Even though Obama’s proposed Pentagon budget is more expensive than last year’s budget, the Republicans insist on calling it a huge cut in defense spending. So, here’s my question.
We all know that it is pointless to do things (like refuse to cut defense spending) to avoid Republican criticism. After all, they accuse you of doing these things even when you are not. It’s the mirror image of the Republican’s tendency to call environmental deregulation bills things like the Clean Skies Act and the Healthy Forests Initiative. Orwell would be proud. But, does Obama get anything out of the Republican’s critiques not actually being true?
My tentative answer to that is that it depends on the degree to which the ‘impartial’ press is willing to report the objective truth. As in, “The Republicans falsely claim that Obama is weakening the country by slashing the Defense budget, but he is in fact raising the overall budget by $21 billion.”
I’d prefer to slash the Pentagon’s budget by about 20% over Obama’s first-term, but re-prioritizing defense spending is just as important as cutting. Obama’s defense budget is an improvement in spite of its overall higher pricetag. But if the pricetag is higher to fend off criticism, the only way that will work is if the national media is willing to tell the people the truth without hedging. And when has that ever happened?
I’ve seen some folks mention that since Obama is putting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars “on budget” instead of keeping them off budget like Bush did, this actually IS a substantial cut in Pentagon spending. I have NOT, however, seen any actual journalists report anything like this – this is merely coming from people who are putting together the change in accounting practices with the size of the budget as announced.
I’d like to know if there is any truth to that claim before I start going one way or the other on this. If Gates really is cutting spending in this budget, then I think it’s a good thing but the Republicans will be able to somewhat accurately spin that the budget is getting cut. On the other hand, if the war spending is not part of this propsal, then I don’t see how anyone is going to be able to spin this as a “gutting” of the Pentagon with a straight face and having it stick. The TPM link makes me think this is coming from Air Force guys, who Gates has had problems with and who tend to be the Pentagon’s biggest money sink. They’re probably upset that Gates has been on their asses since he came into the job and are trying to keep their precious toys from getting scratched from the budget.
(I think the folks who are claiming this is an actual cut are wrong, FWIW. I think Obama’s change in accounting was to be applied to the total budget and not necessarily to each individual portion of the budget. So the numbers for the war will correctly show up in the budget, but will be separate from the Pentagon’s operational budget, which is what Gates is talking about. But again – I haven’t seen this confirmed or denied anywhere, so I don’t know what to believe).
Found a citation that shows that I was correct in my assessment:
So this really is an increase – but only a $9 billion dollar increase when the war spending is factored in. Interesting – they’re planning on needing to spend $12 billion dollars less on the wars this year than last year. I wonder where that money is being recouped.
So the only way this counts as a “cut” is if you use the definition of “cut” that says if you aren’t increasing it more than inflation, it’s a cut. That can work – Democrats have used that rhetorical device in the past to call things “cuts” that end up with a higher real dollar value than they had the previous year. It’s something that irritates Republican voters to no end, though – I wonder if they’ll worry about it much now that the shoe is on the other foot.
ya know it’s weird: the conservatives and the republicans have this real obsession with things that aren’t real. It’s a fascinating pattern, and difficult to write about.
there are some obvious references i could make, like the 2004 election between a REAL war hero and a PRETEND hero. but there is So much more.
For example, the conservatives just love joe the Plumber, who isn’t actually a REAL plumber. they sent him to Gaza to report on the war, but he’s not a REAL reporter. He spoke at CPAC, but he’s not a REAl activist. he’s never done anything other than function as a mccain campaign prop. And yet they give the guy a platform. i hear he’s writing a book. About what??
And then there’s this Glenn Beck thing. He’s basically copying Howard Beale’s schtick from the movie “network”. that’s right, Beck is pretending to be a fictional character from a movie, and the conservatives are eating it up!
It honestly baffles me. I get into debates with conservatives i know, and then realize that their “facts” are from the neighborhood of make-believe. if you were on facebook yesterday, you would have seen Steve Hach (you may know him as steveeboy from susie’s comments) absolutely DEMOLISHING one of my conservative buddies, til the guy was practically begging for mercy.
And that’s back to glenn beck again, with his “we surround them” special. Anyone with a grasp on reality can point to an electoral map and show conclusively who surrounds who, but they make believe it’s so and voila!
Coupled with their complete lack of foresight… well let’s talk about that for a moment. i love watching them freak themselves out imagining obama’s plans to send Americans to re-education camps, not realizing that they basically authorized this kind of thing during 2000-2008. Did they simply discount the idea that maybe someone from the other party would win an election? Did they think that even if that happened democrats wouldn’t keep that power for themselves out of liberal-pantywaistedness? Or did they think that the powers one president accumulates doesn’t get handed over to the next one?
