Comment by ch4s3
5 days ago
The previous poster totally misunderstands how the War Power Act works, and many of those statements are at best supposition and at worst demonstrably false. The war powers act does not allow any domestic action at all.
> 2. it satisfies the biggest donors to the republican party - weapons manufacturers and oil companies.
This is nonsense the defense industry contributes pretty much evenly to each party. And the oil industry bit is just like the nonsense take on the Iraq war which saw virtually no contracts going to US companies.
Additionally:
>truth is there are effectively no drugs coming in from venezuela.
While Venezuela does not supply drugs bound for the US the regime there has long partnered with FARC to smuggle cocaine and weapons[1].
> Bonus: honors the practice of a republican president invading a country under bullshit premises to capture oil. Bush I and II both did so.
The first Gulf War was about kicking Saddam out of Kuwait, not capturing oil, so yeah conspiracy and false statements.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela_and_state-sponsored_...
>This is nonsense the defense industry contributes pretty much evenly to each party.
Wow, that's the most cringe thing I've seen in this thread. The defense industry owns both parties but contributes significantly more to Repbublican efforts than DEM efforts.
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus?Ind=D
You'll notice that while the defense industry contributes to DEM candidates, they far outspend on "conservative" politicians.
>And the oil industry bit is just like the nonsense take on the Iraq war which saw virtually no contracts going to US companies.
The US oil industry didn't get any contracts during the Iraq takeover? The oil industry literally had a Haliburton CEO, Dick Cheney, go from the C-Suite to the Vice Presidency.
> The US oil industry didn't get any contracts during the Iraq takeover? The oil industry literally had a Haliburton CEO, Dick Cheney, go from the C-Suite to the Vice Presidency.
Until about a year ago most Iraqi oil contracts were held by a Chinese company that bought it's contract under Saddam an maintained it beyond the war. Haliburton mostly made money handling logistics for the war, things like construction and laundry. Oil law in Iraq was finalized post-Saddam in 2007 and pre-2000 levels of production didn't happen until 2011 after the US withdrawal.
PLEASE stop bringing wild conspiracies here.
Haliburton is a oil and gas company, not a laundry company.
PLEASE stop ignoring the obvious here.
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> This is nonsense the defense industry contributes pretty much evenly to each party.
Horseshit:
> Across 2017–2022, analyses based on OpenSecrets data find the defense industry’s contributions split at ~57% to Republicans vs ~43% to Democrats (a “kitchen-sink” strategy of giving to both parties).
Giving 1/3 (32.6%) more is not "pretty much even".
This is just dumb hair splitting, nearly half goes to each party.
I did the math so you don't have to.
Here's the facts. In the last 18 election cycles, here's what happened (source: Open Secrets)
the Defense industry spent $242.54m on GOP candidates. They average $13.47m spent per election cycle on GOP candidates.
the Defense industry spent 181.51m on DEM candidates. They average $10.08m spent per election cycle on DEM candidates.
Only 4 times has the industry spent more on DEM candidates than GOP candidates - 1992, 1994, 2008, and 2010. For spending those years, the average difference between GOP and DEM campaign contributions is roughly $233k, or a grand total of $4.21m (as in that is the difference in overall political spending between GOP/DEM across all those cycles).
For the other 14 cycles, when the GOP was given more than the DEM, the average difference is $3.624m between parties, for a grand total of $65.24m. You could eliminate the industry's GOP contributions for the last 4 cycles and they'd still have given more to the GOP than DEM since 1990.
Bottom line: when the industry spends more on DEM than GOP, it's by a few hundred thousand dollars. When the industry spends more on GOP than DEM, it's by a few million dollars.
Splitting hairs? That's several million dollars. You're free to write me a check for that amount if it's truly splitting hairs.
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