Trump / Musk (other than DOGE) Omnibus Thread

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gtyellowjacket said:
Foreign aid may be a relatively paltry sum but our defense spending is just the opposite. And a fair amount of that defense spending is needed because we are protecting those allies.

So what does that spending get us? Influence for what? Countries we have to defend right next to a large enemy? The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
Folks on here are ridiculing Trump's plan of cutting spending because this or that policy won't make a dent. I agree. But rolling back our defense commitments can most definitely make a dent, and its dismissed because we don't want to lose some not all that useful allies. I think the trade-offs are worth it.
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Just so you'll have a clue, we only pay about 16% of the cost of NATO which is about the same as Germany.
 
nycfan said:


Cleans up the never-ending engagement for Don Jr, who seems to be openly dating other women, I guess?

Republican National Convention GIF by Election 2020
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Does Kimberly think that she is “the best?” Because if so, then that quote - put in context of her dating Don Jr - would make perfect sense.
 
Iirc, one former mod on ZZL blamed the decline of the Presidency on Obama wearing a brown suit and Michelle a sleeveless dress. Is that really what brought us this?
 
finesse said:
Just so you'll have a clue, we only pay about 16% of the cost of NATO which is about the same as Germany.
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Sure. I'm sure all that defense spending and those bases in Europe are to protect Iowa from a Red Dawn style invasion.

Right now the US defense spending is 2/3 of all of the NATO country's defense spending. That's a little misleading because we have interests in the Pacific and South America but quite a bit of that defense spending goes to protect Europe.
 
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gtyellowjacket said:
Foreign aid may be a relatively paltry sum but our defense spending is just the opposite. And a fair amount of that defense spending is needed because we are protecting those allies.

So what does that spending get us? Influence for what? Countries we have to defend right next to a large enemy? The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
Folks on here are ridiculing Trump's plan of cutting spending because this or that policy won't make a dent. I agree. But rolling back our defense commitments can most definitely make a dent, and its dismissed because we don't want to lose some not all that useful allies. I think the trade-offs are worth it.
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To be clear, I wasn’t just mocking the “make budget cuts by requiring everyone to work five instead of three days,” merely because it won’t move the needle in regards to the deficit.
It’s also because it is about the dumbest way possible to eliminate part of the workforce to save money. Instead of having department heads decide which 25% percent to cut, it’s only slightly less arbitrary than pulling names from a hat. How do they know the best, most productive people won’t be the ones to quit first? Usually, they are the ones that have the most options.

However, I agree that defense spending should be looked at. Not sure that leaving NATO (if that is the plan) is the best plan for that. Could be penny wise and pound foolish.
 
I wonder if the Europeans will at some point call Trump's bluff..something along the lines of "You want to pull out of NATO? Go ahead. Europe will defend Europe.".
1. The Russian threat is not as scary as it was 3 years ago. The boogey man is not quite as scary.
2. The euros take it as an opportunity to funnel government spending into their regional defenses industry.
3. Germany shrugs off its post war aversion to rebuilding its armed forces.

That scenario, in the long run, makes the world a more dangerous place. Trump is a fool for not understanding the importance of NATO in global stability and American preponderance in the last 75 years.
 
ChileG said:
To be clear, I wasn’t just mocking the “make budget cuts by requiring everyone to work five instead of three days,” merely because it won’t move the needle in regards to the deficit.
It’s also because it is about the dumbest way possible to eliminate part of the workforce to save money. Instead of having department heads decide which 25% percent to cut, it’s only slightly less arbitrary than pulling names from a hat. How do they know the best, most productive people won’t be the ones to quit first? Usually, they are the ones that have the most options.

However, I agree that defense spending should be looked at. Not sure that leaving NATO (if that is the plan) is the best plan for that. Could be penny wise and pound foolish.
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To be clear, I'm not for leaving NATO. I am for shrinking our NATO commitments to the most important allies.

If Russian aggression threatens a place like Lithuania, a Ukraine style conflict funded by us and our allies serves our interests better than a commitment to put forces into combat.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
To be clear, I'm not for leaving NATO. I am for shrinking our NATO commitments to the most important allies.

If Russian aggression threatens a place like Lithuania, an Ukraine style conflict funded by us and our allies serves our interests better than a commitment to put forces into combat.
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Short-sighted nonsense.
 
finesse said:
What do we get for the 4 billion we give to Israel which is mostly military as well? How many troops have they provided?

Do you think Russia is not put at a serious disadvantage by NATO?
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Hey I'd pull that money out of Israel too. Screw those genocidal maniacs.

