In fact, a Northrop Grumman win might mean additional jobs for America if European and other versions of the tanker are produced in the U.S. Of course, the last thing Boeing wants is to give a competitor a toe hold for large aircraft aircraft production in the U.S.

Honestly, the current KC-135 fleet is ancient and is in need of replacment soon. There is really very little disagreement about this. But of course, this is going to be a very tough decision and politics always enters the fray because ultimately congress has the power of the purse. Unfortunately, too many people (on all sides) are willing to demegogue the issues for political (or lets face it, financial) gains rather than acknowledge the many competing factors involved.

Now this is how this thing works:

We need tankers to fuel the super gas guzzling planes en route to wherever.

The planes refueled are laden with missiles.

Now which fucking idiot does this make any sense to?

They carry missiles, they don’t need the fucking planes at all. What idiot thinks that buying tankers is a good idea? Seriously we need to have a contest on what is the stupidest thing the pentagon will buy with a straight face. You think $400 per gallon gasoline at the front lines in Afghanistan is outrageous? Try delivering it in a $400 million dollar airplane. That will save money, eh?

There is not one stinking aircraft building corporation in the whole damn world that ever made a true profit. THEY are ALL subsidized by the government. Boeing has never shown an unsubsidized profit. Give the damn plans to the Chinese and let them pour their money down a rat hole. Gee, maybe we could get them to think stupid and give them plans for planes that will deliver missiles to the point that the damn missile will fly. We could talk them into leasing the American plane plants and get double the whammy. They could pay for the planes and pay our workers to build them.

Nah, the Chinese aren’t that stupid, you really need a southern politician to push this crap.

I thought Reagan’s chief idiot at the pentagon was the champ when he poured 40 billion dollars into refurbishing 5 battleships. Ships that the Japanese proved indubitably in December 1941 were only good as anchors.

The nonsense that I saw on the Discovery (pentagon propaganda) channel said they made a solid base for cruise missiles.

Well, maybe, but dry land would probably be a lot more stable, right, you fucking moron money wasting assholes?

We don’t need airplanes, aircraft carriers, battleships, destroyers, and 350 luxury civilian airlines for every general and admiral in the US forces. We need a damn cheap missile that will hit what it is supposed to.

But first we need to decide what is a hit. Now the Bombing Survey after WWII considered any bomb landing within 1000 ft of the target a hit. Ignoring the fact that this would not even cause a locomotive to stop moving was not a problem. Within 1000 ft was a hit. In Vietnam, that overintelligent lying sack of shit, McNamara (who had been involved in the WWII bombing survey) redefined a hit within 2000 ft. By the Bush I’s Gulf War, the accuracy had reached 1000 meters. Sound impressive? It was meant to be, because the fancy dan airplanes were not hitting within 3300 feet of the target. In other words bombs got one hell of a lot less accurate while the cost of the planes and bombs went up 1000 to 100000 times. Plus the effectiveness actually dropped through the floor as the bomb failure rate (ie did not explode) got so high that the North Vietnamese shut down their munitions plants and simply recovered the explosives from american bombs. Look at the Arclight missions post attack photographs – bomb bomb bomb no bomb bomb no bomb bomb bomb no bomb.

Shut down the military, send every one home and give them full pay, allowances and benefits, and education and we could actually save 85 per cent of the military expenses.

When did Gates stop beating his wife?

The military waste complex sucks up something like 75 per cent of all professional blue collar workers. There can not be an engineering base reestablished in the US if one of our greatest assets, the skilled millwright, steel fabricator, tool and die maker, metallurgists and all of the other crucial parts of an industrial society are tied up in a program of total waste.

you don’t have to worry about [workers] being out on strike when America needs them.

America needs it’s union workers today — to spend and bring the economy back — but Barbour and other Republicans who hate unions don’t seem to realize that the low-paid non-union Southern workers simply don’t have the money to go out and spend now.

When America needs union workers to pull us out of a recession Haley Barbour is silent.

Does Haley Barbour hate America when we’re in a recession?

The IAM is not afraid to strike. They struck Boeing just last year, and regularly launch strikes against employers that won’t come to the table in a serious and timely way. They led a very courageous strike at a General Dynamics shipyard in Mississippi in 2006.

IAM is also fairly democratic, as far as most unions go. Last year they polled their members on which candidates were preferred in the election. The results were interesting: Huckabee was the preferred Republican and Hillary Clinton was the preferred Democrat.

While that applies to this Euro jobs-depressing contract, it’s also an excellent general rule. Saves lots of analysis, actually: if Haley sez yes, I say NO.