The GOP reminds me of the 13-year-old brother of a friend, who snuck a black widow home and spent the next 6 weeks feeding it, apparently convinced he could train it. He wound up rushed to the hospital after a (thankfully dry) bite. He, however, learned his lesson.
Was that tirade by Marjorie "Dude Looks Like A Lady" Taylor Greene from the TV competition show: "Donald Trump Presents - Word Salad Speeches"?
Like the Master of Word Salad, Greene just opens the spigot and out pours anything on her demented mind in the moment. As her follow party member J. Danforth Quayle said 30 years ago...
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."
Unfortunately, her constituents are in such a tizzy about "owning the libs" that they will forego government working on their behalf and instead enjoy their warm and fuzzies of her speaking out for protecting "Real America" from the Socialists, Communists, and Fascists.
Greene's constituents should be are proud that she 'earned her $175,000 salary for the "work" of introducing 17 Bills:
~ 4 were to impeach Joe Biden, with an average of 4 Republican co-sponsors for each
~ 3 had no co-sponsors (First Biden impeachment bill, Eject Maxine Waters Bill, and the Kyle Rittenhouse Congressional Medal Bill.
~ 9 were were referred to the appropriate committee, but not yet accepted for review
~ 1 has already been discharged by a committee (The Fire Fauci Act)
~ 1 bill did cross the aisle with bipartisan co-sponsorship (The Congratulations for Georgia football team Resolution)
Interesting to note that in the same year the average of Bills/Resolutions submitted by Congress persons was about 35. But then she did slip by Matt "I Like Me My Teens" Gaetz with 11, and Coatless Gym Jordan with 1.
Uncle Joe is too nice a guy to allow Mitch Landrieu to offer infrastructure packages according not only to need, but also for the cooperation and support of the Senators and Congresspersons who voted for the bill.
Why should those legislators who worked hard to get the bill created and signed lose money to those colleagues who loudly spoke out against the help??
Play hardball Joe, helped the ones who helped you, then pass on the scraps to the crap.
Apparently, Ramthun gained a seat in an uncontested general election. Won't be so easy for governor. There must be something in the water in Wisconsin, between Ramthun and the fools who knocked over the statue of HC Heg, it is a state with populist mania on both sides of the aisle.
I see that the Bulwark has a new member, Theodore Johnson. Can we get a bit more of a writeup/welcome for him? Perhaps not at the Will Saletan level, but a bit of background and what he brings to the Bulwark?
Is it possible MTG and / or her comms people knowingly misused Gazpacho to gain attention? Not that MTG is an attention seeker or anything whatsoever like that.
I don't like to make fun of people with a disability but MTG is such a twitter troll she's fair game. Has anyone else noticed that she works overtime to hid her lisp?
1. “The GOP leadership then stripped Ramthum of his lone staffer ‘for lying about fellow GOP members and using taxpayer resources to put out political screeds.’” Would this be true if he were lying about Dems? Haha, nvmd. We all know that answer
2. How does one conduct a physical cyber audit? Methinks Ramthun doesn’t know what those words mean
Shame on MTG! Cold soup has enough marketing problems as it is! Gazpacho is lovely, and we should all try it.
How about Pre- K helped single parents like me go to work!?! Also, Pre-K helps kids become more socially and emotionally aware. But y’all supported the disastrous No Child Left Behind so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Maybe somethings can’t be tested for properly, and we have to look at the big picture.
They're also bettered prepared to function in the school setting. In my son's K class 3 years ago, you could tell who had been to pre-K and who had not based on their classroom behavior
As was pointed out at Freddie's place, "No less a hardass than Charles Murray pointed out that preschool would be a great way to help poor kids stay in a warm, safe, place and should be funded on that basis."
