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Seems like a rather concerning stare of affairs, I suppose. The mouth diarrhea about our expansionist plans. Gonna make international relations even more tricky.

Do you know anything about anything? Serious question. Trump gets a long with foreign leaders much better than Biden ever did. Especially in that part of the world. The Saudis will be key to solving this shitshow in Gaza. And guess who couldn't even get the Saudi leader on the phone? Joe. Fucking. Biden. That's who. Saudi crown prince loves the shit out of Trump.

I do not like the idea at all- makes me sick to my stomach even thinking about it- and I have my doubts Trump is even serious about this. Could just be him throwing shit against the wall, trying to throw Benjamin Mileikowsky for a loop. Who knows. Trump is a deal maker. The guy has literally negotiated for a living his entire adult life. And if you've ever been a part of negotiating anything you'd know being a tough mean son of a bitch, having a ton of bluster and an edge, and throwing all kinds of shit at the wall can be an extremely effective strategy in negotiations....and especially so when your currency is still the worlds' reserve currency and you have the most powerful military on planet earth.

as someone who lived through a mini version of this scandal (the Milwaukee County pension scandal (late 90s/early 00)) which a quarter century later is still leaving a mark on the balance sheet for the county, I disagree OAM.      It was a must to rip the F ing bandaid right off, later led to Act 10 in Wisconsin too, which the left is still going wild to try to unwind via the Courts.  I was a 'victim' of voters/pols putting an end to that era (in WI), it had to be done.

the pigs at the trough need to be slaughtered.  it is not sustainable.

I don't disagree but the problem of scale is misunderstood by nearly everyone.  See, for example this reply:

Holy smokes.  $45 Billion is like 2x the budget of NASA.  We could have went to Mars multiple times with that amount of cash over a 10 year period. 

I don't mean to pick on @Gigem for two reasons:

• $45 Billion really is a lot of money, and
• EVERYONE makes this mistake.  

Yes, $45 Billion is a LOT of money but the Federal Government spent $6.2 Trillion in 2023 while collecting $4.5 Billion in revenue.  

Here it is written out:

• $6,200,000,000,000 Federal Spending in 2023
• $4,500,000,000,000 Federal Revenue in 2023
• $1,700,000,000,000 Federal Deficit in 2023
• $     45,000,000,000 <-$45 Billion written out (I added spaces to align it).  

So great, cut $45 Billion.  You've solved a whopping 2.6% of the annual deficit.  

I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, just that the scale of this problem is nearly incomprehensible.  I think the easiest way to get a handle on it is to lop of eight zeros and think of it as a household, ok:

• $62,000 annual spending
• $45,000 annual income
• $17,000 annual deficit
• $    450 spending reduction

Nice start, you only have $16,550 to go to balance the annual budget.  Oh, and the total debt outstanding has even more zeros.  

On the subject of imperialism, I guess we’re gonna take over Gaza. That’s … odd

I *THINK* and hope that this is a proposal to encourage another solution because yeah, I do NOT want us any more involved in the Middle East than we already are.  

Eisenhower should never have kneecapped the British and French, it was their problem until the 50's when he kiboshed their takeover of the Suez.  

meet the new boss, same as the old one, Israel's servant. hey I guess it's better than destroying 90% of all infrastructure and buildings and slaughtering 400,000 to 500,000 people? Oh well. Great job Genocide Joe.

This annoys the hell out of me.  The US Military should be defending US interests not getting involved in other countries affairs.  

I have to admit, I may not in the kindest about your posting, but that is the funniest thing I’ve read on this message board.

Convincing yourself this administration wouldn’t be fully behind Israel’s most destructive aims, except for those dastardly Dems. High comedy.

The US serving Israel's interests rather than US interests is something that I oppose regardless of whether the President is an R or a D.  Fat lot of good it has ever done me, every President both R and D for generations has served Israel's interests.  

I'm 100% in agreement with you, and furthermore as we've discussed multiple times on this board the only way to really cut is by cutting the entitlements since it's the largest single source of expenditures by the Federal government.  Or, increase taxes (LOL). 

So we know what they are doing, while helpful in it's own way, won't get us where we need.  I'm hopeful that if nothing else, we can cut this bullshit out, grow the economy at the same time, shrink inflation, and maybe curb some of the entitlements and shrink the deficit down to a manageable number again.  When I say shrink entitlements, I'm talking about SS benefits to 150 year olds, gross fraud in medicare, that type of stuff.  Not actually cutting SS benefits or changing the core requirements. 

First, I'm glad you saw what I meant and didn't think I was just picking on you.  

Second, I agree with this post and just want to add one area of SS Fraud/waste that is a pet peeve of mine:
My wife is an addiction counselor who previously worked for a County Health Department with addicts in that county.  Nearly ALL of her adult clients were on SSI Disability.  

Wait, what?  

It gets worse, the disabilities weren't from injuries or something, they were mental health disabilities.  

Wait, what?

Want to know what the disabilities were?  Their addictions WERE their disabilities.  So for these people, in sum, we the taxpayers are paying for:

• Disability checks so they can sit around the house getting high watching tunes, 
• Police for all the crimes they commit,  
• Addiction counselor salaries to tell them to stop taking drugs, 
• Paramedics salaries and Narcan kits for when they OD

Many jobs in Ohio require a drug test to GET the job.  If we are going to require drug tests to GET a job shouldn't we also require drug tests to NOT get a job and sit around collecting govn't handouts too?  

Just a note mostly for our resident libertarian @betarhoalphadelta :
I'm enough of a libertarian that if you are independently wealthy and want to use your wealth to sit around getting high I don't really care.  My issue here isn't the drug use it is the waste of government resources.  

I think that you want to think he did that but the current president wouldn’t do it with more gusto is funny.

I know a smattering of Israelis, and heading into the election, they were all grousing about how Biden wasn’t letting Israel do what it needed to do, but they were excited for Trump to give Bibi free rein.

Except Trump got in, and hostages are being released, bringing an end to the Gaza/Israel affair --- while simultaneously negotiating and end to the Ukraine/Russia war.

He's the most anti-war, anti-killing president in any of our lifetimes.

I believe the evidence is there.