Out-of-control corporate pressures on one hand.  Now (acc. to NYT 8/10) Pentagon pressures on the other:
  “Their (the Pentagon’s) argument for NOT winding down in Afghanistan,” said one senior administration official, who would not speak for attribution about the internal policy discussions, “is that while we’ve been in Afghanistan for 9 years, only in the past 12 months or so have we started doing this right, and we need to give it some time and think about what our long-term presence in Afghanistan should look like.”
  Say what?  We’ve been in Afghanistan 9 years, 8 years of which was spent “doing it wrong.”  Now we are “doing it right.” Plus “our long-term presence”? Remember that.
  A government of unattributable threats? Under such twisted but powerful mismanagement, what’s a poor blind-sided democracy to do but cave?
  Fascism, anyone?

Yes you would,Gibbs logic!

All those left leaning Ho-bags would get rid of the Pentigon and make us have Candian Healthcare, hell, there is no money in that!

Yes, I would,..... guess I am a leftey after all, especially now that Obama seems to have become a out of the closet righty?

Vote Sarha Palin 2012, support the Pentagon, support the Constitution and of curse the poop persons right to die without medical care!

ofersince72,

Agreed, beyond the waste of money, and the soothing of public xenophobia, any “success” will be measured in untrimmed hedges.

Raylan:  What’s so difficult is that it’s not just Obama.  It’s the power and profits behind the corporate military industrial complex which is run by the American “meritocracy” for want of a better term. It’s easy for “expertise” to get in the way of “common sense” especially when common sense is in short supply and easily muzzled by fear of reprisal. IMO, of course.

But don’t worry,  guess what the

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

passed to day???

  a   $600,000,000   border bill,,  because
all of the slave Mexicans streaming accross the
border stealing hedge trimming jobs and the
Rupublicans are still looking some kind of idiot
excuse for Americans to vote for them, so they are
happy to tell their constituents looky, looky .,,,see
what we made the Dems pass, but it don’t go far enough.
AND the DEMOCRATS get to say..
SEE,  We are fighting those SLAVE MEXICAN
HEDGE TRIMMING JOB   THIEVES .......
$600,000,000 wow….
and not a word on NAFTA reform of course.
and not a word on the route of the problem by the
DEMOCRATS. . . . .
We are so screwed in this country,  I really , really
feel sorry for our posterity,  at least they will know
that their isn’t a lick of diff between the parties,
just the media circus that pretends that there is

only the global finance oligarchy benefits from any of this war making - for all
those still duped - think it over hard - only conclusion: this POTUS was hand-
picked to advance the oligarchy’s hegemonic agenda under Left Cover, just as the
last hand-picked POTUS did so under RIght Cover - all media is either owned or
played - the electorate is fully duped

This was fully predictable in the spring of 2008 when candidate Obama gave interviews to the Chicago Tribune and later during the so-called “debates”. Obama was going to wage war at the end of an iffy supply line and such wars are always excessively expensive. Apparently the “protective baksheesh” alone eats billions of dollars.

Obama will spend more on the military? Well they don’t call it Bush’s third term for nothing!

So the White House , through the Press Secretary,

Instead of lambasting the conservatives in the House
and Senate,

Lambasts the public support that put Obama into office,
the progressives that organized and sent money to his
campaign.

What is a prgressive to do????

Robert Gibbs,  White House Press Secretary

“They wouldn’t be happy unless Dennis Kucinach were
in office.”

That would be just fine with me Robert.

Spending money on wars/military does not help the average American citizen or the country. Helping others in a foreign land get their act together doesn’t help the American taxpayers who are footing the bill. It is better to spend the money “in the economy” where if you have a lot of people working they will in turn spend money in the economy rather than throwing it away on another country. It’s not logical to justify it - Obama and future presidents have to make a decision - reduce the deficit by either reducing entitlements (medicare, social security etc.) or reducing military spending. Which one would benefit the American people more?

Also, Americans need to organize an 8-million unemployed persons march on Washington to protest the unemployment, military spending, bailouts, etc. There is strength in numbers - instead of complaining on a blog, show the world you mean business!

It’s impossible to have confidence in a Defense Secretary that fails to alert our Nation and our National leaders of the obvious:

“Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights—or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State—that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability? “ [Glenn Greenwald]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/06/collapse?source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm;_campaign=Salon_Daily Newsletter (Premium)_7_30_110

While others believe the fight is with
other citizens of our country.

falling for the liberal vs tea party
media make up

Some people will continue to shrug their shoulders
at a trillion dollars a year being thrown down a
rat hole,  that kills many innocent human beings and
is putting our nation and their citizens in Austerity.

