Politics

[mdwest]

The en masse migration from the west coast and from south of the border ensures Texas will never leave the union…

In fact, I’d be surprised if Texas remains a “red” state more than 10 more years… by then it will be purple..

 

[Neophyte]

The en masse migration from the west coast and from south of the border ensures Texas will never leave the union…

In fact, I’d be surprised if Texas remains a “red” state more than 10 more years… by then it will be purple..

I pray you’re wrong but I watched my state turn purple.
It’s sad.

 

[Red Leg]

It’s beyond destitute, it’s dead. If we truly had to support our citizens by domestic production we would have to significantly reduce our population. We are players in a global economy and there is a fairy tale to think that we could exit it.

Must be the phase of the moon.

 

[Red Leg]

I’m less than an inch from the tipping point.

Once it was a Utopian fantasy that thirteen little colonies could overthrow the strongest army in the world.

As for certain posters here they love their money more than the country itself. I want to make it a better country. The communist party and their RINO sycophants don’t. They want to maintain the status quo even if detrimental to our country.

Really? Who is going to really join you and where are you planning to plant your little flag? And "love their money more than their country"? What do you know about the background of any of us?

 

[Neophyte]

Really? Who is going to really join you and where are you planning to plant your little flag? And "love their money more than their country"? What do you know about the background of any of us?

I judge by your words for they reveal your heart.

 

[WAB]

I’m less than an inch from the tipping point.

Once it was a Utopian fantasy that thirteen little colonies could overthrow the strongest army in the world.

As for certain posters here they love their money more than the country itself. I want to make it a better country. The communist party and their RINO sycophants don’t. They want to maintain the status quo even if detrimental to our country.

It’s not that we do not love our country. It’s the reality that we cannot exit global trade and care for our citizens. Isolationism sounds like a solution until you face some grim realities. We cannot produce the chips to keep our vehicles running. Those same chips run the equipment that plants, harvests and processes our food. We do not produce the right mix of nutrients to fertilize our crops to feed our nation. I can go on and on, but you get the idea. For decades we have participated in global trade. This has created a dependence on foreign raw materials and manufacturing capability. We do not have the ability to replace this domestically. It is not aimed at you, it is simply a fact. You can accept it or deny it, but it’s like gravity, declare it doesn’t exist and step off a ten story building and you’re still dead.

 

[sgt_zim]

It’s not that we do not love our country. It’s the reality that we cannot exit global trade and care for our citizens. Isolationism sounds like a solution until you face some grim realities. We cannot produce the chips to keep our vehicles running. Those same chips run the equipment that plants, harvests and processes our food. We do not produce the right mix of nutrients to fertilize our crops to feed our nation. I can go on and on, but you get the idea. For decades we have participated in global trade. This has created a dependence on foreign raw materials and manufacturing capability. We do not have the ability to replace this domestically. It is not aimed at you, it is simply a fact. You can accept it or deny it, but it’s like gravity, declare it doesn’t exist and step off a ten story building and you’re still dead.

Ayn Rand put it a bit more efficiently.

"You can avoid reality, but you can't avoid the consequences of avoiding reality."

 

[Red Leg]

I judge by your words for they reveal your heart.

Let me get this right - you advocate absolute economic nonsense which a number of contributors dispute with facts and precedent and you now deem yourself worthy of being the "judge" of them. You even question their patriotism. The burden of your self-righteousness must be nearly overwhelming.

It’s not that we do not love our country. It’s the reality that we cannot exit global trade and care for our citizens. Isolationism sounds like a solution until you face some grim realities. We cannot produce the chips to keep our vehicles running. Those same chips run the equipment that plants, harvests and processes our food. We do not produce the right mix of nutrients to fertilize our crops to feed our nation. I can go on and on, but you get the idea. For decades we have participated in global trade. This has created a dependence on foreign raw materials and manufacturing capability. We do not have the ability to replace this domestically. It is not aimed at you, it is simply a fact. You can accept it or deny it, but it’s like gravity, declare it doesn’t exist and step off a ten story building and you’re still dead.

Not just decades. Our economy has been based upon fighting for free access to world markets since the Stamp Act and Townshend duties attempted to limit it prior to the Revolution.

 

[John Wasmuth]

 

[WAB]

Let me get this right - you advocate absolute economic nonsense which a number of contributors dispute with facts and precedent and you now deem yourself worthy of being the "judge them." The burden of your self-righteousness must be nearly overwhelming.



Not just decades. Our economy has been based upon fighting for free access to world markets since the Stamp Act and Townshend duties attempted to limit it prior to the Revolution.

You are correct, I understated my point significantly.