Pre-K isn't what gives kids a warm, safe place to say while their parents are at work. Any minimally competent daycare would do that. Pre-K sinks a lot of cost into developing curricula that are supposed to give kids a head start. If the curricula don't, actually, that cost is wasted. Here's what's in Mona's article:
"many families, particularly single-parent families, cannot afford to have a parent stay home to care for young kids. That’s why direct subsidies to parents make much more sense than subsidizing universal pre-K. Let the parents decide how to spend the stipend. If they prefer to work and place the child or children in daycare or pre-K (and there really isn’t much of a distinction), they can make that choice."
For as much time as the Bulwark spends talking about the bad political optics of so many Democratic positions, I'm left scratching my head over the fact that this idea of direct subsidies to parents keeps getting promoted here. If the child tax credit were made permanent, it would be incredibly easy (and probably effective) for bad faith Republicans to trot out the welfare queen trope.
Also, notably absent from Mona's piece is any mention of the child tax credit being made permanent in Build Back Better. If the bill were to pass (long shot I know) I hope that Mona is prepared to not simply criticize the childcare/pre-K funding, but to also sing the praises of the child tax credit, and to defend poor Black single mothers who choose to stay home and care for their children, because they will end up in the political crosshairs.
I think what Mona (and others NR contribs and alumni who are capable of looking in a mirror) knows is that there's no guarantee it *would* be incredibly easy and effective for bad faith Republicans to trot out the welfare queen trope once it's obvious plenty of white, "Real American" parents are benefiting, too.
After all, the response to KDW's reporting on the similarities between America's "heartland" and "urban" poor was thermonuclear denial. Break down that denial (which I think is what KDW was trying to do), and Republican voters must realize how much of the "tough love" rhetoric they're used to isn't. Isn't love, that is, as they recognize when it's directed their way.
What if the denial's unbreakable? We have evidence it might be. In that case, the divisive absurdity of Republican rhetoric sorting people who use *identical* social services into "deserving" and "undeserving" based on race alone rears its ugly head.
On the other hand, there's evidence that government benefits that differ by factors correlating with race and class is part of what drives racism and classism. For example if homeowners get a benefit after recent history when government promoted homeownership as a civic good — and subsidized it for whites... well, this actually happened:
I hope you're right, but I'm extremely doubtful. Look at all the folks who get their health care through ACA subsidies, branded with their state's exchange, who nonetheless vehemently hate Obamacare. There's a long history of whites feeling that they deserve government benefits but that blacks do not.
Right. Throughout US history, much of this has been enabled by blacks and whites typically getting different benefits, so that whites could tell themselves *their* benefits weren't really benefits, "properly understood". This is obviously harder to do with a widespread benefit applying to races equally, but in the Kraken world we live in, clearly not impossible.
I do cut Americans railing against our system of medical care payment, Obamacare or not, some slack. The stuff that makes American medical payment so crazy, like laws favoring employer-based plans, is also stuff that middle-class Americans are used to by now, and, as the saying goes, always keep ahold of Nurse for fear of finding something worse. People want a scapegoat for how much this sucks, even now, so of course if they lean that way, "Obamacare!" is tempting.
And I’m saying this data is one-sided towards what is being measured. You are measuring for hard data about knowledge/literacy. How about a child’e emotional/social intelligence? How about preparation for being school, away from home? How much money are we really dumping into this? Is this seriously a drain on the education budget? If that’s so, it speaks much louder to our priorities as a nation that we have to argue about giving children a head start.
I am not the one measuring. But the people who do measure do measure factors associated with social and emotional development, such as avoidance of criminality. Mona's piece mentioned this, citing "higher rates of disciplinary problems" for the pre-K group in the Vanderbilt followup and also:
"in Canada’s Quebec province, the adoption of universal pre-K in 1997 led to serious negative outcomes when the kids reached adolescence. Teenagers who had been placed in daycare showed marked increases in anxiety, aggression, and dissatisfaction with life compared with those who had spent their early years in parental or other care. Even more worrying was the sharp increase in criminal activity"
I am a big believer in social-emotional learning, after having parents who were themselves too academics-only focused. But precisely because the social-emotional component of learning is important, daycare that does *not* make a pretense of academics, but instead focuses on the basics of giving kids a safe space (which includes enforcing basic social rules like no hitting), might be more feasible if the goal is to have programs for everyone, including the kids who aren't a disciplinary fit for intensive pre-K programs.
