Frankly, our goos well done. Just stick the fork in.

Senior, I realize Mr. F is a bit loco at times, but a small amount of critical thinking would yield a lot of dividends in the long run. When the loon bals are right, they are right, and no amount ad hominem will change the fact. A review of Churchill’s statement about the truth would be in order.

“The greatest threat to our national defense lies not with a foreign nation or a group of radicals. (Nor with the NYT for that matter.) It lies within our shores. It is our seriously weakening economy, and our great dependency on foreign governments for products, energy, and most importantly, investment. If foreign nations ever pull out of our economy, we will soon look like Russia, with a rusting fleet and a broken economy.”

When do you leave?

Regardless of whatever a New York Times editorial recommends, it is just an opinion…. and all know what “opinions are like,” ’cause everybody has one, including those with their personal opinions of the NYT.

But all this misses the far greater and inevitable facts. There are many extraordinary yet exigent hard decisions to be made in defense procurement, plans, programs and operations regardless of what any newspaper editorial proposes. It will happen regardless – painful and drastic cuts out of sheer necessity.

Most everyone now realizes that our country is in a recession, likely to get far worse, and even in great risk of a depression. Our major economic ills are rippling throughout the world, which further exacerbates our own problems.

The days of massive cost overruns, unconscionable cost-plus projects, defense contractors corporate welfare, earmarks, pork, fat, corruption, weapons without a mission, weapons and platforms that don’t work, inappropriate platforms and systems, etc., are all over out of sheer necessity. No longer can we afford the past massive federal deficits, nor the tremendous, off-budget supplementary funding for years of two wars that do not even appear on our broken budgets.

The greatest threat to our national defense lies not with a foreign nation or a group of radicals. (Nor with the NYT for that matter.) It lies within our shores. It is our seriously weakening economy, and our great dependency on foreign governments for products, energy, and most importantly, investment. If foreign nations ever pull out of our economy, we will soon look like Russia, with a rusting fleet and a broken economy.
They have us by the short hairs, and can dictate our future.

We are now on the “backside of the power curve.” Even without those incredibly colossal and continuing bailouts and funding to banks, automakers, etc – even greater than we have spent on Iraq – we could have no longer sustained our massive defense spending – double the rest of the world’s combined.

As a nation, we seriously risk becoming a pauper; no longer able to design, buy, and operate all of the highest-tech toys of the past, regardless of their utility.

The age of American Exceptionalism is rapidly coming to an end. In the past, what made this country great was our insatiable drive for more, better, greater… be it the greatest nation, greatest military, greatest political system, greatest technology, or greatest economy.

Unfortunately, our profligacy has propelled us past the point of diminished returns. In our seemingly never-ending drive for more – on personal, corporate, government, and military levels – we all have way overextended, and will now have to endure a long period of payback and redemption – including the military-industrial-complex.

The Gray Lady may not survive our downturn, and may become only a footnote to history. But I do not worry about her. Nor should you.

Worry about our nation instead.

Even you must admit it takes something over 5.000 sailors and officers to launch less than 100 sircraft from a bird farm that costs well over several billion dollars to build and operate. Would CINPAC or CINCLANT task fast moving aircraft to go against littoral combatants when more serious situations exist?

Just curious.