 

[sgt_zim]

Let me get this right - you advocate absolute economic nonsense which a number of contributors dispute with facts and precedent and you now deem yourself worthy of being the "judge" of them. You even question their patriotism. The burden of your self-righteousness must be nearly overwhelming.



Not just decades. Our economy has been based upon fighting for free access to world markets since the Stamp Act and Townshend duties attempted to limit it prior to the Revolution.

As much as I am an acolyte of Rand, Friedman, von Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt, et al, I acknowledge they were all guilty of the same judgment error. They all assumed, incorrectly, that free markets would tend to liberalize (in the Enlightenment sense) the world. At least to this point, China has proved them all wrong on that one point.

The only thing Chinese leadership appears fully committed to is accretion of power.

 

[barryk]

We can NOT recover from Trump's foreign policy short of an actual war in a future administration. Harris domestic policy can be recovered from. It is not one being more important than the other, but risks associated with each.

I have hedged against Harris Presidency having a free rein, that's why I had a long conversation discussing various strategies with my banker and estate attorney the other week. Right after election we will execute depending on the House and Senate makeup if Harris wins.

Someone mentioned that I should look forward to paying investment income being taxed as regular income instead of the current 23% or so. That is not an issue as there are strategies for it.

There is a whole industry based on minimizing taxes legally.

No...No...No...absolutely No....we will not recover from a Harris domestic policy! I don't know that we will ever recover from the Obama/Biden, Biden/Harris Marxist regimes....we have half of this country that have been spoon fed anti-American propaganda through our educational institutions, corporations, and news media to the extent that there are few politicians or occupants of this country that are truly Americans that love this country. No way could anyone love this country and justify what has been unleashed across our borders, total chaos and none of those current administration buttheads care a damn bit....no way anyone could love this country and decimate our energy independence.....seriously, how can anyone be that damn stupid?! You can't get a straight answer from the FBI (major cities not reporting crime statistics so crime has diminished?), Secret Service (no organization can be that incompetent after decades of refined and streamlined operating procedures yet an untrained goofball kid gets close enough for a 150 yd shot....that's not incompetence....that has got to be intentional ineptitude on their part). How many FBI agents were pulled from high priority assignments to investigate school board meeting participants? And what administration supports the FBI assignments and actions? No accountability...just B.S. We went through the BLM riots and billions of damage were done....who helped those local businesses rebuild in those neighborhoods? Did I miss something? Was BLM held accountable? Hell no....nobody is held accountable anymore...no one. Do I feel for the people of Ukraine...absolutely.....but this war never had to start in the first place. That blithering idiot of a POTUS basically told Putin to just make a minor incursion into Ukraine. We have our own war to fight in this country....and I doubt we will ever be able to take back what we have lost. I have read and respect your posts Tanks, and I respect your service as a fellow Marine....but I vehemently disagree with you on this! The Biden/Harris administration along with the potential Harris/Walz and most of our gutless Republicans have and will make a despicable leadership for Americans.

 

[WAB]

As much as I am an acolyte of Rand, Friedman, von Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt, et al, I acknowledge they were all guilty of the same judgment error. They all assumed, incorrectly, that free markets would tend to liberalize (in the Enlightenment sense) the world. At least to this point, China has proved them all wrong on that one point.

The only thing Chinese leadership appears fully committed to is accretion of power.

China is such an enigma. In the face it appears oppressive. However, when you are there, you realize that, as long as you don’t infringe on central party directives, business is allowed to function on a free market basis. I represented a minority investment, and sat on the board of a Chinese company for a number of years. It is a fascinating place.

 

[sgt_zim]

We can NOT recover from Trump's foreign policy short of an actual war in a future administration. Harris domestic policy can be recovered from. It is not one being more important than the other, but risks associated with each.

I have hedged against Harris Presidency having a free rein, that's why I had a long conversation discussing various strategies with my banker and estate attorney the other week. Right after election we will execute depending on the House and Senate makeup if Harris wins.

Someone mentioned that I should look forward to paying investment income being taxed as regular income instead of the current 23% or so. That is not an issue as there are strategies for it.

There is a whole industry based on minimizing taxes legally.

This presumes we could recover from Harris' foreign or domestic policies.

Unless your assets are valued at 9 figures or higher, you, like the rest of us, are just one more pissant.

 

[Tanks]

... Seems that Trump is the only American President this century that Putin is afraid of. Seems Trump's first term has everything to do with how he will deal with foreign affairs if he has a second term.

Again, you seem to be ignoring what Vance has said in regard to Trump's policy of appeasement towards Russia vis a vis Ukraine. I can only go by what they say they would do. Are you saying they are lying for some reason?

