten years,” Webb wrote on his official website.

The senators instead called for the military to relocate Futenma’s current Marine air operations to the nearby Kadena Air Base, which is owned by the Air Force.

Webb states the obvious-Kadena is huge, the amount of real estate it owns is obscene-and from a standpoint of available ramp space alone, could accomodate the Marine Corps aircraft at Futenma. Furthermore-if anyone is poised to move, its the Air Force, given the fact that it has four other bases in the region that it could relocate forces to. ( Korea, Guam, Yokota and Misawa). Even if it did not move anything it would have room for the Marines-but not their families. However, I’ll bet housing could be worked out.

Furthermore-given the fact that the shift of operational control in Korea keeps moving to the right ( Korea is the reason are there in the first place), it begs the question of whether there are better ways to reduce US footprint in Japan.

The Navy will be less effective because of this move and it will impose a lot more hardship on CVW-5 families. Webb is right to take up this banner-but he needs to say it even louder-especially to the folks who were instrumental in advocating this move-one of whom lives at Camp Smith and one in Fort Meyer. ( PACOM and CJCS).

It was stupid back then-its even more stupid now.

While looking around for the previous post-look what I stumbled onto on the US Navy’s web site. What’s wrong with this picture?

The Carrier Air Wing

The typical air wing aboard a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier usually contains four FA-18 squadrons, one S-3 squadron, one EA-6B squadron, one E-2C squadron, and one helicopter squadron. You can find detailed information on each of these aircraft by clicking on the silhouette. That will take you to the Navy Fact File for that particular aircraft.

FA-18 E/F Hornet	FA-18 C/D Hornet
E-2C Hawkeye	S-3B Viking
SH-60 Seahawk

Some things take longer than a comment block to explain. Accordingly-since this is my blog and I will write what I want to- I have decided to address commenter Michael Junge’s comments in a more lengthy fashion. After all, not everything in the world can be reduced to a Power Point slide-or a bulletized point paper.

Lets start with the easiest thing first: numbers. Mr. Junge says that I am wildly off on my numbers. I don’t think so-except perhaps for a concept that should be readily apparent to both of us: latency of track data. The Proceedings list is as of March 1,  2011. It pictures 339 flag officers with lineal numbers going down as far as 398.  The difference could simply be lag time in updating the Naval Register, a document I do not have readily available. ( Why does the old joke about seniority among JO’s being like virginity among whores appear in the back of my head now?). Regardless, one conclusion we can both agree on, there are more flag officers than there are warships. (286 vs 364). Why do I use 364? Because I add in the current selects-and its not always one in one out, especially in a world of Goldwater Nichols. The fact that there were 398 lineal numbers tells me that there were more than 339 flags at some point in the last year.

220-221, whatever it takes. Fly what you want-log what you need.   ( The issue at Tailhook is not that we took a few liberties with out female party guests-we did.)

The real point here is that in a below 300 ship Navy there are too many flag officers.That’s my argument-and it is not flawed because there is a difference in lineals vs pictures. That is what I mean by missing the point. 339 is still about 75-90 too many. That’s the issue that needs discussion here-not 339, 364 or 425. I didn’t work in OPNAV for a reason.

So that brings us to the other points which I will address in no particular order:

You ask good questions, but that’s all you do. You don’t support your assertions or questions with any rationale beyond “we have too many”. Why not ask it this way: Why have 4th Fleet in it’s own bastion instead of co located with the Combatant Commander the way other Fleets are? That could reduce the admin support footprint, and make for a true Joint structure for the Fleet and Combatant Command it supports.

If you will refer back to the post, I made it clear I was trying to keep it short. But I’ll address your question. First of all in general, numbered fleets are not located where the COCOMS are because like why you rob banks, that’s not where the ships are. Furthermore-we had a Southern Command for years, and we got along just fine with Second Fleet and an adjunct NAVSOUTH staff that also had other duties. Plus there is no hard and fast rule that a Naval Component Commander has to be a three star-it’s designed to be scalable based on the force.  Given the paucity of ships in the SOUTHCOM AOR-a one star could do just as well. I think a cogent argument could be made against Southcom too-but I know that’s a losing proposition. ( Same argument could be made against Africom too-or it could be argued that dual hatting the same fleet commander(e.g. C6F) is the way to go).

