US 2024 Presidential Election

[Eacaraxe]

Obama cut the future soldier series of weapons that included everything from IFVs to Tanks to Infantry. Better weapons optics, everything. He even cut my beloved F-22 program by capping it to under 250 airframes—a stupid idea in hindsight. He didn't start a land invasion of any country. He was a dove.

First, the future soldier program -- and its "2030" iteration -- was a thirty-year-long, multi-billion-dollar, Pentagon boondoggle which focused on technologies that didn't make it out of R&D before becoming obsolete or proven combat-ineffective in theory as well as practice, were vastly outperformed by competing programs, or relied on literal unobtanium -- lest we forget, future soldier's "power armor" program ultimately concluded it was impractical if not impossible without materials science discoveries yet to be identified, to either power it or armor it.

The program wasn't a serious effort to modernize and future-proof US armed forces, it was a quid-pro-quo job application by birds and stars to move into the private defense industry. His admin didn't even cancel it, just revised it and continued R&D that actually yielded practicable results.

You're goddamn right he cut the F-22. We have no fucking use whatsoever for a quarter-billion-dollar hangar queen that only provides marginal improvements to combat performance beyond later production blocks of the very aircraft it was intended to replace -- that cost anywhere between a tenth to half the price per unit, require dramatically fewer maintenance hours and have far better supply of replacement parts globally, and have a quarter the operating cost-per-hour. Yeah, the F-22 wipes the floor with Typhoons, Rafales, vipers, eagles, and hornets...under tightly-controlled conditions and rules of engagement impressed by the Pentagon that in no way reflect the ebb, flow, and logistic demands on an armed force of an actual war. Just never mind each and every one of those aircraft I just mentioned, wipes the floor with global rivals' own aircraft in accordance to known and observed specifications and performance.

What, do you think we're going to end up in a furball against the UK or France, or God forbid a civil war in which one side only has F-22's and the other F-15/16/18's?

The goal of the US armed forces is to win wars, not pyrrhic tactical victories bleeding ourselves out with expensive unsustainable materiel. And speaking of, I can't help but notice you didn't say word one about the Obama admin's going whole-hog into the most expensive defense project with the least return-on-investment in human history -- the F-35.

Even if the determining factor between "hawk" and "dove" was defense project priority, and it's not, you're not even correct in the goalpost you just set for yourself.

Ukraine wasn't Obama, it was the Ukrainian people's economic self-interest...

By "people" you mean Western-friendly Ukrainian oligarchs that footed the bill for and astroturfed on behalf of the Maiden protestors with the assistance of the US government.

Syria was of Assad's making...

Well, let's just check this for veracity shall we?

...Then some of the protestors start firing back.

"Some" of "the protesters" being "literally al-Qaeda", and "firing back" with weapons supplied by the US under the direction of the Obama administration.

Yemen literally was hosting AQ cells...

Yeah, they were. They were acting as proxy for Saudi Arabia in Yemen. A non-OPEC country which was increasing its oil exports to meet IMF debt obligation, which Saudi Arabia -- the second-biggest state sponsor of al-Qaeda, behind the US -- could not tolerate.

...as was Pakistan, which hosted Bin Laden, who did 9/11 near the Pakistan version of West Point.

Yeah if al-Qaeda was actually that big a deal, Riyadh would be a glowing green parking lot by now. As that clearly is not the case, and the US and Saudi Arabia continue to be the biggest state sponsors of al-Qaeda as we always have been -- including the periods we were nominally at war with them -- we can safely conclude the idea al-Qaeda is a big deal to be complete bullshit.

By the way, which president personally ordered US intelligence and armed forces to technically invade Pakistan, to extrajudicially execute bin Laden in the first place? As I recall, it's the one you're specifically calling a dove.