Last night on Countdown it showed where several states are now undoing the road paving as it is to costly to maintain and are shredding the tarmac up to a gravel like consistency. This will be great come winter time when it will be impossible to plow the snow as it will scatter. Also, speed will have to be reduced greatly to maintain control of your vehicles on this type of road finish. 38 counties in my state of Michigan have already begun the unpaving of roads. Way to go America to save money at home to spend on foreign soil instead.

School teachers are being let go because of lack of funding, increasing the unemployed. So we let a few of the military personal be reduced. It is nothing compared to the number of people downsized since 2000.

The only jobs that seem to be in demand, well sort of unless you are gay or perhaps a non-white, non- Christian person, is for Americas war machine. Continuous,never ending wars all over the world.If America spent 1/10 of 1% on domestic programs as we do on all of our wars and other expenses that go with it, we would still be that beacon of hope they claim we still are to the rest of the world.If as much effort were put into making the world a better place for all living things as we do on destroying anything we feel interferes with Americas take over and control of the world, be it animals and people, the stealing of minerals,oil and land, or dominate power over the masses, we might be looked upon in a more favorable way than we are now. America has set a poor example for all to see. Time to clean up Americas behavior and image.

Time to take its toys, all the military related things including people and bring them all home and start fixing the broken mess our nation has become. Priorities have never been in a logical order and if we are defending our freedoms as the brainwashed believe, why are we defending a crumbling nation that is quickly becoming a third world country or a banana republic? There will be nothing left here worth defending if we continue to let things at home go unfixed and repaired as we have been doing for decades.

Yes, and Obama will spend more than Bush on every other department of government as well. So, what was your point?

Re NYT: “the ranking Republican on the committee, Representative Howard P. McKeon of CA, said, he was unconvinced “that these savings will be reinvested into America’s defense requirements and not harvested by Congressional Democrats for new domestic spending and entitlement programs.”

If anyone doubts our leadership in D.C. has gone completely mad, they only need to listen to disengaged “representatives” like Howard P. McKeon of California. The reality is we need jobs to support our families and we need money for our schools, “paved” roads, streetlights, libraries and public transits. Such basic domestic needs are not “entitle-ments” – they are “survival-ments.”

@gerard Problems are defined by the goals one is trying to achieve. The ‘war on terrorism’ is a corporate oligarchic hoax - an excuse for illegal preemptive acts of aggression.
There is no problem that Obama needs to solve or can solve by the military presence he does not immediately withdraw. What’s so difficult? - withdrawing just needs an executive order.

re:  Ultimately the “citadels of the meritocracy” may have to fight it out with
the Tea Party types, neither one of whom understands the other in the least.

and clearly the oligarchs’ orchestrated playing off of the so-called liberal minded champions of social amelioration against the so-called libertarian populists is poorly understood by most presumably well-read thinkers in the blogosphere

Actually I don’t think Obama is “steeped in the same hawkish corporate interests.”  I think the problems of Obama are not that simple.  A lucid article in the current NY Review of Books by Frank Rich is, I think, nearer the mark.  It’s worth reading in full. 
  “He is simply too infatuated with the virtues of the American meritocracy that helped facilitate his own rise…The White House has not only fallen right into this trap but, for all its sophistication and smarts, was and apparently still is unaware that the trap (of meritocary) exists…This misplaced faith in the best and the brightest .. (coalesced) around domestic policy, especially in the economic team whose high-handed machinations the new book (“The Promise” by Jonathan Alter) chronicles in vivid detail.”
  “‘This disconnection from the world,’ Alter concludes, ‘was not due to ideology or the clout of special interests but was instead the malign consequence of the American love of expertise, which, with the help of citadels of the meritocracy, had moved from a mere culture to something approaching a cult.’”
  Ultimately the “citadels of the meritocracy” may have to fight it out with the Tea Party types, neither one of whom understands the other in the least.

Obama has seriously broken faith with his constituents - those who ‘hoped’ he would lead the country from the old guard, the Republican Washington corruption. He has betrayed himself to be as dirty has they are, steeped in the same hawkish corporate interests.

Look at Gates in the leather jacket, imitating George Worthless Bush.  Or is it Stallone in “Rambo”?  What a pea shooter!

Money is important, especially when the country is going bankrupt due to military expenditures.  But human lives are even more important.

Let’s see a drastic cut in the expenditure of human lives.  Let’s stop the killing, get our soldiers back home, treat their war-induced wounds and traumas. Let’s give up war as a world weapons market.

Let’s create jobs here to improve the decaying infrastructure, improve public education, clean up pollution and meet the challenges of a green economy.