(My own kid, prone to act out due to a speech impediment, was not a fit for the tony preschools around us at first. Some kids aren't, and not necessarily "those people's" kids, either.)
It's amusing seeing Khatiri argue that the US, which spends more on defense than probably the next 10 countries combined, is unwilling to invest in being a global power. Maybe percent of GDP that goes toward defense spending isn't the best metric; I think $800 billion is plenty, and most of that gets wasted by contractors. We spend more and get less than any other country in the world, from our military, to our infrastructure, to our health care.
As far as maniacs like Ramthun running around, this is why we can't move on from Trump. This guy's only real qualification is a lie he's willing to tell. And, if he were to win in 2022, does anyone think he'd actually keep that promise to call for a "cyber audit," whatever that is? For the Ross Douthats of the world, who want to argue that 1/6 wasn't such a big deal, and that it's time to move on, and blame the mainstream media for sensationalizing and overhyping Trump and the big lie, no one can move on, because the rightwing media hasn't moved on. These crazies are being fueled by a media ecosystem that folks like Douthat don't want to talk about for some reason, and their crazy spills over into and infringes upon the rest of us who are just trying to live in reality, but cannot.
Using dollar figures to judge military strength is questionable at best. A dollar spent in China goes further than the same dollar spent in America (WRT defense)... this also means that % GDP is not that useful either, other than assessing the defense burden on the overall economy for a particular country.
The US seems to routinely make bad investments in defense and seems to waste a lot of money in efforts that have little or no payoff. A lot of this money goes into deep R&D that has no payoff until a generation or two later in the weapon design/development cycle.
This is the danger of being at the bleeding edge of military technology development. The US had workable stealth back in the late 80s. Our current stealth technology is probably markedly superior that anyone else's--but the payoff for that difference is less than it used to be because of counter measures development and the fact that others also have SOME capability.
An analogy (maybe not a good one but I think it is illustrative): Nuclear weapons were VERY useful when we were the only ones that had them. Once someone else had them, their utility approached zero--at least in actually using them.
The utility of stealth has not degraded so much because the power/use dynamics are not quite the same.
As I see it we have some major problems WRT defense spending/development:
1) We spend a lot (I mean a LOT) of money trying to do things that are at the very edge of possibility given current knowledge/technology.
2) we spend a lot of money trying to make things do 6 things instead of 1 or 2 things.. or to be used by services with very different requirements (like the F-35) in the name of "economy" or interoperability. This usually does not actually pay off as you end up with less capable, more expensive systems with LONG development cycles and huge up front costs... and instead of buying 3,000 of them that we actually need, we buy 200 and move to the next generation (while letting actual operational requirements go hang).
We seemingly spend a lot of money and effort just keeping defense contractors busy/in business. I do not want to venture how many development cycles and trials we have done over the last two decades attempting to develop things like new rifles and gear for infantry (that never went anywhere).
3) We are HEAVILY invested in legacy systems that may or may not be useful in an actual war against a par or near par military. My primary example here is aircraft carriers.
A CVN is a HUGE investment in time and money. Gob-smackingly huge. That is why the US is the ONLY country that has any REAL aircraft carriers (we can pretend that these Chinese, Russian, and British ships are aircraft carriers, but in the end we are pretending they are).. No one else can afford it, nor do they have the expertise to operate them effectively... and they do not actually NEED them.
A CVBG is an awesome power projection tool to be used against non-par militaries in locations all over the globe. The air wing of a CVBG is more powerful than most countries entire air forces.
I am not convinced they would be useful against the PRC or against the Russians (the Russians mostly because of geography, the PRC because of countermeasures they have developed).