 

[Hades]

Obama's administration set the stage for every major regional conflict today, whether that's Ukraine, Syria, Iraq (round 3), or Yemen. In the first case it was down to the Obama administration supporting right-wing extremist insurgents to bullishly and myopically provoke Russia;

Nope. Accepting Ukraine is an independent country rather then Russian property objectively isn’t “provoking “ Russia. In fact it was Russia which provoked Europe and Ukraine by forbidding them from signing a trade deal and then invading Ukraine when this backfired.

Russia’s stance that it still owns or should own Ukraine has always been illegitimate. There was no need for Obama, Ukraine or Europe to humor Putin in this regard.

 

[Agema]

Nope. Accepting Ukraine is an independent country rather then Russian property objectively isn’t “provoking “ Russia.

"Provoking Russia", in this wider context, comes down to supporting any ex-Soviet state's right to self-determination independent from Moscow.

Also noting Putin has heavily implied the Baltic States are Russian, although at a practical level even he might have conceded that the ship has sailed on enforcing that.

 

[Silvanus]

Nope. Accepting Ukraine is an independent country rather then Russian property objectively isn’t “provoking “ Russia. In fact it was Russia which provoked Europe and Ukraine by forbidding them from signing a trade deal and then invading Ukraine when this backfired.

Russia’s stance that it still owns or should own Ukraine has always been illegitimate. There was no need for Obama, Ukraine or Europe to humor Putin in this regard.

Not to mention what utter horseshit that "funding right-wing insurgents" argument is, when deployed in defence of Russian imperialism and against Ukrainian (or Georgian, or Moldovan) independence.

Back in 2014, there were right-wing paramilitary groups both in support and opposition to Ukrainian independence-- and the latter were far more well funded and stocked by overseas sources, predominantly Russia.

It was Russia that created a far-right insurgency in Ukraine, armed with Russian weaponry, trained in Russian military facilities, staffed in part by disguised Russian troops and directed by Russian commanders to achieve Russian tactical aims. To seize and hold another country's land. This was a conflict that would have been over in a matter of months (and almost was), until Russia flooded eastern Ukraine with weaponry to prop its new proxy up, dragging it out for 6 years of occupation. All this supposedly (so the insurgents claimed) to protect the locals from Ukrainian chauvinism... except that even those areas voted strongly for independence from Russian rule (back into which the insurgents are fighting to take them). Their self-proclaimed saviours then proceed to gun their citizens down in the streets, torture them in basements, and deport their children.

Then, we have the fact that Russia continues to be the largest financial and military benefactor of neo-Nazi and far-right paramilitaries around the world-- not only in Ukraine, but also in ~6 African countries, where they rapaciously siphon away mineral resources to fund the war machine back home. Chief among them being Wagner-- a decidedly neo-Nazi outfit of smaller merc companies, most of which (such as Rusich) are individually larger and more active than the Ukrainians' Azov Brigade, which is the overwhelming focus of Russian propaganda about the threat of the Ukrainian far-right. A neo-Nazi merc conglomerate were invited to open a military tech centre in the capital city, and we're supposed to believe their employers are taking a stand against Nazism.

What complete horseshit. Imperialist and fascist apologia dressed up as its opposite in the thinnest, most unconvincing costume.

 

[Agema]

What complete horseshit. Imperialist and fascist apologia dressed up as its opposite in the thinnest, most unconvincing costume.

It is the conclusion of monomania, though. Once a person has made their entire world revolve around an ideology, nothing else really matters. "[Western] capitalism and USA bad" becomes the only meaningful frame of reference, and so such a person ends up approving regimes like Putin's Russia murdering their way through neighbouring countries. Sure there's some vestigial sense and even an acknowledgement that Russia's behaviour is bad... but it just doesn't really register as a significant concern.

And to be fair, there were signs long before that, like the disinterest and skepticism about China's treatment of the Uighurs. It's not a real human rights abuse, because it's just a distraction from the REAL human rights abuse that is Western capitalism.

 

[Eacaraxe]

Nope. Accepting Ukraine is an independent country rather then Russian property objectively isn’t “provoking “ Russia. In fact it was Russia which provoked Europe and Ukraine by forbidding them from signing a trade deal and then invading Ukraine when this backfired.

