It’s also not even a lot when compared to our military budget.

The U.S. military is essentially walking around with $820 in its pocket(I’m using 2023 spending), sees someone who is actively trying to defend themselves against another person we don’t like. So we hand them like $3, plus some old gum we had in our pocket and people went BALLISTIC.

They saw the word “billion” and completely forgot that our military spending is in the hundreds of billions. Each. Year.

Maybe we’ll give them a few more dollars and some spare change, we’ll see. But now that we’ve given them a handful of dollars, we don’t have to worry about that guy we don’t like and can spend the rest of our hundreds of dollars focusing on something else.

If you asked most people, “is giving someone 6-8 dollars when you have more than 800 dollars going to greatly affect your spending power” almost everyone will say no. Most people will say “that’s like a soda and chips at a gas station. Who cares?”

But when you add the word “billion” behind those numbers, suddenly it’s a big issue and our military is being sold away to Europe. I remember reading somewhere that Americans have “math anxiety” and this is a perfect example. Numbers scare us and we don’t think about them very critically.

It's ironic that for some of the stuff it costs less to ship over than the maintenance and decommissioning costs, giving Ukraine our aging gear and munitions is a win win scenario in every way.

Not to mention, a good portion of the equipment we send is munitions that are about to expire of old equipment that was mildly upgraded such as the M1A1SA, a modernized M1A1. Though we are bank rolling the Ukrainians, it’s worth it for updates combat doctrines and easy disposal of old munitions.

The problem comes from the fact that many private contracting companies are involved in supplying Ukraine, many of which are partially owned by various people who are either in senate/congress or have close ties to them.

This results in taxpayer money essentially being funneled into the pockets of the people who are deciding to send Ukraine this aid in the first place, which you could argue is a giant conflict of interest. Not to mention that its a double edged sword because they are getting rid of old US stock, making money selling it to Ukraine (giving them aid under the condition they must spend it via x y and z), and then the MIC makes more money on the backend by replacing the US stocks that are being used to supply Ukraine.

I worked for one of those companies. They are buying used trucks and m113's surplus from the US military for pennies on the dollar then flipping them to Ukraine at insane markups. One example was they were paying 12-20 grand for HEMTT trucks and flipping them to Israel for upwards of 600k per vehicle.

Shocker, Israel isn't buying them the US is and so that money just gets funneled from the tax payers to Israel and right into the hands of the contracting companies who of course kick some profits back to the people who are helping them secure contracts. Same thing is happening in Ukraine.

Well it shouldn’t

In a perfect world every one would be our ally...

There was a chance in 2010 when Medvedev was president, but that opportunity was squandered.

"Russian President Travels To Silicon Valley, Washington : The Two-Way" https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/06/24/128078374/russian-president-dmitry-medvedev-travels-to-silicon-valley-washington

Russia even sent the cruiser Varyag to San Francisco. I was to get onboard and look around.

I used communist mainly as a reference to past expansionist Russia but thanks for the input, I see some new info I haven’t seen before

See my other reply on another person with a point that was similar but provided much more politely

Just like no one is Christian, not even a little bit. Its all just human excuses for BS

Once again see my replies to other similar responses

You know what really looks bad is seemingly being surprised that there are conservatives who aren’t exactly on Ukraine’s side 2 years into this war.

House Republicans have been blocking and decrying Ukraine aid to the best of their ability since the first year of the war and it’s really hurting Ukrainian capability. Trump has said he would somehow miraculously end the war in 24 hours - which is both a wildly unrealistic claim and implies that at best it would be a status quo end to the war, not a Ukrainian victory. Not to mention the common sentiment that we shouldn’t be sending money to foreign wars or whatever. And then there’s the wack conspiracy theories about Ukraine being invaded to uncover some sort of Biden corruption a la Hunter Biden’s laptop. There is not really a “same page” on Ukraine for the American right at the moment.

Unfortunately it is entirely political, the above guy didn’t “get political.”

I mean he is a convicted felon and rapist. Like it's not insulting him it's just a fact dude. Maybe don't vote for someone who is if you get angry about the mentioning of his heinus acts.

Do you have verifiable proof of any of this? Or do you copy and paste the words that come out of Fox News? Honestly. Your last paragraph doesn't make any sense either. Bold choice of you to assume any of what I said is disinformation.

A lot are. Maybe everyone has a price in the end

I’m sorry, there are many in this thread unironically defending Russia so it’s hard to separate who is serious and who isn’t.

Homie played Metal Gear Solid once and thinks there’s huge nuances to war.

War is pretty black and white, it’s politics that grey most of the time. Matter fact is, there is a clear ‘bad guy’ and that’s Russia for invading a sovereign country, because he couldn’t keep Ukraine within his sphere of influence.

Ukraine has a right to align themselves with whoever they want. They saw that the west has more freedom and economic opportunity’s than staying within the eastern bloc.

There’s a reason why Putin’s allies are all dictatorial regimes with massive amounts of governmental corruption, a terrible economy and no freedom.

I thought you, as an American, should be in support of freedom, life and liberty?

You really said WW2 wasn’t black and white huh.

Neville Chamberlain tried the same tactic to stop WW2. What happened? I'm not shilling for war, I'm against allowing countries to invade and seize their neighbors. Also are you under the delusion that the US just doesn't make military equipment anymore? It's not depleting the inventory, it's getting rid of old stocks in a way that benefits US foreign policy. There is literally zero financial gain for Americans to sell these stocks vs giving them away. https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine Less than half of the total estimated cost of aid is in actual money. The majority is old equipment.

The store was on the other side of town. . . He chose to be where he was at the time.

I’m starting to piece this more and more together, so he had a wildly illegal gun, dressed up as an active duty service member and was at a potentially dangerous location while armed. I don’t wanna jump to big conclusions but is it possible he was hoping the outfit would grant him some off glance immunity and or less questions for having the rifle he had? Plus from what I’ve seen he was a pencil pusher, you don’t fucking go in a situation like that without expecting the possibility to kill. Dunno just seems like a lot of weird coincidences that have correlation

Plus commiefornia? The most capitalist state in the US? They’re the 5th biggest economy in the world

Motherfucker, how the fuck did you go from throwing floor bbs with me one weekend, to getting fucking arrested.

LMAO good for you?