This investment in legacy systems is not merely an investment of money or time--it is also an investment in doctrine and leads to not pursuing other approaches/technologies. An example here is the continued emphasis placed upon battleships in the interwar period and early parts of WW2--particularly once the efficacy of carrier-based airpower had been conclusively demonstrated. The Japanese were particularly bad in this respect... and this was driven by institutional and doctrinal pressures rather than military effectiveness.
We also probably have the most risk-adverse and casualty sensitive military and society among the major powers... and we have issues with maintaining civil determination in conducting wars and military operations.
"The US seems to routinely make bad investments in defense and seems to waste a lot of money in efforts that have little or no payoff."
They absolutely have payoff; they keep a lot of people at work. We have a workfare system where we give corporations money to build equipment so they'll pay workers. The post-Cold War "Peace Dividend" taught a lot of politicians that cutting defense is a good way to crush a lot of local economies in the short term, which is all they care about.
If the only reason you are doing these things is to keep people working, their are more effective ways to do it.
You can make an argument for using procurement and R&D as a tool to maintain an industrial base for future defense needs. But the question is, is it the best way to do this? And are you getting good product out of it?
What would be more effective, spending a crap ton of money for a weapon system you build a few hundred of (because it either ends up being too expensive or just actually a PoS) or paying for dedicated research while building, IDK, useful things.. or upgrading old things to be better?
Plus we hand out cash to our "friends" so they can then turn around and buy our weapons. That seems a bit roundabout and clumsy.
But all the people who cry about "socialism", don't seem to have a lot to say about this "socialistic" behavior--especially if they are Red State politicians who benefit from it.
Maybe some or even many of these people would be better employed doing other things? Maybe we might be better off a government armory built these things, even if a private company (or university or whatever) did the research?
We have a system that is apparently ripe for abuse and that is, seemingly, often abused.
There can be a valid debate to be had on how much to invest (& whether there is sufficient ROI) on strategic/aspirational fronts (like trying to stay ahead in defense, technology, medicine etc.). But the problem in US seems to be that every expense is many times what it ought to be (e.g. why does it cost almost 10X times to build a mile of roadways in the US as compared to France, how much value-add does a realtor or a car dealership offer to their customers, what about the outrageous medical expenses our systems allow?). The systems/processes in US is built to accommodate middlemen who need their cut. True whether we are talking about our military expense or others.
"It takes a real dirtbag sensibility to claim the Ohio Supreme Court demanding districts in line with the Ohio Constitution voters overwhelmingly amended that actually represent Ohioans’ political preferences and still give your party a majority is somehow the real gerrymandering."
You can also talk about the major scandal that's happened under Republican domination of the state's politics through veto-proof majorities for the past 10 years -- the largest in the state of Ohio's history and one of the largest in the country: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/us/larry-householder-expelled-ohio-house.html
The GOP reminds me of the 13-year-old brother of a friend, who snuck a black widow home and spent the next 6 weeks feeding it, apparently convinced he could train it. He wound up rushed to the hospital after a (thankfully dry) bite. He, however, learned his lesson.
Was that tirade by Marjorie "Dude Looks Like A Lady" Taylor Greene from the TV competition show: "Donald Trump Presents - Word Salad Speeches"?
Like the Master of Word Salad, Greene just opens the spigot and out pours anything on her demented mind in the moment. As her follow party member J. Danforth Quayle said 30 years ago...
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is."
Unfortunately, her constituents are in such a tizzy about "owning the libs" that they will forego government working on their behalf and instead enjoy their warm and fuzzies of her speaking out for protecting "Real America" from the Socialists, Communists, and Fascists.
Greene's constituents should be are proud that she 'earned her $175,000 salary for the "work" of introducing 17 Bills:
~ 4 were to impeach Joe Biden, with an average of 4 Republican co-sponsors for each
~ 3 had no co-sponsors (First Biden impeachment bill, Eject Maxine Waters Bill, and the Kyle Rittenhouse Congressional Medal Bill.
