by Cheryl Rofer
Our long national nightmare. I’ve seen something like these two thoughts elsewhere, but not exactly as I want to say them.
1. We don’t have to pay so much attention to the nonsense churned out by the wingnuts, because we don’t have to worry about it becoming national policy. Monitor and stomp on it where necessary, of course, but we will not have to worry after January 20 that the President is listening.
2. Telling the public that the government is not working for them discourages them from taking government actions seriously or monitoring the actions of their representatives. This leads (by default or design) to a situation in which corruption will be tolerated. Representatives who share the belief in non-government are likely to feel freer to loot that government.
Going the way of the Whigs? In the Boston Globe today, Timothy Gay compares Sarah Palin and Millard Fillmore. Fillmore was one of the last of the Whigs, whose respect for his political opponents was much like Palin’s. Stunningly so, if the Globe’s op-ed is to be believed. My crystal ball is much too cloudy, but it would be a historical irony indeed if the Republicans recapitulated the demise of the party to which theirs provided the new and improved model.
Pentagon board recommends cuts in budget. The Defense Business Board, which is supposed to advise the Pentagon on best business practices, warns that the Pentagon’s bubble should be burst. The defense budget is “not sustainable,” it says, and the next president will have to consider deep cuts, particularly in expensive equipment. While I was googling to try to find the reports themselves, I found some more advice to the next president, which contains some real gems that I don’t have time to blog about now.
Meanwhile, the Defense Science Board was preparing its wishlist (h/t to J.). The Pentagon is big enough that these guys don’t talk to each other. Another reason to cut down the size of that enterprise.