You seem to have forgotten some context there. That "trade deal" was a free-trade agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, that committed Ukraine to EU defensive obligations as a necessary step towards eventual EU state membership, which by extension would have obligated Ukraine to participate in then-ongoing and future economic sanctions against Russia. It's a rather remarkable idea of state independence, that membership in a supranational union that carries with it defensive and economic obligations is a prerequisite for it, and that anything short of it (up to and including a multipartite neutrality agreement) must be by default considered Russian suzerainty.

Even stranger is that you consider a Western-backed coup d'etat a matter of that "trade deal blockage" "backfiring".

Whataboutism

Feel free to explain this symbol at any time, please and thank you.

 

[Silvanus]

Feel free to explain this symbol at any time, please and thank you.

You and I both know what it is.

The difference is that I don't consider the presence of fascist symbols to be a justification for annexation, carpet bombing, and ethnic cleansing by a military with a far larger fascist vein.

What you're doing is rationally & morally identical to justifying the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan by pointing to how horrid the terrorists there are, as the credulous right-wing did at the time. It's the same tired imperialist playbook to lay the groundwork for war-- and it's also true whataboutism.

It's a rather remarkable idea of state independence [...]

Yes, you've never really grasped the idea that state independence includes the right for a state to enter consensual agreements with others, and European ex-Empires no longer have the right to dictate which ones others may enter.

You may be confused by the Russian insurgents claiming to fight for the 'independence' of their areas while also delivering them directly back into the control of the state their people voted to leave. It's confusing when warmongers and their puppets use 'independence' to describe its exact opposite.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

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www.nasdaq.com

Trump clearly has very little understanding of what crypto currency is or how it works, despite launching his own crypto currency. I'm pretty sure he just likes it when people clap when he says "crypto." Crypto bros actually believe crypto is the future, and Trump just sees it as another scam opportunity.

 

[BrawlMan]

Crypto bros actually believe crypto is the future, and Trump just sees it as another scam opportunity.

Just like the crypto bros themselves. They're schemer sucking the dick of a bigger schemer. All trapped in a little schemer world.

 

[Gergar12]

First, the future soldier program -- and its "2030" iteration -- was a thirty-year-long, multi-billion-dollar, Pentagon boondoggle which focused on technologies that didn't make it out of R&D before becoming obsolete or proven combat-ineffective in theory as well as practice, were vastly outperformed by competing programs, or relied on literal unobtanium -- lest we forget, future soldier's "power armor" program ultimately concluded it was impractical if not impossible without materials science discoveries yet to be identified, to either power it or armor it.

The program wasn't a serious effort to modernize and future-proof US armed forces, it was a quid-pro-quo job application by birds and stars to move into the private defense industry. His admin didn't even cancel it, just revised it and continued R&D that actually yielded practicable results.

You're goddamn right he cut the F-22. We have no fucking use whatsoever for a quarter-billion-dollar hangar queen that only provides marginal improvements to combat performance beyond later production blocks of the very aircraft it was intended to replace -- that cost anywhere between a tenth to half the price per unit, require dramatically fewer maintenance hours and have far better supply of replacement parts globally, and have a quarter the operating cost-per-hour. Yeah, the F-22 wipes the floor with Typhoons, Rafales, vipers, eagles, and hornets...under tightly-controlled conditions and rules of engagement impressed by the Pentagon that in no way reflect the ebb, flow, and logistic demands on an armed force of an actual war. Just never mind each and every one of those aircraft I just mentioned, wipes the floor with global rivals' own aircraft in accordance to known and observed specifications and performance.

What, do you think we're going to end up in a furball against the UK or France, or God forbid a civil war in which one side only has F-22's and the other F-15/16/18's?

