Location: In a land without pants, or war, or want. But mostly we care about the pants.
Exp:
While I'll agree Canada should live up to its NATO commitments, what we really need is to fly airplanes and float ships through the Arctic. The only nations that border Canada are the US, Russia, and Denmark, and it's obvious which of those defence should be geared toward. If we had 60-70 F35s and a half dozen modern subs, we could credibly say we were helping defend North America, which is all the American isolationists care about.
I'm actually very surprised about this isolationist trend with Trump, it's almost like he thinks the rest of NATO is going to pay but America is still going to run things and the military at home will just get to spend money on more toys instead of bases. It's like NATO'd be paying mercenaries, really, except these ones won't even do what you want but have their own agenda and enemies that don't necessarily coincide with yours.
Long-term, if the US goes protectionist and isolationist, what benefits accrue from being its ally? Influence costs. For a somewhat recent example, how much global influence did Russia inherit from the USSR once all the arms deals, trade subsidies, and military advisers went away? Maybe it's just going to take a few decades longer for the other superpower to fail.
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Better educated sadness than oblivious joy.
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Peter AlexanderVerified account @PeterAlexander 6h6 hours ago
NEW: Source close to Gianforte campaign says it's raised $100K+ online in last 24 hours -- most of it coming after reporter "body slam."
Trump is mad other first world nations have health care for everyone and not spending outrageous amounts on military. He wants every country to be screwing their less fortunate, like he wants for America.
The Associated Press called it after 522 of 681 precincts – or 77% – reported. At that point Gianforte had 163, 539 votes, or 51% of the vote, compared with challenger Rob Quist’s 140,594 votes, or 44%.
After emerging from a blue curtain to greet a cheering crowd, Gianforte apologized for this actions on Wednesday, talking past the laughter of the crowd to say, “Last night, I made a mistake and I took an action that I can’t take back, and I’m not proud of what happened. I should not have responded the way that I did and for that I’m sorry.”
A member of the crowd shouted: “And you’re forgiven.”
Gianforte continued: “I should not have treated that reporter that way, and for that I’m sorry Mr Ben Jacobs.”
You know the simplest thing for Trump to do and probably would be a popular move would be to go completely isolationist, leave NATO completely, shut down their world wide bases and shift their defense spending to their Nuclear Armaments.
Basically leave Nato to its own devices, and define military alliances based on a one on one basis set on their own defined criteria.
At the same time in North America they could inform Canada that they need to start spending more or America would take over the aerodefense of North America and Canada wouldn't have a seat at the table.
And Pylon I know that yours is the populust and somewhat hilarious view. But would you then subtract from that budget figure the good that came from America's involvement in NATO? Just curious.
I know for example Iceland could not fulfill 2% of GDP to a military since we don't have one.
But the US would never let Iceland not have a base, its in their defense interests to keep NATO in Iceland.
But its certainly silly that Germany and France are not paying their share, these are 2 strong economic powers.
While I'll agree Canada should live up to its NATO commitments, what we really need is to fly airplanes and float ships through the Arctic. The only nations that border Canada are the US, Russia, and Denmark, and it's obvious which of those defence should be geared toward. If we had 60-70 F35s and a half dozen modern subs, we could credibly say we were helping defend North America, which is all the American isolationists care about.
Just so you don't loose a bet someday, France as well
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I know for example Iceland could not fulfill 2% of GDP to a military since we don't have one.
But the US would never let Iceland not have a base, its in their defense interests to keep NATO in Iceland.
But its certainly silly that Germany and France are not paying their share, these are 2 strong economic powers.
Here's some facts behind this argument. The 2% target was an arbitrary number proposed in 2006 in fears of a Russian build up. This was right before the economic crash and austerity programs all around Europe.
Here's how that spending actually looks.
NSFW!
Spending has changed for many reasons. Austerity and changing economies are a big reason. Reduced threat is another. The Americans see Russian as this looming menace, because the Americans need an enemy to keep the industrial military complex churning away and sucking the tax payers dry. Some of the Europeans do not see Russia as that same risk, and it has caused budgets to be adjusted accordingly.
Most important in all of this is the spending of other countries that can be defined as existential threats. Russia is the only truly significant geographically related threat, and they are considered a moderate threat in the greater scheme of things. Russia is projected to spend $69.2B on defense in 2017. This was an increase on the $52B they spent in 2015. The non-American NATO nations spent the following in 2015 (most are scheduled to spend more in 2017).
Total non-American NATO spending: $309,441B or almost six times as much as the Russians are spending. When you add in the American spending ($595B) NATO spends over 17 times what Russia spends on defense. Spending is obviously stacked up on the NATO side of the ledger. The Americans are demanding an arms race start within NATO membership. Russia can’t compete, and with article 5, it would be stupid to make aggressions toward another NATO member. Also, since the vast majority of Europe are NATO members there is no other existential geographic threat.