~ 9 were were referred to the appropriate committee, but not yet accepted for review
~ 1 has already been discharged by a committee (The Fire Fauci Act)
~ 1 bill did cross the aisle with bipartisan co-sponsorship (The Congratulations for Georgia football team Resolution)
Interesting to note that in the same year the average of Bills/Resolutions submitted by Congress persons was about 35. But then she did slip by Matt "I Like Me My Teens" Gaetz with 11, and Coatless Gym Jordan with 1.
Uncle Joe is too nice a guy to allow Mitch Landrieu to offer infrastructure packages according not only to need, but also for the cooperation and support of the Senators and Congresspersons who voted for the bill.
Why should those legislators who worked hard to get the bill created and signed lose money to those colleagues who loudly spoke out against the help??
Play hardball Joe, helped the ones who helped you, then pass on the scraps to the crap.
Once of MTG was enough Charlie, lol. Especially after you crystalize the character of Ram your Thumb.
Apparently, Ramthun gained a seat in an uncontested general election. Won't be so easy for governor. There must be something in the water in Wisconsin, between Ramthun and the fools who knocked over the statue of HC Heg, it is a state with populist mania on both sides of the aisle.
I see that the Bulwark has a new member, Theodore Johnson. Can we get a bit more of a writeup/welcome for him? Perhaps not at the Will Saletan level, but a bit of background and what he brings to the Bulwark?
Is it possible MTG and / or her comms people knowingly misused Gazpacho to gain attention? Not that MTG is an attention seeker or anything whatsoever like that.
I seriously doubt these people are playing 2 dimensional chess, let alone 4 dimensional chess.
You offer that cadre too much credit. LOL
I ran a credit report and there is no way I will ever extend that cadre any credit! :-)
I don't like to make fun of people with a disability but MTG is such a twitter troll she's fair game. Has anyone else noticed that she works overtime to hid her lisp?
Don't go there. Uncle Joe has a stutter.
Far be it from me to dispense fashion criticism, but has anyone talked to Rep. Ramthun about his color choices in the jackets he wears?
At least he wears a jacket, unlike Coatless Gym Jordan (R-Pedophilia Protector)
First, they came for my soup, and I stayed silent...
(Yeah, I know I posted this on The Morning Dispatch, but I'm very proud of myself, so...)
Still ages well. ;)
Awwww...
Are the Gazpacho Police related to the Vichyssoise French? Are they roaming the world with their thermometers?
And Charlie, you have my sympathy for living in Wisconsin.
I saw Gazpacho Police open for Jewish Space Lasers in '96. Best concert ever.
Morning Shot comment contributors have the BEST jokes anywhere! Thanks!
It's the first cup of coffee talking. All downhill from here. : )
Lucky you! Ehh, I don't get good until mid afternoon.
Ain’t THAT the truth!
That was a great concert. The heyday of Guac 'n Roll...
Okay you guys (Brad, Jeff and the original), you are making me spew my coffee out of my nostrils.
At least you're not drinking Coca Cola---that really stings when spewed! You're welcome.
I'm a huge fan, but my fav now are the Classified Flushers. They've been tearing it up lately...
Yeah, their song "Rip Me To Pieces" gets me every time.
YOU GUYS!
Couple of questions:
1. “The GOP leadership then stripped Ramthum of his lone staffer ‘for lying about fellow GOP members and using taxpayer resources to put out political screeds.’” Would this be true if he were lying about Dems? Haha, nvmd. We all know that answer
2. How does one conduct a physical cyber audit? Methinks Ramthun doesn’t know what those words mean
On #2...it's a physical inspection of the electrons.
With the new James Web Space Telescope. That sucker can even SEE INTO THE PAST!
Shame on MTG! Cold soup has enough marketing problems as it is! Gazpacho is lovely, and we should all try it.
How about Pre- K helped single parents like me go to work!?! Also, Pre-K helps kids become more socially and emotionally aware. But y’all supported the disastrous No Child Left Behind so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Maybe somethings can’t be tested for properly, and we have to look at the big picture.
