so i lied....a little

I did enjoy just laying around last night and vegging out in front of the t.v.

But I've been hearing about "base closings" for a few weeks now but never really followed up on it. I think it's hilarious, to be honest, because Clinton was criticized heavily (and still is) for signing off on the base closings about 10 years ago and here we are, about to close more with Bush's approval.

Bush is supposed to be "pro-military" and to "support the troops" so it's only fitting that I find this ironic.

And this has the panties (or boxers, tighty whitey's, etc.) of the repub's in a twist, for real. After all, the title of article is "Legislators scramble to reassure constituents." Accroding to the DoD and our wonderful Donald Rumsfeld, the US could save nearly $50 billion. I wanted to know how they are justifying it besides the simple statement that it will save them money, so I searched on.

“Our current arrangements, designed for the Cold War, must give way to the new demands of the war against extremism and other evolving 21st Century challenges,” Rumsfeld said.

This was the reasoning behind Clinton's decision, too. It didn't make sense to have the military capacity that we did when there was no longer any threat. Of course Bush thinks everyone is a threat to us now except those who really are, but he's still allowing the closures. Funny how I haven't seen any of this in the major press, but I might not be watching the same channels.

It is interesting to see their aim is to better fight extremism and to "consolidate similar or duplicative training and support functions to improve joint war fighting." Heh. Heh heh.

I have to admit that I am secretly enjoying this decision because Bush ran his campaign stumping for the military vote. Now, according to this report, he'll be allowing the closure and realignment of 33/29 bases, only 1 being in Virginia. Go figure.

Here we have the largest Naval base on the east coast. The Pentagon, Quantico and Fort A.P. Hill are also large bases but the latter two are used for testing new weapons and take up a large chunk of the military's budget (Fort A.P. Hill is in my backyard practically and the canons/guns they fire shake the house sometimes).

I now have the proof to say, "See? And you thought he was goooood."

People in town after town are worried. I guess they have a right to since, in many instances, those bases are the towns livelyhoods. If they move those workers to another state entirely, the towns lose that revenue. Which may be why this suburb of San Francisco is ok with their base closing.

They should take the advice of this article's author and plan for the fall, just in case.