The goal of the US armed forces is to win wars, not pyrrhic tactical victories bleeding ourselves out with expensive unsustainable materiel. And speaking of, I can't help but notice you didn't say word one about the Obama admin's going whole-hog into the most expensive defense project with the least return-on-investment in human history -- the F-35.

Even if the determining factor between "hawk" and "dove" was defense project priority, and it's not, you're not even correct in the goalpost you just set for yourself.



By "people" you mean Western-friendly Ukrainian oligarchs that footed the bill for and astroturfed on behalf of the Maiden protestors with the assistance of the US government.



Well, let's just check this for veracity shall we?



"Some" of "the protesters" being "literally al-Qaeda", and "firing back" with weapons supplied by the US under the direction of the Obama administration.



Yeah, they were. They were acting as proxy for Saudi Arabia in Yemen. A non-OPEC country which was increasing its oil exports to meet IMF debt obligation, which Saudi Arabia -- the second-biggest state sponsor of al-Qaeda, behind the US -- could not tolerate.



Yeah if al-Qaeda was actually that big a deal, Riyadh would be a glowing green parking lot by now. As that clearly is not the case, and the US and Saudi Arabia continue to be the biggest state sponsors of al-Qaeda as we always have been -- including the periods we were nominally at war with them -- we can safely conclude the idea al-Qaeda is a big deal to be complete bullshit.

By the way, which president personally ordered US intelligence and armed forces to technically invade Pakistan, to extrajudicially execute bin Laden in the first place? As I recall, it's the one you're specifically calling a dove.

The IFV, tank, and common vehicle chassis worked you know how I know this, It's because Russia's concept of a common vehicle concept for the T-15 IFV, and T-14 Tank is currently in testing. The optics worked, and power armor is being tested now, made with lighter and lighter materials.

The F-22 is not designed just for 4.5-generation fighters: Eurofighter and China has J-11s, J-16s, and J-10Cs/4.5-generation fighters too. Did you just conveniently ignore that right now the entire defense department views China as the biggest threat geopolitically since the Cold War?

It's designed to fight against future threats and was a dreadnought-like breakthrough in military technology that Obama didn't like because he was a liberal intellectual who wanted to appease the international community on US arms procurement, so he made the F-35. The F-22 wasn't made for export.

Also, you conveniently ignore the FSA or Syrian Free Army every time you talk about the civil war in Syria like most tankies, and Russian-paid actors.

The F-22 was designed for future threats like the J-20, and Mig-1.44, which later became the SU-57. And every time a dove talks about foreign policy, they always have to mention either an ally who is maybe fighting against future imperial land-grabbing aggression or just ignore the gorilla in the room, China.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

He only hires the best.

 

[Gergar12]

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www.salon.com

How do you have decades of running for office, and you don't know that we have 435 members of Congress in the House of Representatives?

The real question is why didn't people attack Stein sooner.

 

[Kwak]

Trump Makes a New Campaign Promise Straight out of Project 2025

Donald Trump is hewing awfully close to a plan he says he knows nothing about.

newrepublic.com

Speaking before roughly 5,000 people at the Kovalchick Convention and Athletic Complex, Trump flatly promised to demolish the Department of Education, claiming that the federal authority was the reason for the country’s floundering education rates.
“We spend more money per pupil than any other country by far, and yet we’re at the bottom of the list,” Trump said. “Out of 40, we’re ranked about Number 40.”
“And I’m going to close the Department of Education and move education back to the states,” he continued. “And we’re going to do it fast.”

 

[Kwak]

Yes, yes they were. The election laws say absentee ballots can be attained or submitted through mail or at the county elections office. They made up the idea of satellite offices for this election. Giving people things to get them to vote, like free meals, is a violation of federal election laws. They broke a bunch of laws.

So Trump just broke the law?

Trump gives Pennsylvania mom of three $100 towards her groceries: ‘Here, it’s gonna go down a little’

"Here, it's gonna go down a little," Trump said as he handed the woman the money. "It just went down 100 bucks."

www.aol.com

 

[Agema]

The F-22 is not designed...