They're also bettered prepared to function in the school setting. In my son's K class 3 years ago, you could tell who had been to pre-K and who had not based on their classroom behavior
As was pointed out at Freddie's place, "No less a hardass than Charles Murray pointed out that preschool would be a great way to help poor kids stay in a warm, safe, place and should be funded on that basis."
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/pre-k-research-is-mixed-running-to/comments
https://www.aei.org/articles/the-shaky-science-behind-obamas-universal-pre-k/
Pre-K isn't what gives kids a warm, safe place to say while their parents are at work. Any minimally competent daycare would do that. Pre-K sinks a lot of cost into developing curricula that are supposed to give kids a head start. If the curricula don't, actually, that cost is wasted. Here's what's in Mona's article:
"many families, particularly single-parent families, cannot afford to have a parent stay home to care for young kids. That’s why direct subsidies to parents make much more sense than subsidizing universal pre-K. Let the parents decide how to spend the stipend. If they prefer to work and place the child or children in daycare or pre-K (and there really isn’t much of a distinction), they can make that choice."
For as much time as the Bulwark spends talking about the bad political optics of so many Democratic positions, I'm left scratching my head over the fact that this idea of direct subsidies to parents keeps getting promoted here. If the child tax credit were made permanent, it would be incredibly easy (and probably effective) for bad faith Republicans to trot out the welfare queen trope.
Also, notably absent from Mona's piece is any mention of the child tax credit being made permanent in Build Back Better. If the bill were to pass (long shot I know) I hope that Mona is prepared to not simply criticize the childcare/pre-K funding, but to also sing the praises of the child tax credit, and to defend poor Black single mothers who choose to stay home and care for their children, because they will end up in the political crosshairs.
I think what Mona (and others NR contribs and alumni who are capable of looking in a mirror) knows is that there's no guarantee it *would* be incredibly easy and effective for bad faith Republicans to trot out the welfare queen trope once it's obvious plenty of white, "Real American" parents are benefiting, too.
After all, the response to KDW's reporting on the similarities between America's "heartland" and "urban" poor was thermonuclear denial. Break down that denial (which I think is what KDW was trying to do), and Republican voters must realize how much of the "tough love" rhetoric they're used to isn't. Isn't love, that is, as they recognize when it's directed their way.
What if the denial's unbreakable? We have evidence it might be. In that case, the divisive absurdity of Republican rhetoric sorting people who use *identical* social services into "deserving" and "undeserving" based on race alone rears its ugly head.
On the other hand, there's evidence that government benefits that differ by factors correlating with race and class is part of what drives racism and classism. For example if homeowners get a benefit after recent history when government promoted homeownership as a civic good — and subsidized it for whites... well, this actually happened:
https://modelcitizen.substack.com/p/does-zoning-cause-racism-does-negative
I hope you're right, but I'm extremely doubtful. Look at all the folks who get their health care through ACA subsidies, branded with their state's exchange, who nonetheless vehemently hate Obamacare. There's a long history of whites feeling that they deserve government benefits but that blacks do not.
Right. Throughout US history, much of this has been enabled by blacks and whites typically getting different benefits, so that whites could tell themselves *their* benefits weren't really benefits, "properly understood". This is obviously harder to do with a widespread benefit applying to races equally, but in the Kraken world we live in, clearly not impossible.
I do cut Americans railing against our system of medical care payment, Obamacare or not, some slack. The stuff that makes American medical payment so crazy, like laws favoring employer-based plans, is also stuff that middle-class Americans are used to by now, and, as the saying goes, always keep ahold of Nurse for fear of finding something worse. People want a scapegoat for how much this sucks, even now, so of course if they lean that way, "Obamacare!" is tempting.
And I’m saying this data is one-sided towards what is being measured. You are measuring for hard data about knowledge/literacy. How about a child’e emotional/social intelligence? How about preparation for being school, away from home? How much money are we really dumping into this? Is this seriously a drain on the education budget? If that’s so, it speaks much louder to our priorities as a nation that we have to argue about giving children a head start.
