Leopold

What?

You mean the guy who has started around 10 wars since he took office and is leading a genocidal purge of the Ukranian people might not want peace?

I see no lies in that tweet.

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What does Zelensky want?

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He wants the country who invaded him and is openly slaughtering his people to leave it and never come back.

I believe we have more fans by sheer numbers, but they have more actual devoted ones.

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If you're over 70 and heavily exposed to the market then you get what you deserve

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Or maybe we just implement policy that doesn't sink the stock market...?

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In fact an honest accounting of the pentagon would find we’ve run down our strategic reserve stocks of missiles, ammunition and particularly artillery rounds to incredibly dangerous levels which for various reasons we obviously aren’t admitting to publicly.

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We have acknowledged the shortage of ammunition and reserve stocks, but the whole point of them in the first place was to kill Russians and Chinese so they are actually doing their job. It's also worth noting that missile fuel has a shelf life and that it costs money to properly dispose of them, so giving them to the Ukraine not only serves American foreign policy it actually saves taxpayers a few pennies.

Let me repeat this: Your military is built with the express purpose of killing the Russians and, by default, the Chinese, whose own weapon systems are just cheap Russian knock offs, so the ammo and equipment we send are actually doing their job, that's why we aren't alarmed. But again, this does require some vision.

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I’m also greatly amused that you think NATO membership somehow saves us money.

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No, I know that NATO costs us a great deal, but it's not meant to 'save' money, it's meant to be a deterrent to war and, should one occur, provide allies against a common opponent. While I absolutely do want NATO to pay more, they have also absolutely lived up to both the spirit and the letter of the agreement; the USSR didn't invade any of us, when 9/11 happened we declared Article 5 and they come with us to Afghanistan, and Russia is screwed because of all of us working together. From that standpoint NATO has been an incredible bargain.

But now we are about to face China and NATO should be our biggest weapon; it's Europe, after all, that is China's biggest trading partner, not the US, and if China wants to challenge US hegemony in any way we should be able to go to our NATO members and ask for help militarily, economically, politically, etc. Before this current administration I would have told you this was a slam-dunk, no-brainer - now that's not the case.

We have decided to walk away from them right when we may need them, negating the whole purpose and throwing away the decades of support you have pointed to - it's literally the worst of all possible actions. And this over an uber-weak Russia. It's a horrible decision.

Make no mistake - we run the world. We control the worlds ocean ways, we garner 70% of the worlds investment, we (stupidly) invade countries at a whim with no real ramifications outside of a finger wag and a dirty look. Our military reigns supreme with hundreds of bases all over the world, and our media, arts and entertainment, and culture running rampant throughout the world, and we are able to wantonly rip up treatise at our own behest. Anybody who thinks Europe is running things isn't paying attention, and telling them they are own their own is the very thing that would prompt them to compete with us. This policy doesn't make any sense.

Honestly, the Egg Bowl is underappreciated and gets my vote.

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All this shat talk about cruel Russia, you best not be tossing stones my friend, a lot of the stuff happening in wars now......we taught them how to do it.

Japan attacked us. What Japan did to China was barbaric. They would have done the dame to us if they had the chance. So, wtf is your point. Russia invaded Ukraine. Stalin killed millions of people. They need no lessons in killing.

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I'm sorry, what?

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Which key ally? And what obvious threat are we not acknowledging? The threat to the US is fighting and financing a war we can't afford and shouldn't be involved in

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The obvious threat is Putin/Russia. The guy who has

- openly declared the US as an 'enemy': LINK
- a long history, both on a personal and geopolitical level, of fighting against us.
- thousands of nuclear missiles, many of whom are pointed directly at us.
- attacked us multiple times using proxy forces in the form of Wagner and other countries
- stated that he wants an empire from Lisbon to Vladivostok, which would go right through our committed allies in Europe

As a result, Ukraine could (emphasis on 'could') become a key alley when dealing with a facist/mafia state that has shown it's open, unapologetic cruelty in this invasion. Of course, gaining another alley, one that is paying dearly in blood and treasure to do our dirty work and is thus proving its willingness to become a state that shares common goals, would require vision, something we seem to be sorely lacking in right now.

As far as paying for this, the answer is yes, we absolutely can afford to send them M113's from the Vietnam-era, F-16's from the 'Top Gun' movie era, Bradley's from the Gulf War era, and Bradley's from the GWOT era. And we absolutely can afford to send them state-of-the-art Air Defense systems that let us know if they are capable of shooting down Russian (read CHINESE) aircraft as we prepare for a possible conflict in Southeast Asia. Sending them the outdated systems save us a few pennies, in fact, and sending them the new stuff is vital to make sure it actually works.

The good news?
They sure as hell do. :usa:

Therefore the smart play is to back the Ukrainians and kick the sh!t out of the Russians.

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The money that comes in from foreign investment, buying our bonds and thus funding our debt, comes from the very trade deficit Trump is trying to eliminate.

Where will foreign nations get all the dollars to buy our bonds if we don't give them to them through trade?

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Good. Nothing necessarily wrong with trying to eliminate the trade deficit, no problems there.

But something tells me they'll find somewhere else to park their money if not in our bonds, companies, real estate, etc. Not that we can't survive, and I certainly wouldn't mind seeing some things, like home prices in major cities, become more affordable, which would be a silver lining of sorts.

But that would also mean that we don't have as much money for other things, and that - and this is the real loss - we start to pay more for our debt while still accumulating it. This is an entirely separate issue altogether, but until we start to get the debt under control - and that is entirely on us - we really can use that cheap money; I just wish we could find better ways to use it.