Politics

[Royal27]

Good geopolitical read on the current state and where it looks like we are going.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1921406158247481687

Think the author's response to the first comment sums it up nicely too.

 

[Altitude sickness]

That whole argument about NATO on the border is moot now that Putin caused Finland and Sweden into NATO.

I completely agree. And we should be thankful Finland and Sweden are now in NATO.
It would have been foolish not to take those two competent countries into NATO.

My point was the incursion did not happen out of thin air. Putin wants to reunify the USSR and thinks he is justified by the NATO expansion and a few other issues.

 

[Alistair]

I would keep it very, very simple:
Let's say the standard income tax rate in a given country is a flat rate 30% tax rate.
The rate of births that are needed to keep the population in check is around 2.5, let's round to 3. (half a kid is just not very useful)

First child born: your personal income tax rate drops with 2%
Second child born: your personal income tax rate drops with an additional 3% (so 5% total)
Third child born: your personal income tax rate drops with an additional 5% (so 10% total)
No further deductions after the third. However when war and pestilence rules the land, the government could just add additional advantageous rates for the fourth, fifth, etc. child depending on how many children are needed.

Advantages:
Bloody easy to implement.
It gives benefits to only those that actually contribute to society (as they pay taxes)
Therefore you incentivize precisely those with the biggest income to have the most babies. Usually these are the smart, hard working, good citizens of society.

Sorry Vertigo, I missed this earlier in the week.

This is an option, but I think it's a little too regressive an incentive plan to be truly effective.

The simple truth is, that for high income earners, a lot of them are having kids and are hitting replacement rates. It's a luxury they can afford.

If they're well off and are choosing not to, it's probably due to a lack of time, not a lack of resources. They can afford to have a kid, but both parents work a lot, maybe they have to travel a lot, there's a decent possibility that they'll need to up sticks and move for a better job in a different location in any given year. Maybe they just enjoy their independence and don't really want the hassle of children. A couple % reduction in income tax that may or may not persist beyond a single term is not going to change any of that.

A financial incentive is only really going to work for people who want kids, but can't afford them, and are responsible enough to realize they can't afford them. In the US in 2025, that group appears to coincide with households with an annual income of $50k-250K, especially if they don't own a home outright. Source:

I like the means tested mortgage thing because it will weed out those who genuinely cannot afford a kid (but have them anyway) - they simply don't earn enough to qualify for a means tested mortgage at any interest rate. It is also an incentive that effectively targets the people who want kids but can't afford them, so the middle classes without a fully owned home.

I think it aligns very elegantly with the portion of the populace who are most likely to see benefit from the incentive, are most likely therefore to actually use it, and aren't actually hitting replacement rates.

 

[Altitude sickness]

I completely agree. And we should be thankful Finland and Sweden are now in NATO.
It would have been foolish not to take those two competent countries into NATO.

My point was the incursion did not happen out of thin air. Putin wants to reunify the USSR and thinks he is justified by the NATO expansion and a few other issues.

I’ll use another confusing, loosely tied comparison

When Iraq invaded Kuwait. It was seen by most as just naked aggression. But Kuwait was stealing Iraq’s oil by slant drilling under the border. Hussain warned them and they denied it.

The CIA told Iraq they had no interest in that dispute. They basically gave saddam tacit approval. The CIA thought Iraq would take a few miles of Kuwait to seize the whole Rumaila oil field. They didn’t know he would take the whole country.

”The Rumaila oil field, which straddles the border between Iraq and Kuwait, was a key factor in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwaitin 1990. Iraq accused Kuwait of slant-drilling, or using wells that angled across the border to tap into Iraq's portion of the field. This, along with other factors like Kuwait's alleged over-production of oil and debts owed to Iraq, contributed to the conflict”

My lame comparison is there is always more to the story. And it usually involves meddling or an agency screw up.

 

[Red Leg]

Most of us have burned into our memory from the Lefts Media puppets. More specifically Bidens media puppets.

That the Ukraine invasion materialized from thin air.

I AM IN NOW WAY CONDONING THE INVASION

But context and what really happened not what the leftist media has been feeding us are important.

