anti_dan
43m ago
Are you talking about quantity or reach? Because the lowest quality grifter with the most reach in America is Ibrahim X. Kendi. Next you have the 1619 project, all BLM related orgs, etc. RW orgs with that much reach are people like Daily Wire and Vivek. You might not like their positions on everything, but those aren't grifters. One is a legitimate media business that has really innovated in the space, and the other is a serious politician and thinker, although odd.
anti_dan
1hr ago
I think the "peak woke" line is cope on the center left and right for different reasons. The center-left keep writing these articles as a smokescreen to let their radicals reload, and the people on the right are just deluding themselves that the extremists will give up and/or that the center-left will ever side with them.
anti_dan
5hr ago
Legacy media is left wing. New media isn't conventionally left or right, but the most popular versions tend to lean republican.
These are related. Just like how Fox News was the biggest cable news channel, despite being a drop in the bucket overall. They were the only people putting out a product lots of people wanted. In addition to that effect, the current crop of left wing views cannot sustain themselves in a questioning environment. Joe Rogan and the podcast sphere didn't start on the right, they slowly walked there because that is what happens outside of the left wing censorship regime.
anti_dan
9hr ago
If something is happening at your hospital like once a year, that seems inevitable.
anti_dan
1d ago
This is plausible. But the real world data is that P is very high compared to R. So Rs are being subsidized with not-Rs in the post-R environment. All indicia point to X>C
anti_dan
1d ago
If that were true it would be self-fixing. You'd have the number of surgical residents that are needed to do surgeries going forward. Or at least, current demand. But instead all these positions are basically people working more hours than is healthy a day, making a paltry salary, and then once freed from the artificially contained program immediately making 4-10x they were.
anti_dan
1d ago
That is just what happens if you don't censor the right. Progressives have been coddled so long they cant win fair fights. As JD showed in the debate, they cant win 3v1 debates.
anti_dan
2d ago
I think people who have never been involved in criminal law, particularly sex crimes, do not understand is the difficulty of proving a case. The fact that a person is in an area they shouldn't be in is very good evidence they committed a sex crime compared to what normally is submitted.
Most sex crimes happen in private with no witnesses and no corroboration.
But a sex crime where a man is in the ladies locker room and can be seen going in or out? That can be charged. This is the difference between a rapist going free or being charged.
Sex crimes are both some of the most egregious crimes, and some of the hardest to prove crimes in our system. They are much harder than murder to prove, for example.
anti_dan
2d ago
In other words, the "they left me" meme is super true for former centrists who became "right wing".
anti_dan
2d ago
If you think Bluesky is Twitter inverted, you are mistaken. Bluesky is just MSNBC extreme as a social media. Twitter is not right wing, it is just lacking in censorship of people right of center.
anti_dan
2d ago
Basically what happened is they upheld his initial, corrupt, dismissal. This is not bad. The justice system is supposed to be pro-defendant. That is all that happened here.
anti_dan
4d ago
Sweden and Finland would join because they already were effectively joined as establishment American (to be distinguished from America as a whole) proxies and joining merely formalized that. The problem remains that the whole alliance is entirely dependent on America because the rest of them are sclerotic, and the alliance, unfortunately, comprises countries that encourage the US to follow us down that path.
Money can't guarantee victory
This is antithetical to the theory of being a NATO proxy as Ukraine is. The theory of the NATO hegemony is that American establishment types can just bully the world with their wallet and win. If you actually need AMERICA (aka our 18-40 year old men and the engineers and tradesmen supporting them) to control and win a regional skirmish like Ukraine, the theory is dead.
If I offer to give any student at my local high school free SAT tutoring and a student I tutor gets a very low score does that completely discredit me and prove my tutoring was worthless?
A fairly good analogy. Tutoring for standardized tests has little value (although it has increased recently as the tests have had their predictive qualities intentionally lowered).
