Originally published at: A Key House Dem Breaks Down the White House’s ‘Unfathomable’ Iran War Funding Requests - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Weeks after the Iran War began, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) predicted to TPM that it would become a billion-dollar-a-day “mess.” Now, with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth taking to Capitol Hill to request almost $67 billion in supplemental war funding, Morelle says his fears have been confirmed. And though Morelle is a member of two…
Seems to me the Department of WAR!!! should learn to live within its means, just like the rest of us. Maybe it should cut back on coffees and avocado toasts.
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“he couldn’t give us an accounting and wouldn’t give us an accounting.”
First-degree treason if anybody has their fingers in the public till.
the Iran War has cost U.S. households about $1,100 each. All of this war funding is coming in the wake of President Trump nearly doubling defense spending overall.
What’s the limit to what our country can spend, Republicans? Hello… Republican Party? …hello, anybody there?
There’s no rhyme or reason to it.
Sure there is. It’s military build-up for war.
Or, in Donald’s case, “pretend war” so his family can skim money off the budget and out of our pockets. Unfortunately, there’s a real aspect to his strategy.
"And they let you! --Donald Trump, 2005
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We need to see articles like this every day:
Pete Hegseth’s leadership leaves the Pentagon in financial and moral crisis
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We are fighting a war over an issue that wasn’t an issue before we started the war.
Forrest Gump might be the only person who could explain why.
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I don’t know how you put this genie back in the bottle, but no way in hell should we be spending $1 billion / day to to ineffectively do it.
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Atomic Energy (and perhaps) weapons in Iran: Bad
Atomic Energy (and perhaps) weapons in Saudi Arabia: Good
Remind me again, where did the 9/11 attackers come from?
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So, according to Pisco-packin’ Pete Kegsbreath, giving even more tens of billion$ to a department that has never, ever successfully passed an audit run by the most unlawful, corrupt and incompetent gang of lackeys in the nation’s history is a good idea?
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. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
— President Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his “The Chance for Peace” speech.
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This is what happens when a bunch of ignorant clowns get hold of advanced weaponry.
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It’ may not cover all the bases with Hegseth et al but, applying Hanlon’s Razor, I’d have to grant the real possibility that he wouldn’t supply details because he couldn’t; he doesn’t know and quite possibly didn’t even know he was supposed to know.
But that’s the thing about a kakistocracy: rulers embodying the worst of the worst blend malice and stupidity so completely the distinction becomes nearly meaningless.
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And testosterone.
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Another remarkable feat that only Putin’s Cock-holster* could achieve.
On the upside:
Only a handful of countries have a lower opinion of Trump’s presidency, Pew’s data suggests, but such powers as Germany, France, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Mexico, Sweden and Turkey are among them.
*h/t Stephen Colbert
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And How the Actual Fuck is this legal?
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Ask John Roberts…
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Media should be smart enough to not call the Iran War a “Military Action” (WH determination) or otherwise. But …
OT (?) Trump attended four deceased soldiers’ dignified transfers in Dover, Delaware, today:
“All of them said, very strongly, that we can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon, so we’re going to honor them.”
That is truly one sick bastard. To go to Dover, and instead of showing respect, he puts words in the mouths of ALL deceased soldiers, who he never met, and has no idea of their opinion.
This threw me more than the 10,000 other sick things he has said.
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If the DOW needs more money then DonOLD’s little redecorating projects need to stop.
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We have no DoW. We have a Department of Defense.
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When I hear some talking head use DOW it changes to D’oh!
But seriously for the life of me I can’t fathom why Hegseth was confirmed. I mean yes he served, but he doesn’t have the experience of heading a complex large department. And yes I know Dems are in the minority but this is going to cost all of us in the end.
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The Daily Beast of all things has a killer podcast interview with history professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat. She goes into some depth on why strongman regimes break down and why Trump is a particularly fast-moving and aggressive case of strongman creation and collapse. The world seems headed for a period where less goods and services are produced, either due to systemic disruption including war and ecological disruption, as well as low demand from waves of debt and financial failures. No country will want to be caught holding the bag. As we’ve seen from the change in US policy, foreign aid cuts are justified in terms of not enough. Gaza and the West Bank, for example, are treated as real estate development projects (and not for the current inhabitants).
In any case, war can reflect increased desperation on the part of the autocrat. Putin knows this and has studiously used the term “special military operation” (SMO) for the Ukraine war. People even were jailed for implying the word war with respect to Ukraine. Yet this week Putin’s press secretary Peshkov finally used the term “war” about Ukraine. Similarly, Trump has called the Iran war an “excursion” and other euphemisms, but it’s war, a society-splitting distraction and diversion of attention when things are going really bad for the actual or aspiring autocrat. A problem for autocrats that start wars is that they must declare victory, and the sooner the better. Europe’s longest-lasting fascist government, Salazar’s Estado Novo had a neutrality policy that succeeded for decades, only to fall victim to draining colonial wars from 1961 to 1974, when the Estado Neuvo ended. War has also been poison for Putin as people at Russian gas stations will tell you these days. Why did Trump pull the war ripcord? There is now little likelihood of a quick resolution to conflicts in the Middle East unless you count yesterday’s decision by Trump to give the Saudis nukes, (ahem, cough) I mean “domestic nuclear enrichment”, a step in that direction.
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Timothy Snyder has also written about this. The autocrat whose grip on power s weakening whips up fears of a foreign threat to create a “rally 'round the flag” response. Those who don’t so rally, or don’t continue to, become an internal enemy whom the autocrat goes after. This strategy may work for a while but eventually undoes the autocrat. Trump’s military action in Venezuela and war with Iran only sort of follow this pattern. For one thing, neither Congress nor the American public at large perceived Venezuela or Iran as imminent threats. Belatedly trying to whip up fear that Iran is close to developing nuclear weapons and then irrelevant McCarthy-esque fear of communists without and within isn’t working. In other words, Trump and, for the most part, his administration are incompetent autocrats. (Which doesn’t, of course, mean they are not extremely dangerous.)
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