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8 thoughts on “it’s not like it’s their money, right?”

  1. First, it was one session in a workshop on space travel.

    Second, if our military ever does encounter aliens, those with strong religious beliefs will have to make some adjustments. If their chaplains have a plan in place it might make that transition a bit smoother. Considering how many in the (American) military do have strong religious beliefs, I see a small investment as a worthwhile one.

  2. Old Windways: There may be good reasons for some of this stuff, but contingency plans for chaplains encountering space aliens does take the ridicule cake here.

    They were just asking for a drubbing.

  3. On the other hand getting rid of 100’s of Admirals, Generals and etc.. sounds brilliant.

    Now, if only he’d apply the same pruning logic to all the OTHER branches of government.

    There are ENTIRE departments, plus what not ( post office ) that could safely be cut, never mind upper level bureaucrats by the plane-load.

  4. I am not claiming that the Pentagon is the most responsible of spenders, but when they are the parent agency of groups like DARPA, who are funding some of the most promising “basic science” being done today, its easy to take the results of that spending out of context for the sake of political rhetoric.

    – “research into archaeopteryx” has the potential to reveal new insight into the fundamentals of flight, which would seem a reasonable thing for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to fund.

    – telling “people how to schedule their coffee breaks” has the potential to increase workplace efficiency, and with a large portion of the military working in support and administrative rolls, there is a lot of room to increase office efficiency.

    – spending money “to develop a special new roll-up beef jerky” sounds ridiculous until you have eaten MRE’s, and realize that a tasty portable snack that actually delivers necessary nutrients could have a massive effect on troop morale and supply logistics.

    Just because a politician bandies about couple of “sound bytes” from a budget report doesn’t mean he has a clue what he is talking about.

  5. Scott K;

    When you have a large number of folks in an organization, and a free press, it is inevitable that some fuckwit who was brained good and hard by the Good Idea Fairy’s magic wand will leave a heaping pile of embarrassment on the floor in public.

    In less free societies, the fuckwitticisms are usually made by people with lots of pull, and anyone complaining in public gets shot.

    In smaller countries, there is less organization for a true fuckwit to hide in and cause damage … they ( usually ) get detected at some point.

  7. (Raised eyebrow)

    Sure, I’m not from your nation… But this kind of fuckwittery seems to very much atypical of the stereotypes view of Americans that we have over here. I find it amusing that people are spending absurd amounts of money to consider the what their religion may mean if they encounter aliens, instead of pondering if the question really matters in the first place.

    Do people over there really spend that much time trying to insert Jesus into everything that is irrelevent?

    1. Stereotypes are rarely true. For example, I’m sure you really aren’t an effete, tea-drinking homosexual, and yet that’s how you are perceived, at least by people who don’t think you run around the outback, drinking Fosters, wearing an alligator-tooth necklace, and saying “fair dinkum!” every fifth word.

      Provincialism cuts both ways, mate. 😉

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