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Stoker

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Everything posted by Stoker

  1. Again, Russia does not have the right to dominate the lives of 300 million people outside its borders. We "provoked" Russia by letting democratic states align with us instead of Russia? That's like a wife-beater saying his victim provoked him by trying to leave the trailer park.
  2. The only thing that wouldn't have "provoked" Russia to war is letting them reconquer the entire former Soviet Union and the former Warsaw Pact. That's a couple hundred million people who have made it emphatically clear over the past couple centuries that they DO NOT want to be ruled by Russia. I don't think it's the US' right, power, or in its interest to tell those people crying for freedom that it's too bad, they need to submit because we don't want to offend the Russians and then have to kill them. Europe tied it's entire energy sector to Russia to give them a reason not to have a conflict - and that didn't work, either.
  3. I can't tell from this article if there's actual allegations of fraud, or if it's just bitching that we're spending money in general. If it's the former, there are avenues to address that and they don't include "Cut Ukraine loose, let the Russians roll through Europe and upend the free world order." If it's the latter, well, it's time to grow up and realize the US Government is a vehicle for shoveling money out the door to accomplish policy goals. And at ~$300 per American to stop a genocide and cripple a major threat to US foreign policy for decades, it's pretty cheap. We spent on COVID bailouts about 45 times as much as we've spent on Ukraine. It's a rounding error in the budget.
  4. I'm saying the Western electorate is a lot more ok with you murdering your own people than they are with you crossing borders. I'm not saying I agree with that stance, but is the default stance of democratic nations since circa 1917.
  5. If the murderous dictators are only murdering "their own" people and not invading neighboring countries, it becomes a lot easier to justify not getting involved. Recall that WW2 started over Poland, not Kristellnacht.
  6. I mean, Taiwan doesn't explicitly support Taiwan's independence. If there's one lesson we should take away from our involvement in Afghanistan and Ukraine, it's that we should only commit to helping people who are willing to die for their cause.
  7. I thought the whole point of a MBCBP is that it isn't subject to the 401k limits. It's basically a funded pension pretending to be a 401k, but it's not actually in an account you own.
  8. Eh, I get it. People were getting legally persecuted for being gay less than fifteen years ago. I've been to retirement ceremonies where someone brought their partner - who they had to hide for the first ten years of their career or their career would have been over. That's sad, and the scars from that don't go away overnight.
  9. China and Japan are the largest foreign holders of US debt. Japan owns slightly more than a trillion, China slightly less. So about 5% each.
  10. The idea of countering Russia has been US foreign policy since 1946.
  11. They're army helicopter captains, they're already not flying.
  12. The fact that Minihan isn't on the short list for CSAF is why he sent that memo out. If you're not winning the game, try to play a different game.
  13. I don't know how it goes in T-38s, but sometime in the early academic phases of T-6s you get access to full cockpit simulators with screens. Just go practice there with a couple friends. It's basically unlimited, provided you show up early enough to beat everyone else on the sign-in sheet.
  14. Seriously. Let's remind people what happens if you leak documents and you aren't a general or a politician.
  15. It's not a hard question to answer. The Capitol Police were/are a glorified security guard force, where anyone competent leaves for a different federal agency ASAP. Leadership roles go to people who've stuck around by default. You spend enough time sitting by a metal detector, you eventually freeze when it comes time to start shooting.
  16. In my mind, it's pretty much because they didn't fight back in 2014. There is a plausible (if not legally legitimate) argument for Russia to own Crimea - it was the least Ukrainian part of Ukraine (thanks to successful ethnic cleansing on the part of the Soviets). Within Ukraine, there wasn't nearly as much appetite for conflict with Russia - a good chunk of the country thought they should be oriented towards Russia, not the West. I've read a couple of the opinion polls done in Ukraine now about the war - the country is united to a level you wouldn't believe if someone told you the poll was done in the US. Something like 90% of the population is convinced they'll win the war, and virtually all of the pro-Russian sentiment is gone (not least because the people with pro-Russian sentiment were likely drafted by the Russians and sent to their deaths).
  17. We've sent $75 billion of aid total, and that includes near-expired or obsolete equipment and ammunition donated at book value. The war is almost certainly a net positive for the US economy - Europe is buying gas from us instead of the Russians, the developing world is getting their grain from Iowa instead of Ukraine, and the entire world is buying American military hardware instead of post Soviet crap or indigenously developed "better than nothing" gear.
  18. You don't think it might strengthen Ukrainian troops' resolve? Their are still areas of the world where the words "US president" has meaning and respect.
  19. We've given them something like $20b so far, but it's really all about the accounting. If an artillery shell costs $500 and has a shelf life of 20 years, does giving an artillery shell that's twenty years old to Ukraine count as a $500 cost? IIRC virtually all of the early equipment we gave to Ukraine was either obsolete already or due to be replaced in a couple years. Stingers, humvees, MRAPs... I can write a report about how these cost X to produce and we gave them to Ukraine but that doesn't account for the fact that they were destined for the scrapheap. If you were king of defense appropriations, how much would it be worth to you if you could buy a magic button that crippled the Russian military for a decade or three?
  20. Jeb is too much of a policy wonk to survive in today's politics. No one gives a crap about how you're going to increase the effectiveness of program x by y percent. They want to hear how you'll punish people who think differently and spend money on people who think like them.
  21. Well I guess that's why we have elections. The "keep helping people kill Russians" party did historically well during the last midterms.
  22. The money and effort we spend supporting Ukraine will effectively terminate the ability of our second greatest foe to threaten European security at a less than nuclear scale for the next twenty years or so. I think we should spend commensurate with how much we value that goal. I don't know, man, I'm just a guy who flies planes, not a senior staffer on the Appropriations committee. I guess my point is, the people who moan and complain about all the money we're spending on Ukraine are either willful or ignorant puppets of Russian information shaping efforts. If someone from your political party had a magic deal where, for 2% of Federal spending a year, they could reunite Europe behind a pro-US banner, crush one of our biggest enemies, generate new markets for US energy exports, and protect 45 million people from subjugation, oppression, and extermination, would you say that is a good deal?
  23. All spending has diminishing marginal utility. There's definitely a point where the "dead Soviets per dollar" ratio doesn't justify spending more. But we aren't close to it yet.
  24. For what it's worth, looking at the internal numbers the great FO oversupply at the regionals should be gone by the end of the summer if not earlier. Of the excess FOs, it seems like about 25% are upgrading or leaving for an LCC every month.
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