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Aisha Greyjoy

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Posts posted by Aisha Greyjoy

  1. They were going to lose the top tier eventually.  They banked on the low tier to win decisively in order to support the mid-tier and win that.  Then use mid-tier to updeclare and drag down.  Problem is, the top tier will always win faster than the low tier just due to how much offensive power there is to zero militaries out.

    Yes, but if, with great resolve, and great determination, and no defections and surrenders, the strategy is given time to play out(4+ cycles), the strategy could work out.

     

    But a few alliances already bolted, didn't they?

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  2. My point was, the actual $ I pay for defense isn't absurd. And America's spending per capita is abusrd when compared to Russia and China because their per capita income is so low.

     

    Compare the US to the UK or Germany, and we do spend a lot, being #1 and the World Police/Empire is not free or cheap.

     

    But its in the same ballpark. 3.6% or so of GDP compared to the mid 2's for most NATO countries, Germany is a bit of an under-militarized country ATM.

     

    An interesting quote is...(http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/mo-budget.htm)

    Percentage-wise, Russia is one of the world leaders in terms of the share of GDP spent on defense. For instance, the United States’ defense spending makes up 3.5 percent of its GDP, with China’s reaching some 2.1 percent, whereas Russia’s amounts to 4.5 percent of its GDP. The Russian figure is the world’s largest after Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which spend 10.4 and 5.1 percent of their GDP respectively on arms.

     

    Really, the only large items are medicare and social security. Everything else in my taxes is kind of small.

     

    I spend 4x as much in property taxes for my local schools as I do for defense. Just to put things into perspective. And I think that's a good ratio. Lets keep that ratio.

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  3. It might be dubious to claim that the F-35 is easily taken out by an S-200.

    http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-f-22-f-35-stealth-fighters-vs-russias-s-300-s-400-s-17394

    http://nationalinterest.org/blog/could-russia-really-shoot-down-f-22-f-35-or-b-2-stealth-17986

     

    Sorry to post from a blog, but there's not a lot of articles on the subject.

     

    I did find a bunch of Russian propoganda on RT and Russia-Insider claiming they can easily shoot down an F-35.

  4. Federal:

    On the mandatory spending side, I contributed:

     

    Social Security 3,083.23 (interestingly, they took out a lot more then that for my Social Security)

    Medicare/Health 2,357.76 (interestingly, they took out a lot less then that for medicare)

    Interest 544.10

    Veteran's Benefits 241.82

     

    On discretionary spending, I contributed:

     

    Defense 1,335.47

    Education 218.04

    Transportation 190.78

    SS/Emp/Labor 163.53

    Government 163.53

    Veteran's Benefits 163.52

    Medicare Health 136.27

    International Affairs 136.27

    Energy and Environment 109.02

    Science Tech and Space 81.76

    Housing and Community 54.51

    Agriculture 27.25

     

    For the record, I head a family of five with significant medical expenses, own a home, and pay a !@#$ton of local taxes, which contributes to relatively low federal tax burden. Really, a very typical American situation, except I have a stay at home wife, which is unusual now.

     

    Its hard to get too worked about how the government spends my $8771. Where on here should I be furious with the governemnt for spending that money?

     

    And really, as a liberal, can I freak out that the government spends 1335.47 of my money on an army? That seems like a real !@#$ing bargain to me. Best army in the world for the price of a new laptop?

     

    I'm more concerned about social security. As our people age, and work less, and live longer, how will we sustain that burden? Will that burden be sustainable when I'm old enough to get Social Security?

     

    Locally, I spent 10,200, not counting local sales tax and/or utility taxes, which I'd estimate at about $5000-$6000.

     

    Overall, that's about 25k in taxes I paid. That's considerably less then half. I consider half the "unfair" point. Half is where its reasonable to say "Why should I work, F you government!" So I don't feel overtaxed.

     

    Just offering a quick reality check to the usual idelogicial craziness we throw back and forth at each other here.

  5. #ImWithHer

    But still..

     

    I'm not with you on this one.

     

    Liberals lose the middle because they go too far.

     

    The point of conservatives is supposed to be to say "Whoah, whoah there chief, slow down!". Today's conservatives have lost that purpose, and instead say "1000 steps back, we must run at full speed backwards!", and without any reasonable rational voices telling liberals to slow down, we see this shit.

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  6. My general rule is, don't quote or cite motherjones, huffpost, or thinkprogress.

     

    If I see something there I want to share, find it somewhere else.

     

    I do sometimes read fox news because I wanna know what the other side thinks. And its really not all 100% awful. The opinion stuff is out there, of course. But I bet they are like...in the ballpark of 60% as accurate as other sources, which is bad, but its not the 10% liberals like to think.

     

    Worst source is obviously some random dude's conspiracy blog. Which is pretty much how infowars got going.

     

    Honestly though, some extreme sites may be more accurate reporting on their extreme topic, like redstate reporting on inter-gop squabbles(except redstate is so anti-trump, its kind of not really credible on that front)

  7. If I were in Trump's shoes, I'd say "Lets start with this. Its not exactly what I want, but its a whole lot better then letting the Obamacare death spiral continue. We will get this first step taken care of, and we'll push for other legislation as needed to improve what needs improving." Then promptly do nothing. Really, poor people don't get insurance, rich people get tax breaks, what's not to like from a Republican perspective? Oh yeah, huge deficit increases. But whatever, you can blame those on Obama.

  8. Well, Republicans control the House, Senate and White House. They own the debt now. Last time they controlled government, they turned a surplus into debt and ran the economy into the ground, making the debt worse. Here's hoping this time is better.

     

    They've also controlled Congress for a long time. "All bills for spending shall originate in the House of Representatives". So they kind of already owned it.

  9. In my humble opinion, I think you've got the wrong idea about being liberal. Being liberal doesn't necessarily mean you're against religions, but it is against religions to be practiced in public (government institutions, public schools, and whatnot) where these facilities are funded by taxpayers' money from the mixed background of faith and beliefs.

     

    Furthermore, the notion that being liberal means you're also an atheist is utterly wrong. There are many liberals who still believe in the Supreme Being and Jesus in particular. Thus, celebrating Christmas doesn't contradict them in any ways whatsoever.

    In fact, my Christian faith compels my liberalism. There are too many verses to even both quoting, but Leviticus 19:34 is a good place to start, as is Colossians 3:11, Exodus 23:6 and Dueteronomy 15:4.

     

    Before I was a Christian, I was a conservative libertarian Ron Paul supporter.

  10. So riddle me this Batman......seeing as you seem to be an expert in this area, what size military should we have than?

    I'd say about 200 warships, enough to assure commerce protection if a nation state goes pirate, 600-1000 fighter aircraft, at least a full corps, so 50000 ground troops on active duty ready to fight, a single marine division of maybe 15-20000 and a much more active reserves and national guard allowing us to "scale up" within a few few months as needed. Throw in enough personal to man our strategic weapons of say 1000 nuclear warheads and I think that's probably enough.

     

    As a veteran, I say "being in the military is not republican welfare".

     

    Really. Its a hard goddamn job, much harder then anything I've done in the civlian world.

     

    I know about a dozen women who protested Trump back in Jan. They all have jobs. My wife didn't go. She was afraid of being put on a list. The Chicago PD does use software to monitor crowd's faces and link those faces to social media posts, so they do build a database of who attends protests. The day may come when those people dissapear. its happened in lots of countries. It could happen here.

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