And the band played on….

Shot:

Yet as troubling as that may be, the sixties were in many ways the Boomers’ finest moment. It was at least a fad then to pretend to care about racial justice at home and war abroad, to speak out against pollution and prejudice. But it was mostly just talk. As they came of age, and as idealism might have required some real sacrifice, idealism suddenly became unfashionable.
— The Worst Generation, Or, how I learned to stop worrying and hate the Boomers
By Paul Begala

Chaser:

TO some, millennials — those urban-dwelling, ride-sharing indefatigable social networkers — are engaged, upbeat and open to change. To others, they are narcissistic, lazy and self-centered.

I’m in the first camp, but regardless of your opinion, be fretful over their economic well-being and fearful — oh so fearful — for their prospects. The most educated generation in history is on track to becoming less prosperous, at least financially, than its predecessors.

They are faced with a slow economy, high unemployment, stagnant wages and student loans that constrict their ability both to maintain a reasonable lifestyle and to save for the future.

Longer term, rising federal debt payments and increased spending on Social Security and Medicare will inflict a tremendous financial burden on them, threatening their own prospect of receiving promised retirement benefits.

To a considerable extent, that’s the fault of my generation, the baby boomers. We were the children of the Greatest Generation, but we may also be the most irresponsible generation.

—We’re to blame for the millennials being such a bunch of jerks, Steven Rattner, NYT.com.

As ye sow, so shall ye reap….

“America as the new Scandinavia”

Question:

That’s right. That’s right. And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong when you have more income and wealth equality? What’s wrong when they have a stronger middle class in many ways than we do, higher minimum wage than we do, and they are stronger on the environment than we do? Look, the fact of the matter is, we do a lot in our country, which is good, but we can learn from other countries. (Bernie Sanders)

Democratic politicians, and especially the furthest-left ones like Sanders, have always been more open to the Scandinavian example than others—but it’s been a long time since anyone so liberal has achieved Sanders’s prominence nationally. It’s especially unusual for any Republican to follow suit, but Jeb Bush did just that when he returned from a jaunt to Europe, marveling at technological innovation in government services: “You can fill out your tax return in Estonia online in five minutes.” (Yahoo)
— Is the U.S. Ready to Become Scandinavia? (Yahoo.com)

Answer:

Dare we dream? America as the new Scandinavia (HotAir.com)

Dare we dream? America as the new Scandinavia Greece.

It’s called learning from history – and other countries.
— Athos on August 2, 2015 at 1:04 PM, comment thread in repose to the above article

Ah, the Nordic “model”, as Reason.com points out: “A touch too much in the way of conformity, high taxes, and “benign totalitarianism”.

And Sweden is trying to privatize large parts of it’s industry, Finland has pretty much let Nokia die after selling large parts of it to Microsoft (Mariana Mazzucato can’t be reached for comment).

A lot of ink has been spilled and a lot of memes and pictures on the internets been used to say that America should be more like Scandinavia. Mostly so the young liberals can live like teenagers.

The problem is paying for all of it.  Even Scandinavia is trying to find out how to pay for all that socialism, unlike Greece.

The Iron Lady on socialism.

And Salon Jumps the Shark

A WTF from Salon.com as they exceed their own parody:

Put a man in uniform, preferably a white man, give him a gun, and Americans will worship him. It is a particularly childish trait, of a childlike culture, that insists on anointing all active military members and police officers as “heroes.” The rhetorical sloppiness and intellectual shallowness of affixing such a reverent label to everyone in the military or law enforcement betrays a frightening cultural streak of nationalism, chauvinism, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, but it also makes honest and serious conversations necessary for the maintenance and enhancement of a fragile democracy nearly impossible.
— David Masciotra, quotes at This Ain’t Hell.

Yeah, douchenugget, it’s not the uniform that makes folks worthy of respect and a measure of adulation, it’s what the uniform says about the person wearing it and their commitment to the ideals that they are defending. Anyone can buy a uniform and put it on – our Stolen Valor page is chocked full of people who do that. Those spazwads do it because the uniformed services are the last government institutions which accomplish that for which they were created.
— Jonn Lilyea’s response.

