Little eruptions of stupidity before the big one.

1. Last week I was cruising the cable new channels in the morning when I happened on to Morning Joe on MSNBC. The guest du jour for that time slot was Suzie Orman, who by the way usually imparts some sane, practical and useful advice to the viewers. Ms. Orman was just wrapping up her interview when they brought on The Honorable Richard Shelby, one of the Senators from the great sovereign state of Alabama and Ms. Orman said she had a question for Mr. Shelby, she went to great lengths to make sure he understood that she was not asking with the intent of insulting him or his office and in no way was showing any disrespect to him or his fellow Senators. He said that was fine and she proceeded to ask him why there were so many of his colleagues on powerful finance committees that were not able to manage their own personal finances and yet they were in charge of managing financial programs for the nation. The good Senator was struck speechless, rendered the proverbial deer in the headlights, turned into the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy looked behind the curtain and found out to be a lunatic who had escaped from the asylum. He had nothing to say, it looked as though the mic had gone dead along with his brain. Senator Shelby then turned his head to the side, which I am guessing was one of his handlers talking to him, trying to get him to give an intelligent response, then turned back to the camera and said, 'well my wife and I don't have any debt'. Good job Senator we are getting a better idea all the time of what we have elected to govern out country.

I for one think there should be certain qualification a person must meet before being allowed to serve on any government committee. If it's finance you should be required to have real world experience in finance, economics etc..and that experience must be with large successful organizations. The same applies to all other areas to include the justice department, real job experience, not lifelong bureaucrats, academics, theoreticians and other fly under the radar types that are clueless as to the everyday goings on in the country they reside, which for the benefit of the bureaucrats is America.

2. The call up of the mother of two, after she was Honorably discharged four years ago should give readers a good indication of the state of our overstretched military. I am a strong advocate of a strong military and as such see this as gross mismanagement by the previous administration, that's the Bush administration in case you may have forgotten. Well, this problem actually dates back to the illustrious progenitor of the last President, George HW himself. You might not remember and since I didn't have this blog up and running yet, so I can't say I told you so, but he and his guy's in the form of the familiar Dick Cheney were advocates of a small high tech military that Mr. Cheney dreamed would be able to defeat all comers, they were horribly wrong as evidenced by the Iraq conflict.

They also, made the National Guard or Army Reserves a component of the active military in that the Army could call up the Guard when they needed troops to help cover, bad idea since this leaves us without a National Guard in times of national emergencies such as Hurricane Katrina etc...etc... Well, anyway as fate would have it the Army appears to be very short handed since they are going after people that have been gone for four years and they must have figured Lisa Pagan had enough of a rest and was ready to serve again, not taking into consideration that she may have a life after soldiering. So she shows up with her two kids in tow and the following day the Army says they are going to give her a discharge but haven't decided if will be Honorable or Honorable/General which will make one look like they have been let go because they are unfit to serve, and the wonder boys who run the military can't understand why they have such a difficult time recruiting people to serve.

3. And while we are on the subject of the military, one of today's news stories is about the Obama administrations' leaning toward cutting funding for the YF-22 Advanced Tactical Fighter since they see it as unnecessary because they don't feel it fits with warfare of the future as they envision it, sounds a little like the last group of non-military guy's who meddled in the Iraq war because they fancied themselves to be tacticians and military strategists even though none of them, including 'W' who conveniently disappeared for most of his military commitment, had a clue as to how to run a war and were in effect responsible for the protraction of the Iraq conflict and it's resulting loses.

And a side bar to the article said the Obama administration also, wants to cut the defense budget. I will make it a point to tell you 'I told you so' when he comes up for re-election since he was so emphatic about taking care of the military, never trust a politician when he's crying crocodile tears. I have no doubt this administration has designs on turning the US into a second rate military power as soon as possible, since they feel the Nevel Chamberlain approach to capitulation is favored over any form of confrontation.

Thanks for reading,

"To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice"
Confucius
551 BC - 479BC

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