Matthew

Sometimes an American problem requires an American solution. It may not be moral, but it still feels to many here like the shooter is the good guy. Violence isn't a preferred way for a society to get things done, but when the system itself is killing large numbers of people, the masses always have the guillotine.

The fascists on this board would obviously all cum in their pants if they read it. They only deny its relevance out of a need to be oppositional. The narrative on the left has been inaccurate--that its some kind of trump playbook. Trump is completely ignorant of policy and governing, and has no conservative principles. So this is an effort by an outside conservatives group to mobilize the bureaucracy for their ends, given trumps failure to implement policy in his first term.

No problem, it happens. Let me know if you think of anything else to worthwhile to contribute to the topic. 👍

The US leads the biggest military alliance in all of world history. That alliance is a large part of US strength as a global power. Weakening our own alliance therefore weakens the US.

Nope that's a normal thing that's been done for decades. Doing it by threatening to end the alliance is itself an act that weakens the national security of the US.

It's not about saying a phrase, its about wondering what the US policy is. If people ask the president if he supports article 5 and offers no clear answer, and then he cuts the part of a NATO speech that would have answered that question, and his strategist craft policy plans for changing our stance with NATO, then it creates justifiable narrative of doubt.

Yep, good job. Trump suggesting we're going to leave NATO is the topic of this thread. The trump fans here have been arguing that he has never suggested leaving NATO. So thanks for backing my side comrade.

Trump's actions as president, statements he's made, policy proposals of his team. Republicans and Democrats in Congress literally passed a law to try to prevent Trump from leaving NATO, which Trump will simply violate with impunity.

The "terms of the agreement" is the 1949 treaty and only Trump and his team have thrown that treaty into doubt.

Nope the goal post is still the 1949 NATO treaty. Your attempt to invent new nato requirements to justify Trumps faithlessness has failed.

If/when Trump gets his way and the US abandons NATO, Europe would lead their own reduced defense and the US would sit in isolation. Russia and China would escalate their territorial expansions.

Exactly. Tell this to Donald Trump when he deliberately sows seeds of doubt about our commitments to the NATO treaty.

Article 5 of the nato treaty is in fact a formal commitment. Trump's weakness in communicating an unwavering policy of upholing that agreement is not nit picking. Its not officially a formal commitment. In 2014 it was a 10 year goal that counties informally agreed to work towards. No treaty was signed or any other kind of binding agreement. Not true, the strategic value of the alliance is first in the solidity the agreement. Second the sum total of our alliance's populations and economic capacities. Third the upkeep and preparedness of our arsenal. Weakening the most important item in order to marginally improve preparedness is deeply ignorant.

Not after decades of conservative deregulation. It was republicans who forced finance industry deregulation that led to the recession. Even Alan Greenspan admitted this.

I agree, which is exactly the problem with Donald Trump. The 2% target is not a formal commitment. It is a suggested commitment proposed at NATO's 2002 summit in Prague and has turned into a major benchmark for assessing NATO members, but nothing more. The actual formal commitments of NATO are laid out in the 1949 NATO treaty. It is these commitments that trump has thrown into doubt and therefore created a lack of trust. The level of hardness of one's pressure is not an objectively measurable thing. For example it was Bush II's administration that elevated the obscure 2% figure into a spending goal in the first place and later tried (and failed) to make it a requirement. Nevertheless, bringing this 2% target to the forefront in the early 2000s was an actual leap in policy.

A military alliance is a trust and a willingness engage in shared sacrifice. Sometimes that involves money, but it is not a monetary transaction. Have you ever been married? If so, what matters more in your marriage--mutual trust or money? One part was a matter of fact and the other was a matter of opinion. As you should know by now, I always opt for the demonstrably factual argument and ignore the subjective fluff.

The feelings and perceptions of your allies matter when the issue is confidence in your mututal protection agreement. Not true, calling out europeans for not meeting their defense spending goals has been a hallmark of US diplomacy with NATO for decades (for both parties). Obama and Bush II did this many many times. The fact that trump thinks the way to get alliance partners to act is to threaten to blow up the entire alliance probably explains why he's never had a successful relationship with a woman, why his businesses all fail, why his previous associates despise him, and why his kids apparently hate him.

Maybe the wall. Its hypothetically easier to spend tens of billions of dollars on a wall that does very little rather than actually pass a bill to reform the administrative problems that have plagued the immigration system for decades. Trump can't have a photo op with administrative reforms, so they won't happen.

Well Europeans are very concerned right now that the US is no longer going to be with them and that they would have to face Russian and Chinese aggression alone. If our allies feel this about us it means the reverse will also be true and that they therefore feel less obligated to support us. The US is already right now weaker and more isolated in the world because of Trump.

No, I got covid a couple months ago, otherwise I would have.

It's solely the power and responsibility of the president--not France--to communicate US foreign policy with the world. Any impression of cracks or doubts in US resolve is the fault of the President first (and sometimes Congress second, though not in this case).

Repeatedly making the whole world doubt our commitment to the core promise of NATO was and continues to be a policy choice, not a one off gotcha moment.

Which narcotic do you consume before posting?

That's a good point. In 1981 Reagan responded to the signs of recession by spinning it as necessary for moving forward. Reading that speech will make anyone appreciate how awful the current generation of republicans are by comparison even though his reasoning is flawed and short-sighted.

One big flaw in your narrative is that you're attempting to describe the entire thing as being caused by government policy when the vast majority of it was caused by private sector activity. The policy changes made by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the early 2000 were done to keep up with private sector competition. One way we know it was caused primarily by unregulated private sector activity is because housing bubbles happened in many European countries between 2003-2007 (including Spain, Ireland, the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, and others). Their mortgages were not being impacted by US federal policies at Fannie and Freddie. The private sector financial shenanigans that collapsed the system were the product of conservatives obsession with deregulation. In the 1980s republicans started trying to repeal the Glass–Steagall act which was a 1930s law separated lending banks from investment banks. They finally did so with the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999, which also explicitly banned any regulation of the derivatives market. There were many other deregulation policy changes in the 1980s and 1990s. Not allowing any basic guardrails within a powerful finance industry was foolish and does far more to explain the chain of events that created these bubbles (and why the bubble was magnitudes larger than the actual housing properties involved) not just in the US but in many counties that were utilizing the same finance markets. The FCIC said it best when they concluded that "We had a 21st-century financial system with 19th-century safeguards."