Now lets go to something I do know a lot about-aviation logistics to show you why I know I am right about both the TYCOMS and CNIC. “Why do we have lead follow TYCOMS anyway? Why not have just one-and the equivalent of COMFAIR on the opposite coast. 1/3 the manpower required-and a lot of the day to day work can be contracted out”.  I remain adamant in my assertion: CNAL, Surflant, Sublant-all of those flag positions can be done away with. Not the staff’s mind you-but the flag billets. Same with CNIC-the Navy doesn’t need a three star running installations, it needs to return them where they were and where they belong-the TYCOMS. Maybe you don’t remember when the TYCOMS had rather large shore station management divisions-I do.

You need to remember the history of how we got here. We had a perfectly good LANT and PAC establishment, with the shore stations under their respective TYCOMS for many years. Then in the late 90′s as we started down the “better business Navy”,  the shore stations were transferred to the  regions. Who also were in a couple of cases not commanded- as they should have been by 1110′s, 1120′s and 1310′s and 1320′s-but by 1700′s.  Folks who had zero approaches to the pier, traps or anything else warfare related. And as a consequence made some pretty boneheaded decisions ( Like not keeping the Fresnel lens up at a certain Naval Station-as a cost saving measure. ( true story)).  As a result the TYCOMS  started casting about how to get their fingers back into the pie again-and restore what head been badly broken by one flawed decision.

Then along came Uncle Vern, who proceeded to f*ck every thing up royally. The result was “regionalization” on steroids and the Navy was also stricken with “Enterprise fever”. ( A dangerous and debilitating disease if not carefully controlled with proper medication and ass whippings of certain deranged individuals). I know-I had a ringside seat as it happened in Japan. For almost nine years I got to watch the transition and the after effects. They were not good. The Tycoms did what they could, like prying the ASD’s and AIMD’s out of the air stations and placing them under a typewing: my little band of happy warriors, MLC’s,  government civilians and contractors.

Eventually-as a result of what can only be described as a witless purge over in Sixth Fleet-the result of an obsession with reducing in theater bodies by a certain flag officer-we ended up running supply pools for C6F, C5F and C7F. With a staff of about 75 and about 800 people in eight commands across eight time zones. The most senior person working for us down range was an O-5.   With an O-6 directly reporting to a TYCOM commander. That’s why I know it can be done. Now that I have a had a chance to see the contracting world up close-I would have liked to have had the authority to have some contractors at our overseas locations, but even without we did OK. All it took was money, knowing who to shake down to get more money,  and an aggressive plan.  ( and this was against the backdrop of a war or two).

Until our friendly P-3 folks came along and f*cked it all up- it worked pretty well.

But here is the thing-it also worked fine when the shore stations worked for the TYCOMS via the respective COMFAIRS. I’ve got the files and point papers still in my records here at home to prove it.

I can drill down as much as you want-but here is the bottom line: The Navy made a foolish reorganization of the shore stations and of our little staff, simply to create another flag billet in Japan. The move was unecessary then and it is unnecessary now.

But that’s where you have to remember the other side of the story-the personalities involved. I’ll forgo the details here-but trust me, its not a good story nor does it reflect well on the individuals who promoted these stupid ideas.

So in that one way alone I can save 3 flag positions right there.  I can save you even more by reducing the number of Navy regions from 11 down to six. If we had done the BRAC correctly it probably could be even more-details available on request. I’ve already told how how I would eliminate CNIC-if need be reduce Vitale’s job to a one star embedded in FFC and have O-6′s run the TYCOM shore station offices. With business rules agreed upon by the three TYCOMS and backed up by FFC, I know it will work fine. Naval Aviation already has shown the way on this score in several areas-so I know it can work.

I can go on. There are plenty of ways to tighten up at the flag level-I am not so sure I see the point of going further here, except to say that my ideas are right (by definition) and they can save flag billets. They won’t save money per se-except in pay dollars for flag officers, but the Navy needs to get less penny wise and pound foolish about its TAD dollars anyway.

There is of course a bigger reason to do these things. It was voiced by another commenter, enlisted and junior officers are getting screwed and thown under the bus routinely ( especially in the surface community). Yet they don’t see the pain being shared by individuals with wide gold braid. If bluejackets are getting screwed and downsized, then so should flag officers.

I’ll close with a final explanation here-I feel strongly on these issues because I spent 29 years of my life in the service of an organization I dearly loved-even if I did not always like it. Whether you believe it or not, that organization is veering off the road and into a ditch; or off a cliff. The personnel O-6 and below are like kids strapped into their seats, while the flags get ready to jump for it before the bus goes careening off the cliff. One needs to speak out about that.

In the grand scheme of things, I am just another disgruntled retiree, who happens to know that the Navy of today is not as good as it was or could be again. That’s my core belief and I shall not be shaken in it. By anyone.

