Joel Mathis

 Stephen Wertheim speaks the truth :  This is true about domestic priorities as well. I think it's weird, for example, that there is so much talk about having the military distribute a coronavirus vaccine. A country as prosperous as the United States has been should have a robust enough public health system to do that job, shouldn't it?

This isn't good for democracy. Josh Rogin , on President Trump's decision to withdraw some troops from Germany: One reason it will take time is that, according to multiple senior administration officials, the Pentagon won’t submit the options for implementing the withdrawal that Trump wants. Trump’s request for such plans was communicated to the Pentagon in a classified Cabinet memo signed by national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien and initialed by Trump, officials said. But the Pentagon is treating Trump’s demand as if doesn’t carry the authority of an actual presidential decision. The generals are effectively ignoring it. “Whatever you think about the specifics of withdrawing troops from Germany, there’s nothing heroic about deliberately ignoring the president’s expressed intentions,” a senior administration official said. There's a temptation to figure that if Trump is for something, anybody opposing it must be right. But that's not the case here. The generals ar

I've seen a couple of Blue Angels shows in my life and found them utterly thrilling. But. I'm concerned that we as a country can't seem to honor hospital workers without resorting to displays of militarism. It's supposed to look strong. But it seems like it is probably a weakness.

Speaking of the way Americans are sold wars of choice as no choice at all : While the Kim regime is technically a Communist government, the ideology that governs North Korea is known as “Juche” (or, more technically, “neojuche revivalism”). The official state ideology is a mixture of Marxism and ultra-nationalism. Juche is dangerous because it is infused with the historical Korean concept of “songun,” or “military-first,” and it channels all state resources into the North Korean military—specifically its nuclear program. Juche is not a self-defensive ideology. Rather, it is a militaristic and offensive belief system. If the North gets a fully functional nuclear arsenal, they will use those weapons to strike at their American, South Korean, and Japanese enemies. Get that: If North Korea gets the right combination of nukes and missiles, it will definitely attack the United States . Which leads to the inevitable conclusion: "Given these facts, why should we waste precious time

Yikes : Total taxpayer losses in the failed Solyndra solar-energy program might come, at their most dire estimate, to some $800 million. Total cost overruns, losses through fraud, and other damage to the taxpayer from the F-35 project are perhaps 100 times that great, yet the “Solyndra scandal” is known to probably 100 times as many people as the travails of the F-35. Here’s another yardstick: the all-in costs of this airplane are now estimated to be as much as $1.5 trillion, or a low-end estimate of the entire Iraq War.