If anything European countries are recognizing the changing face of the threat matrix and not spending money on weapons they may never have reason to use. European nations are recognizing that the greatest threats to their nations come in the form of terrorism, cyber attack, and espionage. Increases in NATO spending does not address those particular concerns. Trump may be right in one regard, NATO is outdated, but only in dealing with the current threats facing nations. NATO is still very healthy and capable, and I can see why the other leaders would scoff at Trump’s comments. Demanding massive increases in spending only benefits the nations where weapons are purchased from. Oh, the number one nation on that list? The United States.
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"Even were Canada to double its spending on defence, it would not change its rank as the sixth-largest spender in NATO, according a new report.
In terms of actual dollars spent on defence Canada is ranked sixth among NATO’s 28 member nations, behind the U.S., France, U.K., Germany and Italy. It would remain in sixth place if it added $20 billion a year to the defence budget, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which monitors worldwide defence spending.
That increase would, however, see Canada move from 16th-largest defence spender in the world to 12th largest, according to the report compiled last month.
Canada is under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to increase its defence spending to two per cent of gross domestic product. Meeting that target would require the military budget to double to $40 billion annually."
Trump is on the road to alienating the USA from every single country in the World. Even inseparable ally Israel does not trust Trump. Has it ever occurred to Trump that running a business is much different than running a country? You can't have the mentality that you need to pummel any real or perceived enemy into submission. It will almost certainly backfire. It's the 21st century. Most Western Democracies work together, and try to remove barriers to improve relationships between each other. Trump is going to destabilize the world, unless he is impeached.
This is something; normally Joe isn't this aggressive in criticizing the GOP (that's what Mika is there for, after all).
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
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This is something; normally Joe isn't this aggressive in criticizing the GOP (that's what Mika is there for, after all).
Wow. I'm not sure I've ever seen such direct criticism.
"Darwinian medical insurance" how accurate, and how saddening.
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Pylon on the Edmonton Oilers:
"I am actually more excited for the Oilers game tomorrow than the Flames game. I am praying for multiple jersey tosses. The Oilers are my new favourite team for all the wrong reasons. I hate them so much I love them."
So odd that Joe is a republican. He's the rare type that actually doesn't fall in line to the party. For that, though I do not like him much, I do have to give him credit for standing up to his own party.
Well hes the traditional Republican that we saw before Obama took office, after he took office the right wing of that party as we all know rose up to fight the darkie from Africa who wanted to destroy America, its been a gong show ever since and what used to be conservative principles have become an embarrassment to intelligent conservatives.
So a bit of news today with Comey and his handling of the Clinton email investigation and why he had chosen to re-open the investigation. Apparently he chose to act when he received a Russian doctored intelligence linking then AG Loretta Lynch to the Clinton campaign, which he knew to be fake, but he had no way of refuting that without burning intelligence methods and assets publicly.
List of actions taken:
Comey receives intellegence that shows the Clinton campaign colluding with then Attorney General Loretta Lynch to end the investigation into Hillary's emails.
Comey determines this intellegence was fake, but was unable to prove it without burning intellegence assets
Comey is afraid if he ignores the intelligence the Russians who fabricated it will release it publicly and will discredit both him and Lynch
Comey decides the best course of action is to hold a public press conference where he says he's seen all the evidence and there's not enough to charge her so the investigation is over. Simultaneously he bashes her for being reckless. This pisses off both sides, which makes him seem impartial and since he went around Lynch to do it, even leaking the fake intellegence against her doesn't matter since it was Comey who declared the investigation over
The FBI was banking, incorrectly, that Clinton would be able to weather the bad press so they could further prosecute the Russian operation down the road but they sadly miscalculated how the election would turn out. Comey made the gamble to lose face in the short term and maintain the integrity of the investigation. So really he had the choice of acting on false Russian planted information or having the entire Republican party would have turned it into a crap show once the Russians "leaked" the fake info. Do not envy his available choices at the time. Bill Clinton did not help the case either when he "bumped" into the AG. Knowing how concerned and calculated the Russian effort was to get Trump elected is crazily disturbing.
Quote:
The Russian intelligence at issue purported to show that then-Attorney General Lynch had been compromised in the Clinton investigation. The intelligence described emails between then-Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and a Clinton campaign operative suggesting that Lynch would make the FBI investigation of Clinton go away.
In classified sessions with members of Congress several months ago, Comey described those emails in the Russian claim and expressed his concern that this Russian information could "drop" and that would undermine the Clinton investigation and the Justice Department in general, according to one government official. Still, Comey did not let on to lawmakers that there were doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to sources familiar with the briefings. It is unclear why Comey was not more forthcoming in a classified setting.
Sources close to Comey tell CNN he felt that it didn't matter if the information was accurate, because his big fear was that if the Russians released the information publicly, there would be no way for law enforcement and intelligence officials to discredit it without burning intelligence sources and methods.
