F-35

From spending $150 million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing $2.7 billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades. Other hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase of helicopter gears worth $500 each for $8,000 each and the accumulation of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons components that will never be used.

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

It’s actually pretty easy. At an apt moment very soon, Trump should offer Governor Kasich the VP slot and Senator Cruz the vacant Supreme Court seat.

Last Thurssday, the Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Joseph Dunford testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC). The topic? The President’s defense budget request for next year.

The nearly three-hour hearing covered everything from the fight against ISIS in Syria to NASA’s research and development projects. But what was remarkable, other than senators using valuable time with Secretary Carter to broker pet projects, was the evident reevaluation of threats to the U.S.

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The possibility that Trump would step on favored political toes and act pragmatically to rein in Imperial over-reach terrifies the bloated Imperial city of Washington D.C.