Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"Thou Shalt Get Sidetracked by Bullshit, Every Goddamned Time." -- The Ghoul

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck,
"FOFF" = Felonious Old Fat Fuck,
"COFF" = Convicted Old Felonious Fool,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset,
A/K/A P01135809, A/K/A Dementia Donnie, A/K/A Felon^34,
A/K/A Dolt-45, A/K/A Don Snoreleone

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Stand By for Heavy Rolls

As the Department of Defense comes about.

SecDef Gates is going to try and kill several weapon systems programs.  The F-22 and the DDG-1000 are on the chopping block.

Good luck with that.  Think of the most difficult creature to kill in fiction, and I'm not referring to run-of-the-mill critters like vampires or zombies.  Something that is implacable and utterly unstoppable.  Now try to kill that several times over.

That is what killing a major defense procurement program is like.  The armed services are, at times, both complicit and victims of this.  When they can, the contractors site the final assembly plants in the districts of powerful congressmen.  The armed services, when it suits them, are all too happy to show how many states and congressional districts benefit from any given program. If one of the seinor senators had a plant in their state that made muskets, the Army would still be buying them.

I don't think Gates will succeed, but I wish him luck.

(H/T to Abu Muqawama)

1 comment:

Cujo359 said...

Something that is implacable and utterly unstoppable.

Something like this, I suppose, with the power of invisibility.

Gates will be very lucky to make these changes stick, but I hope he does. Right now the last thing we need to be doing is plowing billions of dollars into weapons we don't need. I see no reason at all for a new class of super-destroyers, and while the F-22 is a formidable aircraft, it's doubtful it will be worth buying hundreds more of them.