So anyway: coupled with the lack of foresight, I am convinced that the conservative mind is mentally ill.
Doesn’t help when “serious conservative pundits” get to lie with absolute impunity thanks to the Village press.
And of course, the bottom line is Obama is destroying the country. Doesn’t matter what he actually does. They can lie and suffer no damage from doing so.
We have yet to advance the narrative from September 2008.
you’re still expecting impartiality and truth from the msm?…silly man
“Truth” has never once stood in the way of the republican party.
…comes in those dwindling party ID numbers for the Republicans.
Not a single one of Obama’s overtures to the Republicans has had the tiniest effect on “The Republicans”– that is, it’s had no effect on John Boehner, Rush Limbaugh, Arlen Specter etc. But maybe we don’t have to view them as the intended audience. It’s possible these overtures could be going over the heads of the few hundred “Republicans” in DC and NY that run the party, and still reaching the actual Republican voters— you know, the people “The Republicans” are supposed to be speaking for. By doing and saying a lot of the things those wider Republicans actually more or less want to hear, Obama’s given “The Republicans”– Boehner, etc– no good way to remain in opposition to what Obama is doing short of just plain claiming crazy and generally false things, like “Obama will take away your guns” or “a $9-$20 billion defense increase is gutting the defense budget”. It’s possible that as Obama gives the wider Republicans reasons to take him seriously and “The Republicans” give no one any way to take them seriously without willfully believing falsehoods (even if the media does everything they can to make believing those falsehoods easy), a gulf is going to open up between “The Republicans” in Washington and the Republicans everywhere else. And looking at the polling data– which sure looks like the Republican Party is being gradually vacated of everyone except the Limbaugh dead-enders– it looks to me like this is happening already.
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(The Economist) – MORE men at the expense of machines; more drones rather than top-end fighter jets and future bombers; more helicopters for combat troops rather than a replacement for the presidential chopper; more coastal vessels and fewer aircraft-carriers; better cyberdefences, but scaled-back missile defences and laser weapons.
Mr Gates says long-term commitments–such as health care for wounded and traumatised troops and other forms of personnel spending for an expanding army and marine corps–should be brought into the base budget. Special forces, the tip of the spear in fighting terrorists (and training allies), will also get a boost in numbers.
All this means there will be less money for expensive kit. And the kit that is bought should support fighting units: a 62% increase in unmanned drones, for instance. Mr Gates argues that America’s superiority in conventional forces “is sustainable for the medium term”. This means trading off “exquisite” top-end equipment, such as the F-22 fighter, for less capable but cheaper stuff, like the F-35 joint-strike fighter being made with several other allies. Decisions on a new bomber would be deferred, pending nuclear talks with Russia. Spending on missile defence would be pared and would focus on what works best.
Generosity for defense contractors under Bush
Worse is how both Democrats and Republicans in Congress pay for it. Eagerly advertised to the voters back home as good news, they neglect to explain that they raided parts of the defense budget to offset the cost. The favorite target is the Operation and Maintenance budget that includes spending for weapons maintenance, training, fuel, and all the other essentials key to fighting a war.
[Interesting to read the pdf file, link in article – Oui]
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."yeah, that cyberdefense thingie with the intertubz and what not, seems to be a hot topic:
China and Russia vs. US Grid!
l guess they’ve been too busy monitoring tweeter and x-rated emails between congressmen and pages to keep up, eh.
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The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama has fallen victim to a cyber attack, but two computer security experts say it could have happened to anyone. Indeed, “social malware” attacks are easy to mount but very difficult to defend against.
Shishir Nagaraja from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Ross Anderson from the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory helped the OHHDL with a forensic investigation of the penetration described in Tracking Ghostnet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network, published in Information Warfare Monitor.
The truth is, it’s very hard to get to the truth. And, even worse, it’s not unusual to be without evidence in circumstances like this: the nature of well-conducted, modern cyberwarfare is that it is almost untraceable.
Security experts in Estonia have long blamed Russian government agents for the 2007 attack on their country’s infrastructure – but even when I met up with Nato’s leading cyberdefence team, they were unable to show any direct evidence that proved it was an act by the Russian state and not an independent group.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."regarding Operations and Maintenance: take a look at Obama’s stimulus package. in it you will see around 30 allocations for military base repairs, etc.. it adds up to multiple billions and covers all branches of the military.
THAT is how they are handing O & M spending, sweet, eh?
you’re kind of missing the point.
when it comes to keeping the Billions flowing to the “defense” industries, democratic and repuglican congresspeople are all alike; the react instinctively to any sort of “cut”, because they know the defense industries giving THEM bribes, errrr, I mean campaign contributions will not like it.
a mere $21 Billion defense spending increase in the overall pig trough may not be enough; hence the whining and complaining of congressional servants.