Trimming The Fat

There was an interesting debate on the letters page of the New York Times Sunday Review section. The ongoing gridlock in the congressional debt panel has opened the door for all sorts of suggestions on where to cut money from the Pentagon’s budget. It all began with a letter from Lawrence J. Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, and went from there. Interestingly, there wasn’t a single letter published that argues for either maintaining or increasing current spending levels. People know a raw deal when they see one. Continue reading “Trimming The Fat”

Oval Office Thunderdome: “Nobody Loves Me, It’s True…”

With a little under a year remaining before the general election, GOP voters are soon going to have to get serious and pick a candidate. For months now, the mantle of frontrunner has passed from Mitt Romney to Michele Bachmann back to Romney to Rick Perry to Romney again to Herman Cain and back to Romney, with Newt Gingrich’s once dead campaign showing signs of life. Polls aren’t votes. What is known is the GOP base does not seem to want Mitt Romney to be their candidate, but no other credible party member has chosen to throw their hat in the ring. Romney should be able to wait out the rest of the fools in this circus and get the nod to run against President Obama. Continue readingOval Office Thunderdome: “Nobody Loves Me, It’s True...””

Shitty Movie Sundays: Escape from L.A.

From IMDb’s trivia page on Escape from L.A.: Escape from LA [sic] was caught in development hell for over ten years. A script for the film was first commissioned in 1985 but John Carpenter thought it “too light, too campy.”

Too campy? Why? Were The Riddler and Two-Face in the original draft? I find it hard to believe that Carpenter rejected a script for this film because it was campy. This movie lives on camp. It’s not light, though. I’ll give Carpenter that. Escape from L.A. is a violent flick. A bit cartoonish, maybe, but that many bullets can’t be fired in a movie and still be considered light. Continue readingShitty Movie Sundays: Escape from L.A.”

Cocksuckers Ball: What A Bunch of Clowns

Part of the debt deal that was enacted this year requires that a Congressional committee has to find $1.2 trillion to cut from the federal budget over ten years. If the committee cannot come to an agreement by November 23rd, and both houses can’t pass the recommendations by December 23rd, then $1 trillion worth of cuts are automatically implemented. Half of that amount would come from the Pentagon. Fearing that their organizations are about to take a healthy hit in their pocketbooks, a whole host of generals, admirals, secretaries, and under secretaries have been testifying on Capitol Hill recently about the dire consequences which would result from any cuts to military budgets. Congressmen, but especially Republicans, are listening, and a few are preparing legislation that would exempt the Pentagon from the automatic cuts should the debt committee fail in their task. This is just too damned rich. Continue readingCocksuckers Ball: What A Bunch of Clowns”