I fucking love how they were all about sending in troops literally 15 seconds before that as if an active combat operation by US forces doesn't burn millions an hour.
The B-2 are notorious hanger Queens. The stealth coating needs constant attention.
I'm curious how much of that flight cost is insane proprietary maintenance procedures and what-have-you that manufacturers are charging to the US gov't at absurd margins, and how much of that is the "real" cost of flying the C-5.
Same. I'm sure the actual cost of flying, fueling, and maintaining a giant ass plane loaded with heavy military equipment is expensive as is, but it's the US military, they could upcharge a nut and a bolt for $30.
The largest, newest version of the 747 cargo aircraft has a cargo capacity of about 2/3rds that of the C5, and costs less than $20,000 per flight hour. How tf does the C5 manage to rack up that high of a bill? The military even takes shortcuts on maintainence procedures that are illegal to do on commerical aircraft to save money.
A combat aircraft that make sense for, but for just a cargo plane? Wtf?
I imagine that's why they contract air transport out whenever possible. They basically only use the C5 when they absolutely have to, like for moving tanks and helicopters because the 747 cargo hold isn't setup for stuff like that.
Imagine being that salesman. Some dumb asshole got a bag and I know in my heart they squandered it trading futures for cryptocurrencies
they don't think about any of the increased pay for soldiers, civilian contractors with danger pay, diesel, aviation fuel, petrol, parts for vehicles, replacement equipment, the newest doodads the mic wants you to use, ammunition...
Turns out relentlessly extending your firm military commitments further and further across the world might be a bad idea once you leave the rhetorical to account for the material
I like how the comments admit that Ukraine is only being used as a way to weaken Russia and not because they actually care about the people. Ukraine is a lot like the ROC. Chiang-Kai-Sek would ask for money so often to combat the PRC that he became known as "General Cash-My-Check."
Also they're finally admitting Ukraine has a whole lot of corruption, and not Wholesome 100 Anti-Russia Nazi Country.
Lol, typical product-buyer mindset. Can't admit the flaws when they want to buy it, its perfect, Slava ukrani! But the moment the price gets a bit too steep, they suddenly become keen-eyed political analysts who have some concerns.
already $13.6 billion in combined military and humanitarian aid for "responding to the situation in Ukraine"
Note that according to some UN guy, $6 billions applied correctly could save 42 million people from potentially starving, roughly equivalent to the entire population of Ukraine
This is awesome Redditors have no qualms with supporting Nazis, but draw the line at giving them too much money.
However, the fact that these views are being supported on a space as astroturfed as the worldnews subreddit really demonstrates just how little tolerance Americans will have if their quality of life goes down due to the war/Russian sanctions. If the cost of living doubles while billions are being sent to Ukraine, no amount of "Putin's recession" cope will prevent the Dems from getting massacred in the midterms.
2 billion a month is a rounding error in the combined budgets of the western military complex
It's amazing, these imps have no morality, perspective, or politics outside of psychotic power fantasies about empire, it's all spectacle, they get bored and suddenly revert back to conservative debt hawkry the minute they detect a lull in msm coverage of imperial client #24
Talk about well-trained dogs, fuckin Winston Smith ass demons
Javelins for Pell Grant recipients who operates a successful business in an underserved community for at least three years.
No no no my dudes that's not the plan.
The plan is, we're going to loan you two billion a month, and then the IMF is going to come up with a nice plan for how you're going to pay us back by the time of the Horus Heresy.
U.S literally spends >700 billion a year on military but this is too much huh.
It's seeing the direct cost that bothers them. If the news media did this to other expenses in the US military budget, I think they would complain about those things too.
These redditors are just eating out of the media's hand.
$2bn/month is not a subscription cost I'd support
The new Netflix war is mediocre
I hear Ukraine is cracking down on weapons sharing and plans to put ads in their propaganda.
Netflix needs to reboot it zelemske should have a new outfit
"Moving a big dial taht says 'weapons give away budget' and constantly looking back at r*dditors ...."
