Politics

[Nature Boy]

Would you prefer the US government to be so powerful that it would always mandate where US businesses can buy goods and services, even when not at war or in a proxy war? The US government has now put sanctions on Russia and this prevents most transactions until sanctions are lifted.

In many of your posts, you combine ideas about trade and geopolitics as if governments are all-powerful and should stop all trade with adversaries. Yes, it’s ironic that we have bought oil and other products from countries like Russia and China. They also buy from us. I also don’t like the mandated sharing of technology that China requires of US based companies. These companies have chosen to go forward anyway. Legally, the US government cannot stop this.

Are you serious? Janet Yellen was literally trying to place a cap on crude prices and then I just posted (as one example) that she just told India they can buy all the RFussian oil they want. Lol, yes they can. See: Cuba.

 

[John Wasmuth]

People often get upset over opinions. They don’t want to hear your opinion, they want to hear their opinion coming out of your mouth….. I don’t know who wrote it but it’s very accurate…..

 

[Nature Boy]

My Dad had a great saying about people like nature boy. "They open their mouth and their guts fall out. Guts are usually full of shit.

lol, you think you are popular now?

 

[John Wasmuth]

Another thing I’m pretty sure of is that the majority of the stuff written on these pages would stay very very quiet if people were standing in close proximity to one another……

 

[Wheels]

 

[Scott CWO]

The point was America first for a change and imo that is not the deal. It is money for certain folks over the American people. Like the burisma deal and a lot of other deals. Just my opinion.

America first won’t happen in a protectionist vacuum although I wish it could.

 

[Nature Boy]

The U.S. can I believe do what it wants legally and arguably should. There was a thought process that integrating China more into the mainstream of the world would be a good thing. That seems to have proven wrong, and has had quite the opposite effect. And now that pendulum seems to have swung the other way.

The Evolution of U.S. Thinking and Policy - U.S.-China Technological “Decoupling”: A Strategy and Policy Framework

Washington has rapidly converged on a new, China-focused techno-nationalism. A diverse and growing U.S. restrictive tool kit has targeted Chinese tech with increasing intensity.

carnegieendowment.org

Exactly right Phil. If you read Michael Pillsbury's book "The hundred year marathon" it sums up how china is trying to take us over. Michael Pillsbury is probably the leading expert on China and has been around since the Carter Admin. Carter the idiot was was duped and signed this:

"The U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement was the first bilateral accord signed by the two countries after relations were normalized in 1979."

It is still in effect (which is why there are over 300,000 chinese nationals being educated in our Universities still today to use against us-lol) today. They got almost all of their tech from us and stole what we didn't voluntarily give them. It's simply laughable and no way anybody but treasonous people who are making money from it can think it's a good thing.

 

[Nature Boy]

Perhaps but it would have been very hard to isolate China like North Korea. We seem to think we can just snap our fingers and rule the whole world. We cannot but we like to think we can.

If you understand the agreement Carter stupidly made and is still in existence we GAVE them all the tech to kill us. We are still educating their students at the level of over 300,000. Then they got so much tech from the manufacturing side. Stole a lot of it.

 

[Nature Boy]

Can’t disagree with you there. I think that is due to China to at least some level adopting capitalism as part of its economic system. North Korea has never done that and in reality isolated itself. We’ve allowed ourselves to be invaded by China. They chose to invade through the west coast shipping harbors bringing their cheaply made goods to the U.S. which we have happily bought. A modern Trojan Horse.

The one mistake I think Xi Jinping is currently making is consolidating power that much more unto himself. The more he does this, the more like NK he makes China.

His mistake is also trying to kill us off too soon. Now we are in shoring many things finally and they are toast without the US market. The chip deal thing is good and it is weird it got zero press FTMP.

"The Joe Biden administration has further tightened technology export to Chinese technology industry, targeting semiconductor industry in the latest rules announced this month."

"Under the latest US technology export rules, US citizens working in Chinese firms might face a tough choice — quit their jobs or risk losing US citizenship.

The latest tech export rules by the Joe Biden administration are an attempt to further regulate the flow of technological know-how from the United States to China and to affect the Chinese ability to produce semiconductors —commonly called chips— which are the bedrock of modern electronic industry and are used in everything from our personal computers to electric vehicles and high-end military technology. "

Somehow biodet did something smart. I mean his handlers.

 

[Nature Boy]

People often get upset over opinions. They don’t want to hear your opinion, they want to hear their opinion coming out of your mouth….. I don’t know who wrote it but it’s very accurate…..

Yep, exactly. They would have told critics of the Vietnam War the same thing they are telling me. How'd that turn out? How'd Aghanistan turn out?

 

[Nature Boy]

I infer from your comments that you consider military actions in Vietnam to have ended badly. But then you note that Vietnam has valued assets. If you look at the intent of US involvement in Vietnam you may see that the end result is what the US desired- so the US actually won from its involvement. Too bad you believe the teaching of some biased-for-communism professors and their lackey media.

