Hurricane Irma News. Defense increase is gone...

Watching Hurricane Irma coverage and they got the track wrong...or rather the predicted track changed.  Instead of going up the center of Florida it's going up the West side of the state.

If they're right about storm surge then you're looking at devastation that will stretch from one side of the state to the other wiping out several billion dollars worth of real estate.  We haven't even begun to talk about the damage from wind and rain...that's just the thinking on the damage caused by storm surge.

Of course we haven't even tabulated lives lost...you can't put a price on that but one thing is certain.  Many Floridians are about to learn new respect for the power of Mother Nature.

But back on task.

There is no way you can have two regional disasters, tax reduction disguised as tax reform and somehow get that long hoped for defense spending increase.

You can call any increase in defense spending gone with the winds of Harvey and Irma.

All that talk from the Pentagon of assuming reasonable risk is just like the war plans in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Stupid on a plate.  The future budget wars will be stunning and a sight to behold.

Even inside the Marine Corps, a few members of the tribe are waking up to how badly managed Aviation has been and how they've stripped the rest of the force of funding to get the F-35 (a program I hate with every fiber of my body) across the finish line.

These storms are bad but don't endanger the future security of the country. The idiocy shown by military leadership with regard to defense spending is a different matter and historians/future Marines will curse us all for not raising the alarm bells.