Estonia is the suburbs of St. Petersburg

[Kontinuum]

Newt Gingrich, a top Donald Trump supporter and former speaker of the House, defended on Thursday the Republican nominee's recent remarks setting conditions for honoring the NATO military alliance.

"[NATO] countries ought to worry about our commitment," Gingrich said on "CBS This Morning" in an interview. "They ought to worry about commitment under any circumstances. Every president has been saying that the NATO countries do not pay their fair share."

Of countries that aren't "doing their fair share," Gingrich said, "They're a source of weakness, not a source of strength."

When pressed on whether Trump and the U.S. would come to the aid of countries like Estonia in the case of a Russian invasion, Gingrich said he too "would think about it a great deal."

"Estonia is in the suburbs of St. Petersburg. The Russians aren't gonna necessarily come across the border militarily. The Russians are gonna do what they did in Ukraine," he said. "I'm not sure I would risk a nuclear war over some place which is the suburbs of St. Petersburg. I think we have to think about what does this stuff mean."

When asked whether he believed Trump meant to terminate the NATO agreement, Gingrich said he believed the GOP nominee wanted to have a "very serious conversation about us being the people who defend people who won't defend themselves."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/newt-gin...ation-to-nato/

Putin is getting a raging boner at the thought of Trump presidency.

[Arlon]

It kinda is. Sucks for them and me though(since i probably plan on moving there).

[Shefu]

No, Estonia is not the suburbs of St. Petersburg. That's wrong on so many levels. That's like saying Cuba is the suburbs of USA.

But then again Republicans do like to speak out of their asses.

[Reeve]

This is like saying South Korea is the suburbs of Pyongyang.

[Skroe]

There is pretty compelling evidence that Trump, knowingly or not, is another one of Putin's illiberal democracy surrogates. Paul Manafort has been doing Putin's dirty around the West work for years.

Anti-NATO? Anti-American Global Strategy? Dismissive of historic allies? Anti-democratic? Anti-Press? Changed the GOP's official stance on Ukraine in a sneaky way? Yeah. As of now the Republican Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of Vladmir Putin.

Add to the fact that a not insignificant number of Trump's supporters online are apparently paid Kremlin trolls... yeah... as Trump would say "we gotta look into this, we gotta see what's going on". The US is under a kind of assault.

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...n-nato/492332/

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a..._lot_like.html

If Manafort were the only Kremlin connection in the Trump campaign, his presence might signify nothing. But he’s hardly isolated. Many pundits have scoffed at the idea that Trump has a circle of foreign policy advisers given that his initial list of gurus emerged abruptly in March and included names unknown to most experts. Yet the list suggests certain tendencies. One of the supposed Trump whisperers was an investment banker named Carter Page. During a stint in Moscow in the 2000s, he advised the state-controlled natural gas giant, Gazprom and helped it attract Western investors. (In March, Page told Bloomberg that he continues to own shares in the company.) Page has defended Russia with relish. He wrote a column explicitly comparing the Obama administration’s Russia policy to chattel slavery in the American South. His reasoning: “Numerous quotes from the February 2015 National Security Strategy closely parallel an 1850 publication that offered guidance to slaveholders on how to produce the ‘ideal slave.’ ”

Also on the list of advisers is Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Eighteen months after he departed government, he journeyed to Moscow and sat two chairs away from Putin at the 10th anniversary gala celebrating Russia Today. In Politico, an anonymous Obama official harshly criticized Flynn: “It’s not usually to America’s benefit when our intelligence officers—current or former—seek refuge in Moscow.”

More recently, Richard Burt, a Reagan administration official, has begun advising Trump on foreign policy. His criticisms of NATO and pleas for greater cooperation with Putin grow from a deeply felt realism. Yet his ideological positions jibe with his financial interests. Burt is on the boards of Alfa-Bank, the largest commercial bank in Russia, and an investment fund with a large position in Gazprom.

Trump’s advisers have stakes in businesses where the health of the Russian state is the health of the firm—where, in fact, the state and the firm are deeply entangled. The campaign isn’t just one man with an aesthetic affinity for Putin and commercial interests in Russia; his sentiments are reinforced and amplified by an organization rife with financial ties to the Kremlin.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...256_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...7a0_story.html

http://www.politifact.com/global-new...er-and-his-ti/


Don't worry, the usual far right nut jobs will ignore it. Because their dislike of Obama, Clinton, or "SJWs" has by this point, largely liquefied their brains. They're just someone to defeat, not someone to convince.

[Deleted]

"McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.""

[Tackhisis]

Well, he just said what everybody knows: no one would risk a nuclear war because of backyards country with 1 million population.

[Super Friendly Kitty Cat]

NATO doesn't pay it's fair share, nor respect the United States enough for us to suddenly be compelled to help.

If the NATO alliance is important to these countries, how about a little help and consideration.

[Deleted]

This is an extremely dumb thing to say considering estonia is one of the few NATO allies outside the US to actually meet its spending commitments. Its president is even an american. These people have no fucking clue.

