You know I don't disagree but two things are also true; 1. I have been hearing this for *my entire life* and the date or the number or the metric keeps moving forward so for the debt chicken little's, get your facts together it's wearing thin, particularly because...

2. Those same people who cry about the debt my whole life continue to elect the same people who just run it up even more. Or the last two times leave office with a huge mess that the now Democrat president has to spend to clean up (Obama in 2008, Biden with Covid) nevermind the military ventures we also had to pay for, thank you Mr Bush.

And now we have this fine Big Beautiful Bill that spends more money for not much in return and is taking on debt for fucking tax cuts so maybe all Republicans and Conservatives can shut it about the debt for a couple decades. Let the adults raise some revenue (Like Biden was doing)

Firstly, was the Budapest Memorandum not real and signed by Russia? Those nukes they got back seemed pretty real. That lease on Sevastapol was treated as real.

Guess what, that concept also went out the window after the cold war and even under your own view all you are saying here is "Hey Ukraine, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and folks. You don't get to decide which sphere you belong to. You are not actually independent nations which is the position of Mr Putin and friends, conveniently.

You don't get to be countries, you don't get to decide your leaders, you don't choose who you trade with because Russia's feelings will be hurt.

Yeah Arafat kinda sucked shit at being a state leader instead of a commander.

I'm sorry but this is bullshit, Russia has zero reasons to fear unprovoked invasion from NATO, that's cope. Those "formally neutral" countries lobbies and voted to join NATO because just like the USSR Russia still liked fucking with it's neighbors in the 90's and 2000's. The Baltics are feeling pretty good right now, they're not getting invaded despite sharing a border.

They're (Putin and his oligarchs) mad because all these nations have gone towards the EU just like they started invading Ukraine with paramilitary right after Euromaidan, Ukraine wanted to join the EU trade group instead of their bloc.

This is absolutely unjustified Russian aggression against a neighboring country. Russia can go back to respecting Ukraines borders like they agreed to in 1994 and then we can talk about who's antagonizing who here.

Joe Biden when speaking to the Senate in 1995 about American getting involved in Bosnia; This part is at 12:58 but really the whole thing is really compelling, Biden makes a very enthusiastic case for America's role as you describe (and really it also lines up to Ukraine today in my opinion, particularly since Europe is uniting around it and we should be supporting them for the effort.)

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.c-span.org%2Fclip%2Fse...

What is the message we send to the world if we stand by and we say we will let it continue to happen here in this place but it is not in our interest? We do not fear that it will spread? I am not here to tell you that, if we do not act, it will spread and cause a war in Europe--tomorrow or next year. But I am here to tell you that within the decade, it will cause the spread of war like a cancer, and the collapse of the Western alliance. What is so important about the Western alliance? NATO for NATO's sake so that we can beat our breast?

What I am about to say is going to cause me great difficulty if I am reelected and come back here as the ranking member or chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. But Europe cannot stay united without the United States. There is no moral center in Europe.

When in the last two centuries have the French, or the British, or the Germans, or the Belgians, or the Italians moved in a way to unify that continent to stand up to this kind of genocide? When have they done it? The only reason anything is happening now is because the United States of America finally--finally--is understanding her role.

Oh Israel has a lot of different populations still and the West Bank settler's are fuckin' nuts. If you're American you hear about those out there ethno nationalist militia groups, that is kinda their version of it. Really while everyone focuses on Gaza the worst shit is consistently happening out there.

Yeah my bad, I thought they were commenting why everyone is surprised by the inspection, I figured everyone in the UK knows they have inspections but some folk don't even know of the concept around here. .

I would hope most every folk understand why such a tax is necessary and good but I guess I've never seen the logistical and privacy costs of tracking the miles driven worth the benefits over just flat rating the EV at registration, or making it based on vehicle weight or some other fact of the vehicle and driver. The best taxes tend to be the ones that are the simplest to comply with.

Don't know where you are from but here in America(TM) we let the states decide how and whether at all vehicles get inspected, despite the fact there are zero restrictions for driving between state borders.

I live in a no inspection state and while when I did it was annoying to have to take it in every year or two the number of tires in the parking lot I see with the belt wires poking out tells me they're probably a good thing.

The fires can be worse but gas cars catch on fire like 2-20x as often.

This is also a problem that is only going to get better over time, most companies are moving away from lithium-ion and they are making more and more stable. In 20 years all the batteries will be solid state and those vehicles will effectively be inert, the only flammable device will be the airbags.

This was more interesting counterpoint back in the 2010's where every Tesla that caught fire made the national news but the stats just don't back it up.

Yes it does seem like this admin believes in the "realist" sphere-of-influence pre-WWI style of international relations.

Surely by coincidence this is also the position Russia holds, funny how that keeps happening!!

Depends on whether you think a multi-polar world can exist today. I don't think it can, there will be a global hegemon and your choices are China or the USA.

What was the title of my post? Perspective, that's all, picture that mount of billions in a different way. I also said it was 1 year of revenue but go off chief.

What is my conclusion? That there's an AI bubble?

It isn't really new information that the largest corporations in China are either directly involved with the Chinese government or implicitly involved with the Chinese government and if you are intertwined with the Chinese government then you are with their military, this separation that we are used to in the US simply doesn't and has never existed over there.

This is how it has always been and it's by design, it's a Loki's wager of private/public systems. This is feeling even more performative and desperate from the current admin who really have no concept of how to actually deal with China which is why Xi has been running roughshod over them and Xi isn't some master strategist either so it's all relative, he's just making obvious moves and playing off the fact this admin is too chickenshit to stand up to the big countries out there.

Thus we have 10% of our Navy off the coast of Venezuela instead of Taiwan because what we really need to fight China is a regionwide destabilizing civil war a couple thousand miles from our own shores.

All that can be true but it can still be a bubble and it can still be a stupid amount of money. This is also about 3x the entire military budget of Russia ($66B)

And if this is so crucial to the military then I would hope we could spare some of that free flowing money to Ukraine to you know, do the drone warfare they seem to have become experts at (at a much lower cost than all this) and provide us valuable field research and testing while also putting pressure of the geopolitical antagonists we are worried about having all this for the future.

I dunno, seems a little "sus" to me, as the kids say.