Russia is at a serious disadvantage but maybe that is the wrong way to think about it. Let's figure out what the main US interests are and come at it like that instead of checking Russia.

Did it really affect us when Russia took a few provinces in Georgia? Would it really matter to the vast majority of American taxpayers if Latvia lost a few provinces, assuming that Russia could do it?

I just think if we are going to reign in our spending, defense spending to protect some very weak allies is a very juicy target. But the military industrial complex has convinced us that we need to buy their goods to protect Albania against the threat of a Russian invasion that can't fight their way across Ukraine.

The defense contractors are not nearly as effective at convincing Germany that their interests are well served by mortgaging their grandkids' future to protect against that Russian threat. We could take a lesson from those guys.
 
Can anyone identify a time in our nation’s history when isolationism has been beneficial to our long term strategic interests?
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Hey I'd pull that money out of Israel too. Screw those genocidal maniacs.

Russia is at a serious disadvantage but maybe that is the wrong way to think about it. Let's figure out what the main US interests are and come at it like that instead of checking Russia.

Did it really affect us when Russia took a few provinces in Georgia? Would it really matter to the vast majority of American taxpayers if Latvia lost a few provinces, assuming that Russia could do it?

I just think if we are going to reign in our spending, defense spending to protect some very weak allies is a very juicy target. But the military industrial complex has convinced us that we need to buy their goods to protect Albania against the threat of a Russian invasion that can't fight their way across Ukraine.

The defense contractors are not nearly as effective at convincing Germany that their interests are well served by mortgaging their grandkids' future to protect against that Russian threat. We could take a lesson from those guys.
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Seriously, anything that Russia wants to do outside its borders is generally against our interests. Making it difficult for them there for less money than it costs to operate our carrier groups for a year is a win. Btw, at 27 billion to build and 3 billion to operate a year, why do we have so many?

You might want to get so recent information on NATO spending. Europe has picked up its spending and changed its spending focus, Germany in particular.
 
ChileG said:
To be clear, I wasn’t just mocking the “make budget cuts by requiring everyone to work five instead of three days,” merely because it won’t move the needle in regards to the deficit.
It’s also because it is about the dumbest way possible to eliminate part of the workforce to save money. Instead of having department heads decide which 25% percent to cut, it’s only slightly less arbitrary than pulling names from a hat. How do they know the best, most productive people won’t be the ones to quit first? Usually, they are the ones that have the most options.

However, I agree that defense spending should be looked at. Not sure that leaving NATO (if that is the plan) is the best plan for that. Could be penny wise and pound foolish.
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Nonsense. When trying to reduce defense spending it is the best possible course to make sure that you alienate any possible allies so that you have to bear 100% of the burden of your own defense at all times.

That's just math.
 
finesse said:
Seriously, anything that Russia wants to do outside its borders is generally against our interests. Making it difficult for them there for less money than it costs to operate our carrier groups for a year is a win. Btw, at 27 billion to build and 3 billion to operate a year, why do we have so many?

You might want to get so recent information on NATO spending. Europe has picked up its spending and changed its spending focus, Germany in particular.
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The 2/3 number comes from this report which is collecting 2023 data.

SIPRI Military Expenditure Database

The SIPRI Military Expenditure Database contains consistent time series on the military spending of countries for the period 1949–2023. The database is updated annually, which may include updates to data for any of the years included in the database.
www.sipri.org www.sipri.org

The wide difference between the two numbers is the issue I mentioned earlier with the US spending money to protect its interest in South America and Asia but also a bit of an accounting gimmick. 14% is likely the money the US directly contributes to shared NATO operations but I suspect it doesn't include all of the budget that we dedicate at least nominally to European defense.

I don't think we need anywhere near that number of carrier groups. Those monkeys are expensive as heck. They do offer us a lot of flexibility but once again, flexibility to do what? Protect Israel from their own decisions? Protect US interests in Albania from a Russia that looks pretty anemic? Protect a few islands in the Philippines? Protect Taiwan who is the 14th richest country in the world and spends 30% less than us on a GDP basis on their military? That's a lot of money to spend.

To me the choices are we spend that money on our citizens' welfare programs, we spend it on defending some other country's interests, we go into debt or we raise taxes. We have chosen to go into debt but I think that's the wrong choice. I'd rather stop spending that money to protect the Estonias of the world and start spending it on Americans FDR and LBJ style.
 
Post on Bluesky:

"Twitter is extremely creepy these days because 90% of the responses are bots and it’s not exactly clear why. Usually it’s not even political, it’s not selling anything, it’s just bots pretending to be people. The vibe is like boarding a city bus and realizing none of the passengers have faces."
 
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