[Skroe]

"McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.""

Yeah there's not 5 links filled with facts or anything, Putin Lackey.

[Kontinuum]

If the NATO alliance is important to these countries, how about a little help and consideration.

Like what? Spending 2% of GDP on military or sending troops to Afghanistan?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoni...tan_Contingent

[Skroe]

NATO doesn't pay it's fair share, nor respect the United States enough for us to suddenly be compelled to help.

If the NATO alliance is important to these countries, how about a little help and consideration.

Europe spends $300 billion a year in defense. For one continent.

The United States spends $700 billion a year for a global strategy.

By in large, Europe pays its fair share. That it doesn't is an anti-NATO fiction. What Europe doesn't do is spend that money wisely or efficiently. It can spend 1%, 2%, 10% of GDP, it doesn't matter so long as 10 different countries make 10 different tanks, 10 different frigates, etc. Propping up individual countries' defense firms rather than leading to a massive continent wide defense consolidation (and putting a lot of people out of work) is NATO's biggest hindrence to getting more bang for the buck.

Add that to the fact that NATO countries have been stalwart allies in Afghanistan for over a decade, and yeah, the entire claim is ridiculous and plays right into Putin's hands.

Fundamentally what country's can spend is a function of their national wealth and tax payer base (its a positive feedback loop between all of these). The US spends $700 billion a year - and could afford to spend a great deal more - because it is a tremendously wealthy country with 210 million taxpayers putting trillions of dollars of funds into federal, state and local coffers, ever year, one way or another. That's with a population of 320 million. Europe has a larger popution - 505 million - but individually their tax bases are far smaller. The UK has a population of 64 million, with ~30 million taxpayers. There is no way that tax base is going to generate the money required to build a navy, an air force or an army comparable to the US. All of Europe, together, could probably do it from a pure money standpoint. But to do it practically would mean federalizing European and centrally managing defense spending, just as it does the US.

Consider the US - Massachusetts is a big defense dollars recipient state, but has zero say over how that money is spent. The federal government says so. We used to have army bases and several air force bases. We have two air force bases now. We used to build ships. Now we build F-35 parts, cruise missiles and high-technology. The Pentagon decided that, not the Massachusetts state house. Because defense coffers are federal.

The same principle would apply to Europe. "Pulling their weight" in a way truly equal to the US would require Brussels' managing defense spending. That would mean the end of British tank manufacturing, Spanish ship building and German small arms building. Is Europe close to that? Not remotely. That doesn't make them slackers. That makes them different.

Stop playing into Vladmir Putin's hands.

[Deleted]

Yeah there's not 5 links filled with facts or anything, Putin Lackey.

Your posts are the living fact of you engaging in your own kind of McCarthyism.

[Skroe]

Your posts are the living fact of you engaging in your own kind of McCarthyism.

Pffft, it's not like you care what my posts say anyway. You're the one clinging to the wreckage of European-trade-integration because you're too slow to keep up with the changing of the world.

I think anything I would say would be McCarthyism to you because you don't like it. You're a manifestly dishonest and ignorant person who legitimately does not care.

In any event, what you think doesn't matter. This is the way things are, and it's being investigated. Go be a lackey for Putin somewhere else. I'm busy.

[Deleted]

Pffft, it's not like you care what my posts say anyway. You're the one clinging to the wreckage of European-trade-integration because you're too slow to keep up with the changing of the world.

I think anything I would say would be McCarthyism to you because you don't like it. You're a manifestly dishonest and ignorant person who legitimately does not care.

In any event, what you think doesn't matter. This is the way things are, and it's being investigated. Go be a lackey for Putin somewhere else. I'm busy.

McCarthyism Translate Button
[muh-kahr-thee-iz-uh m]
noun
1.
the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, especially of pro-Communist activity, in many instances unsupported by proof or based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence.
2.
the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.

[ItachiZaku]

That's like saying Cuba is the suburbs of USA.

Kinda of is, but we don't want it. It's a shit hole. Humid. Bugs. Fuck it. We get good, cheap ball players from that pissy little island.

[TheMediator]

This is like saying South Korea is the suburbs of Pyongyang.

Of course it is. Nothing will stop Glorious Leader Kim Jong Un.

[Theodarzna]

Your posts are the living fact of you engaging in your own kind of McCarthyism.

HAY BUDDY!!!! REMEMBER!

NATO GOOD, RUSSIA BAD!

ALWAYS FOREVER!!!!!1!!1eleven!!1!

[Deleted]

HAY BUDDY!!!! REMEMBER!

NATO GOOD, RUSSIA BAD!

ALWAYS FOREVER!!!!!1!!1eleven!!1!

And if you disagree you're a "paid Kremlin troll.... that needs to be defeated".

McCarthyism

[Theodarzna]

And if you disagree you're a "paid Kremlin troll.... that needs to be defeated".

McCarthyism

Can you get paid by the Kremlin? No Joke, how much? What are the rates?

Does the US pay as well?

Whose benefits package is the best?