Political Roundtable Part XXXII

[Wizardspride]

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[dobrojim]

I would have liked Warren but she’s no spring chicken either.

74

[Zonkerbl]

well apparently anything 76 or younger is fine

[Zonkerbl]

ugh I mean if NATO members are concerned that Trump is going to pull the US out of NATO and we certainly won't be supporting Ukraine maybe they should consider contributing more to help defend their neighbors from tyrannical dictators themselves

UGH I HATE AGREEING WITH TRUMP BUT COME ON. The USSR was a global threat. Russia is a local threat.

[dckingsfan]

ugh I mean if NATO members are concerned that Trump is going to pull the US out of NATO and we certainly won't be supporting Ukraine maybe they should consider contributing more to help defend their neighbors from tyrannical dictators themselves

UGH I HATE AGREEING WITH TRUMP BUT COME ON. The USSR was a global threat. Russia is a local threat.

I might have to disagree with some of your points without stepping on your larger point. Russia is certainly still a global threat, I think the proof is what they did in Syria and their destabilization efforts in Africa as well as in western nations. Plus, they still have nukes.

Second, many of the NATO nations are now contributing 2% of GDP towards defense. Your point that they all haven't met their numbers is a good one.

And some of the countries (specifically the Baltics & Poland have contributed far more to Ukraine than we have (per GDP) as well as the number of Ukrainian refugees they have taken in.

But your overall point stands. If the EU countries would contribute 1% of GDP toward Ukraine, Ukraine would crush Russia in time.

[Wizardspride]

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[pancakes3]

ugh I mean if NATO members are concerned that Trump is going to pull the US out of NATO and we certainly won't be supporting Ukraine maybe they should consider contributing more to help defend their neighbors from tyrannical dictators themselves

UGH I HATE AGREEING WITH TRUMP BUT COME ON. The USSR was a global threat. Russia is a local threat.

I might have to disagree with some of your points without stepping on your larger point. Russia is certainly still a global threat, I think the proof is what they did in Syria and their destabilization efforts in Africa as well as in western nations. Plus, they still have nukes.

Second, many of the NATO nations are now contributing 2% of GDP towards defense. Your point that they all haven't met their numbers is a good one.

And some of the countries (specifically the Baltics & Poland have contributed far more to Ukraine than we have (per GDP) as well as the number of Ukrainian refugees they have taken in.

But your overall point stands. If the EU countries would contribute 1% of GDP toward Ukraine, Ukraine would crush Russia in time.

The issue of NATO paying their fair share is another misdirection by Trump that imo has no substantive impact on fairness or effectiveness.

NATO's direct funding has always been honored, and is not tied to GDP. The direct contribution goes towards meeting NATO's budget, so it wouldn't make sense to tie the annual funding to a shifting GDP; NATO's budget is set and the nations fund it accordingly. Before Trump, the US took the plurality share at 22% of NATO's budget, with Germany and UK taking smaller shares (around 10-15%), etc. In 2019, Trump threw a hissy fit and now the US and Germany each are responsible for 16% of the budget, and other nations' share proportionally went up. In 2019 when Trump made this move, the NATO budget was approximately $2.5B, meaning the US saved itself around $150M/year in NATO obligations, which is like... 4 predator drones aka 0.02% of the military budget in 2019.

NATO's INDIRECT funding is each member nation's domestic requirement to spend at least 2% of its GDP on its own military forces, in the event that Article V of the NATO Charter is ever invoked (that when a member country is attacked, it shall be considered an attack against every member country) and if the attacked nation responds militarily, the expectation is that the other member countries would also be ready to join in retaliation. In the 74 year history of NATO, article V has only been invoked once - for 9/11 by the US. There is also an expectation that 20% of the military budget is spent on equipment and R&D of equipment.

The US is by far the largest nation in NATO, sitting at about $25Trillion. Germany is second at about 4.5 Trillion, so already at less than 1/5 of the US. In fact, the other NATO nations combined account roughly the same GDP as the US alone (Montenegro is at $6B GDP, 2% of which is $120M).

