US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3417

On March 22 2016 04:57 frazzle wrote:

If they embraced the Palestinians they conquered and integrated them into the state of Israel that would be one thing. Expelling Palestinians from their land and explicitly having a policy of maintaining a Jewish majority state is another.

On March 22 2016 06:06 KwarK wrote:
A few tens of billions? So like one F-35?

On March 22 2016 06:14 Velr wrote:
Some quick googling brought me to: Germany/Franke/UK/Spain/Italy alone accounting for 20% of total arms exports worldwide (US is at 31%, Russia at 25% and China at 5%).
While i agree that it would take time to truely gear it up, its not like there isn't any knowledge around...

But nvm, its a stupid discussion and i don't know why I started it

On March 22 2016 06:26 oneofthem wrote:

you can't really lump uk into that group. there is greater integration of uk to murica now than ten years ago.

also, lol 'new f15.' it's more expensive to buy these than f35 in bulk.

On March 22 2016 06:37 ticklishmusic wrote:
I'm pretty sure KwarK was joking about tens of billions for a plane. You can get yourself a Nimitz-class carrier for 4.5B or a Gerard Ford-class one for 10B (not accounting for ~30B of R&D).

The total life-cycle cost for the entire U.S. fleet was estimated at US$1.51 trillion over a 50-year life, or $618 million per plane.

On March 22 2016 06:37 ticklishmusic wrote:
I'm pretty sure KwarK was joking about tens of billions for a plane. You can get yourself a Nimitz-class carrier for 4.5B or a Gerard Ford-class one for 10B (not accounting for ~30B of R&D).

On March 22 2016 06:44 GreenHorizons wrote:


Of course, they run about $75-$120m each, depending on how you want to calculate the cost. We will have paid quite a bit more for ours though.

On March 22 2016 05:12 Ghanburighan wrote:


I think that's likely. Especially as he also called out South Korea for not pulling its weight, while South Korea spends a lot of its GDP on defense; South Korea's military spending as percent of its GDP is roughly in the same ballpark as the US, but because it's poorer, this means South Korea spends roughly 10% of their annual budget on defense.

Donald Trump is on the verge of two things once thought to be impossible: winning the Republican presidential nomination, and putting Republicans’ historically large House majority in danger.

Democrats have for the past year discussed the GOP’s 30-seat majority as a long-term problem, solvable only by shrinking it over several successive elections. But Trump’s remarkable rise in the GOP presidential race, and the backlash he has already provoked among the broader electorate, has suddenly raised the prospect of a large November wave against Trump and the Republicans who would share the ballot with him.

The House GOP’s leading indicators — its most vulnerable members, like Reps. Bob Dold and Carlos Curbelo — are already sounding the alarm against Trump and his rhetoric on women, Hispanics and other groups. The party’s outside groups are preparing an intensified fundraising push to help defend the chamber. The respected Cook Political Report downgraded Republicans’ chances in 10 districts Friday. And though the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has been stung by overzealous predictions in past years, won’t say outright that the majority is in play, the party is clearly thinking about it.

Democrats already had reasonable odds of flipping a dozen or so House seats. But DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján recently started highlighting “reach” districts, like those of Rep. John Mica in Florida and Rep. Steve Knight in California, that broaden Democrats’ target list enough to take back the chamber — if local candidates can take advantage of the sudden opportunity. Strategists are now turning their attention to moderate suburbs around Detroit, Minneapolis, Washington and other areas where House Democrats have struggled in recent years but Trump has already shown weakness.

“The idea that Trump is going to help with federal races is like putting lipstick on a pig,” said Jason Roe, a California-based Republican strategist and a former spokesman for Marco Rubio's presidential campaign. “To deal with that, most people with a brain are cutting and running, redirecting resources from the presidential to keeping control of Senate and House.”

A handful of particularly vulnerable Republicans have already distanced themselves from Trump.

On March 22 2016 06:47 TheTenthDoc wrote:


Well, it could be worse. He could have called out Japan for only have a self-defense force. In fact I bet the only thing stopping him from vomiting that up at some point is that he doesn't know about it.

On March 22 2016 06:46 KwarK wrote:

They come with locked in service contracts with Lockheed-Martin. They don't make their money on the plane, they make it on the upkeep because the government doesn't understand what a sunk cost is and would rather pay $50m on upkeep per year than remove a $80m asset from their books.

literal steel scraps like the a-10