The New York Times editorial board marches on with its “Overmatched” series. Today’s installment: “The Pentagon’s Gilded Fortress.”
An excerpt:
In 2011, the Army decided to get its soldiers new pistols. The odyssey that followed included a 350-page list of technical specifications, years of testing and a protracted battle on Capitol Hill between competing gun makers. The Pentagon won’t complete delivery until 2027 at the earliest. The Army could have raised an infantryman from birth to within two years of enlistment age in the time it will have taken to get him a new handgun.
Unsurprisingly, our elected representatives are part of the problem:
As the House and Senate work toward the country’s first trillion-dollar defense budget, over $52 billion is for things members of Congress added, unbidden, to the Pentagon’s wish list, according to the independent budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Jaysis. Planes that can’t fly. $13 billion sitting ducks. Millions for retrofitting Vietnam-era helicopters to carry and launch drones. For Ike’s fabled Military-Industrial Complex it’s like robbing the same bank, over and over and over again, because you have a guy on the inside. You don’t even need to bring that pistol you can’t seem to acquire for some mysterious reason.
Mad Blog Media 
Ah, the double action semi-automatic pistol. A solution when there was no question.
I’m pig-ig’nant, as you know, but I always considered the personal sidearm one of the three last resorts, with knife and knuckles being the other two. How much skull sweat has to go into this hand cannon?
I’d prefer my carbine or the Remington 870 if it came to that situation, but my better half would probably move out of the house if that was sitting by the bedside.
There was nothing wrong with the Beretta M9 that I recall. I think its main selling point over the old 1911, also a perfectly reasonable sidearm, was that it made no sense to have our guys carrying 45s while the rest of NATO was carrying 9mm. Heck, mine never fail to function. That delay was hilarious but scary.
NYT never even mentioned the Littoral Combat Ships, which were such a disaster that the Navy folks christened them the Little Crappy Ships. I guess the paper has just so much room for failed ideas.
https://warontherocks.com/2021/11/lessons-from-the-littoral-combat-ship/
Military procurement is 99% pork barrel and if one is lucky, 1% national security. We are doomed. And of course, I made my living the last quarter century in the Pork Capital of New Mexico, LANL.
And on another subject, since it is Christmas time.
Kristi Noem is Coming To Town, to the tune of Santa Claus is Coming to Town
You better watch out,
You better not strive,
You better lay low,
I’m telling you why…
Kristi Noem is coming to town!
She’s making a list,
And checking it twice,
Gonna find out,
Where to send ICE.
Kristi Noem is coming to town!
She sees you when you’re working,
She knows when you get paid.
She knows if you’ve been kitchen help,
So go hide for goodness sakes!
Oh…
You better watch out,
You better not strive,
You better lay low,
I’m telling you why…
Kristi Noem is coming to town!
With a little tin badge,
As a little toy cop.
Rinky dinks masks,
And unmarked cars.
Kristi Noem is coming to town!
Curly-haired migrants,
Who have suffered or died,
Coming in boats,
Eighteen wheelers, at times.
Kristi Noem is coming to town!
Brown kids in girl and boy land,
Will land in custody.
They’re gonna build a prison camp
All around this big country.
Sooo. . . .
You better watch out,
You better not strive,
You better lay low,
I’m telling you why…
Kristi Noem is coming to town!
As Brits would exclaim..WOT!!? All this time Khal has been a poet. How’d I miss that?
Oh my….this should be forwarded to Kimmel or Colbert post haste.
I used to do this as a kid. I once re-wrote “Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas” to “It’s beginning to look a lot like Hitler” in grade school. They sent me to a child psychologist.
You should do more of it, Hoss. It’s fun, a good stretching of the mind.
I like rewriting lyrics m’self, and other things as well. I may have some hard copy of the fake horoscopes I used to knock out when I was a rim rat on the copy desk at The Pueblo Chieftain back in the early Eighties. It was a giggle trying to run those past the slot man … while keeping one eye out to make sure they never actually got past him and into print.