That’s when you know spending is truly out of control. From the article,
In both the House and Senate versions of the legislation, defense lawmakers have inserted $74 billion toward a number of weapons programs “those that have outlived their usefulness” to the department, Panetta said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.
(Newser) – Four US soldiers planned to overthrow the federal government and kill President Obama, the Press Association reports. The alleged plot, whose details remain scarce, emerged during a murder case against the soldiers. One of the four, Pfc. Michael Burnett, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and gang charges today in the deaths of an ex-soldier and his girlfriend, 17. The ex-soldier, Michael Roark, was killed because he was aware of the plot, Burnett said. The quartet had purchased $87,000 worth of firearms and explosives; they intended to attack Fort Stewart as well as locations in Georgia and Washington state, the AP reports.
(Source: nickoftime, via sarahlee310)
House GOP Blocking Abortion Access for Soldiers Who Are Raped
Republican Senators John McCain, Scott Brown, and Susan Collins all support an effort by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, to expand abortion access for military women who are raped. But despite bipartisan support in the Senate, Shaheen’s proposal may not make it into the final version of the 2013 defense authorization bill—because House Republicans oppose it.
If Shaheen’s measure passes, military families will finally have the same access to abortion that other federal employees already receive. Unlike the rest of the federal government, the Department of Defense currently only provides abortion coverage if the life of the mother is at stake. Under current law, if a State Department employee is raped, her government health insurance plan will pay for an abortion if she wants one. But if an Army medic serving in Afghanistan is raped and becomes pregnant, she can’t use her military health plan to pay for an abortion. If she does decide to get an abortion, she will have to pay for it with her own money. And if she can’t prove she was raped—which is difficult before an investigation is completed—she may have to look for services off base, which can be dangerous or impossible in many parts of the world.
Note to right-wing money groups:
When you use our headlines in your anti-Obama ad, we’re going to look into your group.
And you probably don’t want us looking into your group.
USA Today reporters subjected to secretive negative propaganda campaign after reporting on Pentagon PsyOps operation.
When Tom Vanden Brook and his editor Ray Locker researched a story about the astronomical sums being spent by military propaganda campaigns, one of their first stops was the Pentagon.
Published in February, their story outlines a massive propaganda effort costing U.S. taxpayers hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars a year that produced dubious returns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The investigation prompted a federal investigation into one of the “information operations” contractors that had $4 million in unpaid federal taxes and liens against them.
Maybe the team expected that, but what Vanden Brook and Locker did not expect was to be personally attacked online by a sophisticated team of Internet assailants.
Gregory Korte at USA Today reports that following their story the pair noticed websites, Wikipedia entries, and fake Twitter accounts appearing in their names publishing false information and attempting to disparage the unblemished record of them both (via The Military Times).
From the Military Times:
The activity is the work of what online reputation expert Andy Beal calls a “determined detractor.” “It’s like a machine gun approach. They’re trying to generate as much online content as they can,” he said. “The person who’s behind this, we can give them a lot of credit here and assume they’re very sophisticated about reputation attacks.”
“This is the work of somebody who knows what they’re doing. They have some experience of covering their tracks. This is probably not the first time they’ve done something like this,” said Beal, CEO of Trackur, an online reputation tracking service.
The attackers took great pains to cover their tracks, employing proxy servers and various measure to keep their identity hidden, but both journalists remain undeterred.
If they thought it would deter me from writing about this, they’re wrong,” Vanden Brook said.
And Locker agrees, “This is a clear attempt at intimidation that has failed.”
This sure as hell sounds like endorsing a religion, doesn’t it.
Newt Gingrich must be totes surprised. From TGDaily:
According to Solazyme, the U.S. Navy Frigate fleet ship USS Ford just sailed from its homeport in Everett, Wash., down to San Diego using 25,000 gallons of the company’s Soladiesel blended in even proportions with F-76 military diesel.
Solazyme didn’t say exactly how far the trip was, but charts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [PDF] peg the distance from Seattle (about 30 miles south of Everett) to San Diego at 1,228 nautical miles.
The Navy has set a goal of deploying a “Great Green Fleet” powered entirely by alternative fuels by 2016, and of reaching 50 percent alternative energy use overall by 2020. The service has also tested alternative fuel in a yard patrol boat at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., and in a landing craft utilityoff the Virginia coast.
South San Francisco-based Solazyme, which ferments algae to produce oil that can be refined into fuel, is one of two big players in the Navy’s biofuels program. The other is Louisiana-based Dynamic Fuels, a Tyson Foods-Syntroleum joint venture that makes its fuel from used cooking oil and non-food-grade animal fats. Last December the Navy said it will pay $12 million to purchase a total of 450,000 gallons of biofuels from the companies to help power a carrier group during big maritime exercises this summer.
After November’s remotely controlled biofuel test, the Navy reported “there was absolutely no difference, whatsoever, in the operation or performance of the ship” using the algae-derived fuel. Solazyme said that was the case on this longer voyage as well.
“Feedback from the ship’s engineers was favorable; the crew reported that operational performance of the fuel system and gas turbine engines on the 50/50 blend was…comparable to operations on traditional petroleum F-76,” Solazyme confirmed in a statement.
