“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.” — George Orwell, from 1984
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“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower
The military’s new fighter jet project only costs $1.45 trillion – While [Gov. Rick] Scott famously refused $2 billion in federal funds for high-speed rail in Florida, deriding it as an expensive boondoggle, his team shows no such hesitations about the $1.45 trillion F-35 project. The most expensive weapons system in Pentagon history, it has suffered technical setbacks, nearly a decade of production delays, and substantial cost overruns; the Pentagon currently estimates each plane will cost $135 million to build and maintain. So it’s no surprise that the Simpson-Bowles commission pointed to halving the Navy and Air Forces’ orders and eliminating the Marines’ version as a deficit-reduction step; in 2009, the Congressional Budget Office floated a similar cut. Any such reductions would lower the $1.59 billion in economic impact that, Lockheed boasts, Florida will get from F-35 contracts held by 95 in-state suppliers. […] During the Republican rebuttal to Obama’s 2012 State of the Union, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels ripped the president for trying to “build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars.” Yet just three months earlier, his deputy, Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman, blessed a report highlighting the stimulus brought to her state’s economy by nearly 40,000 deficit-exploding federal defense jobs. – Mother Jones
Where did your 2011 federal income taxes go? Find out more here.
“The U.S. defense budget is about 43 percent of the world’s total military spending — more than the combined defense spending of the next 17 nations, many of which are U.S. allies. Are Republicans really going to warn voters that America will be imperiled if the defense budget is cut 8 percent from projections over the next decade? In 2017, defense spending would still be more than that of the next 10 countries combined.” — George Will, The Washington Post
CHARTS: U.S. Military Spending Is Totally Out Of Control And Can’t Last: “Between 2009 and 2010 defense spending increased 3 percent even as the economy continued to slow, with the 2012 military budget claiming $1.4 trillion tax dollars. That amount doesn’t even include classified programs and that money is buying expensive equipment that is just as costly to maintain.” — businessinsider.com
wordsagainstchaos: With defense spending soaring, from 2001-2011, and government revenues falling to 24% below 2001 levels (imagine how difficult it would be to pay your bills if you were earning 24% less than you did 10 years ago), the United States finds itself in a security-state deficit crisis. If we can be smarter about how we manage our money, we can ease out of record deficits without crippling the middle class or the states.
John McCain’s Reindeer Games: what does defense spending have to do with farm / nutrition issues? Nothing, of course — The McCain amendment [to the FARM bill]… would require Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to file a detailed report by Aug. 15 on the security effects of the nearly $500 billion defense sequester. [...] Though the push to reverse the defense part of the sequester is especially popular among Republicans, the move to attach the McCain measure to a delicately negotiated, $969 billion bipartisan farm bill could be just the first of many to threaten final passage. [...] Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said earlier this week he is willing to have an open amendment process on the bill as long as amendments fall within the purview of the legislation. The big question now is whether Republicans will demand amendment votes on proposals such as McCain’s, which are not directly relevant to farm or nutrition issues. – 
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer charges GOP with Obstructionism – “It’s not ‘our way or the highway,’ it’s ‘our way or no highway.’ No jobs. No progress. No consensus. No agreement,” Hoyer said. “So what the Republican hardliners are doing, are saying, [is], ‘We won’t agree in conference, we won’t come to agreement, we won’t help create jobs in America … unless we get our way.’” — 
Scott Walker steps right up into the pocket of those who got him there — Make no mistake. A star was born last night. You will now see Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to run their midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, everywhere in the energetic precincts of the revived American right. He will be on the covers of their startlingly advertising-free little magazines. He will be the darling of every wingnut blogger in the extended monkeyhouse; poo will be flung high and far in celebration of him. He will have a high-profile speaking role in Tampa this August, and it is very likely that there are people in Iowa who already are booking house parties for the late autumn of 2015 in his honor. He will be a bigger presence on Fox News than are Brit Hume’s jowls or Shep Smith’s gradually swelling public rage. I will tell you what: Willard Romney better be damned glad that he’s already clinched the nomination, and that Walker didn’t win this recall a year ago. And, because they are a timid flock of ruminants, the rest of the elite political press corps will wander, sheeplike, in his general direction, grazing amid the unmitigated manure of his victory speech here last night. Oh, Lord, are we going to be hearing about what a “turning point” in Walker’s career that speech was. – 
