MAGA rages over report Pentagon exempting Ukraine from government shutdown
https://www.newsweek.com/maga-rages-over-report-pentagon-exempting-ukraine-government-shutdown-1829028Open linkView original on lemmy.world546
Comments147https://www.newsweek.com/maga-rages-over-report-pentagon-exempting-ukraine-government-shutdown-1829028Open linkView original on lemmy.world
Conservatives genuinely support Russia invading innocent European countries and committing genocide. This is just who conservatives are.
Conservatism is a plague of oppression that is long overdue for a cure. There is no place in a modern civilization for conservatives.
Conservatism has been infiltrated and suborned by Russian intelligence.
This is what’s going on. I really don’t understand how it’s not very obvious to everyone that the entire Republican party has been infiltrated by the Russians.
What If they haven't really been "infiltrated", though, in the conventional sense? What if they are deliberately inviting the Russian Influence in, because they like the Russian model of Capitalism better than ours?
I believe they are trying to build an Oligarchy here, on purpose, because they are planning to become the oligarchs.
I'm kinda more in this camp. I think Russia and the GOP are working together (kinda hard to live through 2016 without believing that on some level) but does that mean that Russian intelligence has "flipped" the GOP? I don't think so.
I think it's more of a convergent goals kinda situation. I think one of the things that the GOP wants to do to American politics is turn it into a open moneymaking venture. Not saying that it isn't defacto already there, but it is still looked down upon and technically criminal behavior to accept bribes and the like. Matters of enforcement aside.
Not only is that kind of blatent corruption already prevalent in Russian politics, Russia for there part would love a united states that they could just bribe to get off their back. The GOP is trying to comodify American politics and by consequence American power abroad and Russia is looking to be their number one customer.
Does that mean that Trump gets marching orders daily from Putin? No, probably not. There's probably some level of communication between them, but I doubt any of that takes the form of any kind of directives or anything.
@PeleSpirit
Lindsay Graham was never a decent person. I hate Trump but he’s done some amusing stuff over the last few years. Completely making Cruz and Graham debase themselves comes to mind
Lindsey Graham was never a decent human being. He just had bouts of openly verbalized rationality previously. Now he simply keeps it all to himself only openly toeing what the party line changes to.
I do think this is more on point. They want a dictator and oligarchs so they see Putin's Russia as a kindred spirit.
Yes. It could certainly be collusion. They do love that word.
And their news outlets. Fox, Carlson, OAN, Newsmax, all of them spouting what their masters tell them.
It is obvious to everyone, which is why several key democracies around the world are funnelling billions into the only country actively fighting Russia. The US is using it's own intelligence and command functions to help guide Ukraine in what to fight and where. Russia is being overthrown and their arrogant invasion is how Putin will lose a tremendous amount of credibility worldwide.
Russian military tech has been proven to be substandard when compared to literally any other arms manufacturing nation except China and India. German, Swedish, UK, French, and US weapons are being used against Russia to incredible effect and showing other national leaders how ineffective Russian weapons are. This means far fewer nations will field Russian tech and gear.
Russian without the illusion of power will have some serious internal upsets, like the recent Wagner and rebel uprisings. Whoever replaces Putin will not renew those conservative back channels because those relationship are contingent on being an international asshole, which a new leader can't afford to be.
So don't worry about the long term effects since Russia may not be here for long. Everyone does see Russia being an international asshole and it's the reason they are losing their war.
Don't forget that Russia still has some very powerful assets, like nuclear material, nuclear technology, and a veto at the UN. And Russia's native amounts of oil, fertilizer, and grain means it's really hard for a lot of smaller countries to side against Russia.
The current sanctions allow many of these countries to turn a nice profit by reselling russian products and energy ressources. The western countries are aware, but hesistant to enforce the sanctions there too, as otherwise it'd cause more conflict.
The US has a lost a lot of soft power over the course of the Trump presidency and the key benefactors are Russia and China. If the US had more credibility it could convince more countries to stand on Ukraines side.
Oh no, it's fine; they are just asking questions.
“Let me play devil’s advocate”
“Are what we pretend to be”
My mom was bitching about this last night…after supporting efforts by the US & NATO when Putin first went in.
Now we need to stop sending money over there, it’s not our responsibility, let Europe deal with it, get rid of NATO, etc etc etc. Apparently if the US stops sending aid, we could feed every hungry child & house every homeless veteran in “our country” and take care of “our people”.
I told her those problems existed before 2022 and we didn’t fix them then, so this doesn’t really affect that now.
“But we could! If we wanted to!”
Well, yeah, that’s the root of the problem - we don’t want to. Ukraine is irrelevant to that argument.
I just figured these were the new MAGA/Fox talking points & changed the subject.
You can remind her of our obligations to Ukraine according to the Budapest Memorandum of 1994
It’s so strange how easily Trump convinced Americans to abandon almost all of their values.
