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Loose Canons

Where Are the Grownups?

By on 10.17.11 @ 6:08AM

An SGO roundup, inspired by the weirdness pervading not only our domestic scene but the entire world.

(Page 2 of 2)

Our defense cuts haven’t yet reached the stage that Britain’s have, but they may soon. The British reallocation of military spending to other priorities — such as control of global warming — has reached the stage of low comedy.

Britain’s Secretary of State for Defense Liam Fox resigned last week over allegations that one of his associates was implicitly acting as if he were a staffer with government status. Fox, a brilliant Scot, shouldn’t have resigned because of this micro-scandal. But he should have resigned before his boss — PM David Cameron — cut the Brit forces to the level they have now sunk. British airmen, operating over Libya, can’t launch from a Royal Navy carrier because there isn’t one. While Brit forces, as skilled and brave as almost any of ours, were fighting in Afghanistan and Libya on a bare-cupboard budget, Ministry of Defence funds were spent on buying carbon allowances in the EUnuchs’ entirely ridiculous “cap and trade” scheme.

According to a UK Daily Mail report, “In February 2010, Gordon Brown’s cash-strapped Government spent £60 million on ‘carbon credits’ for Whitehall and other Government offices in the UK, as well as British NATO bases in Europe. Thus while troops were going short of kit in Afghanistan, the defense budget was being raided to buy carbon certificates.” Brit PM David Cameron can blame that on the Gordon Brown’s Labour Party government, which will carry as much weight as Obama’s never-ending campaign against the economic crisis that began under George W. Bush.

There are no grownups in British politics, and if there are some here they have yet to reveal themselves as people who can actually stop the devolution of our economy and our military. One of these people was lost to cancer about a week ago.

Steve Jobs knew how to get things done. He reportedly left four years’ of planned product innovations as part of his legacy at Apple. One wag I know said that the newest “app” for the iPhone would be “iHaunt.” Was it a coincidence that the world of BlackBerry fell apart for three days shortly after Jobs’s untimely death? Perhaps.

Page:   12

About the Author

Jed Babbin served as a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush. He is the author of several bestselling books including Inside the Asylum and In the Words of Our Enemies. You can follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (48) |

martin j smith| 10.17.11 @ 7:32AM

We are at thius moment in our history partly because the former Democrat(ic ? ) party has chosen to morf into a hard LEFT Socialist /Marxist-Leninist Party while the Republican Party establishment is at War with the Ta Party who actually want grown ups. This is my view.

From this perspective we need someone being president who is far from the Establishment Republican Brand--Bad Seed/
That for me eliminates at least Huntsman( lost at sea ) Paul ( half and Obama ) and Romney ( Too Establishment ) I would prefer one of the others .

( In the case of Perry I say ? )

DTOM| 10.17.11 @ 9:12AM

They all said Wag the Dog was fiction. As desperate as the little President is, does anyone doubt for a picosecond that Obama is NOT trying to start a shooting war with Iran? His reliable mouthpieces have already started screaming about Iranian acts of war.

The Occupy Astroturf is gaining steam with Obama's encouragement. They are ramping up one serious "crises" on top of another.

I wouldn't want to live in a big, Democratically controlled city next summer. I remember vividly the 1968 Days of Rage.

This is Alinsky 101, on unpaid student loans, purloined union dues, and misdirected Democrat campaign funds...

Buy ammo.

Anybody heard from the EU? Or will we have to send the submersibles out to find it broken into pieces on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean?

Paging Mr. DiCaprio, paging Mr. DiCaprio. You are wanted on the sinking ship...

POST American| 10.17.11 @ 7:38AM

"The US has one final task before
its own collapse is CON-summated
and RED China's brought in as 'world
model and enforcer' ----and that's to
'bring in' (ie franchise slums, USURY
and EUGENICS) the recalcitrant
Middle East."
-ALAN WATT
(essential NON--sick-O-fan--tick
coverage online)

AS another former Globalist tool,
JAPAN, is being systematically destroyed
----TAKE HEED

----INFINITELY more important than
IRAN, is our finishing off, decades in the
works, broad daylight, US taxpayer
funded, Globalist RED China set up, sellout,
TREASON and EUGENICS OP.

-----------HUAC meets NUREMBERG 2012---------

Tim the Enchanter| 10.17.11 @ 12:23PM

Huh?