I am not the one measuring. But the people who do measure do measure factors associated with social and emotional development, such as avoidance of criminality. Mona's piece mentioned this, citing "higher rates of disciplinary problems" for the pre-K group in the Vanderbilt followup and also:
"in Canada’s Quebec province, the adoption of universal pre-K in 1997 led to serious negative outcomes when the kids reached adolescence. Teenagers who had been placed in daycare showed marked increases in anxiety, aggression, and dissatisfaction with life compared with those who had spent their early years in parental or other care. Even more worrying was the sharp increase in criminal activity"
I am a big believer in social-emotional learning, after having parents who were themselves too academics-only focused. But precisely because the social-emotional component of learning is important, daycare that does *not* make a pretense of academics, but instead focuses on the basics of giving kids a safe space (which includes enforcing basic social rules like no hitting), might be more feasible if the goal is to have programs for everyone, including the kids who aren't a disciplinary fit for intensive pre-K programs.
(My own kid, prone to act out due to a speech impediment, was not a fit for the tony preschools around us at first. Some kids aren't, and not necessarily "those people's" kids, either.)
I'M TIMOTHY RAMTHUN, AND I AM USING COPPERPLATE GOTHIC FOR THE FIRST TIME.
It's amusing seeing Khatiri argue that the US, which spends more on defense than probably the next 10 countries combined, is unwilling to invest in being a global power. Maybe percent of GDP that goes toward defense spending isn't the best metric; I think $800 billion is plenty, and most of that gets wasted by contractors. We spend more and get less than any other country in the world, from our military, to our infrastructure, to our health care.
As far as maniacs like Ramthun running around, this is why we can't move on from Trump. This guy's only real qualification is a lie he's willing to tell. And, if he were to win in 2022, does anyone think he'd actually keep that promise to call for a "cyber audit," whatever that is? For the Ross Douthats of the world, who want to argue that 1/6 wasn't such a big deal, and that it's time to move on, and blame the mainstream media for sensationalizing and overhyping Trump and the big lie, no one can move on, because the rightwing media hasn't moved on. These crazies are being fueled by a media ecosystem that folks like Douthat don't want to talk about for some reason, and their crazy spills over into and infringes upon the rest of us who are just trying to live in reality, but cannot.
Using dollar figures to judge military strength is questionable at best. A dollar spent in China goes further than the same dollar spent in America (WRT defense)... this also means that % GDP is not that useful either, other than assessing the defense burden on the overall economy for a particular country.
The US seems to routinely make bad investments in defense and seems to waste a lot of money in efforts that have little or no payoff. A lot of this money goes into deep R&D that has no payoff until a generation or two later in the weapon design/development cycle.
This is the danger of being at the bleeding edge of military technology development. The US had workable stealth back in the late 80s. Our current stealth technology is probably markedly superior that anyone else's--but the payoff for that difference is less than it used to be because of counter measures development and the fact that others also have SOME capability.
An analogy (maybe not a good one but I think it is illustrative): Nuclear weapons were VERY useful when we were the only ones that had them. Once someone else had them, their utility approached zero--at least in actually using them.
The utility of stealth has not degraded so much because the power/use dynamics are not quite the same.
As I see it we have some major problems WRT defense spending/development:
1) We spend a lot (I mean a LOT) of money trying to do things that are at the very edge of possibility given current knowledge/technology.
2) we spend a lot of money trying to make things do 6 things instead of 1 or 2 things.. or to be used by services with very different requirements (like the F-35) in the name of "economy" or interoperability. This usually does not actually pay off as you end up with less capable, more expensive systems with LONG development cycles and huge up front costs... and instead of buying 3,000 of them that we actually need, we buy 200 and move to the next generation (while letting actual operational requirements go hang).
We seemingly spend a lot of money and effort just keeping defense contractors busy/in business. I do not want to venture how many development cycles and trials we have done over the last two decades attempting to develop things like new rifles and gear for infantry (that never went anywhere).
