• FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The US always “finds” money for more war.

    Doesn’t even matter if the war is ours anymore. We’ll fund it if it makes the Democrats’ and Republicans’ golf buddies super-rich.

    • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      At least the cause is deserving this time. Fuck Russia’s naked power grab

      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Far less deserving than an American who needs to see a doctor but has to decide between treatment or bankruptcy.

        • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Luckily we live in a world where it’s possible to invest in multiple things simultaneously. The US already spends more on healthcare than the rest of the world. If it was allocated better this wouldn’t be a problem. Don’t vote Republican, support single payer.

          Isolationism isn’t a realistic policy in a world that is more connected than ever.

          • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Don’t vote Republican, support single payer.

            The Democrats had the chance to pass single payer. Obama had a supermajority for seven months of his presidency. They opted to make it more expensive instead.

            Luckily we live in a world where it’s possible to invest in multiple things simultaneously.

            Yeah, but they don’t.

            • sylver_dragon@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              No, they were always one vote short of a super-majority. Joe fucking Lieberman insisted on the ACA without a public option. The shitbag had sold out to the insurance companies, jumped ship and torpedoed the one chance Democrats had at real healthcare reform. Want to blame someone for the fucked up version of the ACA we got, instead of what was possible? Blame Joe fucking Lieberman.

              • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Joe Lieberman was a Democrat.

                And no, I’ll blame Democrats. Their one chance to do the right thing and they sold out, as they always do.

                It’s a shame the people can’t eat excuses.

                • sylver_dragon@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  He was one, and chose to leave the party in 2006 and become an independent. He did continue to caucus with with Democrats. However, he also endorsed John McCain in 2008.
                  Yes, Democrats were within a dick hair of getting a public option but fell one vote short. Mind you, the super majority vote was only necessary because of the GOP filibustering the entire ACA, even the watered down version. We would have had better health care in this country, if the GOP wasn’t hell bent of preventing it. Could Democrats do better? Yes, but the lack of a public option is very much the fault of the GOP and Joe fucking Lieberman.

                  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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                    10 months ago

                    And Democrats.

                    He did continue to caucus with with Democrats.

                    And, no, they didn’t come withing a dick hair of anything.

                    They rule as conservatives and have for 40 years. This is the shit they pull.

        • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          The reason we don’t have healthcare in the U.S. is conservatives. If we shipped our conservatives to Russia, we could simultanously achieve healthcare in the U.S. and rid ourselves of our primary hindrance to all other progress.

          Conservatism is a plague long overdue for a cure.

          • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            The reason we don’t have healthcare in the U.S. is conservatives.

            Oh, I agree.

            The problem is you all delude yourselves into thinking Democrats aren’t conservatives every two years, despite the fact that they rule as conservatives when we give them power.

    • crackajack@reddthat.com
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      10 months ago

      A lot of weapons supplied to Ukraine are actually old stockpiles whose value depreciated overtime. So basically hand-me-downs. 100 billion aid package to Ukraine sounds a lot, but this is cheaper if people do the math. And US allies are pitching in so US isn’t doing all the heavy lifting.

      More importantly, the US is not doing this for free. The aid package to Ukraine is lend-lease, like in World War II. Ukraine will pay those back like France, UK, Republic of China, USSR, Netherlands and others who received such aid package in the past. UK, for example, fully repaid the lens-lease debt to US in 2000s. Ukraine is expected to be in debt to US all the same. Also, after the war, many Western companies could be expected to invest in Ukraine for rebuilding the country.

      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        We heard similar excuses about Iraq (multiple times) and Afghanistan. We’re “helping them stand up so we can stand down” or “make war there so we don’t have to here”. It wasn’t that long ago that Hamid Karzai was giving speeches in Congress, and then later we found out he was a crook. In 1983 we were shaking hands with Saddam Hussein, because we were paying him to fight our enemies for us.

        And yet, we still lost 20 trillion dollars in those wars, because no one in this country learns from history.

        This is not our war. We should not be paying for it, not while people here can’t see a doctor.

        At the end of the day, you chickenhawks just do not care about the extent to which we neglect our own people in order to enrich warmongers.

        • crackajack@reddthat.com
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          10 months ago

          Except the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not orchestrated by US? And the blame lies squarely at Russia?

          You don’t need a PhD to recognise there is a thing called just war. US interference in Latin America is bad, but so is the unprovoked invasion of Russia on Ukraine. Not helping Ukraine is like one of those moronic peaceniks and isolationists of the past advocating not to help UK against Nazi Germany, or China against Imperial Japan. As someone said already, isolationism doesn’t work this time anymore.

          • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            What’s moronic is how we already spend a trillion on war each year anyway, and now we’ve dumped 200 billion more into a war that isn’t even ours, and took it away from the IRS.

            So not only are we losing money that should be serving the American people in Ukraine, future losses are compounded because the IRS is underfunded too.

            What’s moronic is how you support this when the US is already making war in seven countries at once, with military bases in nearly every country in the world, and it’s still not enough for you even as you can see the vulgar extent to which our own people’s needs are neglected in order to serve it.

            • crackajack@reddthat.com
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              10 months ago

              The Iraq wars were expensive, because the US military was directly managing it and it went on for thirty years, if I am to include an intermittent period before 2002. Funding Ukraine is less expensive so because, and I know it’s a loaded term, the proxy and taking more direct casualties.

              And as I mentioned, lend-lease is not that expensive. Ukraine is receiving hand me downs and unwanted equipment. They’re not receiving latest state of the art weapons like the stealth bomber or Zumwalt class destroyer that cost $2 billion a piece. This will pay back overtime.

              The US isn’t a saint and have been abusive of its power as the sole hegemon (that’s why I am an advocate to reform UN and allowing multipolar world), but letting Russia get away with invading Ukraine violates the UN charter to respect national borders, a cornerstone of what kept peace in the past 80 years. A lot more will lose than just money. Same if Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were let to annex countries and commit genocide wantonly. The US provided lend-lease and financial aid to China and UK before becoming dire involved in World War 2, and that is in spite of the Great Depression.

              I understand people’s frustration with providing support to Ukraine amidst the neglect of domestic issues. But the domestic issues are the fault of neoliberal austerity policies that had been going on for decades, way before the Russo-Ukrainian war. Decades of underfunding social programmes and letting problems compound. When a new problem arises, politicians uses that to distract the people from already existing problems that are the politicians’ own doing.