Here is the quote again.

Under the proposal mapped out by the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Trump would force Kyiv to concede vast swathes of its territory including Crimea, seized by the Kremlin in 2014, and the land occupied by Russian forces in the south and east of the country after Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Ukraine would retain its independence in return for a guarantee that it could not join Nato or other “allied institutions”, Vance said.

 

[Wheels]

He does in fact have the ability to commit national and cultural suicide. Would that result in the destruction of the world? No one really knows because no one knows the actual status of the Russian arsenal. Obviously, some of it will work as designed and reach their targets. That would indeed be a catastrophe. However, essentially all of ours will work, reach their targets with unerring accuracy, and Putin knows it.

Negotiations break down for all sorts of reasons. I would simply suggest accessing as broad a set of assessments of those talks as possible. The notion that it was anyone's fault - American, British, Russian, or Ukrainian is just simplistically wrong. Negotiations are particularly difficult when the conditions on the ground are changing rapidly advantaging one side and then the other. Putin's claim that the agreement was there to be reached is as specious as claims the CIA, State, the UK, Zelensky, or some mysterious force stalled them. Dozens of influences were at work in a volatile military environment.

The attached article in Foreign affairs is the most thorough I know of that has studied that series of meetings in Belarus and Turkey. I do not necessarily agree with all of the authors' assumptions, but the review is the most thorough I have found. Pick your villain, or realize sometimes there really isn't one. This is a brief summary of their conclusions.

"A final agreement proved elusive, however, for a number of reasons. Kyiv’s Western partners were reluctant to be drawn into a negotiation with Russia, particularly one that would have created new commitments for them to ensure Ukraine’s security. The public mood in Ukraine hardened with the discovery of Russian atrocities at Irpin and Bucha. And with the failure of Russia’s encirclement of Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky became more confident that, with sufficient Western support, he could win the war on the battlefield. Finally, although the parties’ attempt to resolve long-standing disputes over the security architecture offered the prospect of a lasting resolution to the war and enduring regional stability, they aimed too high, too soon. They tried to deliver an overarching settlement even as a basic cease-fire proved out of reach."

The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine

A hidden history of diplomacy that came up short—but holds lessons for future negotiations.

www.foreignaffairs.com

The question that I doubt any of us know is when is Putin pushed too far into the corner, including internal pressure to remove him with the probable consequences that come with that and he launches. How do we respond. Say 10% of his arsenal works but we have no clue which those are so we are targeting all known static and mobile devises Putin has. How many do we launch. Perhaps 1,000. What is the consequences for the world if America receives 600 nuclear weapons and Russia receives 1,000. Probably none of us will care at that point. Does that mean we kowtow to Putin. Not at all. What would probably be good is not to continually push him into a corner.

I agree with most everything you said regarding the March/April 2022 peace negotiations. There was a lot to work out, especially with a fluid battlefield between meetings changing each negotiation. What we do know is the peace negotiations were progressing between every meeting with a new meeting scheduled to deal with other points. Zelensky even said there was real progress. Putin said it was not a bad result. Were those negotiations going to be successful, we will never know. Was Putin going to break the agreement, we will never know. What we do know was that talks were on going with more details being agreed to and Boris Johnson went to Kiev and within a week all negotiations were off.

 

[Tanks]

Regardless of what kind of territorial agreement is agreed upon as long as Ukraine is prohibited from joining Nato it means Russia can and will do it again.

Remember, Russia guaranteed Ukraine's territorial rights when Ukraine became independent in return for Ukraine getting rid of its nuclear arsenal.

 

[Wheels]

Hmm, I work for a company that sells its products all over the world. Were that to end, I'm quite certain that if I still had a job, I'd know plenty of colleagues would not.

You even sell products to derelicts in Oklahoma.

 

[wesheltonj]

I’d rather go through the transition than leave it for another generation to endure.

When Texas leaves this bungled up Union I’m moving to Texas. We’ve saddled future generations, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and probably great great great grandchildren, with a problem that is our’s to fix. Not their’s!

Better we fix our mistakes and the mistakes of our parents than kick the can down the road.

If only. That was closed off with the civil war. The error was corrected that would allow Texas to leave. Although we can still split into 5 states still. But the state at the big cities are that would create 10 D senators now.

 

[ActionBob]

We really do need to get some $500 and $1000 bills in production. Although, so few use cash any more, it's probably not worth it

Fifties are the new Twenties. Many restaurants in our small towns charge extra for using credit cards because of the fees. Seriously, when going out to eat fifties seem to spend like twenties did just 4 years ago.