You inferred correct. Are you literally going to tell us that ended well? Lol. We were there for 20 years and they stayed commie. They are still commie. The goal of the war was to stop the spread of communism. huh?

We didn't win anything from that war. It's been 40 years and Vietnam decided themselves to try some forms of manufacturing, capitalism, whatever you want to call it. lmao.

Opposite, I'm vehemnetly against communism, which Vietnam still is. You sir are misinformed.

 

[Nature Boy]

View attachment 502736

exactly a pathetic JOKE.

 

[John Wasmuth]

View attachment 502736

Can’t be true, we’ve been told it hasn’t cost us a dime in money or munitions……..

 

[Nature Boy]

America first won’t happen in a protectionist vacuum although I wish it could.

I'm all for free trade, we don't have that. China manipulates their currency, etc. and our trade deals are a joke and treasonous. NAFTA was a disaster and a kill shot on American workers and to this day Big Tech pushes for HB visas so they can get foreign workers. Not because we don't have them but because they can pay them less and work them harder. Please explain this?

A car coming from Europe into the United States pays a 2 percent tariff. But a car coming from the United States into Europe pays a 10 percent tariff.Mar 19, 2019

Our trade deals have been lopsided in favor of foreiogn countries. Wonder why?

 

[Nature Boy]

Can’t be true, we’ve been told it hasn’t cost us a dime in money or munitions……..

But but these are "old" weapons. Oh yeah, I didn't know stinger missiles were useless. But guess what, we will make some more and guess who gets those contracts?

 

[Nature Boy]

I infer from your comments that you consider military actions in Vietnam to have ended badly. But then you note that Vietnam has valued assets. If you look at the intent of US involvement in Vietnam you may see that the end result is what the US desired- so the US actually won from its involvement. Too bad you believe the teaching of some biased-for-communism professors and their lackey media.

But let me be clear, we didn't lose the war. The USA has never lost a war. I'm proud of the soldiers, not proud of the gov't who has admitted openly the Gulf of Tonkin never happened.

 

[NE 7x57]

Actions and in-actions have consequences. NATO should have stopped Russia when they invaded Georgia instead of letting Putin get his way. The same thing was true in 2014 when he took over Crimea. But the west allowed him to get away with it again. I'm sure he thought that this military adventure would be the same, he'd roll in, take over the country, install a puppet government and NATO would set on their hands.

Had Ukrainian's decided to stand idly by while Putin occupied their country the only question would have been what country would Russia have attacked next? The Baltics, would have been a likely target and being NATO members would have brought Russia into a direct conflict with the west. But fortunately for everyone Ukraine decided to fight for the freedom to decide their own fate.

There seems to be a common theme among supporters of Russia in that they fall back to talking points about Ukrainian corruption while at the same time failing to acknowledge that corruption is and has been a way of life in Russia for decades if not centuries. Why did Russian not become more European in the early 90s when the USSR fell apart? Corruption! Putin and his cronies didn't gather their billions with book sales, they took it from the Russian people. Why was there corruption in Ukraine? Simple, it's been one of Russia's main exports for decades.

I'm not sure how many trillion we dropped in our Iraq adventure but the expenditures on Ukraine are insignificant when compared to that. We're taking the military capabilities of one of our adversaries apart without spending American blood. We're using up some older weapons and gearing up to produce more, those will be produced in American plants by American workers. We're telling the world that we will opposed naked aggression. In the end it looks to me like a bargain.

 

[Red Leg]

View attachment 502736

Another, and I think perhaps a more useful perspective from the same source.

 

[John Wasmuth]

But let me be clear, we didn't lose the war. The USA has never lost a war. I'm proud of the soldiers, not proud of the gov't who has admitted openly the Gulf of Tonkin never happened.

Yep, the knew for many many years that the water at Camp Lejuene was poisoned and didn’t do a damn thing about it except lie to us lil jar heads even more once it came to light. Never trust any government.

 

[Alistair]

But but these are "old" weapons. Oh yeah, I didn't know stinger missiles were useless. But guess what, we will make some more and guess who gets those contracts?

Think of it like this.

You're driving around in an old car. It works just fine, does the job, but you've had it since '95 and it's got 300k on the clock.

You fancy something new. Something more reliable, something safer, something better on gas, something with a better radio. So you buy yourself a shiny new car..

What do you do with the old car? It's worth something, the dealer might give you a thousand bucks in trade in, it works just fine.

But you remember that one of your less well off buddies has a 16 year old who just passed his test. You give him the old car for his kid. That's a fine gift and your buddy will appreciate it for sure, but it didn't actually cost you anything, the car owed you nothing and if your friend buys you a nice bottle of scotch for the holidays, invites you out to his place to hunt every now and again and the kid is willing to do some yard work for you and watch your place when you travel, it's probably not a bad deal.