Solo| 10.17.11 @ 8:03AM

Hows that for the ultimate absurdity? The British military is spending precious resources buying carbon off-sets!
"Sorry, Mates! We can't defend the nation for fear of contributing to "global warming".

I wonder what the fee is for each bullet fired? And, do they charge the individual soldier or is the fee paid when they purchase the bullets in bulk?

Moe Blotz| 10.17.11 @ 8:23AM

What is next? Take away the Royal Navy rum ration?

Mike D.| 10.17.11 @ 8:27AM

I believe its already been done away with some years ago.

DTOM| 10.17.11 @ 9:13AM

Maybe it's time to bring it back! Those tars could fight!

Moe Blotz| 10.17.11 @ 10:43AM

January of 1970 to be exact.

Dean | 10.17.11 @ 12:40PM

Churchill once described "tradition" in the Royal Navy as consisting of "rum, sodomy, and the lash." There is no rum or lash now . . . but probably a fair amount of sodomy!

Moe Blotz| 10.17.11 @ 4:59PM

Soon our own navy will have its turn in the barrel.

Moe Blotz| 10.17.11 @ 5:01PM

The Royal Navy rum ration was run dry in January of 1970.

Merlin| 10.18.11 @ 4:51AM

Mr. Babbin,

You made up the part about the carbon offsets, didn't you?

SG-1| 10.17.11 @ 8:27AM

Looking for the "adult in the room" is like looking for today's parents to discipline their kids. You aren't going to find it and if you point that out, you'll be excoriated as a "hater". Plus, just like the irresponsible parents, none of the politicians who CLAIM to be from the conservative side, wants to be the "bad guy". The one who clearly, unambiguously identifies crap as crap and tells us all that it needs to be done away with. No, that would offend the Romanesque ruling-class elites like Boehner, Pelosi, Reid, et al. Not to mention the media-monkeys who like flinging poo at people who are right.

We're basically screwed until a new generation comes along that has their sex organs in the right place and the ability to dismiss emotionally-biased criticism.

Ken (Old Texican)| 10.17.11 @ 8:55AM

Jed, folks,
speaking of grownups...where is Rush Limbaugh?

I can't get his web-site to come up. Will some of you try to get it and report back here.
Thanks

SG-1| 10.17.11 @ 9:01AM

I had to do a fresh search, then I noticed the web address has changed, ever-s0-slightly. So do that and bookmark it. You should be set.

Ken (Old Texican)| 10.17.11 @ 10:09AM

SG
thanks a lot!

Anthony| 10.17.11 @ 10:01AM

This is just the prelude to 2012, when SGO is really gonna hit the fan, as Obozo and the Ds face loses in a monumental fashion. America at its crossroad.
Just wait and see what next year at this time brings!! We'll be wearing riot gear in order to vote, assuming the polls are open.

Paul Kotik | 10.17.11 @ 10:15AM

We've now raised 2 generations of imbeciles, thanks mainly to the teachers unions. Why would we expect anything other than what we got?

Nice going, America.

Grzmlyk| 10.17.11 @ 12:41PM

That's the supreme irony of the liberal world view, Paul:

They've whined that America is a horrible, evil, malevolent, bigoted, corrupt oligarchy for a century, and they've had the mainstream media/pop culture complex putting wind in their sails in earnest since the days of the Great Society.

Well, thanks to their ministrations and tireless efforts, they have finally created the America they decried.

And yet the fools cannot see that it is liberalism that authored this tragedy; the pawns don't care who authored it, the social vandals delight in it and the crooks, as always, profit from it.

And liberalism today is populated exclusively by fools, pawns, social vandals and crooks.

Al Adab| 10.17.11 @ 3:11PM

GRZ:
There are two huge ironys here. One is that the OWS crowd actually agrees with the Tea Party about the bad idea that was the bailouts and two the world they want to create and its attendant government would put them against a wall for behaving this way. Apperently all this escapes botht eh demonstraters and the press. How strange.

The Big Kahuna| 10.17.11 @ 10:17AM

RE: They want wealth to be redistributed, from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs. Change needs to "wants" and you have the Occupy Wall Street idiots credo.

Paul Kotik | 10.17.11 @ 11:54AM

That's one of the problems with using need as an accounting basis. They're impossible to measure, are indistinguishable from wants, and everybody's are infinite.