Creating a renewable source of fuel for the military’s ground and air fleets is a matter of national security. In support of this proposition, I’d like to quote from a Villanova Law Journal Symposium on shale natural drilling that was published last year:
[W]orldwide, we are at a point in time called Hubbert’s Peak. Hubbert’s Peak is that point in time in which half of the world’s oil has been used up. America is well ahead of the Hubbert’s Peak curve because America has used more than fifty percent of its oil reserves; America has used seventy to eighty percent. This number may be higher than eighty percent if natural gas is also taken into account. The world, in total, has used about fifty percent of its oil right now. So in terms of absolute numbers of barrels, there are about two trillion barrels accessible worldwide, of which one trillion have already been used. Most of that oil is located outside the United States.
— Source: ”Shale” We Drill?, 22 Vill. Envtl. L.J. 189, 192 (2011).
That means that in order to power our fleet on conventional petroleum-based fuel sources, we are at the mercy of those who provide it to us, along with all the diplomatic issues that accompany such dependence. ”going green” on fuel production is not only environmentally sound energy policy, but a national security imperative.
This is yet another reason why Newt’s jab at Obama over using “algae” as one solution to our energy crisis was severely misplaced, and frankly, stupid. Perfecting this technology is in our national interest from an environmental, economic, and national security standpoint. Newt Gingrich’s decision to disparage this technology was an egregiously boneheaded display of political cravenness. Thankfully, he is becoming more and more irrelevant by the day as the primary season winds down.
h/t sarahlee310
I wold like to ask Newt Gingrich how his foot tastes.
This entire website involves the plight of atheists in the military. These men and women have rights, and those rights should be respected. There is no reason why atheists willing to be in the military should be subjected to crap like this.
A very good friend of mine who is also a nonbeliever served for eight years, some of the stories he’s told me are fucked up.
But Christians are persecuted… heh
(Source: diadoumenos)
Air Force dumped remains of 274 troops in landfill
By Craig Whitlock and Mary Pat Flaherty | washingtonpost.com
The Air Force dumped the incinerated partial remains of at least 274 American troops in a Virginia landfill, far more than the military had acknowledged, before halting the secretive practice three years ago, records show.
The landfill dumping was concealed from families who had authorized the military to dispose of the remains in a dignified and respectful manner, Air Force officials said. There are no plans, they said, to alert those families now.
The Air Force had maintained that it could not estimate how many troops might have had their remains sent to a landfill. The practice was revealed last month by The Washington Post, which was able to document a single case of a soldier whose partial remains were sent to the King George County landfill in Virginia. The new data, for the first time, show the scope of what has become an embarrassing episode for vaunted Dover Air Base, the main port of entry for America’s war dead.
The landfill disposals were never formally authorized under military policies or regulations. They also were not disclosed to senior Pentagon officials who conducted a high-level review of cremation policies at the Dover mortuary in 2008, records show.
Inside the Corporate Plan to Occupy the Pentagon
Behind the growing push to slash soldiers’ pensions and other military costs is a little-known advisory group—stacked with Wall Street executives.
Wait till you read what else they’re pushing for.
(Source: Mother Jones)
Suicidal lesbian Marine Corps veteran seeks help, was told her depression was because of her ‘life of sin’ by nurse at Dallas VA hospital. She left determined to kill herself.
By Justin Griffith | freethoughtblogs.com
Esther Garatie is a hero to our nation, serving in the Marine Corps in war-time. She also happens to be a lesbian.
But that shouldn’t matter. Not when she checks into a Dallas-area VA hospital for treatment for severe depression – including suicidal thoughts. She wanted help, and was brave enough to actually ask for it.
She had been battling PTSD-like symptoms before she even received her Honorable Discharge. Rather than help, an evangelical Christian nurse took it upon herself to preach about Esther’s life of sin. Esther left the VA Hospital absolutely determined to kill herself because of this.
ACLU, AU Tells the Army That They Must Approve Atheist Festival
The Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, ACLU, and ACLU North Carolina, and are rallying around the Rock Beyond Belief festival. They delivered an impressive letter to Secretary of the Army, and officials at Fort Bragg yesterday, which you can read here [pdf].
They have already recovered hundreds of pages of documents relating to the evangelical Christian festival from 2010, known as Rock the Fort. Their stated goal was to convert as many Soldiers, family members, and members of the public to (their particular version of) Christianity. The festival cost nearly $100,000 in a complicated web of U.S. Government controlled funding. It was advertised in a 90 mile radius, and expected to evangelize 10,000 people.
AU explains:
After studying the documents and doing additional research into military rules, the three groups have determined that officials at Fort Bragg violated several Department of Defense regulations by supporting Rock the Fort.
“Supporting an event designed to increase membership in Christian churches cannot be squared with [Army] regulations, much less with the First Amendment,” observes the letter. “Furthermore, based on the Army’s own admissions, it is clear that Fort Bragg officials engaged in substantial co-sponsorship and support of Rock the Fort – support that cannot plausibly be deemed ‘incidental.’”
What pisses me off is the fact that this is even an issue when the US government isn’t supposed to be in the business of supporting religious beliefs.
Here you have our military, our fucking military backing a particular faith.
To me, this kind of shit seems awfully dangerous, and I’m not sure why who ever lets shit like this happens thinks it’s okay when we clearly have laws against it.
It’s basically saying they can do what ever the fuck they want because god is on their side.
It’s supposed to be liberty and justice for all, not liberty and justice for religious people only.
