The truth can be ugly, can’t it? Here are, courtesy of frequent good guy yet employed by the American Enterprise Institute James Pethokoukis, a number of cogent (I think) charts to illustrate a recent cogent (I think) talk by Larry at the Peterson Institute for International Economics titled “What Should the 2023 Washington Consensus Be?”,…
Tag: military spending
Noah Smith is an idiot! But not all the time!
No, Noah, the “Noahopinion” guy, is not always an idiot. Take, for example, this recent post, If this is a bad economy, please tell me what a good economy would look like, expressing a bit of amazement at how well things have worked out under Uncle Joe’s genially geriatric hand. In fact, Noah says he…
I did not see this coming! The B-21 bomber is so dumb, even the Washington Post is making fun of it!
Hell no I did not! The Washington Post, not known for its skepticism regarding America’s military intellectual complex—because it’s a charter member!—just can’t stop snickering at the B-21 “bomber”, sounding a hell of lot like me! Noting that Congress has kept the big boy’s budget secret, and that the plane’s recent roll-out was as primly…
The new B-21 Bomber? Don’t you mean B-2B?
I have been making fun of the B-21 bomber, under development by the defense firm of Northrup-Grumman, and its bumbling predecessors in uselessness, the B-1 and B-2, for years. Well, we now have gotten our first look at the newbie, shown above, and, wonder of wonders, it looks exactly like the B-2, also produced by…
Another $2 trillion down the rathole
“Another $40 billion down the rathole,” Secretary of the Treasury Gordon Humphrey used to sigh, contemplating the Defense Department’s annual budget requests under the Eisenhower administration.1 But that was then. Now we’re up to $2 trillion! Well, on the one hand, that $2 trillion, to update our nuclear deterrent, will be spread out over 25…
Ukrainians brave, Russians cowards! Ukraine good, Russia bad! Well, yeah, but couldn’t I get a little nuance on the side?
War, no matter what anyone wants to tell you, is not a morality play, where one side is ever brave and virtuous, and the other ever sneering and evil. And, to amplify that point a little, we shouldn’t end up fighting World War III just because the Russian invasion of Ukraine is deeply immoral. The…
A Cheer for Elizabeth Warren
Damn straight! My gal Lizzie, whom I confess has received more thumbs down than thumbs up from me in the past, holds the sad distinction of being the only Democrat—and thus of course the only member—of the Senate Armed Services Committee not to vote to boost the Biden administration’s already massively bloated defense budget from…
The F-35 Flying Turkey, Fiercely Flapping Its Wings
Well, turkeys can fly, can’t they? So what’s the problem? Over at Forbes, David Axe brings us totally predictable (and predicted) news: The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed. Dan is extrapolating, just a little, from a recent article in Air Force magazine, Brown Launching Major TacAir Study with CAPE,…
George F. Will showing some signs of improvement. Emphasis on the “some”
Recently, I’ve slackened off making fun of George F. “the ‘F’ stands for ‘Frabjous’, son” Will, first because George has largely been a good boy, leaving the Republican Party in disgust with its abandonment of free market policies, doubling down on that disgust at the nomination of Donald Trump, and going the extra mile by…
Pinch Me, I’m Dreaming! Politico runs two—two!—articles calling for REDUCED Pentagon spending!
Yes, you read that right. Middle of the road just the facts, ma’am, Politico actually ran two articles, one “liberal” and one “conservative”, calling for Congress to stop spending so gosh darn much on defense. Both pieces are waaay too timid by my standards, but to hear two voices speak up in what has been…