"Record-Breaking $788 Billion Defense Budget Passes House"
The Jimmy Dore Show (December 11, 2021)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOdcMq2A6J0

[ : ] Jimmy Dore:

[5:40] Max Blumenthal: "One of the most important things that I've learned about the Pentagon and military spending from people like Gareth Porter who is a frequent contributor to the GrayZone and Kelley Vlahos who's one of the best writers out there on the corruption of the Pentagon. She has a great piece in The American Spectator right now if you want some good background on this called Our Military in Decay? Facing Some Hard Truths," and she points out that while the Lockheed/Martin and Raytheon and the big arms dealers have spent about 1 billion dollars on lobbying since 2001, which kind of seems like a lot, but if you compare it to other industries, it's not, what they have received over 1 trillion dollars in taxpayer subsidies to basically purchase their wares. That's probably the most effective lobbying operation in history."

"But it's not that their lobbyists are that effective. It's that the Pentagon itself, which sucks up more of the budget, as we see, than any other entity is itself a giant PR operation."

"And if you look at who comes out of the Pentagon, look at the Revolving Door. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was a Raytheon lobbyist. He raked in like 27 billion in federal contracts in 2020. Shanahan, Secretary of Defense under Trump from Boeing. Ryan McCarthy, he was Secretary of the Army, Lockheed/Martin. And then Lloyd Austin, the current Secretary of Defense was a paid member of the Raytheon board. So all these guys are lobbyists getting the goods that they need from Congress with a complete rubber-stamp, with the support of the Democrats. I don't know which democrats voted against this but they were in the extreme miniority. And then they get credit for bringing jobs back to their districts because so much of the U.S. economy is based on "Military Keynsianism."

"And what do they produce? What are we funding? We talk so much about what we could have instead instead of spending 758 billion dollars a year on an NDAA, but what are we paying for? We're paying for things like the F-35, which is the most expensive military project in history. It will cost like 1.7 trillion dollars just to maintain just one of these fighters over the course of its entire lifetime. It is a case study in corruption. The maintenance of these aircrafts, because they have so many technological pieces, high-tech pieces makes them basically impossible. It's like trying to maintain -- I mean, I can't even come up with an analogy for an old exotic foreign car -- it's unprecedented."

"And so, it's probably possible, it's very likely that the F-35 will become obsolete after the U.S. taxpayer spent literally trillions on maintaining them. And I can talk about other items that will be deployed against China in this phony 'great power competition', this New Cold War that the U.S. knows it can't win, at least if the war turns hot. But I don't think that anyone believes that they're getting their money's worth for what they're paying for."

[9:16] Jimmy Dore: "We're not getting anything for what we're paying for. So, according to the Financial Times, Saudi Arabia agreed to increase their crude oil production because Biden asked them to ... there's no difference between Trump and Joe Biden when it comes to Saudi Arabia, when it comes to Yemen, when it comes to the military budget. There's no difference. So they have the money, but when it comes to the environment there's Joe Biden calling OPEC and saying 'Please produce more oil' as he's on his way to an environmental summit."
[10:31] "Do you understand that there is not a two-party rule; that we have one government and it's run by a handful of billionaires and a handful of corporations. That's what's running the country right now. It's not a country. It is a company."

. . .

[11:47] Jimmy Dore: "Who's going to pay for that [free Covid testing] . . . when it comes to everything else, no one ever asks that question?

. . . [some stuff about Jamal Khashoggi's murder by the Saudi Royal Family] . . .

[13:30] Jimmy Dore: "Why do you criticize the democrats, Jimmy? I'm just criticizing the one side of the one party. There are no two parties in America

Max Blumenthal: Why does Jimmy Dore just focus so much on the democrats, and like, when the Republicans are like, obviously, worse? It's because were supposed to expect something of them because they're supposed to represent us, the Left, as their constituents, and we have nowhere to go because a third party is basically forbidden in this country. It's not like we expect anything of the Republicans."

[13:56] Jimmy Dore: "How dumb do you have to be to ask that question? Why doesn't Jimmy spend more time ripping on the Republicans. I don't know. Where else are you going to get those kinds of critiques? Where else could you find somebody ripping on the Republicans? How about the problem isn't that we have a pro-corporate, pro-war, right-wing party in America. The problem is we have TWO them. We don't have a Left-wing party and the mission of this show is to wake people up to that fact. That there is no democratic Left-wing party, that we have two right-wing, pro-war, anti-worker, pro-Wall Street parties in America. And that's the fucking fact. Democrats aren't even trying to get workers to vote for them anymore. As Chuck Schumer said, for every blue-collar worker they lose in Pennsylvania, they're going to get two white-collar Republicans to vote for them. That's who they are. They're a party of white-collar Republicans. There is no party that represents the Left or workers. That's why I spend all my time focusing on the party that pretends to represent those people."

[15:06] Max Blumenthal: "I still hate the neocons. I didn't stop hating the neocons because they came out against Trump. Neocons are a worse threat than like 12 neo-Nazis in a basement somewhere, and they've been welcomed into the Democratic Party. Bill Kristol. He's the hero of the mainstream establishment democrats. And MSNBC has done segments on WOKE Bill Kristol hanging out with washed-up rapper Fat Joe and Ari Melber. I mean, I will never forgive Bill Kristol for what he's done. I will never forgive Fred Hyatt, the late neocon editor of the Washington Post who died two days ago."

. . .

[17:14] Jimmy Dore: "Everybody has turned into a spineless, nutless wonder on the Left 'because Trump.' Even people who were Bernie supporters are now calling themselves Biden Bros because they're afraid to be thrown out of the cult. ... [reads from Biden/Harris campaign poster] ...

"America's committment to democratic values and human rights will be a priority, even with our closest security partners. I will defend the right of activists, political dissidents, and journalists around the world to speak their minds freely without fear of persecution and violence."

[17:47] "That's Joe Biden saying that. Joe Biden who is trying to kill Julian Assange right now. Edward Snowden still a fugitive. Joe Biden who tortured Chelsea Manning. Joe Biden's administration with Barack Obama prosecuted more journalists using the espionage act than all the presidents combined before them. And you wonder why I criticize the democrats?"

Max Blumenthal: "Yeah, the State Department, Tony Blinks Krieg's State Department is sponsoring an Alliance of Democracies summit tomorrow. And today as a preliminary event they emphasized the importance of press freedom at a ceremony where -- I mean, come on -- Merrick Garland, the Attorney General is determined to see Julian Assange commit suicide or rot to death in a prison cell. He's also determined to never speak about it. And the Washington press corps, the lacky white-collar stenographers for power are determined to never ask Merrick Garland or Tony Blinken about Julian Assange."

[19:08] "And so this clown show, this delusional clown show of an Alliance of Democracies which includes just so many heroic human-rights leaders across the world is able to proceed without much of a critique inside the beltway."

. . .

"... and the idea that Julian Assange's name doesn't come up at a press freedom event is just absurd. Amazing."