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  1. Spekkio

    DoD hiring freeze

    To add on... there is a cultural aspect to the phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_mean_age_at_childbearing The U.S. is #150 of 236.
  2. Spekkio

    DoD hiring freeze

    "Single parent homes" refers to families where one of the parents, usually the father, does not provide any financial or child care support at all. Typically happens when a couple gets pregnant out of wedlock and the father decides to take off. A family where dad (or mom) works on the other side...
  3. Spekkio

    The end of NATO?

    He's right on the Russian perspective... but if Zelenskyy were willing to do a genuine peace settlement that ceded some territory in the East in return for security guarantees for sovereignty, this would have already been negotiated with the previous Presidential administration. This is not an...
  4. Spekkio

    The end of NATO?

    The key thing is that the staffers and secretaries that run his administration have read it, so the ideas contained within are being pitched to Trump and he generally finds them palatable.
  5. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    I'd settle for them using their carriers to take the Houthi problem off our plate.
  6. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Zelensky's goal has always been the restoration of all Ukranian territory and admission into NATO. He's not going to compromise on either point. Media setup or not, that's also why the Biden administration was frustrated with him. He is determined to win back Ukraine's territory or die trying...
  7. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    He also said "fuck you" in Ukrainian to the VP.
  8. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    That's a really odd fetish you got there, but whatever floats your boat.
  9. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    So this is the miracle of video editing. Watch the whole 60 minute press conference and see if you come away with the same impression. There was 45-50 minutes of normalcy until JD Vance picked a fight.
  10. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Since taking office, Vance has done quite a bit of diplomacy (if you can call it that) with Europe and Ukraine. It seems like he's the de facto Europe SME in the administration.
  11. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Social Security and Medicare aren't part of the 'balanced budget' discussion because they are funded through different taxation. Medicare is revenue neutral and social security was making money up until last year or so... but Congress will kick that can down the road until the 2028 or 2032...
  12. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    The only lucid part of that engagement was the last couple of minutes where Trump gives insight into how he actually views the conflict. The rest was... not a good look, to say the least. He is potentially trying to pull a reverse Nixon and use Russia to counter-balance China instead of pushing...
  13. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    There are people who model the impact of fiscal policy before the President and Congress acts. Without spending cuts, the JCT and CBO estimate that the TCJA extensions will add about $300-325B per year over ten years to the deficit. That includes projected revenues from economic growth. If...
  14. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Except time and again, this proves to be worthless. As soon as we want to wean a country off of US funding, they turn on us. The business model where someone gives a customer a good deal so that they become loyal and tell all their friends about it is a uniquely American concept.
  15. Spekkio

    Military Recruiting Ads Thread

    Also, RADM Waters fired his senior medical officer and told the new guy thou shalt process all waivers within 72 hours... and do everything you can to get to yes.
  16. Spekkio

    The end of NATO?

    There is a lot of hawkish mentality ITT without any consideration for political end-state. I'm pro support Ukraine, but the end-state is stalling Russia long enough for Europe to unfuck its military capabilities and prevent an invasion in the Baltics without relying on the U.S. to provide 90%+...
  17. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    My wife watches Good Morning America. That's how she gets most of her info. It's not just watching CNN / Fox News on loop. A better way to interpret the data is that 60% of millenials don't give a shit to search for news on the internet, and only pay attention when something comes across the TV...
  18. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    I can't find the article (fuck Google's indexing), but last time I looked the breakdown for getting news by generation between TV (MSM) and online was: Boomer and older: 80 / 20 Gen X: 60 / 40 Millenial: 40 / 60 The online influence is overblown. People weren't bleaching produce because of...
  19. Spekkio

    The end of NATO?