So really, calling for the 2% requirement does not match what the public perception of the talking point for a variety of reasons:
- It doesn't go towards funding NATO; it's a call for other nations to be hypermilitarized.
- Other nations actually pay a higher proportion of their GDPs for the direct funding of NATO
- Tying the indirect funding to GDP handcuffs some of the most important nations on Earth to commit to military spending, at a point where many major nations (US, UK, Canada, France, Italy) are at a point where their debt:GDP ratios are >1. I would argue that military spending needs to go DOWN. Germany, to their credit has a 66% debt:GDP percentage.
- Requiring ALL member nations, including tiny nations like the Balkan nations, Iceland, and former Soviet Bloc nations where their GDPs are fractions of fractions of the US, or even UK/Germany, to not only spend on their standing armies, but also R&D is actually extortion. What exactly is Montenegro's $20M, or Macedonia's $40M going towards? Again, this isn't going into a group pool, it's for each nation to individually spend on their own militaries, so what happens? It's basically telling Montenegro/Macedonia, they need to pay the US and/or Lockheed 20% of 2% of their annual GDPs to buy weapons and weapon R&D from us.

[Zonkerbl]

NATO is an obsolete organization designed to fight the spread of Communism. If you want to create a new organization to fight the spread of autocracy then you should absolutely exclude the United States from it, because we can't be relied on to oppose it.

[Zonkerbl]

what a bunch of ignorant, bible thumping rubes they have running things in Alabama

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/02/20/alabama-supreme-court-ivf-embryos/

"The decision could also have implications for genetic testing of embryos, she said. Many patients rely on screening embryos to identify and prevent passing along genetic conditions.

Such testing can also identify which embryos have a normal number of chromosomes and are less likely to result in a miscarriage.

“If someone has a recurrent miscarriage, it could be due to a genetic disorder,” Dunham said. “You end up creating multiple embryos, and they usually genetically test to see which one has the best chance of making it.

“But if you say these are children, and they can’t be destroyed — we are looking at maybe not being able to test it, because it could hurt the embryo,” she said."

[dckingsfan]

NATO is an obsolete organization designed to fight the spread of Communism. If you want to create a new organization to fight the spread of autocracy then you should absolutely exclude the United States from it, because we can't be relied on to oppose it.

No. It was to counter the USSR imperialist expansion. And it did its job. Now you have an imperialist Russia and it is doing its job.

If you exclude the US, fine. But it is still doing the job for which it was intended.

[Zonkerbl]

well, I guess my point is that the way it is constructed now NATO is extremely ill suited to counter imperialist Russia. Russia's imperialist aims are qualitatively and quantitatively different from the USSR's. The USSR was an ideologically driven superpower, Russia is neither of those things. Russia has more in common with the Taliban than it does with the USSR.

[Zonkerbl]

Let me put it this way, I will be very pleasantly surprised if a kleptocratic government that exists primarily because of insane amounts of money that it earns from petroleum and natural gas production, and is able to have diplomatic influence solely because of its ability to turn off natural gas supplies to large parts of modern europe, can be defeated simply by supplying guns and tanks to Ukraine. Russia's tendency to bully its neighbors is a symptom of a more fundamental problem, that there is basically nothing we can do to turn off the spigot of cash flowing into Russia's coffers, allowing them to do anything they want. They invade their neighbors because they can and there's nothing anyone can do to stop them. Losing the war in Ukraine won't necessarily stop them, what does losing mean anyway? Ukraine can prevent Russia from winning, but they can't beat Russia. Putin has enough money to win a war of attrition against NATO, and with Trump on his side he will almost certainly win.

[pancakes3]

Let me put it this way, I will be very pleasantly surprised if a kleptocratic government that exists primarily because of insane amounts of money that it earns from petroleum and natural gas production, and is able to have diplomatic influence solely because of its ability to turn off natural gas supplies to large parts of modern europe, can be defeated simply by supplying guns and tanks to Ukraine. Russia's tendency to bully its neighbors is a symptom of a more fundamental problem, that there is basically nothing we can do to turn off the spigot of cash flowing into Russia's coffers, allowing them to do anything they want. They invade their neighbors because they can and there's nothing anyone can do to stop them. Losing the war in Ukraine won't necessarily stop them, what does losing mean anyway? Ukraine can prevent Russia from winning, but they can't beat Russia. Putin has enough money to win a war of attrition against NATO, and with Trump on his side he will almost certainly win.