The GOP House passed a defense budget Friday that exceeds the deal cut by Congress and President Barack Obama last summer, and that would have to be paid for with cash taken from poverty programs, health care and the federal workforce. The National Defense Authorization Act permits $642 billion in defense spending next year. The White House has threatened to veto the bill, which passed 299 to 120, citing more than 30 changes to the budget the administration was seeking. But the measure also adds $8 billion more than called for in the Budget Control Act that Congress agreed to last summer in exchange for raising the nation’s debt limit. – 
Geraldo Rivera: Trayvon Martin was ‘dressed in thugwear’ – “I think what is far more significant is what Trayvon Martin looked liked that night Bill,” Rivera said. “Aside from the fact that he was dressed in that thugwear, look at the size of him. He’s not a little kid, he’s 6’2, he’s a strapping youngster. You can see that if this man, this young man was a stranger to George Zimmerman. He looks just like the people who have been burglarizing and victimizing that neighborhood for the last six months. He was exactly the person that George Zimmerman, the property owner, feared. He looked just like the others.” – 
World Leaders at U.S. Meeting Urge Growth, Not Austerity – CAMP DAVID, Md. — Leaders of the world’s richest countries banded together on Saturday to press Germany to back more pro-growth policies to halt the deepening debt crisis in Europe, as President Obama for the first time gained widespread support for his argument that Europe, and the United States by extension, cannot afford Chancellor Angela Merkel’s one-size-fits-all approach emphasizing austerity. Pointedly recognizing “that the right measures are not the same for each of us,” the leaders of the Group of 8 nations, at a meeting hosted by Mr. Obama at Camp David, committed to “take all necessary steps” to strengthen their economies. They said they wanted to keep Greece in the euro zone and vowed to work to promote growth in Europe, though they did not detail how they would do so. “Our imperative,” the leaders said in their statement, “is to promote growth and jobs.” – 
George W. Bush finally endorses Romney at ornate elevator door-shutting ceremony — “I’m for Mitt Romney,” Bush told ABC News this morning as the doors of an elevator closed on him, after he gave a speech on human rights a block from his old home — the White House. [...] Romney already had the support of Bush’s brother and parents; he’s already hired Bush’s former team to lead his campaign; and he’s already adopted most of the same policy priorities of the failed former president. The Republican National Committee conceded recently that a Romney presidency would be the same as Bush’s presidency, “
THAT’S SO BAIN! The Tampa Bay Times reports on yet another example of Mitt Romney’s “heads I win, tails you lose” business model: Millions of dollars in tax subsidies given to Bain-owned Dade Behring for creating jobs in Puerto Rico … after which the company shut down its Puerto Rico operations. [...] Romney says he supports tax incentives at the state level, but note that this involved federal dollars—dollars that went to a Bain-owned company for creating jobs even though the company destroyed the jobs. Adding insult to injury: Romney’s firm “earned” $342 million on it’s $30 million Dade Behring investment, a profit of more than one thousand percent, even though it ended up firing 850 Floridians. — 
Sen. John McCain wants campaign finance reform again, so guess where he goes for support: McCain said Tuesday he could join Democrats once again to form a bipartisan coalition, even though it would annoy the Republican leadership. [...] The Disclose Act introduced by the Whitehouse in March would require any group that spends $10,000 or more on election ads or other political activity to file a disclosure report with the Federal Election Commission within 24 hours. Reports would detail the nature of expenditures over $1,000 and reveal the names of donors who give $10,000 or more. The legislation would also require that outside group advertisements include “stand-by-your-ad” disclaimers listing the biggest donors. Forty-three Democrats have co-sponsored the legislation, but no Republican has endorsed it. – 
Only one party’s to blame? Don’t tell the Sunday shows – Last month, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein published an Op ed and a book making the extremely controversial argument that both parties aren’t equally to blame for what ails Washington. They argued that the GOP — by allowing extremists to roam free and by wielding the filibuster to achieve government dysfunction as a political end in itself — were demonstrably more culpable for creating what is approaching a crisis of governance. It turns out neither man has been invited on to the Sunday shows even once to discuss this thesis. As Bob Somerby and Kevin Drum note, these are among the most quoted people in Washington — yet suddenly this latest topic is too hot for the talkers, or not deemed relevant at all. I ran this thesis by Ornstein himself, and he confirmed that the book’s publicity people had tried to get the authors booked on the Sunday shows, with no success. — 