So the "I Stand With Ukraine" bumper sticker isn't enough? ?
That’s disgusting. You should at least abstain until they stop using the outdated Russian spelling for Kyiv!
Stand with, yes. Do anything more than flag emojis and be racist online? No
Like Assata Shakur said about liberals -
As far as I’m concerned, ‘liberal’ is the most meaningless word in the dictionary. History has shown me that as long as some white middle-class people can live high on the hog, take vacations to Europe, send their children to private schools, and reap the benefits of their white skin privilege, then they are ‘liberal’. But when times get hard and money gets tight, they pull off that liberal mask and you think you’re talking to Adolf Hitler. They feel sorry for the so-called underprivileged just as long as they can maintain their own privileges.
Guess even the blue eyed blondies being used to bankrupt an "existential" threat to "western democracies" aren't exempt to this fact
Well, realistically, the CIA will claim they'll coup Russia, realize that's hard, and like do a genocide in Indonesia to make themselves feel better or something.
I don't see Russia opening up to the west in the near future anymore thanks to putin going wild.
People voicing their opinions on Reddit don't have any meaningful influence US foreign policy, they don't reap any benefit from the presence or absence of new periodic Lethal Aid to Ukraine, and they don't have information necessary to make sound choices even if they did.
I wouldn't trust a Redditor to set US policy on Ukraine, much less to the tune of $24B/year. I wouldn't trust Congress or the White House, either. But I have as much control over the former as the former does over the latter, so it hardly matters what any of us think.
But at least people recognize there is a limit to our world influence
I mean, kinda? But this feels more like the "Don't Back A Loser" Trump mentality. Like, Ukraine was supposed to have this shit locked up weeks ago. Russia was supposed to be routed, while Ukrainians pour across the border to liberate Moscow. The CIA was supposed to have couped Putin by now. Biden was supposed to be standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier beneath a Mission Accomplished banner, so the Libs could crow to their Conservative rivals that Democrats do Neoconservatism better than any of their team did.
Instead, we've got a pivot to the south and a long intractable siege. No big W to brag about. Nobody to Own. Just another big money pit to hook our printer up to.
we should be focusing largely on improving domestic issues, at least economically.
And we are. We're putting more cops in NYC subways than ever before. We're giving oil companies billions to fight climate change. We're Defending Our Borders and protecting children from the Disney Trans Menace.
Those are all issues that politicians can brag about. But the Ukraine fight isn't producing anything particularly cheery to campaign on. That's what matters.
It’s fun for the whole family and a perfect distraction from the fact that our economy has been stalling since 2008.
More like 2001.
Google "Jobless Recovery". Bush's economic growth was powered almost entirely by financialization and outsourcing. The real domestic economy hasn't seen growth in this century.
You can make a stronger argument that the US economy was still growing under Clinton than under Bush. Although, yes, the pieces for permanent stagnation were being put into place under Clinton and the Gingrich/Lott GOP.
Clearly bezos and musk are betting on space, but I just don’t see it.
Hard to have markets without people. And getting people into space is incredibly difficult relative to the benefit of them being there.
Amazon’s logistics development alongside google/Microsoft/IBM ai work is probably the more important stuff for our future society, but fuck it is miserable funneling it all through austerity politics
Either Marx was right, and labor power really does produce a better future. Or he was wrong, and capitalists can run the rest of us like gerbils on an exercise wheel forever, with minimal complaint.
I'm betting on Marxism winning out in the end. But it's going to continue to be a slog.
I think the US would be more than happy to cut Ukraine checks every month, all else being equal. That money is just getting kicked back to US interests anyway.
This isn't manufactured consent. Its blowback to a failed foreign policy. You're going to see the media work hard to shift this perception back into line with the views of the MIC. And you're going to see politicians exploit the divisions and contradictions this policy creates wrt our domestic situation and our policy towards China.
You have to know what the baseline sentiment is before you can reshape it. Reddit is useful both for shaping consensus and for sending up trial balloons to see how westerners respond.
