Preparedness for when

pineapple

What a nightmare Monnagran! :eek:

milasavesmoney

pineapple wrote: »

Back to politics for a sec. Interesting article in Zerohedge about Europe and globalisation. I tried posting the link in a discussion in Guardian Comments - Guardian is pro EU and they deleted the post! :eek: Read and enjoy.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-01/eu-wants-empire-brussels-plans-expand-middle-east-africa

Very interesting article and it brings up lots of questions for me. To not rule out wanting the new military army to rival NATO because they are "competent" is one step toward saying now that we have a force as good as NATO we don't need them anymore...which could/would take America out of the region. Obama has been drawing down our military and it will be pre WWII levels soon. If Hillary gets into office, which is more that likely, she will continue to gut our military. Very interesting all the way around.

maryb

Mila, doesn't Trump want to scale back commitment to NATO even more?

milasavesmoney

Maryb, I had not heard that but wouldn't doubt it. I don't really listen to either one. I'll have to check out his NATO stance. He doesn't seem to have any real platform. Just a lot of media sound bite blather. I can't deside who is scarier between the two of them. Our Republican Party is in an upheaval not unlike Labour in the UK. The establishment Republicans don't like him but are stuck because the people voted him into place to run on the presidential election. The Republican elected (Congress) of the party have a real disconnect with the rank and file voters. He's been a shock to the good ole boys.

Edited:
Charles Lane, Washington Post, March 21: So, I’d like to hear you say very specifically, you know, with respect to NATO, what is your ask of these other countries? Right, you’ve painted it in very broad terms, but do you have a percent of GDP that they should be spending on defense? Tell me more, because it sounds like you want to just pull the U.S. out.

Trump: No, I don’t want to pull it out. NATO was set up at a different time. NATO was set up when we were a richer country. We’re not a rich country anymore. We’re borrowing, we’re borrowing all of this money. We’re borrowing money from China, which is sort of an amazing situation. But it was a much different thing. NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO but we’re spending a lot of money. Number one, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed. I think NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as it was when it first evolved.

VJsmum

monnagran wrote: »

No, pineapple, but I have had to clean up a1 gallon tin of white gloss paint that my 2 yearold son managed to get the top off. While I was preparing lunch for visitors he managed to paint an antique table, as far as he could reach up the inside of the Windows, the bottom half of an armchair, as the brush wouldnt reach the paint in the tin any more he tipped a pool of it on to the new carpet and rode his little push along tractor through the lake of paint round the living room, hall and dining room making a pleasing pattern of tyre tracks. As a final flourish he collected the cutlery fromthe beautifully laid table and stood them in the paint pot. He himself was covered from head to foot in the stuff.

I discovered this as the visitors rang the front doorbell.

I won't even begin on the tale of when he managed to creosote his father's car.

Surprisingly he lived to be 3.

Which just goes to show what a restrained, philosophical, calm, long-suffering, patient and all round wonderful mother I was.

I'd stopped sobbing by the next morning.

x

:eek:

:rotfl:

moneyistooshorttomention

pineapple wrote: »

Back to politics for a sec. Interesting article in Zerohedge about Europe and globalisation. I tried posting the link in a discussion in Guardian Comments - Guardian is pro EU and they deleted the post! :eek: Read and enjoy.
www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-01/eu-wants-empire-brussels-plans-expand-middle-east-africa

_pale__pale__pale_ - and I'll go back for a detailed read of that later.

Thanks for sharing - errr...I think:rotfl:

Thank goodness we're coming out:)

moneyistooshorttomention

jk0 wrote: »

Thanks Pineapple.

Now if we can just find a conservative leader who is prepared to trigger article 50, (never mind find anyone to be in his/her cabinet), we'll be fine.

Think they've got to find that an easier task than Jeremy Corbyn's task. Was half-watching the news yesterday and thought "He's just appointed someone in their 80s - to a couple of things at that!!!!". I'll be the first person to expect to still be "me" to a full extent in my 80s iyswim - but ...errrrm....first impression was of someone "in their 80s" iyswim. Second thought being - "Boy is Corbyn getting desperate - to do that....".

That appointee will have to be an exceptional person indeed to have full normal energy levels still/good health/flexible mind. If he is - then I want to know just what "power breakfast" he has every day...

GreyQueen

pineapple wrote: »

Back to politics for a sec. Interesting article in Zerohedge about Europe and globalisation. I tried posting the link in a discussion in Guardian Comments - Guardian is pro EU and they deleted the post! :eek: Read and enjoy.
www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-01/eu-wants-empire-brussels-plans-expand-middle-east-africa

Today we learnt a lesson - put the lid back on the paint properly! Have you ever tried to clean up nearly 2 litres of spilled paint? :mad:
Fortunately it was emulsion...

How absolutely fascinating - I read the Guardian website regularly and have been driven nuts by their relentlessly pro-EU stance, so much so that if it was a dead-tree paper that I was paying for, I'd be cancelling the order with my newsagent.

And yet, to find that this alleged bastion of truth and freedom (although unaplogetically left-wing), would do something like that...........! Once, it would have surpised me, but these days, I can quite believe it of them. The opposite point of view must clearly be given no platform.

The EU project has frightened me for some time, in respect of their overweening ambition to run a pan-European superstate, which they now want to run far into Asia, the ME and even Africa?! Whose sons and daughters are they planning as cannon-fodder for this? Not theirs, you can be assured.:mad:

Sheesh, I would think that the residents of that unfortunate continent, having been looted for centuries by Europeans, have had quite enough of imperialism from the northern hemisphere. I'm sure they'll all sit on their hands whilst the eurocrats plan things to their detriment. Let's not forget that there are extensive Chinese interests in Africa, too. Do we want to see the EU and China fighting like dogs over the Africa-bone? Bound to end well, particularly for the Africans, I reckon.:(

Looking for someone else to loot is the ultimate acknowledgement that you can't fund your ambitions from inside the territory you hold. The logical response would be to scale back those ambitions to a modest, thrifty and ecologically-sustainable level. Instead, we get this. Grrrrr!

moneyistooshorttomention

Well - looking for someone to loot outside their territory - that instantly brought to mind visions of newspaper headlines of 2040 (or thereabouts:cool:) of "EU announces space exploration programme to receive increased funding".

Followed by those a couple of years or so later stating "Final economic collapse of the West etc" at the sheer cost of financing all this.

I'm not entirely sure I'm joking....:cool:

GreyQueen

money, that thought has occurred to me also and is a long-recurring theme in science fiction.

The spectre at the feast is that we are running out of oil and this will bring the end to industrial civilisation as we know it. In a few generations, keeping the lights on and transport moving will be as much as we can hope for.

The energy required to heft ourselves out of the gravity well of this very dense planet just won't be available. I'm sure some of the elites would like to wring the last drop of life from Earth and beggar off somewhere else, if only they could find it. Better hope they don't, because they'd trash the rest of us to achieve escape velocity.

It's interesting how the policy-makers of this world are completely oblivious to what's happening. They must know, but there's such a cognitive dissonance about the reality of running resource-ravening lifestyles on a planet of infinite resources, that the subject isn't even up for discussion.

With some careful actions now, we might be able to achieve a soft(er) landing into the post oil age but TPTB seem to think that we should party-on until we open the cupboard one day and find it's completely bare.

The youngest cohort of adults might usefully spend less time painting themselves as smurfs in Lunnon Town and a bit more time reading because some of them will probably live long enough to see the end of the oil age.