I mean, even if everybody had exactly the same stuff, we'd still have our innate need to be different, special, better. No end to that one.

Grzmlyk| 10.17.11 @ 1:13PM

Not only that, but as nice as some liberals think that platitude sounds - "from each according to his aility to each according to his needs" - they do not say who is empowered to determine what an individual's abilities are, or who needs what.

It is always the State that makes these determinations, and always in the form of some politically-motivated bureaucratic hack whose only interest is in feathering his own nest and keeping expenditures going outside of his own feifdom at a minimum.

Thus the theoretical ideal of socialism breaks down immediately upon implementation.

Not to mention that socialism, which detests capitalism, relies on that very capitalism in order to provide the funds that socialism steals.

How any human being on this planet is stupid enough to believe in this perpetual motion machine boggles my mind.

The Big Kahuna| 10.17.11 @ 10:17AM

RE: They want wealth to be redistributed, from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs. Change needs to "wants" and you have the Occupy Wall Street idiots credo.

Petronius| 10.17.11 @ 10:28AM

Come spring of 2013, your property will be limited to what you can hold onto by force of arms or carry at a dead run. Plan accordingly.

Boar Hunter| 10.17.11 @ 12:10PM

The only time I run is to chase and destroy my enemies,

For to crush the liberals, to see them driven before me and to hear the lamentations of their women would be the greatest joy I can imagine.

Plagiarized in part from Ganges Kahn

Occam's Tool| 10.17.11 @ 10:54AM

Just so the Paulbots realize that I do NOT support intervention everywhere and anytime---I am opposed to the Uganda intervention, and I opposed the Libyan one. No state interests are served in either of these two places, especially since the rebels will be worse than Daffy. Wait and see.

I also though t getting rid of Mubarak was stupid, and nation building with terrorist loving scum is idiotic. Destroying them, however, like you would wasp nests on your underhang, makes sense.

Drunken Sailor| 10.17.11 @ 11:06AM

I agree OC. The left is always screaming about reducing our nuclear stockpile. What better way to do it then by dropping them on areas that need to rebuild from the stone age. Start with Iran, work our way down the list and watch how fast people take us seriously again.

I know its a pipe dream but it's about the only thing that brightens my political day anymore.

Al Adab| 10.17.11 @ 11:37AM

OT, DS:
The Left continues to confuse the military war making power with peace keeping power. To them, the military is an organization for social engineering and doing "good works" around the world. It is that perception which continues to put troops in harms way for no purpose and to no effect. Our military should be used rarely and then decisively only when US interests are at stake and never for the sake of pandering.

Boar Hunter| 10.17.11 @ 1:36PM

A man I once knew told me that in Vietnam, his unit, would place the end of a rope onto the skid of a helicopter. A series of nooses had been tied along the remaining length of the rope and the heads of the men they captured were placed within the nooses. As these men stood single file, the first man would be questioned by the interrupter and when he refused to answer the helicopter would raise off the ground. According to this man, they never had to repeat the question to the second man.

When I was a child, the answer to the "Why isn't the continental United States ever attacked?" question was self evident. It was because our enemies feared the men in my grandfather and father's generation. It used to be our enemies who were afraid of what we would do to them with our weapons. Now we are more afraid of the power we possess than they are.

If I were king, I would simultaneously cruise missile that Iranian devil monkey and every other religious and military leader in their entire country who has ever so much as implied a modest dislike for America.

This would not be a surgical strike, limiting the possibility of death or damage to the civilian population or its infrastructure, this would be a spectacular explosion designed to eradicate the leader and everyone who surrounded him, including his family, housekeepers and family cat.

As a means of graphically illustrating America's new policy on terrorism, I would live feed the explosion over every news channel in the world, declare a National Holiday and force the Department of Homeland Security to pass out candy and sweets to American citizens everywhere, just like those animals did when the twin towers fell.

America is stricken by the cancer of political correctness.

It took how long to build the twin towers? How many years has it been since they fell and what have we accomplished?

The only ones whose "hearts and minds" have been changed are ours and a more ignorant and ill conceived policy towards managing our enemies I cannot imagine.

I say we invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to christianity.

Al Adab| 10.17.11 @ 3:15PM

Hunter:
The quickest Iranian action would be to drop the 82nd or 101st on Natanz, let them bulldoze a a quick landing strip, take apart the factory and fly out all in about four hours time. Air cover would prevent interference and the job would be done.

