Forum Replies Created
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And how much more of a deterrent do you want than our total domination in military matters? We’re the world’s undisputed hegemon. The Cold War is long gone. We don’t have several hegemons. It’s just us. And doesn’t the desire to increase our military power contradict the desire to stop being the world’s policeman, not to mention “making other nations pay their fair share”?
We have all the deterrent we need times a thousand. And we actually have more active ships now than we did under Dubya.
Our surface Navy is outdated. Both China and Russia have brought online weapons systems that will destroy our surface fleet within 14 days of fighting. Our anti-missile defense is overhyped and rendered archaic to the latest offensive systems of Russia and China. Our sub fleet should fare much better though with both Russia and China actively upgrading both BeiDou and GLONASS military satellite systems with BeiDou far more accurate than our GPS and slated to go global. All three nations are actively pursuing space weapons to defend? their satellite systems.
When one of our carriers is lost with its 4000 member crew, how long do you think it will take for the conflict to go nuclear? Wouldn’t it be better to modernize and upgrade both the Navy and Air Force to dissuade an aggressor?
bnw,
None of that is true. We’ve poured trillions into modernization. No one comes close to our military — not for advanced tech, capacity, speed, or any other metric. Do you really think the Military Industrial Complex ever misses a chance to score major contracts with endless updates? Come on. You’ve just bought into Trump and the GOP’s despicable fearmongering and scapegoating. In reality, we have long spent waaaay too much on behalf of Corporate America, and that didn’t change under Obama.
Whatever you say Billy since you’ve been proven to be correct despite reality. Its your thing.
bnw,
It’s beyond obvious that you were wrong about Trump’s supposed mass appeal. Again, he lost the popular vote to Clinton, one of the least liked presidential candidates ever. He lost to her. And he received fewer votes, total, than Romney or McCain, who both lost bigly to Obama.
He has no mandate. He has no mass popular support. He has his dead-ender, white-nationalist base, plus some folks who always vote for the GOP candidate no matter who it is.
Just as the Dems made a huge mistake in assuming Clinton had this in the bag, you and your fellow Trump supporters are kidding yourself if you think Trump is beloved by anything close to a majority. He’s actually despised by a majority of Americans. A strong majority said he was unfit for the office. They didn’t like Clinton either, of course. But Trump’s numbers were worse.
That’s reality.
this affirms to me why humans will never survive.
I can’t help it. I love humanity. But should we survive? If we take the proverbial “god’s eye-view” — not in the religious sense, but in the widest possible, most perfectly objective, disinterested sense — should we?
No other creature on this planet has come within light years of being so destructive. We’ve wiped out more species than all other life on this planet combined. And, unlike them, we all too often did it because it pleased us to do so. We do it maliciously and with self-conscious cruelty.
As far as we know, no other animal has that trait.
The caveat to the above, at least for me: I think the vast majority of that has happened because hierarchical societies have dominated the last several thousand years. Those at the top have ordered that destruction, primarily to protect, defend and expand their power. “The people” largely had to go along with that or die. If we are to truly end the biggest structural/systemic reason for that destruction, cruelty and maliciousness, we need non-hierarchical alternatives.
More than half of all American corporations already pay zero federal taxes. Zero. That’s with the 35% that Trump wants to slash to 15%. Those corporations, even with zero taxation here, still ship jobs overseas. Why? Cuz it’s a far better deal for them to pay pennies on the dollar for labor than even a 100% tax-free deal. Hell, we could pay them to set up shop here and they’d still send jobs overseas. The difference in labor costs is that big.
Let me ask you to focus on my question posed to you. What’s the alternative? How do you incentivize Corporations to do business in the U.S.? Are you saying there’s no reason to even bother trying? And you don’t have to sell me on the evil of Corporations. I’m aware of the dangers of Corporatocracy, and I’m not even comfortable talking about courting them. But I see no other way to boost jobs in a substantial way other than to increase manufacturing.
Let’s do it this way. If you were POTUS, how would you handle this situation?
To me the solution is obvious. But neither party is willing to do it, because they’re both beholden to corporate interests.
Direct public funding for jobs. Direct creation of permanent public works. Direct hiring of every single unemployed person in America who wants a job, and at a guaranteed minimum wage.
Since we can’t trust the private sector to employ everyone, the obvious and logical thing to do is make that happen via the public sector. Private sector wants to ship jobs overseas? Okay, then fuck them. We’ll build that stuff ourselves, do it better, pay better wages, and make sure the income is allocated in as egalitarian a fashion as possible.
In the private sector, the typical corporation pays its top execs several hundred times what it pays its rank and file. We could set up public sector jobs and make that what it generally is in that sector. Roughly 4 to 1 instead, top to bottom. That way, we can also keep prices down and increase “value” overall for customers. Instead of paying execs tens of millions, we sink that money into the rank and file and product quality instead. The more you “spread the wealth,” the better the economy performs overall.
