EXCELLENT!
This is super news...for China, Iran, North Korea...
One can never maintain super power status with a rotting economy, Trillions in debt and yearly deficits of Trillion+.
We better wake up to reality soon otherwise we will follow the road to demise ala the Roman Empire, the Third Reich and the USSR.
It is complete idiocy to borrow from China to protect oil supply lanes to China in the straits of Hormuz. Since we can never pay the principal, we are forever in servitude to foreign lenders.
Maybe this is what zero was talking to Putin about. He needed more time.
Last time I checked, we had ten carrier groups. What are the other nine doing?
The full court press to suppress public support of budget cuts is on.
In addition to consultation with diplomatic and military leadership, crises of aggression require consultation with a nation’s captains of finance and industry. In effect, the national political leader asks his backers “can we do this”. His backers then offer him the advice that they will. It is this advice that causes wars to start or not start. The leader’s advisors, therefore, are the key players on the geo-political scene, except much of the process of consultation operates behind the scenes. Unfortunately, this “behind the scenes” power is transnational and forms a relatively small and unified nexus. This nexus, in addition to having great control over national economies and capital globally, has enough functional representatives to also dominate diplomatic leadership globally.
Same thing the local politicians do whenever there is talk of a tax cut.
They always threaten reductions in police, fire, emergency medical and school budgets.
They never warn us that tax cuts could result in fewer fat-butted bureaucrats pushing paper in their multi-multi million dollar ivory tower downtown, cheaper vehicles or elimination of vehicles for bureaucrats, or cutbacks on bicycle lane construction, yuppie jogging trails, etc.
Unless we avoid the sequester, we might have to do what France just did in Mali: win and get out. We won’t be about to stay around for a decade or more and then negotiate with the other side until they win.
So, will there be issued “Obama phones” for the troops then?////
Republicans don't like the $500 billion defense spending cuts, but they can stomach them.
"Stomach" them?
Isn’t that so generous of our Republican masters? Someone tell that the military is already suffering under this hostage negotiation.
When a prudent individual is faced with reduction in income, they normally cut back in the least essential areas. Housing and food are not normally the first thing to go. When the Defense Department is told to cut back, they go for the most essential items first. While the individual will attempt to make the reduction as painless as possible, the bureaucrat will try to make them as painful as possible. With a defense budget such as ours, it is difficult to believe that a five to six percent reduction would necessitate major deterioration in our fighting capabilities.