“
There were in fact two main U.S. provocations. The first was the U.S. intention to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia in order to surround Russia in the Black Sea region by NATO countries (Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia, in counterclockwise order). The second was the U.S. role in installing a Russophobic regime in Ukraine by the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President, Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014. The shooting war in Ukraine began with Yanukovych’s overthrow 11 years ago, not in February 2022 as the U.S. government, NATO, and the G7 leaders would have us believe.

The key to peace in Ukraine is through negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutrality and NATO non-enlargement.

Biden and his foreign policy team refuse to discuss these roots of the war. To recognize them would undermine the administration in three ways. First, it would expose the fact that the war could have been avoided, or stopped early, sparing Ukraine its current devastation and the U.S. more than $100 billion in outlays to date. Second, it would expose President Biden’s personal role in the war as a participant in the overthrow of Yanukovych, and before that as a staunch backer and very early advocate of NATO enlargement. Third, it would have pushed Biden to the negotiating table, undermining the administration’s continued push for NATO expansion.

The archives show irrefutably that the U.S. and German governments repeatedly promised to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch eastward” when the Soviet Union disbanded the Warsaw Pact military alliance. Nonetheless, U.S. planning for NATO expansion began early in the 1990s, well before Vladimir Putin was Russia’s president. In 1997, national security expert Zbigniew Brzezinski spelled out the NATO expansion timeline with remarkable precision.”

Again it doesn’t give Putin the right to invade. But Ukraine and its partners helped nudge Putin. And give him (in his mind) justification.

NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard | National Security Archive

Western leaders gave multiple assurances against NATO expansion to Gorbachev in 1990-1991 according to declassified American, Russian, British, Germans documents

nsarchive.gwu.edu

First of all the "promises" allegedly made with regard to NATO expansion were made to a nation that has not existed for 35 years. Secondly, the then president of the Soviet Union, Michael Gorbachev disagrees with the whole "promises" red herring. This is his statement on those discussions - discussions about which no treaty or even joint memorandum was penned, much less enacted.

“The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement was made in that context… Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”

“The agreement on a final settlement with Germany said that no new military structures would be created in the eastern part of the country; no additional troops would be deployed; no weapons of mass destruction would be placed there. It has been obeyed all these years.”

Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge? Gorbachev Says "No"

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it well known his antipathy towards NATO, claiming the Alliance took advantage of Russian weakness after the collapse of the Soviet Union in violation of promises allegedly made to Moscow by Western leaders. Steven Pifer argues that no such promises were...

www.brookings.edu

Fact two. While the number of NATO nations has expanded after legitimate concerns over Russian aggression. No NATO formations, which are different than national armed forces, were moved into Eastern Europe until after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014.

Additionally, I get so tired of this belief among the isolationist right led by Tucker Carlson that the in one moment inept CIA and in the next moment all powerful agency somehow turned the whole nation of Ukraine inside out and caused the popular revolution that ousted Putin's puppet in Kyiv. I suppose those same machinations are at work causing those brainwashed zombies to resist the Russian invasion so effectively and with such sacrifice for 3 1/2 years.

Finally, Russia presuming it has the right to demand neutrality of its neighbors is laughable. First, it requires the national, and especially military power, to make such demands. With 5 million troops on the ground in Eastern Europe in 1946, the USSR could make such demands and enforce them. Russia? not so much. Secondly, the logic of this is the same as if France, also a nuclear armed nation, were to demand the neutrality, even disarmament, of Spain, Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, etc as a security guarantee.

 

[Altitude sickness]

NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard | National Security Archive

Western leaders gave multiple assurances against NATO expansion to Gorbachev in 1990-1991 according to declassified American, Russian, British, Germans documents

nsarchive.gwu.edu

Of course I wasn’t there to call Gorby a liar. the declassified documents from 2017 show that Baker repeated the statement many times in front Groby and witnesses.

But two things can be true

Baker could’ve said it, but that doesn’t mean that Putin has the right to invade Ukraine and that we cannot expand NATO now which I am all in favor of.

All that matters is that Putin thinks it was said

 

[Brent in Az]

The Indian government just made a deal with the U.K that allows Indian graduates to basically take white collar jobs away from British graduates.

Another country under siege from outsiders

 

[Brent in Az]

I’ll use another confusing, loosely tied comparison

When Iraq invaded Kuwait. It was seen by most as just naked aggression. But Kuwait was stealing Iraq’s oil by slant drilling under the border. Hussain warned them and they denied it.