I wish I had remembered that at the time.
It seems everyone has forgotten that it absolutely our obligation to defend Ukraine.
I remember reading about it when everything started, but I didn’t think to bring it up at the time. We fight a lot & disagreeing with her gives me a ton of anxiety.
How unfortunate sorry to hear that.
They never had them.
Speak for yourself.
🤓
America could also do all that stuff if we stopped putting for-profit middlemen in between government services and the public, too.
But thats socialism
Yup, I didn't see the Donald end homelessness. He had 4 years, most of our problems still exist.
I'm legitimately so confused why so many Republicans seem to hate Ukraine (other than the politicians being in the pocket of Putin).
The cost of U.S involvement in Ukraine is only 60 billion so far, only 2/3 of the MONTHLY budget of the U.S military and I swear to god I hear more people bitching it about than Afghanistan, which cost 2.1 trillion dollars and is literaly 35 times greater than what we spent in Ukraine.
Even if you were extremely selfish and didn't care for saving a country and it's citizens from genocide it's in our best interest to defeat Russia. For the last 2 decades the Russian federation has been intentionally sabotaging Europe and the west in general. From hybrid warfare, online propaganda, poisonings and assassinations, destroying deep sea infrastructure, of course cutting energy to Europe and even more.
I'm so tired of this dumb shit idea spreading like wildfire amongst conservative circles and how selfish people are for believing it.
Rant over.
Don't forget the culture war stuff. The Russian Orthodox Church is more socially conservative. (You can see this in Poland too.) Homosexuality is punished, women are more "traditional", etc. And Putin projects a cult-of-personality that people like, even if they have arobber-baron oligarchy.
Repubs look at that stuff fondly, they're titillated.
At this point I don't think there's anything that could come out about Republicans that would make their base reconsider them
Off topic, but let me applaud you for getting the right beverage mix for the reference.
aside from them being literally subject to Russian propaganda and being too stupid to realise, the other factor I think is quite simple.
they think its "woke" to not want Ukraine to fall. that's pretty much it
It is the Ayn Rand influence imo.
Helping Ukraine is alturism, which is bad without self interest.
And MAGA equates to an isolationist nationalist facism. Orwellian.
Because uncle Donny and Putin are friends and he was going to let them roll through. Russia helped build/fund the MAGA movement to sow division in America. Of course they don't support Ukraine.
It's also really confusing because even if you don't have any particular affinity for Ukraine, even a Republican must acknowledge that functionally Russia and China are only things that are even remotely close to peer adversaries, and any military hardware we send Ukraine is going to get dumped directly into damaging that adversary. It's basically one of the most efficient military investments you could get right now. If you're even a bit pro military, you should be pro Ukraine.
Well to paraphrase several preacher, "Putin at least has state church" and the gold gem "Putin at least isn't protrans or gay".
Then you have some people that are against because Dem are for it. It is literally just for them about not agreeing with the other on ANYTHING.
GOP has literally betrayed the entire nation for Russian money. Then they LARP and pretend they care about the cost of Ukraine. Like the Republicans would ever put that money into something like universal healthcare anyway.
It isn't about where it is being spent, but that it is being spent. They are told to see it as unnecessary spending that's taking tax payer's dollars away. They, of course, conveniently forget how much they blew in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mainly because the amount spent on Ukraine is a drop in the sea compared to what they spent.
10 years ago if you had pitched this as the story line for a movie: Republicans aiding Russia in invading Europe you would have been, at best, laughed out of the room.
And yet 10 years ago is when Romney warned us. I remember having a conversation with my mother in which I sounded off incredulously about it, "I don't buy this red scare 2.0 thing" to which my mother said, "there's probably something to it if someone says you shouldn't trust their friends."
I recognised this at once.
Perfect use of this passage.
Kudos.
I wonder why they care so much. It's as if someone is telling/paying them all to put the Ukraine support on hold. I wonder who 🤔
Aid for Ukraine is almost entirely flowing through DoD’s budget (DoD sends weapons from storage, then buys new ones - this also helps end-run Dept of State export rules). DoD acquisitions don’t shut down with the rest of the government, they never have. Ergo, military aid to Ukraine will continue unabated through any shutdown.
Anyone in DC who’s surprised by this has no idea how a government shutdown works.
everyone in DC knows how it works.
They are just feigning outrage for the base.
Just like how they screamed about evil vaccines, while having every single vaccine available during covid.
To be fair, they’re all ancient enough to be in the “high risk” category. 😂
A lot of the billions of dollars in aid is our old equipment from the 90s that was taking up room in storage and costing us money to maintain. Not having to maintain old vehicles is a net savings minus the cost of transporting them.
Well that equipment will be replaced though. Just as Russia is digging out out their T-55s from storage the US military likes to have the capability to do something similar if things get desperate. Just with stuff that's 30 years not 60 years old like Russia is doing.