If I offer to give any student at my local high school free SAT tutoring and a student I tutor gets a very low score does that completely discredit me and prove my tutoring was worthless?
The problem in the analogy is this + the "free" part. Because its clearly not free. You make regional enemies by agreeing to be a NATO proxy.
anti_dan
4d ago
Who is this 'we'?
Liberal Western State Dept Consensus
It is certainly a take that a country that was not a member of a regional defensive alliance, and repeatedly disagreed internally and externally about any need to join a defensive alliance, getting repeatedly invaded and suffering major losses when countries that did join the defensive alliance were not invaded is thus a proof against value of being a party of a regional defensive alliance.
A true statement if we hadn't declared them a proxy via pouring in oodles of money and having leaders going around making declarations. The Biden-NATO philosophy appears to be "Speak loudly and carry a tiny stick."
Again, I will ask who this 'we' is, because this goes beyond a lack of shared consensus.
"We" are NATO and establishment American foreign policy persons.
Just as importantly "they" are foreign belligerents. What you seem to care about is what France or Finland thinks of these entities. That is largely irrelevant. What Russia thinks is relevant. And they decided that the Biden administration was a good time to invade. They decided that Germany had crippled its own economy with Green pipedreams.
Also its important to keep an eye on one of the most important, but mercurial NATO members: Turkey. Turkey has bucked the rest of the members more than ever and was closer to exiting the alliance 2021-present than any time since it joined.
And in 2024 NATO is presumably weaker than in 2020 because the addition of Finland and Sweden, years of greatly increased military-industrial investment in their armaments capabilities, and consensus that the Russians are indeed a common threat is... is presumably worth less than the stockpiles given to Ukraine shoot NATO's primary potential adversary in the face, who... apparently grew in relative strength the more NATO munitions were shot in its face and the more of its own munitions it shot at a non-NATO country.
That capacity has proven both far too slow to materialize and far to expensive for the welfare states to maintain.
anti_dan
4d ago
To be frank, I don't think Germany (or most of NATO) knows shit. They've been getting hard carried for over half a century now and have consistently demonstrated an inability to act either in their own interest or when prodded by the US. They basically exist (along with much of NATO) as the laziest vassal states of all time. If the US withdrew and Russia announced an invasion of Poland in 2034 I doubt Germany would respond until he was past Warsaw, more likely they'd do nothing and surrender when he got to the Neisse river.
anti_dan
4d ago
I find your framing a bit odd.
Russia is not winning the war because it is taking and may keep territory in the Donbas, it is losing the war because Russia itself framed the war not as a conflict between itself and Ukraine, but between the Russian world and the west.
I mean, perhaps that was how Russia framed it at home (I trust neither set of sources on this), but it is certainly true that NATO/America has been losing the war as we defined it as well. Putin was a big bad that had to, and would be, soundly defeated by the power of freedom and money. The latter idea, has failed. We are spending many multiples of what Russia is spending to gradually lose terrain.
I suppose this deal is not so bad if you are a Brit or Canadian who cares nothing about Ukrainian deaths. But if you think NATO prestige is important, its a huge loss. Being a NATO proxy is a provably bad deal now. Even with American investment. Heck, the rest of NATO might as well be dead to the remaining civilized world. Minus America, NATO couldn't help anyone anywhere.
In so much that NATO is worse off in 2024 than 2022, it's because of reasons other than Ukraine, and in many respects NATO is considerably stronger and more threatening than before.
NATO is certainly much weaker now than 2020, but not than 2022. We cratered as a legitimate organization under Biden and it is likely impossible to get lower than Russia just invading again after abstaining for 4 years. But its certainly possible. Trump could keep doing the same things but more. And then our support would get discredited even more.
anti_dan
8d ago
There is plenty of evidence. Just not evidence that fits into the special box that people ask for which is "cannot be explained innocently for other reasons". Look at the PA senate race now. The steal is being attempted, it may or may not prevail.