Skippy| 10.17.11 @ 3:40PM

Ann, is that you?
My kinda gal!

Clint| 10.17.11 @ 5:07PM

That's Because You're A Screwball Israel Firster Maniac,Tool Job & Only Care If It Hurts Your Fanatic Israel Firster Neo-Chickenhawk Agenda.

The Tea Party Rebellion Steps On Tool Job's Face.

cicero| 10.17.11 @ 11:22AM

Bernanke is supposed to be a student of the Great Depression. Obama supposedly admires the legacy of F. Roosevelt. If you whack the hornets nest of the Middle East enough times, you may get the start up of a general war that will, of necessity spill over into both the West (Europe) and the East (India).
Now let me see, what got us out of the last depression? Full employment; ramped up domestic industry; all pulling the wagon. . .
Hope not.

Don H| 10.17.11 @ 1:10PM

We need to treat Iran the way the rest of the world treated South Africa back in the 70s-80s. Total isolation. The US should make an announcement that any business that sells to Iran can not do business with the USA. If an airline flies into Iran you can't do business in the US, and so forth. Compel countries (like China, Russia, etc.) to make a choice. I also think it's time we had a serious chat with the Saudis to stop building and financing Mosques in the US until they allow non-Islamic faiths to practice in their country.

Pat| 10.17.11 @ 1:17PM

It’s not all that easy to start a “depression killer” war these days, at least the massive type of war which grabs every American currently living off their unemployment and puts them to work manufacturing MRE’s and Kevlar underwear. The Middle East has been a continuing disappointment for generating your grandfather’s war, folks there are content to wage wars which go on for decades – what’s the hurry is their attitude, our grandchildren will still hate you infidels 30 years from now. Low intensity, low expenditures. China, India and Southeast Asia are much better bets for an all-out war, but it’s hard for the Pentagon to justify a politically acceptable rationale to intervene in an “Asia for Asians” war.

Taiwan, South Korea or Japan can yell for our help should China invade, but the wise Chinese see no profit for themselves in that reckless course of action. Keeping the vital sea lanes open is the time honored excuse inside the Pentagon but the trade routes from Asia to your local Wal-Mart store won’t be threatened. China is arming slowly, building themselves a world class military – we should know because America is funding their future state of the art military machine. But China’s needed raw materials are located in Africa and Asia, including Russia, not Canada or Mexico. So, with our financial help, the Chinese will become the dominant military power within their geographic sphere of influence and we’d be wise to keep our historic “cop on the beat” intentions to ourselves lest the Chinese cutoff our vital sea lanes of massive financial loans.

Dave Williams| 10.17.11 @ 1:46PM

Iran vs. Saudi Arabia....muslims killing muslims....I say arm both sides to the teeth and let 'em go at it. What's not to like?

Mike D.| 10.17.11 @ 5:12PM

Muslims love killing Muslims who aren't Muslim enough. plenty of historical examples of that.

TMF | 10.17.11 @ 7:45PM

Hey Jed...
How y'all doin?
There are no grown ups in D.C....
Best,
Fitz

CalMark| 10.17.11 @ 10:15PM

Iranian Muslims killing Saudi Muslims?

To quote an old folk saying from my heritage, "They're both ugly." I'd buy popcorn to watch that one.

POST American| 10.18.11 @ 12:18AM

---------------------IT'S OFFICIAL---------------------

Latest polls reveal close to 90% of the
American public are now calling for the AUDIT,
ABOLITION and PROSECUTION of the
criminal, PRIVATE, psychopathically
USURY driven ---'Federal' Reserve.

----Seems the jog is up for the 'bennie violence'
of the 'FULL--anthro--pissts'.

---------------------------LOL-----------------------------

SG-1| 10.18.11 @ 5:37PM

Lysdexia, a thing awful is.

Bill| 10.18.11 @ 1:20PM

I agree, the jog should be up for the bennie violence. About time, dammit.

wordpress theme| 12.9.11 @ 8:50AM

Hello A good Articel :) i have love read google

HokenTaka| 12.9.11 @ 12:21PM

It is absolutely amazing how you right- wing fanatics can be so blinded by your outright hatred of Obama that you can actually dilute yourselves into thinking that everything he does is wrong and harmful to the country Dating Online

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http://spectator.org/archives/2011/10/17/a-where-are-the-grownups-sgo

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