Obama makes budget cuts, Republicans outraged

[bgi39jsjw0ggg]

Obama Defends Decision to Shelve European Missile Shield - Political News - FOXNews.com

So Obama decided to ditch the clusterfuck moneysink known as the missile defense shield. Good, right? I mean, the thing never even worked in laboratory tests, and even if it worked 100% of the time on tests, any minor variation to a target missile's design would render it useless and drained something like $50 billion. It never even had a CHANCE of working. It was a stupid idea when it was called Star Wars, and it was a stupid idea when it was called the Strategic Defense Initiative. Obama was right to cut it.

But the Republicans are pissed because it seems Obama is caving to the Russians. Really? The goddamn Russians? Any registered Republicans out there, go to your next party meeting and demand that your party leadership read some recent world history. The Cold War is over - has been for a couple decades now. What really scares me is that there seems to be a group within American politics that play at the national level that wish the Cold War never ended.

[mirrored]

Well, there has been a recent revival of McCarthy-ism. Maybe they really do want to head back to the cold war-era

[ballucanb]

The republicans are not happy when there freinds are not makeing big mony off of defence projects or spending poor people money on something stupid that would enrich the wealthest people in the US.

I think they took enough money from the US tax payers while bush was president to last 2 lifetimes, but the republicans still want more, if your already a billionair how much more money can you possibly use, maybe they burn money in those mansions for heat in winter, just send them some footed jammies and tell them to burn less.

[satyrical]

So the Democrats are reducing spending and the Republicans are complaining about it? When did we enter this bizarro land? Next you're gonna tell me the President is black.

[NutFreeFruitcake]

You know, you really could have picked a more neutral, less sarcastic title for this thread


My understanding of the decision is that the Obama Administration hasn't decided to cut the program, but rather greatly change its direction. Whereas the Bush Administration wanted to build some ground facilities capable of shooting down long-range missiles, Obama is reducing its scale to a more mobile network capable of shooting down short and medium range missiles.


Really, long-range missile defense on the Bush Administration's scale never really made all that much sense.

If there was a realistic, financially feasible way to build a system that could reliably shoot down thousands of ICBMs, then sure, that would be valuable. However, this "defense shield" was always meant to shoot down maybe 10-30 missiles from a "rogue state".

Here's the thing: why the heck would any "rogue state" capable of launching ICBMs across the world have only 10-30 missiles to do it with? North Korea has found that it is much easier to make the warhead than the ICBM to carry it - presumably, by the time a nation can build ICBMs for which you'd need a system that can shoot down long-range missiles, they'd have more than enough warheads to overwhelm your system.

[gaarafan4]

Originally Posted by satyrical

So the Democrats are reducing spending and the Republicans are complaining about it? When did we enter this bizarro land? Next you're gonna tell me the President is black.

Well, i hate to break it to you, but...

[Yocky]

Typical republican hypocrisy. First they lambast Obama and the democrats in congress for spending too much and for forcing our government further into debt, then they lambast him for raising taxes, and now they lambast him for cutting spending. Well, we can't have it both ways! Republicans want to spend and spend and spend on useless "defense" projects like this (all because they receive campaign contributions from the companies that are contracted to build them), and yet spending money to provide healthcare for the uninsured is communism or fascism. And meanwhile, they want low taxes, too! Well, guess what? You can't have both low taxes and ungodly military spending! Not unless you want to force the government into debt (which they apparently do want, since most of our national debt is a result of wars started by Bush and the republican-controlled congress we had at the time, although most democrats supported the wars as well).
Whenever the republicans control the government, they spend like there's no tomorrow, forcing the government deep into debt. Then when the next recession comes and the democrats rise to power, they suddenly become self-righteous advocates of fiscal responsibility, harshly criticize the democrats for spending too much, and blame the democrats for the growing deficit (which only exists in the first place because of defense spending, tax cuts, and social programs that the republicans started). This year, they have been doing that both on the national level and at the state level in Wisconsin (and probably many other states as well). It's actually a brilliant strategy: the general public will buy their propaganda and blame all of the government's financial difficulties on the democrats, and then vote republicans back into office. In this case it will work even better, since they will be able to spread fear of a missile attack from the Russians (even though they haven't posed a threat to the USA in 18 years, if not longer), and accuse Obama of making America less safe. No doubt the republicans will take control of the House of Representatives and maybe even the Senate in next years elections, and in 2012 they will probably gain the presidency as well. Then the democrats won't be in power again until the next recession comes along and they can blame it on the republicans, like they did in order to win the elections last year.

And yes, many politicians do seem to wish the cold war were still going on. Almost all the republicans and most of the democrats wish this, because they receive donations from corporations like Haliburton that stand to make huge profits if there is another cold war. All of these politicians must have secretly been devestated that the Soviet Union collapsed and the cold war came to an end. They have been looking for an excuse to resurrect the cold war ever since, and when 9/11 happened they saw their chance: they could start a cold war against Islam to replace the cold war against communism. Of course, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that they were able to sell to the public because of the widespread fear of terrorism were hardly enough to satisfy them: they need to make money from these "defense initiatives" that will protect from a non-existant Russian threat (or rather, a threat that didn't exist until they started making the Russian government suspicious with exactly this kind of nonsense).

[Chillhouse]

Obama _________'s, Republicans outraged

[reddawn2988]

Let it be known that if the Russians attack, we'll always have the Wolverines to fight back. Really though, US and Russian relations have never really been too friendly. I don't really think Obama should have strayed from the missle defense systems though. It almost seems like we are throwing a few allies under the bus for the sake of improving relations with a country that didn't really love us in the first place.

[satyrical]

Originally Posted by Chillhouse

Obama _________'s, Republicans outraged

Liberal ___________s, Conservatives (negative emotion).

And vice-versa.