Day: April 2, 2021

Closing Thought–02Apr21

These days there are many speeches and thoughts about an old principle of cessation from the United States…..Texas is always threatening to do so….and a couple of other states….mostly fringe politicians but the thought is still there.

Well Oregon has gone a step further…a couple of counties what to leave the state and join with a neighboring state, Idaho…..

Say what!

… voters in Jefferson and Union counties voted to push their lawmakers to consider taking their communities into Idaho.

The chances of that actually happening remain slim: It would require votes by both Oregon and Idaho legislatures and the U.S. Congress. But that’s not necessarily the goal, at least not yet.

“I’m not really sure what the chances are, if you’re going to put into odds or bet on it,” said Mike McCarter, a retired plant nursery worker and firearms instructor from La Pine who led the petition drive to get on the ballot with the group Move Oregon’s Border. “But if we don’t attempt to do something like that we continue to go down a road of frustration about the state Legislature not paying attention to rural Oregon.”

https://www.opb.org/article/2020/11/16/two-oregon-counties-voted-to-look-at-joining-idaho-now-what/

Really?

I say screw ’em….let them go….my grandfather use to say, “if you gonna be stupid you need to be strong”…..or another saying fits this situation to a tee….”can’t fix stupid”….

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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From The ‘Can’t Fix Stupid’ Files

Once again there is stupid and then there is really stupid.

Law enforcement has been identifying and arresting perps of the insurrection on 06 January…..and they have even asked the public for their help….and then idiots do the job for the FBI……

And this moron is one of those stupid in-bred morons…..

 
Garret Miller didn’t speak to the law enforcement officers who arrested him on charges he stormed the US Capitol in January, but the T-shirt he was wearing at his Dallas home that day sent a clear and possibly incriminating message. Miller’s shirt had a photograph of former President Donald Trump, and it said “Take America Back” and “I Was There, Washington DC, January 6, 2021,” federal prosecutors noted in a court filing Monday. Prosecutors are urging a judge to keep Miller jailed while he awaits trial on charges stemming from the Jan. 6 riot in the nation’s capital, the AP reports. He was arrested on Jan. 20 and indicted by a DC grand jury on Feb. 12 on 12 counts, including civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, and assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers.

Miller’s attorney is seeking his client’s release from custody, saying he has expressed regret for his actions. Like many of the more than 300 people facing federal charges in connection with the siege, Miller thoroughly documented and commented on his actions that day in a flurry of social media posts. After Miller posted a selfie showing himself inside the Capitol building, another Facebook user wrote, “bro you got in?! Nice!” Miller replied, “just wanted to incriminate myself a little lol,” prosecutors said. Miller joined the mob that breached the Capitol building and later threatened to kill Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a Capitol police officer, authorities said. Miller remains jailed in Oklahoma City. His transport to Washington is on hold because he broke his collarbone while playing soccer in the recreation yard at a Dallas jail.

Another fine example of “can’t fix stupid”.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Here A Protest There A Protest

Protests have been raging across the globe…..has anything really changed?

My thoughts on protests….chuq

Gulf South Free Press

These days the whole world is in protest for one thing or another.

Protests in the US for various reasons…..racism, violence, etc…..Myanmar is in protest…the same with India, Brazil, Hong Kong, Thailand…..so forth and so on…..people are rising up and taking to the streets….

Why is the world burning with protests?

Before we answer that question there is another…..

Just what are all these protest accomplishing?

But before we answer that probing question….let us look at historic protests from the not so distant past….

As protests have continued nationwide, more than a dozen other U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Dallas, and Washington, D.C., have also made commitments to reduce police resources and funding, and make changes to their systems.

Throughout American history, peaceful protesting — which is protected under the First Amendment and is an act of patriotism — has been utilized to advocate for and lead to change. While…

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Time To Cut Defense Budget

The Pentagon is bloated and needs to be knocked down a notch.

Really?

Yes the defense budget is $740 billion only the Social Security has a larger budget……

We have endless wars and endless military waste…it is beyond time for the Pentagon get a haircut.

The devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout provide ample reason to reconsider what truly constitutes national security.

Such a reassessment is long overdue. Despite the trillions of dollars Congress and successive administrations have lavished on the Pentagon since the turn of the century, the massive U.S. arsenal and fighting force deployed worldwide are powerless against grave, nonmilitary threats to national security—from a raging pandemic to the fact that tens of millions of Americans breathe foul air, drink tainted water, and struggle to pay for food, housing and health care.

When it comes to U.S. spending priorities, the numbers seem especially misguided in an era of tight budgets to come. By the Department of Defense’s own accounting, taxpayers spent $13.34 trillion on the U.S. military from 2000 through fiscal year 2019 in inflation-adjusted 2020 dollars. Add to that another $3.18 trillion for the Veterans Administration, and the yearly average comes to a whopping $826 billion.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-rein-in-inflated-military-budgets/

Of course the Pentagon will issue reports that point to the need for more and more cash….the cycle never stops and their budget gets more and more bloated….

Many of the steps that can be taken to reduce the Pentagon budget now are contained in a new letter to key members of Congress from a coalition of over two dozen groups from across the political spectrum (my organization, the Center for International Policy, is a signatory of the letter). The letter outlines roughly $80 billion in proposed savings in the Fiscal Year 2022 budget, including cancelling additional purchases of the F-35 combat aircraft ($11.4 billion in savings); eliminating the Space Force ($500 million to $2.5 billion in savings); reducing service contracting by 15% ($28.5 billion in savings); canceling the Pentagon’s new ICBM program, formally known as the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, or GBSD ($400 million to $2.4 billion in savings); and eliminating the Pentagon’s slush fund, the Overseas Contingency Operations account ($20 billion in savings).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhartung/2021/03/24/theres-plenty-of-room-to-reduce-the-pentagon-budget/

This waste needs to be curtailed…..and it can be but it will take guts to stand in opposition to the Pentagon…..

Reducing the Pentagon budget – once a non-starter in official Washington – has a growing constituency in Congress and with the broader public, and for good reason. The greatest challenges we face as a nation – pandemics, climate change, racial and economic injustice, white supremacy, and the rise of global authoritarianism – are not military in nature and overspending on the Pentagon won’t help resolve them. It’s time to rethink what constitutes security rather than relying on the same old arguments for sustaining the status quo of a militarized foreign policy and a bloated Pentagon budget.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhartung/2021/02/16/three-reasons-to-reduce-pentagon-spending—now/

This country needs a lot of work and we need to stop our continuing adventurism internationally……time to shutdown out of control military spending.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”