President Obama

I agree. We subsidize so many while so many of our own suffer. Doesn't make sense to me.

 

I generally agree with this as a principle, but there are exceptions for me. There are times that extreme catastrophes occur around the world that I would want the USA to step in and lend aid. For example, the Rwandan genocide, or the Sudan civil war when the North butchered the South and created the worlds largest refugee camp which still exists on the border of Kenya and Sudan.

What I don't agree with is foreign aid given without any real need just for political manipulation.

 

Completely agreed, but in general we give more than we receive. I have no problem with us scaling back on a macro scale. On a micro scale, there's certain disasters and other such things that I absolutely would be interested in helping with.

I'm in favor of scaling back all government spending in fact. One of the points I'd look to is the bloated Navy/Air Force budget.

 

^^^ having retired from the Air Force, you're now my sworn enemy. Haha. Seriously, you're right. We wasted so much money, but so many airframes are outdated. The AWACS were built in the 70s. You'd be scared to death to fly on one. They provide Air Force One protection and are vital in any war (air or ground). So, yes, many funds are wasted. I won't get into it, but we lived good. but a lot of planes need to be replaced.

 

I've got a buddy who just got out and he explained to me in pretty good detail how life was on his last couple tours.

I know there's a lot that needs to be done still and I'd never cut the military funding altogether, but there's definitely no doubt that our military leaders have had bloated budgets for decades now. We can scale back, get more efficient, and still be comfortable. Our defense budget is a massive roiling monster of money that I think can be better controlled.

My bigger point though was that I'd look into stuff like that before thinking about cutting funding for international women's care organizations. I'd probably still cut that funding too, but it'd just be much lower on my list of wasteful spending by the government.

 

The defense budget as a whole needs to be scaled back tremendously. Our budget is more than the next 15 countries combined and 12 of them are our allies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

 

Definition of ungrateful: Chelsea Manning called Obama a weak leader.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSKBN15A1O7

Trump has Obama's back though. Unleash the Twitter! Haha

 

I've missed you MC. (can't we get your old name back??)

 

Good read.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-wmd-intelligence-failure-1491605634

When the Bush Administration failed to find the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was thought to have, opponents used the intelligence failure to discredit the war in Iraq and call George W. Bush a liar. Will there be any even remotely similar accounting after the Obama Administration’s intelligence failure in Syria, where Bashar Assad has used chemical weapons we were told he didn’t have?

On Tuesday at least 85 civilians, including children, were killed by a gas attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. The World Health Organization says the attack likely involved banned nerve agents, with other medical experts pointing to sarin as the culprit.

Why is this an intelligence failure? Because the Obama Administration assured the world that it had forced Mr. Assad to give up all chemical weapons. In an interview with National Public Radio on January 16, Susan Rice, then the White House national security adviser, was unequivocal:

“I think the President [Obama] stated the U.S. view, which is the use of chemical weapons is not something we’re prepared to allow to persist, and we didn’t. We managed to accomplish that goal far more thoroughly than we could have by some limited strikes against chemical targets by getting the entirety of the declared stockpile removed.” The residents of Khan Sheikhoun beg to differ.

Ms. Rice’s assurances were part of the Obama Administration’s foreign-policy victory lap as it ended its time in office. But did she or others know at the time that Mr. Assad still had stockpiles of sarin gas? Were there dissenting intelligence reports raising doubts about the Assad-Russian pledges that the regime had turned everything over to United Nations monitors?

Reuters reported on April 6 that “U.S. intelligence agencies suspect Assad did not turn over all chemical weapons stockpile—intelligence official.” No kidding, but did Ms. Rice not know this a mere two months ago when she gave that interview to NPR?

Then again, perhaps Ms. Rice was so preoccupied with reading the summaries of intelligence reports on the Trump campaign or transition officials that she didn’t have time to dig into the Syrian chemical threat. Maybe the House and Senate intelligence committees can add these questions to their list of what to ask Ms. Rice when she testifies about her habit of “unmasking” the identities of Americans surveilled by U.S. intelligence.

 

Obama and Rice were wrong about Syria. I think anyone would admit that. WSJ was fair in this report, IMO. As for other articles and being fair, I don't know. I refuse to pay their service fee.

 

^^^ I thought the article was more about Rice, but admittedly, includes Obama by extension.

I really try not to blame Obama because I hated when Bush was blamed years after he wasn't the president.

But, I do compare Obama and Trump when I'm trying to show hypocrisy of the media.

For example, I've seen so many articles about Trump and the 59 missles. In comparison, I saw very little about Obama dropping 3 bombs per hour every hour of every day for his final year in office. Where was the outrage then?

 

Maybe Obama had Congress approval to bomb those 7 countries. I honestly don't know.

I've seen people mad at what he did, the cost of the missles, etc. I just feel like the response, if there were one, would be different if he had a D next to his name.