3) We are HEAVILY invested in legacy systems that may or may not be useful in an actual war against a par or near par military. My primary example here is aircraft carriers.
A CVN is a HUGE investment in time and money. Gob-smackingly huge. That is why the US is the ONLY country that has any REAL aircraft carriers (we can pretend that these Chinese, Russian, and British ships are aircraft carriers, but in the end we are pretending they are).. No one else can afford it, nor do they have the expertise to operate them effectively... and they do not actually NEED them.
A CVBG is an awesome power projection tool to be used against non-par militaries in locations all over the globe. The air wing of a CVBG is more powerful than most countries entire air forces.
I am not convinced they would be useful against the PRC or against the Russians (the Russians mostly because of geography, the PRC because of countermeasures they have developed).
This investment in legacy systems is not merely an investment of money or time--it is also an investment in doctrine and leads to not pursuing other approaches/technologies. An example here is the continued emphasis placed upon battleships in the interwar period and early parts of WW2--particularly once the efficacy of carrier-based airpower had been conclusively demonstrated. The Japanese were particularly bad in this respect... and this was driven by institutional and doctrinal pressures rather than military effectiveness.
We also probably have the most risk-adverse and casualty sensitive military and society among the major powers... and we have issues with maintaining civil determination in conducting wars and military operations.
"The US seems to routinely make bad investments in defense and seems to waste a lot of money in efforts that have little or no payoff."
They absolutely have payoff; they keep a lot of people at work. We have a workfare system where we give corporations money to build equipment so they'll pay workers. The post-Cold War "Peace Dividend" taught a lot of politicians that cutting defense is a good way to crush a lot of local economies in the short term, which is all they care about.
If the only reason you are doing these things is to keep people working, their are more effective ways to do it.
You can make an argument for using procurement and R&D as a tool to maintain an industrial base for future defense needs. But the question is, is it the best way to do this? And are you getting good product out of it?
What would be more effective, spending a crap ton of money for a weapon system you build a few hundred of (because it either ends up being too expensive or just actually a PoS) or paying for dedicated research while building, IDK, useful things.. or upgrading old things to be better?
Plus we hand out cash to our "friends" so they can then turn around and buy our weapons. That seems a bit roundabout and clumsy.
But all the people who cry about "socialism", don't seem to have a lot to say about this "socialistic" behavior--especially if they are Red State politicians who benefit from it.
Maybe some or even many of these people would be better employed doing other things? Maybe we might be better off a government armory built these things, even if a private company (or university or whatever) did the research?
We have a system that is apparently ripe for abuse and that is, seemingly, often abused.
There can be a valid debate to be had on how much to invest (& whether there is sufficient ROI) on strategic/aspirational fronts (like trying to stay ahead in defense, technology, medicine etc.). But the problem in US seems to be that every expense is many times what it ought to be (e.g. why does it cost almost 10X times to build a mile of roadways in the US as compared to France, how much value-add does a realtor or a car dealership offer to their customers, what about the outrageous medical expenses our systems allow?). The systems/processes in US is built to accommodate middlemen who need their cut. True whether we are talking about our military expense or others.
I would really love it if you guys could spend some time talking about what's going on in Ohio. There's the redistricting issue, which you can read about here (https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/02/10/ohio-republicans-throw-temper-tantrum-as-attempts-to-cheat-with-gerrymandering-shot-down/) beginning with this doozy of an opening paragraph:
"It takes a real dirtbag sensibility to claim the Ohio Supreme Court demanding districts in line with the Ohio Constitution voters overwhelmingly amended that actually represent Ohioans’ political preferences and still give your party a majority is somehow the real gerrymandering."
You can also talk about the major scandal that's happened under Republican domination of the state's politics through veto-proof majorities for the past 10 years -- the largest in the state of Ohio's history and one of the largest in the country: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/us/larry-householder-expelled-ohio-house.html