The CIA told Iraq they had no interest in that dispute. They basically gave saddam tacit approval. The CIA thought Iraq would take a few miles of Kuwait to seize the whole Rumaila oil field. They didn’t know he would take the whole country.

”The Rumaila oil field, which straddles the border between Iraq and Kuwait, was a key factor in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwaitin 1990. Iraq accused Kuwait of slant-drilling, or using wells that angled across the border to tap into Iraq's portion of the field. This, along with other factors like Kuwait's alleged over-production of oil and debts owed to Iraq, contributed to the conflict”

My lame comparison is there is always more to the story. And it usually involves meddling or an agency screw up.

It's always about the oil, even if the war excuse was labeled as the threat of WMD's by the Bush administration

 

[Scott CWO]

I completely agree. And we should be thankful Finland and Sweden are now in NATO.
It would have been foolish not to take those two competent countries into NATO.

My point was the incursion did not happen out of thin air. Putin wants to reunify the USSR and thinks he is justified by the NATO expansion and a few other issues.

Well, the people of Ukraine shouldn’t be forced to live under Russian control or even live under regimes more loyal to Russia just because Russia is paranoid. As I have said on this topic many times, nobody has or is threatening to invade Russia. NATO is a defensive alliance. Russia is an aggressor and has invaded Georgia and Ukraine and was involved in the occupations of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Moldova. The USSR has invaded Poland, Finland, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.

 

[Scott CWO]

It's always about the oil, even if the war excuse was labeled as the threat of WMD's by the Bush administration

Wrong Iraq war, Brent. WMD were not an issue in the Kuwait invasion.

 

[Red Leg]

NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard | National Security Archive

Western leaders gave multiple assurances against NATO expansion to Gorbachev in 1990-1991 according to declassified American, Russian, British, Germans documents

nsarchive.gwu.edu

Of course I wasn’t there to call Gorby a liar. the declassified documents from 2017 show that Baker repeated the statement many times in front Groby and witnesses.

But two things can be true

Baker could’ve said it, but that doesn’t mean that Putin has the right to invade Ukraine and that we cannot expand NATO now which I am all in favor of.

All that matters is that Putin thinks it was said

My point is that it should not matter at all what Putin believes - or more accurately - claims to believe. Ukraine was an independent state for thirty years and has the right of self-determination. It is in the interests of the West to insure Putin understands that above all things. Anything less is nothing but appeasement.

Regrettably, I have a vision of Trump boasting in Truth Social about achieving "Peace in our time!!"

 

[Brent in Az]

Wrong Iraq war, Brent. WMD were not an issue in the Kuwait invasion.

Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction

 

[Tubby’s Canteen]

Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction

Well it’s official Brent you’ve just got to ruin everything ( in jest ) I always thought g.w. Come up with that one on his own and now you tell us he was really just recycling his daddy’s yarns.

 

[HWL]

Make Alcatraz Great Again.

Best place for Donald to retire!!
And his complete broadcasting gang.

HWL

 

[Brent in Az]

Best place for Donald to retire!!
And his complete broadcasting gang.

HWL

 

[Scott CWO]

Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction

We didn’t take out Saddam in the Kuwait battle.

Later, yes GW did use WMD as a reason.

 

[Tundra Tiger]

View attachment 684293

Here you go Brent... to wipe the brown off that nose of yours. Hell, your whole face, as far up his bum as you seem to have your nose buried. And I suggest you buy in bulk; you'll need them.

 

[Brent in Az]

Here you go Brent... to wipe the brown off that nose of yours. Hell, your whole face, as far up his bum as you seem to have your nose buried. And I suggest you buy in bulk; you'll need them.

View attachment 684304

Have you ever thought about getting some psychological help?
You really seem to have some deep rooted issues.

 

[Tubby’s Canteen]

Just see on the news tonight Zelenskyy wants to meet with Putin personally Thursday in Turkey. In order to facilitate that he wants a cease fire beginning tomorrow.

 

[Scott CWO]

Just see on the news tonight Zelenskyy wants to meet with Putin personally Thursday in Turkey. In order to facilitate that he wants a cease fire beginning tomorrow.

They are both 5’7” tall and probably weigh a buck sixty. Put them in a ring with no rules and see who wins. My money is on Z, although P was KGB. Z is younger and probably more angry.