Of course the left hates the military. After Vietnam, many leftists seethed. They almost got what they wanted. From the 70’s to the early 90’s the psycho veteran and military conspiracy was a stock trope of Hollywood movies. Phrases like “permanent war economy” and “military industrial complex” were twisted into knots until the men and women of the armed forces were seen as villains.

But there was always a group of people who did the right thing. From Welcome Home parties for Vietnam vets, service organizations that helped military families and those who say “thank you for your service.”

On my blog I have many former soldiers leaving comments about their time in the Army. They don’t talk about the garbage David Masciotra spews. Their comments are fond memories of their time in green.

David Masciotra, I don’t see your panty waist helping military families who’ve lost a loved one. No leftie has ever said “welcome home” nor have they tired to offer job placement for returning vets. Ditto their never helping police families or crime victims.

Nope, they love the stolen valor losers, posers and pot smoking hippies rail about the poor and imperialism. They praise murderers, dictators, criminals and hold signs that support terrorism.

David Masciotra does not support or help anyone but himself. Better men and women have died to protect his right to be a jerkass, for that at least he should be thankful.

ailment

Ah the sound of liberal hurt feelings:

This is just the crisis to make themselves seem relevant again within the GOP—even if they’re undermining the commander in chief at a pivotal moment.
— Why Neocons Love the StrongmanMichael Tomasky, The Daily Beast

---

It’s likely, then, that the J-20 no more represents the end of US air superiority than did Cope India or the T-50’s debut. What it does represent is the world’s second economy finally joining a club of nations long-accustomed to designing, building and operating advanced fighter aircraft.
— China’s Over-Hyped Stealth Jet, David Axe, The Diplomat.

---

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how much the J-20’s design changes matter and indeed how effective an aircraft it is. But it is evident that the plane’s flight testing, at least, is far more than just a publicity stunt.
—Stealth Changes for China’s Stealth FighterGERRY DOYLE, NEW YORK TIMES. Gobssmacks David Axe.

It must hurt when reality overtakes liberal fantasy.

For decades the left’s orthodoxy was that the West was to make peace with Russia/The USSR, China and that “the tide of war was receding”.

Russia is INVADING the Ukraine. They used TBM’s on Georgia. China is building a modern networked force.

And yet, Michael Tomasky makes current events be all about the left and how those meanie Neo-cons runied everything.

Lest we forget, the media and the left (I repeat myself) went easy on Putin, Hugo Chavez and China. David Axe seems to think that the US military sucks and we have nothing to fear.

So when real life starts to hurt them, they either face reality (and start crying) or escape to fantasy.

President Obama’s foreign policy is based on fantasy.
— Washington Post, Editorial Board

And so it begins.

The Bigger the Government…

..the smaller the people.

Armies

“This isn’t 1940. Moreover, as an instrument of coercion, that smaller army would be more lethal than the much larger one that helped defeat Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. Given a choice between a few hundred of today’s Abrams tanks and a few thousand vintage Shermans, Gen. George Patton would not hesitate to choose the former.”
—

Do we really need a large Army?By Andrew J. Bacevich, Washington Post.

This is the same paper that whitewashes the drone strikes. George Bush would never have been given an article titled “5 myths of the Iraq war”.

And yet the “argument” for cutting the military persists.
This Ain’t Hell skewers Tom Rick’s argument for “going to a cadre-like military, with only two Army divisions kept at high readiness”.

The left believes that troops are stupid. Just draft the bodies you need, buy the tanks, trucks and planes and then send them off to war. Lefties won’t go of course, the draft dogers of the 60’s became to leaders of today.

No they want to cut to the bone and keep cutting. there is talk of a new round of BRAC. Closing MORE bases, gutting civilian towns, eroding the defense industrial base. All for more spending on “domestic programs”.

Once the troops leave, their expertise is gone forever. You can’t draft leadership, tribal knowledge or hours in the cockpit.