The only way to find definitive proof of fraud, given our current system, is sting operations. A thing the current DOJ refuses to implement, and which they would also put you in prison for life if you attempted.
anti_dan
9d ago
I think the suspect counties still generated about the same number they always do. Slightly less probably than 2020 because that was the easiest its ever been, but sometimes 100k doesn't cut it. See, e.g. the 1980 and 1984 IL presidential elections.
anti_dan
11d ago
Francis Fukuyama publishes a letter to Musk with regards to DOGE. He tells Musk that the number of Federal employees have remained about the same for 50 years. Young people don't go into the Federal government jobs, so they're filled with older people and about a bagillion contractors.
This is a very stupid take and anyone who has worked as, with, or around the federal government will tell you so. Maybe it is true of very low GS level positions who are essentially secretaries and janitors, but it isn't true of anyone writing and promulgating regulations or enforcing them. Those positions attract very qualified people. Unfortunately, those qualified people take the jobs because they exactly want POWER and the forces surrounding them prevent them from doing anything innovative or good with said power. But those positions are filled with people who have resumes that would make the average hiring manager go "oooo".
Thus the issue of the revolving door and capture of agencies by Goldman and other such firms. But the reason is that those people are Goldman level qualified. The problem isn't quality. It is agenda and structures.
anti_dan
11d ago
Commuter rail is fairly inefficient in most cities, and in any case doesn't replace the automobile. That is a large public capital investment to not even replace a lot of privately held capital.
anti_dan
11d ago
I think you make a pretty important point: Many, if not most, drivers in cities don't even want to be there. They are there to get the paycheck to do the things they actually want to do. Thus any "solution" to too many people driving in the city will inevitably end up hollowing out that industrial/urban core of office buildings. We've seen this story before. This kills the city.
anti_dan
13d ago
I'd echo Butlerian. What are their fresh takes? Can you timestamp me (or at least give the episode) where they said replacing Biden was needed (before the debate) or that replacing him with Kamala was a bad choice (before the election)? Or something post election that undermines DNC orthodoxy? Bring back the death penalty?
The answer for me would be:
Most things that are expensive right now (and even pre-Covid) are not so because the are inherently so. Most cities and areas are not like SF/Silicon Valley. More are like Chicago and DC where a large part of the COL is caused by crime. Your groceries are more expensive because the store has 10% losses via theft and breakage, your commute is 100% longer because close to your work is a bunch of burned out homes from the 1940s occupied by squatters, your house itself is on more land that you need because property values need to be high to keep your kids safe, and because parks can't be kept safe.
Similarly education is expensive. We spend so much for so little, all you can possibly get is a good peer group by, again, paying for it with property values or tuition. And sometimes that doesn't even work (we are having trouble getting our son separated from a problem child despite all this). And that is just standard ed. Higher ed needs to be gutted. People are rightly feeling exploited. People dont understand the loans; or the degrees, and graduate feeling entitled to something they were sold but never actually deserved/earned. The people most affected want a handout, but that will only marginally help them and would make the problem worse. What we need is metaphorical arson.
And last is immigration. It causes problems with the first two, plus social cohesion. The cost of ESL in education and society is enormous. Immigrant populations routinely shelter criminals (very common crime being covered up is sexual exploitation of minors in my experience) and make policing generally more difficult by just committing so much low level crime it cant even be policed (think the 2001 New England Patriots defense, but as a whole community littering, setting garbage fires, having 100 free range cats, etc). There is then the signage, the court and other legal costs they add up.
For part 4) Id just end all transfer payments to people not injured on the job. Of course, that makes 1-3 (already impossible IMO) appear modest. The two biggest problems in the US are Medicaid and Welfare. Social Security and Medicare are a close 3/4. The only reason the feds should be cutting someone a check is if they got a limb blown off in Iraq or cut off while working in a factory. And ideally we restructure the factory portion of that so the factory is paying that shit.
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