It might be a form of nerdgasmic fun, but all the waffle about the relative capabilities of this and that piece of hardware isn't necessarily very interesting or compelling. I would suggest a more simple justification for the F-22.

It doesn't matter that much whether it's that good. It just matters that it was done, to fund expertise and research in military jets because that's worth having. Maybe some of them are not up to scratch, too expensive, too complicated, but hey - as Sturgeon's law states, 90% of everything is crap. Another way of looking at Sturgeon's Law is that you've got to make that 90% of crap to make the 10% that isn't.

Then, if a country sits around doing nothing for 30 years because its planes are 30 years ahead of everyone else's, the logical end result is that at the end of that period it has no advantage... and no military aircraft engineers either, because there's been no jobs in that field for three decades. That's the point it's really stuffed, because it needs to get to work with its skill base and expertise atrophied.

So, if your country wants to stay in the game in military development, maybe it's just got to make things. And suck up the fact that some of them are over-expensive, inefficient, or even occasionally outright lemons.

 

[Gergar12]

It might be a form of nerdgasmic fun, but all the waffle about the relative capabilities of this and that piece of hardware isn't necessarily very interesting or compelling. I would suggest a more simple justification for the F-22.

It doesn't matter that much whether it's that good. It just matters that it was done, to fund expertise and research in military jets because that's worth having. Maybe some of them are not up to scratch, too expensive, too complicated, but hey - as Sturgeon's law states, 90% of everything is crap. Another way of looking at Sturgeon's Law is that you've got to make that 90% of crap to make the 10% that isn't.

Then, if a country sits around doing nothing for 30 years because its planes are 30 years ahead of everyone else's, the logical end result is that at the end of that period it has no advantage... and no military aircraft engineers either, because there's been no jobs in that field for three decades. That's the point it's really stuffed, because it needs to get to work with its skill base and expertise atrophied.

So, if your country wants to stay in the game in military development, maybe it's just got to make things. And suck up the fact that some of them are over-expensive, inefficient, or even occasionally outright lemons.

The F-22 is the best-designed air superiority fighter in the world, we should have made more of them.

Obama wanted to take out Ohio's Lima Abrams tank factory too, because we supposedly didn't need them. And he wonders why Ohio switched to Clinton.

 

[Trunkage]

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www.nasdaq.com

Trump clearly has very little understanding of what crypto currency is or how it works, despite launching his own crypto currency. I'm pretty sure he just likes it when people clap when he says "crypto." Crypto bros actually believe crypto is the future, and Trump just sees it as another scam opportunity.

Almost every single person in Crypto doesn't know how Crytpo works

 

[Eacaraxe]

The IFV, tank, and common vehicle chassis worked you know how I know this...

Because the Stryker platform does it cheaper, more capably, more sustainably, and to greater combat effectiveness -- to the point it was one of the contributing factors to the FCS program's demise (the others being recent production blocks of the Abrams and Bradley AFV's which did the job better with existing hardware)?

...It's because Russia's concept of a common vehicle concept for the T-15 IFV, and T-14 Tank is currently in testing.

Right. Well, we'll get there.

The optics worked, and power armor is being tested now, made with lighter and lighter materials.

Yes, advanced optics systems worked...and the whole-ass lunch was eaten by the Nett warrior program. Because again, why spend hundreds of billions of dollars in R&D over the span of decades, when one can simply develop proprietary operating systems and software for commercially-available smartphones and smartwatches.

Same deal for the stupid fucking power armor. Why spend hundreds of billions of dollars in R&D over the span of decades, when in the meantime MIT is over here saying "hey, we have working prototypes for liquid armor that are more effective without sacrificing warfighter mobility or fatigue, without the additional logistic burden of powering and maintaining powered armor"?

I get it, you love the ridiculously expensive overengineered boondoggles because they get headlines in Popular Mechanics or what-the-fuck-ever, and they look really cool. But you need to understand those boondoggles exist because colonels and generals really, really want high-paying jobs in the private sector, and are willing to suck the government teat dry for one. The rest of us are interested in whether or not whatever shit the Pentagon squats out over the armed forces is actually going to help win wars.