But they'd need to replace their current equipment with new stuff, they're current equipment will be put into storage.
And yeah they'd want to do this anyway as they don't want to get into a situation like Russia where their stored equipment is 60 years old. So you're kinda right, but if they're replacing equipment a little sooner than planned then there's a calculation for the cost that involves depreciation formulas and the like. Note this was the cause of that accounting error they had recently which was an insane amount of money. They didn't misplace money or misplace equipment, they simply miscalculated the depreciation of the old equipment.
So there is a cost despite it being old equipment. It's not strictly correct to say it's free, though it would be even more incorrect to say it's the same cost as new equipment. The cost is somewhere in between, and it's complicated enough to place a value on it that the DoD screwed it up.
Damn, man. That's a refreshingly simple way to describe it, thank you.
I'd go further and say they don't know how countries work. A government shutdown is really insane to me, but shutting down the military would be just straight up destroying the country.
Maybe a country actually in danger from its neighbors, but America?
America only needs a strong military to play world police.
People think everything stops during a shutdown. Not true essential employees are still required to report to work while non essentials sit at home because Republicans live shutting the government down.
Traitors gonna trait.
Sure, but usually you hang traitors
all they know is there are vulnerable people, and they need to be able to threaten them in some way, and use them as a hostage
I bet they're ok with getting their own paychecks during shutdown though.
This is because Putty-boo either has compromat, or is bribing the shit out of them. (which is, itself, compromat.)
I laugh every time a MAGA snowflake gets upset. Imagine living your life with two brain cells fighting for third place.
Shite education system rearing its ugly head.
MAGA is a pro-putler cult? I'm SHOCKED!
Who do you think is really running the show? An incompetent grifter or a former member of the KGB?
Agreed
Seems to me that they should be worried about keeping the lights on.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Pentagon is reportedly planning to exempt aid to Ukraine from the impact of a potential U.S. government shutdown, sending MAGA Republicans opposed to the assistance into a tizzy.
Former President Donald Trump, who has claimed that he would personally be able to end the Russia-Ukraine war "in 24 hours," has demanded that Republicans "defund all aspects" of the government as the September 30 deadline fast approaches.
Pentagon spokesperson Chris Sherwood told Politico on Thursday that a decision had been made to exempt Ukraine operations during a potential shutdown, just after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington, D.C., to make the case for more military aid for his nation's efforts to fend off the Russian invasion.
But the only thing the @JoeBiden administration cares about is funding their proxy war in Ukraine," wrote former Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
Department of Defense spokesperson Chris Sherwood said in a statement emailed to Newsweek that Operation Atlantic Resolve, the name given to the mission to aid Ukraine, was exempt from a shutdown because it "is an excepted activity under a government lapse in appropriations."
A group of 29 Republican members of Congress sent a letter to the White House on Thursday, vowing to oppose more aid, calling it "an open-ended commitment to supporting the war in Ukraine of an indeterminate nature."
The original article contains 546 words, the summary contains 220 words. Saved 60%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I'm just here to document the lemmy tankies once again allying themselves with the far right.
Will the missiles still be raining down or will Russia acknowledge and respect the arcane traditions of the American legislature?
Duh, ah whunt ta uwn da libz. Y cant ah own da libz?
Time for another pentagon accountant oopsie.
It's crazy how absolutely fucking based one simple shape can be.
War is not up for a vote. The war machine will continue to operate regardless of what the House of Representatives does.
Very true. Russia doesn't care what the US house thinks. They started the war after all. Russia continues to mobilize the war machine while the US fails to act decisively
The US fails to act decisively because they don't want the war to ever end. Give Ukraine just enough support to keep the war going forever, until Russia is bankrupt.
Do you not see the contradiction in your statement or are ya just stupid. Russia going bankrupt could be considered a victory condition. Especially if concessions such as Crimea can be forced in a peace deal.
Russia isn't going bankrupt.
What might happen is they just run out of bodies and the country collapses into civil war, 1917 style. Petrostates don't go bankrupt, they collapse violently.
Potato patoto, regardless Ukraine can claim victory. If Russia runs out of manpower and implodes id consider that a win.
You really don't care about Russian citizens and conscripts, do you? Do they deserve to die?
The citizens? Irrelevent, unless it can gain notable strategic advantages IE Dresden. The Conscripts? Yes. They could turn their rifles at any time they couldve draft dodged but they didnt, they deserve same as the Japanese, Germans, and Italians during WW2.
Always has been. We saw how Obama ran on an anti-war platform in the middle of the middle east wars. Then he continued and expanded the wars after being elected.
The liberals don't want to talk about that.
Gosh isn't it strange, conservatives never saw a war they didn't like until the one that's inconveniencing the Russian president in 2023.