To me, that’s the logical solution under capitalism. As mentioned, I’d prefer to repeal and replace it altogether, though.
We have all the deterrent we need times a thousand. And we actually have more active ships now than we did under Dubya.
I don’t think that’s accurate, but I’ll follow a link you give me with empirical data. It’s been my understanding that it was the lowest since 1916, and that came from Obama’s own appointed Secretary of the Navy. There have been numerous reports that the military has been degraded, but if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. My bigger worry *was* the impact that future sequestration cuts would have had on not just ship numbers, but the military as a whole, if Killary Robbem was elected.
This came up in the Romney campaign, too, and several fact-checkers debunked it then. Trying to find the one that talks about the disingenuous comparison. The number of ships is immaterial. Their individual capacity, speed, tech, etc. etc. has grown ginormously. We just don’t need as many.
Mitt Romney says U.S. Navy is smallest since 1917, Air Force is smallest since 1947
So you agree with the sheriff who says it’s wrong to protest the verdict?
I want you to read that WHOLE post again and determine where i made such a statement.
When you can do that, we’ll continue.I know you didn’t say that. I’m asking ya if you do agree with him, though. It’s a separate question from your post, etc.
Sounded more like, “Do you still beat your wife?”
No, I don’t agree with him. It’s our inalienable right to protest whatever we want.
That said, it’s a stupid protest. Democracy is what those people want, unless it goes against their wishes.The electoral college is fundamentally anti-democratic. As mentioned elsewhere, it cancels out your vote, if you voted for the losing candidate in that particular state. Even if you chose the person who collected the most votes nationally, your vote was basically nullified. It becomes meaningless.
And it IS a vote for president of the entire country. It’s not for governor or senator. Holding individual contests per state is bizarre, and it’s goes back to 1804, when the nation was just the East Coast.
I’m actually really happy to see those protests. It’s a great sign, as far as I’m concerned, that a good portion of the country isn’t insane. To strip away all of the nuance and detail of extended debate on our current politics, I’ll just say this:
Voting for Trump was insane, in my view. Americans had lousy choices from both halves of the duopoly. But choosing Trump between the two parties was pure madness.
But hey. At least now, hopefully, that corporatist Clintonista bullshit is dead and we can go back to work on the progressive agenda. Hopefully.
That’s pretty good, Nittany.
But I’m not getting Mac’s comment, really. How could the existent of the Clintons prevent “progressives” from working on their agenda? It didn’t stop Sanders or Warren. To me, it’s still far too weak tea. We need something much stronger than the “progressive movement.” We’re not going to solve this mess until we get rid of THE main cause:
capitalism.
Having an economic system in which the few get to own the many is not amenable to any effective “reform,” and it’s set up to either prevent that reform in the first place, or if it slips by to snuff it out all too soon. Letting a few people own a ton of other people is morally reprehensible, and that’s capitalism in a nutshell. Aside from ownership, it’s designed to concentrate wealth (which means power) at the very top, sucking it up from everyone else, and unify all markets. This also requires massive government intrusion and the coordination of governments around the world.
It’s the opposite of “freedom and liberty,” the phony battle cry of its supporters. Unless one is talking solely about “freedom and liberty” for the super rich.
That’s my take, anyway. Good use of Yoda, though.
;>)
I tend not to invest in what comedians say about politics but what he said in part Tuesday night struck home w/ me.
“This is a moment for people to understand that political involvement is a
responsibility. It’s not just words on paper. You can opt out of voting
but you cannot opt out of the effects of your lack of action. It’s important
to not lose heart.”Personally, I don’t think we are now somehow “done”. I choose to view this as the
last bullet in the rural white man’s six shooter to defend against the country’s changing and darker complexion and a pie in the sky hope to somehow change our evolving culture.Waterfield,
It’s also the result of a highly successful campaign by the super-rich to scapegoat people of color. It’s worked. Far too many white people blame those people of color for supposedly stealing their jobs and lowering their wages, and Trump exploited this already existing belief effectively. The cultural aspects of seeing one’s unquestioned status as top dog slip away is another factor. It’s an extension of what we saw in the Jim Crow South among poor and middle class whites. They once could always look at black people and think or say out loud, “Well, at least I’m not them.”
Bottom line: Instead of looking up at the people really screwing them — billionaires like Trump, corporate America, and both of the major parties working for those financial elites — they just blame people of color and one half of the duopoly. They’ve been fed so much bullshit propaganda, they can’t see straight, and they’re so filled with paranoia, they refuse to hear otherwise.
Both parties have failed these people and the rest of us. But they both work for the super-rich, with few exceptions, and too many people on the right are oblivious of this fact. Instead, they think their enemies are unions, public sector workers, feminists, environmentalists, leftists, liberals and people of color — here and overseas. They have their skepticism and paranoia meters preset to register only one small part of the whole, while turning it off entirely for the super-rich and their fellow right-wingers in general.
In short, they’ve been bamboozled.