“In the meantime, the world, from East Asia to the Middle East, is “unsettled” and becoming ever more so. Does anyone doubt that the decision in Washington to slash its defenses has been fully noted in Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, Tehran, and North Waziristan? Like Jeremiah, we say judgment is inevitable. Unless the present course is reversed, the wages of weakness will be paid in increased instability, crises, and ultimately conflicts that might well have been avoided.”
—
“Deeply Unsettling“, Gary Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly, WeeklyStandard.com

It’s 1938 all over again.

UPDATE: Told you so…

College isn’t for everyone

Instapundit and now the Daily Princetonian say:

It’s time for a large number of Americans to hear what might seem like a harsh message: A degree from a four-year university might not be for you. Popular culture would cast this frank assessment as elitist. But that’s a toxic myth that needs to vanish because the stakes are too high. A new study by Young Invincibles, a think tank geared toward issues facing young Americans, estimates that high youth unemployment costs the government about $25 billion in lost tax revenue. All the while, there are three million jobs that employers can’t fill because too many workers lack the requisite skills.

Others have made this observation. Tuition rises because more are going to college. Student loans are given to young people to study “humanities”. Mostly fluff courses and liberal b.s.

All together the US produces many people with worthless degrees. Many jobs can’t be filled because Moma’s special little snowflake won’t take a vocational job. Mike Rowe was first to notice this and is now “uncool”. Wal-mart, Target, other local shops that cater to the middle class and the poor are pilloried in the media.

Income “inequality” is the left’s answer. Like global warming, it’s just Marxism with a fresh coat of paint. The Occupy “movement” didn’t succeed because it was all envy and hate not answers.

We need jobs not class warfare.

Expect the left to whine and cry as their recruitment dries up.

And in other news…

The DNC is millions in debt. Detroit is only mostly dead.

And this is the reality based community?

Played

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a liberal independent from Vermont and chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, is pushing a broad veterans measure that would restore veterans’ pensions and expand their access to health care and educational benefits.
–“The Veterans-Benefits Bandwagon Is Getting Mighty Crowded” National Journal

Are you imagining how that’s going to play out in November during the mid-term elections. Something like this; “the Republicans cut military pensions and Democrats restored them”. Yeah, if you believe that avowed communist, Bernie Sanders cares about the troops beyond their value as a campaign slogan, you’re kidding yourself.
— Jonn Lilyea deconstructs.

Presented without comment.

Compare and contrast

The war in Afghanistan continues. The war in Iraq is still fresh in the minds of the soldiers who fought it. The war on terror seems far from over. Good war movies will be made about these conflicts, but only after they’re long over.

Until then, speculative fiction allows storytellers to talk about the conflicts in a way that incompetent “realistic” crap like Lone Survivor and The Hurt Locker just can’t.
Matthew Gault in War is Boring

Consider the film Lone Survivor, which tells the true story of heroic Navy SEALs in Afghanistan. The film has been denounced by some critics; a “jingoistic, pornographic work of war propaganda,” in the words of one reviewer. Richard Corliss of Time chimed in: “That these events actually happened doesn’t necessarily make it plausible or powerful in a movie, or keep it from seeming like convenient propaganda.” Similar complaints (from non-conservatives, at least) about antiwar films made during the George W. Bush years are much harder to find.
Tinseltown’s Propaganda Problem , By Jonah Goldberg, NRO.com

Hollywood and the liberals in the MSM want blood and gore, sex and violence. As long as it makes America and her military look bad.

They want the fall of Saigon, US caskets. Hence the “demand” for “access” to Dover Air Force Base. With a Democrat in the White House?

Nope. And Lone Survivor is about the Navy SEALs. So was Zero Dark Thirty and Captain Phillips. And the left hates them. Oh they likes it when Bin Laden assumed room temp, we heard “Osama is dead and Detroit is Alive” over and over.

But then the economy and the ACA hit.

So the War On Terror(tm) grinds on. There will be no Deer Hunter, no psycho veterans shooting up bars or running around in fatigues and army surplus. Thanks to the internets vets are getting our voices out. There are directors who don’t want to do propaganda. We’re sick of 9/11 images and the left screaming about how “Bush/Cheney/the GOP” did [INSERT CONSPIRACY HERE].

The X-files and hippie anti-war b.s. had their day. I say let old Hollywood burn.