I have a theory about organizations and signs of their decay. It is not based on anything scientific-just having led and been lead by people for approximately 32 years. My theory has been reinforced by my current experience working for a customer that is an organization that is : 1) top heavy and 2) totally corrupted by the personality of the psycopath who leads it.

I think a similar observation can be made about the current state of the United States Navy. Not that I am calling the CNO a psycopath, because he’s not; however he has clearly felt the need to pander to too many constituencies ( e.g. witness “diversity as job one”). And a good reason for that is that current US Navy is top heavy with too many flag officers.

How do I know this? Well I was looking at my recent edition of the United States Naval Institute Proceedings.  It is the May edition, their annual Naval Review edition. This months magazine has some pretty interesting articles and it also has, as is their custom, the list of all serving and selected flag officers. All 425 of them.

Yes, you read that right. 425 flag officers for a Navy that constitutes 270+ ships. An average of 1.4 flag officers per ship.

That’s too many-and what is creates is a what they would call in my Six Sigma course, non value added effort. Due to something that they don’t label in the course, but should, “attendant baggage”. Flag officers require staffs for care and feeding-and they have to “vette”, “socialize”, properly staff, and respond to other-properly staffed taskers. Its a self defeating death spiral.

Plus it gets even more ridiculous when you look at some of the titles these erstwhile leaders of men and women hold: five of them for example are “Special Assistants” to some other flag.  Another whole host of them are deputy chiefs of staff for something-or worse yet Deputy Commanders to two stars. There are reserve flags who are ostensibly Deputy Commanders for numbered fleets-yet ( and in this area I have personal experience) they bring little value added, and in wartime there is no way in hell they would be put in charge of anything active. Hell-most of the time their civilian jobs have no bearing on what their navy responsibilities are.

There are probably seven or so who are commanders of schoolhouses-positions that in the time of a much larger fleet, were held by up and coming O-6′s.

And then there is the staff creep.In the preceding section are listed commissionings and decommissionings. The majority of the commissionings were not for ships or squadrons-they were for flag staffs. Who in their right mind thinks that makes sense? 10th fleet? And a Cyber command? 4th fleet? How many ships do they own anyway? And then one looks at the number of Navy regions-all with a two star commander and one has to ask the question again. Why? What value added do they bring to running what is supposed to be an adjunct to fleet operations? Each of those comes with its own civilian mafia which hires only through cronyism it would appear. ( Sorry personal grievance there-but they clearly are not hiring on the basis of competence or experience).

As I sat eating my dinner-before going back to writing words to justify the selling of other people to work for these self same flags- I made a mental list of probably 100 billets that could be downgraded to an O-6. Or simply eliminated.   I’ll not bore you with the entire list unless you want to hear it-but I’ll provide you one example: Rear Admiral Christopher Paul, Deputy Commander Naval Expeditionary Command. Why is this a one star billet exactly? Or why is Charles K Carodine the Deputy of the Naval Warfare Development Command? And what exactly is JTF-300? Why does Martha Herb serve as “Chief Secretariat, Military Agreement Joint Coordinating Body ISAF” ? Yes I know NATO has  strange titles-doesn’t mean a flag has to fill them. ( Right now somebody somewhere is saying, ” But his counterpart is a flag from country “X”-did not used to be that way).

The list goes on, sadly. And lest anyone think I am too far off the mark-start asking around of people you know-who know about the Navy. I’ll bet you can get some agreement out of them.

When the Navy was a lot larger-a lot of these billets did not exist, and we were an organization that was 200,000 people bigger and 300 ships bigger. Yet we still got ships deployed. Why does it take so many flag officers to do so now?

It doesn’t-and you know it. More importantly they know it. They also know that unless they are issued a preferred customer card early-or start piling up sacrificial bodies like cord wood ( Yes Admiral Harvey that remark is directly targeted at you) they know they are finished at one star or two star. That’s not exactly a reformist proposition for people who have spent 30+ years on an ambitious track.

The Navy is out of balance and this problem begets other problems.

You current and former Navy folks know I am right.  I think there are specific cuts that could be made in staff officers and staffs that would free up the actual personnel for more productive pursuits. I would be happy to detail ( in glossy powerpoint) for any decision maker that would listen. But this needs to change.

This week sucked with a capital “S”.

Part of it was work related-but a big part is because there is something I really need:

And I do mean really. The S.O. and her knee pain are driving me up the wall. Kabish?

Thank God for beer!