LIBERALS LIBERALS LIBERALS
Do you think the only people opposed to endless war in Ukraine are conservative?
conservatives and tankies. Not much difference between the two tbh. And both looooove sucking putin's dick
I want the war to end.
Dronies want endless war, that's why they love giving weapons to radical right-wingers. Once Russia is done, then America can spend another 20 years dealing with the new terrorist organizations that they spawned. Y'all did the same shit in Afghanistan - arm radical islamists to stop Russia and then start a war against the radical Islamists you armed. Win/Win!
The war could end at any time if Putin stops invading his neighbor. But you know this and just want to keep sucking authoritarian dick under the guise "but I want peeeeece" You're aware that everyone not radicalized like you can see right through that, right? Gotta love how you compare a country being genocided to "arming radical islamists" Pathetic.
Liberals love their covert homophobia don't they?
It's only homophobic if you think sucking dick is bad. Sucking the dick of someone literally genociding a country isn't homophobic, it's a statement of your values.
There's never been a war that democrats didn't love or expand from 2 to 7.
Call me old fashioned, but when I run out of money the first expense I cut is "funding my proxy war with Russia". But that's just me.
Even with the most cynical and selfish geopolitical view, this is a great example of "penny wise pound foolish". How many Active Duty US military personnel have died in that conflict? Zero.
If Russia were allowed to conquer Ukraine, the western border of NATO would be Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, then Russia's next incursion into these nations would mean US military bodies in harms way. Today, the only thing we have to do is provide the weapons the USA spent over the last 70 years designed to defeat Russians to Ukrainians that will use them. This is the cheapest and most effective war is US history.
There are massive economic benefits to USA in the years ahead:
I will call you old fashioned, circa 1914. That isolation and non-interventionist idea in the USA made Europe spend at least 3 more years the decimation of WWI before the US got involved. WWII, where 291,557 American soldiers, sailors, and marines died, was a direct consequence of the long devastation of WWI. So when you're complaining about a war in Ukraine that we only have to pay a bill without spilling our blood, I call you short sighted.
Your money ideas are perfect for personal finance, however that same logic doesn't work at geopolitical scales.
This article is about continuing funding Ukraine during a government shut down, not backing out entirely or never funding Ukraine in the first place.
You're suggesting cutting funding to Ukraine. That conflict isn't a Netflix subscription you can put on pause for a month so that you can make your car payment. Planning and logistics on that level takes months. Cutting off funding would have drastic consequences.
That's a risk I'm willing to take. All the positive things you listed have already been accomplished anyway. Europe can clean up the crumbs without us.
Glad you are willing to risk other peoples lives, family and freedom because of 5 shitbird Republicans who were going to vote no on any budget because their dear leader wants them to obstruct normal functions of government.
Thanks. Now ask me about my plan to make social security optional.
Its is optional. No one is compelling you to cash those checks.
Clearly. You'll join a long line of people before you making similar mistakes being “penny wise pound foolish”.
I'm concerned you aren't even able to exhibit capacity for your own personal self interest. If you think that Europe could take that hit without drastic hits to the USA, you're even more short sighted than I thought before. Those hits would drastically affect your daily life in the USA.
The government shutting down isn't for a reason. It's not a budgeting mechanism. It's literally just Republicans, yet again, refusing to authorize payment for the programs they already authorized.
They do this repeatedly and regularly to force additional concessions on programs they don't like. It's got nothing to do with money and everything to do with social control.
That's such a strange DNC talking point, "Programs already authorized". Program funding changes all the time.
They created a budget. They allocated money to shit. They all voted and it got approved.
Now they have to authorize payment of the thing they already said they'd pay for. It's fucking asinine.
Is that less of a talking point for you? They lie, cheat, and steal to get crap cut in the original budget negotiations, and then they refuse to pay the bill until democrats agree to ridiculous hostage demands.
And they can be renegotiated at any time. Nothing is ever set in stone.
So when are Republicans going to ask billionaires to pull their weight in funding the budget?
Define "pull their weight".
Don't pretend you don't know.
The Republicans really want to leave Ukraine to Russia, they're just waiting on the messaging to convert enough of their base to make it politically feasible to do so.
We're not out of money though, Republicans are just throwing a fit.
That's certainly a even more simple way to view things.
Nope, you're just wrong
That's the liberal worldview. Anything with more than a Harry Potter-level of complexity melts their brains.
True
Or I could call you Boris or Natasha. Lol America doesn’t abandon our Allies the way Trump abandoned the Kurds as a gift to Russia.
Yes, any critique of america makes you Russian lol
I think the Afghans would like a word. Oh, they are dead.
Trump sold out the Afghans when he negotiated the Doha Agreement with the Taliban in Qatar in February 2020.
Trump handed Afghanistan over to the Taliban the same way he abandoned the Kurds in Syria
Lol sure. And biden was powerless.