...The F-22 is not designed just for 4.5-generation fighters: Eurofighter and China has J-11s, J-16s, and J-10Cs/4.5-generation fighters too...

Again, we'll get to this.

Did you just conveniently ignore that right now the entire defense department views China as the biggest threat geopolitically since the Cold War?

Such a threat that its entire regional empire aspirations can be brought to heel by...a tariff. A country near-exclusively dependent on the US market (for now) to sustain its own existence, ain't a threat.

Which is incredibly ironic, that for all US chickenhawkishness in the face of China, the end result is driving it to securing and strengthening economic relations to Russia, various African countries, Saudi Arabia, and even fucking India. Nobody gives the remotest fuck about that stupid little island, but for hegemonic dick-waving and sabre-rattling brought about because a dead president was happier with a fascist sucking his dick than a communist.

The F-22 was designed for future threats like the J-20, and Mig-1.44, which later became the SU-57. And every time a dove talks about foreign policy, they always have to mention either an ally who is maybe fighting against future imperial land-grabbing aggression or just ignore the gorilla in the room, China.

Now it's time for us to loop back to the beginning of your post, the Armata platform. You do know Russia killed that six months ago, right? you know why they killed it? too expensive as compared to updating the T-90, in terms of manufacturing and support. But realistically it was more likely than not another lemon that didn't deliver the goods, like most Russian AFV experiments.

It's funny how Russia said they've deployed the T-14 to Ukraine and to great effect, but no actual recorded results or data points on that from either side of the conflict. About the same as the Su-57's combat performance thus far in Ukraine...which is, if I recall correctly, getting shot down in short order. By makeshift drones. But of course, Russia says they haven't used them in Ukraine so far, but at the same time they've been used in Ukraine to attack over 40 targets, just trust them bro.

See, here's the thing about Russia and China: they lie their asses off about the capabilities of their materiel. Then hawks repeat those lies to say we need bigger, better, faster and more expensive materiel, because we have to close defensive "gaps". It's a tale as old as the "missile gap" and it hasn't been true since the Soviet Union put the IS-8 to bed. Then does the US acquire that materiel through defection, theft, or acquisition of wreckage, or it shows up on a battlefield baring its whole ass to the world, and that they've just been building giant pieces of shit can no longer be hidden from the world at large.

You should know how this plays out from the story of Victor Belenko's defection alone. You know, the time when the entire Pentagon was performatively shitting its pants over the MiG-25 to maintain the kayfabe it was some Rooskie Super Anime Fighter against which we needed Newer, Bigger, Better, Faster fighters RFN. Despite the intelligence agencies telling the DoD it wasn't shit and we had nothing to worry about. Then bro just outright defected with one along with a whole lot of leaked information about the MiG-31, we disassembled and investigated it, and could no longer hide the fact it (and the MiG-31) wasn't shit and we had nothing to worry about.

The irony you're telling me to stop listening to Russian and Chinese propaganda when you're uncritically repeating this nonsense, all evidence to the contrary, is palpable.

 

[Eacaraxe]

...So, if your country wants to stay in the game in military development, maybe it's just got to make things. And suck up the fact that some of them are over-expensive, inefficient, or even occasionally outright lemons.

Yeah, how'd that work out for y'all tank-wise in World War II? Your country is only the one that invented the fucking things.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Tractor manufacturer John Deere is aiming to move some of its manufacturing to Mexico. In response, Trump has threatened to slap a two hundred percent tariff on all of their products.

Problem is he can't, because that would violate a trade agreement that he signed into law.

Donald Trump's John Deere threat has a problem: the USMCA Act he signed

The former president has taken aim at the machinery manufacturer for planning to move some of its production to Mexico.

www.newsweek.com

You can't really expect Trump to remember everyanything he's done.