    One point I disagree with the author is throwing Biden in the same category as Merkel and Obama. I think he meant Bush 43. Biden and Putin were like oil and water.
  20. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    It's coming back after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, to the extent that it ever fully went away.
  21. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    The global 2 front war and how to manage forces across multiple cocoms is a fairly popular topic. The punch line is that the outcome is anything but certain victory against Russia and our NATO allies currently don't meet force shaping requirements to ensure victory. Which permeates into what...
  22. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    I've yet to sit in a briefing where they say this is the likely outcome.
  23. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Perhaps I'm dense, but I don't. That was a phrase that you used, and he seemed to get irrationally angry that I parroted it. But okay.
  24. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    The luftwaffe was combat ineffective in 1943 and the U.S. still lost 400,000 troops fighting Nazi Germany. Again, I have no doubt that we will be far more lethal than the adversary. But the adversary is also willing to absorb significantly more losses than we are.
  25. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Russia is on the eve of achieving their political and military objectives in Ukraine. Master of war? No. But sufficient enough to achieve its aims.
  26. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    His words, not mine.
  27. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Yes, on paper if we were to commit all of our available forces to the Russian theater we could match their numbers. The key problem here is the concurrent conflict with PLAN.
  28. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Pelunking dudes on motorbikes ad infinitum doesn't win the war. Problem is they have a safe haven in Pakistan, so we're back to incredible fear of nuclear escalation permeating our national strategy. Plenty of OEF combat vets recognize we lost the war despite superior combat capability. Take a...
  29. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    I'm illustrating an example that war is more complex than which nation can inflict more casualties on another.
  30. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Disposal means that the nation can use them at will without risk to its homeland national security. The U.S. makes broad use of disposal forces, which is what we used to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as maintain the Korean border and conduct various other ops around the world... because...
  31. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    We just lost a 20-year conflict to people who bang goats for funsies and have no weapons of war beyond Ak-47s and home made IEDs. Probably shouldn't talk too much shit about Russia's problems with a 1st world military.
  32. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Russia has committed something like 1 / 100th of its fighting aged males to the conflict. As for munitions and armor - we have a lot to do with that. But supplying munitions for a country to stall an offensive is not the same as repelling an invasion in Eastern Europe after invoking NATO...
  33. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Disposal =/= intentionally wasteful. Disposal means that it has no impact to Russia's national security if they lose. It's the same context as your disposable income - you get to use it however you like.
  34. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Russia has attacked, and continues to attack, Ukraine with disposal forces.
  35. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Yep. I guess what I'm trying to get at is... let's say Trump wasn't trying to play 'let's appease Putin,' and strictly wanted to cut the DoD budget to $500B because we weren't going to pick up 80% of the burden for defending Eastern Europe. Would the churn from NATO allies be any less?
  36. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    I agree with your first sentence, but a point of contention: We don't spend $800B on defense. We spend $800B to have a global, expeditionary military force capable of rapidly projecting power. Were we to focus solely on homeland defense, we could probably quarter our budget thanks to...
  37. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    So if the DoD cut 2 Army divisions and 5% of DoD civilians, that's a cut of ~$6B for the divisions, about $2B is personnel costs and the other $4B is O&M. Laying off 5% of DoD civilians save another $7B. That's $9B of personnel costs out of a ~$180B, or 5%. Assuming we want to cut each category...
  38. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    More cuts, erm, "refocusing" on the way.
  39. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Congress is going to override his veto in the very first appropriations bill, just like they did toward the end of his last term when he tried to kill 2x carriers. Then Trump will turn around and tell everyone how great it is because he wanted everything that's in it.
  40. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Not a fan of one-off quotes... To your first question: 60% of Republicans and 54% of independents want foreign aid cut, while even 39% of Democrats support it. So the American people say it's a waste. To your second thing... roughly 200M Americans are working. I did say the phrase "working...
  41. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    This made me look for shits and giggles... the 1972 and 1984 elections were really something. Also, the split for Carter / Ford was East / West, not North / South like it is now (with some exceptions). CA and NY didn't turn perma-blue until 1992 (heh, that rhymes).
  42. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    As noted before... the arbiters of eligibility are the states to put a candidate on the ballot. House only gets a say if no one gets 270 electoral votes, and can't force someone to list Trump for a 3rd term. Senate can whine all they want, but they ultimately have no skin in the game.
  43. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Of course it will. You completely missed the point of that discussion, but oh well.
  44. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    @Flash, good catch on that last line of the 12th amendment. That's much more straightforward :)
  45. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    I don't think it's that questionable. Depends on how you want to interpret "the office of the President." Does that mean the President specifically, or does that mean President, VP, his white house staff, and his cabinet members? So you're saying a 2-term President could never be Secretary of...
  46. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Flash, there is nothing that stops a former 2-term President from being on the VP ballot, succeeding as President from the VP role, or being appointed as VP due to vacancy.
  47. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    Also the quip "what do you mean you wanted a seat at the table? You could have negotiated three years ago..." Ummm... negotiated what? The annexation of Ukraine, execution of Zelenskyy, and murder of millions of people?
  48. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    I mean, let's play this out. There are 23 Democrat state governors and 27 Republican ones. If Trump were on the ballot in every state with a Republican governor (which would be astonishing), he cannot possibly win 270 electoral college votes due to the way our population is distributed. There's...
  49. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    The states administer elections. There may be a few outliers, but I don't see a path where enough states ignore the 22nd amendment and put him on the ballot to get enough electoral college votes to win, and no judge will make a standing ruling to force them to do so. If anything, such a plan...
  50. Spekkio

    Hard Power and Soft Power

    I'm aware of how the budgeting process works. You don't need to have an intricate knowledge of that process to understand that allocating $39B toward USAID in an appropriations bill is a waste of taxpayer dollars. What I sought to do in my post is demonstrate that while $39B is an...
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