The West allowed Putin to "annex" Crimea in 2014 by not interfering, which emboldened Putin's push in 2022. Putin definitely thought that round 2 would have been similar to the annexation back in 2014, and instead has extended to a prolonged 2-year affair.

Does Russia have the cash to wait out Ukraine? Yes. Does Russia have the cash (and more importantly, political capital) to wait out Ukraine if there was a more robust defense of Ukraine, not just with arms, but also civilian supplies and other humanitarian relief? Debatable, but not a definite no, as you seem to imply.

One of the major impetus for Putin's turn to the military is that political tactics stopped working in Ukraine, and that access to the Black Sea, Ukrainian gas pipes, and other logistical infrastructure changed over to be subject to a non-puppet government.

But yeah, NATO is a defense treaty, and its job is to defend. NATO's goal was never to amass enough forces to go win a land war in Asia.

However, I am at an all time low re: effectiveness of cooperative intergovernmental groups. US stonewalling nonbinding resolutions on Israel re: Palestine is cowards' work.

[Zonkerbl]

I don't know if I've said this clearly enough in the past - I think you could eradicate terrorism in an instant by legalizing heroin in the us.

Similarly, if we were to seriously commit to addressing climate change by choosing to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels, the problems we have in the Middle East and Russia would vanish instantly. This isn't a military problem that we're going to solve by shooting people. This is an economic problem that will be solved through economic policy changes. Rather simple ones, tbh. We have the technology to stop using fossil fuels right now, we just don't want to because it'll be expensive. Let me ask you this though: How much would you pay to solve Israel Palestine TOMORROW? How much would you pay to eliminate Russia's political power completely?

[pancakes3]

I don't know if I've said this clearly enough in the past - I think you could eradicate terrorism in an instant by legalizing heroin in the us.

Similarly, if we were to seriously commit to addressing climate change by choosing to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels, the problems we have in the Middle East and Russia would vanish instantly. This isn't a military problem that we're going to solve by shooting people. This is an economic problem that will be solved through economic policy changes. Rather simple ones, tbh. We have the technology to stop using fossil fuels right now, we just don't want to because it'll be expensive. Let me ask you this though: How much would you pay to solve Israel Palestine TOMORROW? How much would you pay to eliminate Russia's political power completely?

ok, this is a fair point.

don't know how much the costs will be on the backend with increased drug usage but the i can get on board with the facial premise that getting rid of black markets is a good thing.

[Wizardspride]

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[Zonkerbl]

If you don't like drug usage, regulate it. And I say this knowing full well that all the ingredients for meth are legally available and that opiates were legal and regulated. But the consequences of banning drugs are much, much worse.

I would love to see a study that looks at mothers who are addicted to "legal" drugs vs mothers who are addicted to heroin and see if the heroin addicts are more likely to lose their children. It doesn't occur to anyone besides me to ask that question, I think I'm just weird that way.

[bsilver]

I don't know if I've said this clearly enough in the past - I think you could eradicate terrorism in an instant by legalizing heroin in the us.

Similarly, if we were to seriously commit to addressing climate change by choosing to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels, the problems we have in the Middle East and Russia would vanish instantly. This isn't a military problem that we're going to solve by shooting people. This is an economic problem that will be solved through economic policy changes. Rather simple ones, tbh. We have the technology to stop using fossil fuels right now, we just don't want to because it'll be expensive. Let me ask you this though: How much would you pay to solve Israel Palestine TOMORROW? How much would you pay to eliminate Russia's political power completely?

How did you come to the conclusion that legalizing heroism would eliminate terrorism? I googled three random terrorist group and none were funded by the heroin trade. They are funded by other illegal methods and true believers.

[bsilver]

Some stories are just incomprehensible. How do you have a dog that has bitten Secret Service agents in 24 separate incidents?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/politics/commander-biden-secret-service-bites-white-house/index.html

[Pointgod]

Remember when posters on this board were supporting Tulsi for President? Told yall this woman was a straight up grifter. Now she’s not even hiding it.

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