Will the Republicans / Democrats that you support...

Discussion in 'Free Speech Alley' started by Rex_B, Feb 18, 2011.

  1. Rwilliams

    Rwilliams Veteran Member

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    1) bring all troops not actually fighting home. We still have troops in Germany , south Korea , japan, Poland now and we even have peacekeeping troops still in Egypt inforcing a ceasefire from the suez canal crisis from the 1950s( very few but some are there). The U. S. Has forward bases all over the world. We could save hundreds of millions if they came home.
    2) social security must be cut. Anyone with a net worth over say a million or two must give up their checks. Not going to be popular but we have to do something.
    3) cut bull**** giveaways. Example : an add has been running about a free cell phone and minutes to poor people. These giveaways have to stop. Also in the last stimlus bill they're were giveaways to a college to study meth use in Asia. This has to stop.
    4)foreign aid must stop. Peorid. You can't buy friends
    5) we feed the world. We give much of this away. If the world wants to rape us on oil then we tie our food prices to oil prices. Oil goes up 10% food goes up 10%. Were fighting for national survival.This is export prices not domestic prices. Why give away what our farmers produce? China doesn't give away anything.
    6) we have enough nat gas to run our cars until better batteries or something else comes along. New gas has been found and extraction from shale is easer than ever. We could switch to nat gas in ten years if we wanted to. This would cause our domestic oil to be enough for our petrochemicals. No more gasoline cars allowed to be built after 2020 and we use U.S. Nat gas.
    7) play hard ball world wide. We try to buy friends. The gov should provide for common defense, regulate interstate commerce and a few other things but should give the states back the power they once had and were suppose to have. Education for example should be local
    8) get a grip on public unions. Gov workers holding states hostage with pensions are bankrupting the states.
    My 2 cents. Flame away
     
  2. TBTrumpet

    TBTrumpet Founding Member

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    One cornerstone of successful modern day warfare is to have a fast and mobile military force. Having bases all over the world means that the US has the capacity to strike with massive force anywhere on the planet quicker than anyone else. We are talking about minutes and hours, as opposed to days and weeks. China, the world's second most powerful military, can't even touch this with a 100 mile long stick. Would you be so quick to give up such a huge advantage?

    "The best defense is a good offense".

    All your other points were dead on. Bravo!
     
  3. LSUsupaFan

    LSUsupaFan Founding Member

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    I don't care who the unions or the companies they contract with support as long as the government is picking sides in labor negotiations.
     
  4. Rex_B

    Rex_B Geaux Time

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    We have enough nuclear submarines strategically placed to take care of any real threat in hours.
     
  5. mctiger

    mctiger RIP, and thanks for the music Staff Member

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    Only if the objective is total annihilation of the threat. You can't take or hold ground with a submarine. You need the ground pounders to do that.
     
  6. Rex_B

    Rex_B Geaux Time

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    They don't just fire nuclear.

    We have 400+ bases overseas. Waste.
     
  7. Rwilliams

    Rwilliams Veteran Member

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    Smart placement of troops is the answer. We don't need an army division in Germany along with two air wings and a state of the art hospital. In the 1960s maybe but not now. A plane can take patients anywhere on the planet in a few hours. I'm talking about after they're stabilized and for recovery. We do not need bases that we lease in japan when we own islands near by. We are still paying to defend post ww2 Europe from the big red dog while European countries have very little military spending. Britian has the largest European military and minus it's navy is no larger than the US marine Corp. We need to pull out of Europe. We still have a NATO presence bit we don't need to have 1/3 of our oversea forward deployment in Europe especially since most of Europe is NATO.
     
  8. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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    Better that we cut unneeded bases in the US. Those overseas bases give us strategic reach that nobody else has. They don't cost that much. Most military spending goes to personnel, military retirees, and benefits.

    We must do something, but SS is not nearly as expensive or as wasteful as Medicare and Medicaid. We need immediate reform there.


    Agreed. TOPS has to stop in Louisiana. It's a nanny state measure that is killing us. The State is supposed to fund its universities and the citizens are supposed to fund their own college educations or earn an academic or athletic scholarship. Screwed up Louisiana is gutting its universities and paying students to go to college.

    Now, this is ridiculous. Foreign Aid buys strategic influence that we need badly, Our enemies won't stop paying foreign Aid. China lavishes it in many countries.

    This notion was destroyed during the Oil Embargo of the 70's. OPEC learned that oil is not a weapon and we learned that food isn't either. We do not feed the world. Most nations are basically self sufficient in food. We sell a lot overseas because we are very efficient and can under cut their prices, but in a pinch most countries can feed themselves.

    Natural gas is not inexhaustible and is getting more and more expensive. The costs of a 10-year complete transition from gasoline would bankrupt the country. Natural gas need to be part of the changes needed but it will be much more complex than that.

    Nobody plays harder ball worldwide than the US. We just took down two countries. We've been involved in 40 shooting wars on every continent since World War II. We have conducted naval strikes and air strikes dozens of times and full scale invasions and occupations with ground troops. We totally control the worlds oceans. We pursue enemies anywhere on earth they go.

    There is little need for public unions.

    This has nothing to do with unions. States offer pensions to their workers and this is the only deal available to them. Workers paid their contributions but the states often failed to make their contributions to keep the pension funds viable when time were good and now when times are bad they expect the workers to take the hit.

    Louisiana regularly robs the state pension funds when they produce profits instead of letting those profits grow to cover expenses in hard times. Now the system is underfunded, not because of the state employees, but because of the governors and legislatures.
     
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  9. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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    No, we don't. We have half the nuclear submarines we once had and the ocean has gotten no smaller.
     
  10. red55

    red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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    Actually, we have 92 military bases overseas and over half of them are tennant bases with no forces permanently stationed there.

    We have over 400 military facilities overseas, but these are not bases for out forces. Most are communication and logistics stations, others are training facilities for local troops, and we have military liaison stations in 97 countries.
     

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