hydroacetylene
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User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
4hr ago
Disadvantaged Americans aren't as desperate as disadvantaged Russians, nor are they fit for military service. You could force the probation roster into the Army without too much fuss from other people, probably, but the US army wouldn't be exactly thrilled to have them.
hydroacetylene
4hr ago
Saudi Arabia has a few insane vanity projects and a poor human rights record, but it manages to accomplish both its religious and human development goals. That's a hard problem to solve.
hydroacetylene
4hr ago
They trade oil for a high standard of living, and Dubai banks the oil money locally.
Now, to be clear, Iran is in some ways morally superior to these countries- at least the locals do actual work instead of abusing indentured servants, for example, and the gulf states don't have stellar human rights records either. But let's not sugarcoat the Iranian regime; they're fucking retards whose sine qua non is being enemies of America, who have seemingly failed at both their good governance and their religious goals. The same cannot be said for the gulf states.
Literally, the gulf states are the bull case for monarchy. You know what most Arabs do when they discover an ocean of oil? Have a civil war and let the winner squander the money on terrorism, with no benefit to the people. Saudi citizens might be lazy fucks, but they don't do that. Saudi Arabia is a developed country with a high standard of living, that's managed to avoid sanctions. Same for Qatar, Kuwait, etc. Iran hasn't had a civil war recently, but you know what they spend their oil money on? 'Cause it ain't good governance. They're out of running water in the capital. That's very unlikely in Riyadh despite supplying water to it being a harder problem. The Gulf Monarchies are basically achieving both their human and religious goals, even if they don't get all their foreign policy goals and have poor human rights records. Yes, they cheated by using oil money, but this is not a foolproof loophole- just ask Nigeria, Venezuela, Libya, Iraq, etc. Does the median petrostate benefit the people at all? I guess Russia's oil money enables a military machine that provides economic stimulus.
For avoiding the petrostate trap, hats off to the gulf Arabs. This is actually a hard problem and they solved it.
hydroacetylene
7hr ago
I can’t speak for the others, but Lina Hildalgo is also crashing and burning, although she blames ‘mental health problems’ rather than racism and sexism.
Talarico is not a moderate; but he is a conventional seeming white guy… until you hear him talk(which during the primary, he didn’t do very much of). He won the primary due to black-Hispanic tensions and mismanaged elections in Crockett’s strongest county. This doesn’t make him a particularly strong general election candidate although he seems like it superficially.
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
Those prisons are already built. Building new prisons could easily cost much much more than operating current ones.
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
Probably no higher than the percentage of Republicans who won't.
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
She lost her primary. She was then appointed VP because she was nonthreatening and stumbled into a big girl presidential run.
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
The dem primaries for the midterms have, so far, pushed towards conventional wisdom white male candidates. Not the same thing as moderates, but not diversity hires or people who can't string a sentence together.
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
25A section four has never been invoked, and I'm skeptical that Vance has the personal political machine to be the first. Diadochos style taking the throne by assassination feels plausible but is probably no more likely, but everyone would agree it would be legitimate.
I think that's the thing getting left out. Legitimacy. It matters. And the US has an assumption that removing a president for incompetence/incapacity is illegitimate. Why would Vance want to be an illegitimate successor taking ownership of a very difficult situation?
hydroacetylene
10hr ago
Newsom has a profound liability in needing to run against his record as chief exec of a state renowned for mismanagement, however. I agree that the GOP could screw the pooch enough to lose to him, but he's not a particularly strong candidate.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
One of Trump's favorite pastors, Robert Jeffress, is affiliated with the southern Baptist convention. His First Baptist Dallas church has satellite campuses, has a theological convergence little different from nearby and well known megachurches, and he is the son of the previous lead pastor. This is a megachurch, and so are tons of other SBC churches.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Trump got his way in LA and Chicago. He lost in Minneapolis. Yes there were all sorts of protestors in these places but it was all page five stories and professional activists getting arrested.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Prisons are built mostly in deep rural areas that are poor enough to welcome employment prospects of working as guards, or in situations where the government doesn't have local veto points(military bases etc), for precisely NIMBY reasons. This is a known and solved problem, and with enough money we could build enough prison to hold anyone who's gotten a jaywalking ticket.
The problem is getting people to prison. First, they need to be arrested. Mostly solved, but you've got to have a place to hold these people until trial and sentencing(takes a really long time, because these people have no incentive to play ball), and jail is usually located in urban/suburban areas reasonably near the scene of the crime. So you give people bail or an ankle monitor, because for constitutional reasons you can't just build the jail in the middle of nowhere where the alternative is cornfields/forests, so there's space limitations(and a lot of these jails are in downtown areas where there just literally isn't more room to expand). Then there's getting through the criminal justice process; our system relies on a large percentage of the (overwhelmingly guilty)suspects pleading guilty in exchange for reduced sentencing, but even that is way at the high end of the bandwidth our system has. You'd need a lot more judges and lawyers.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Vance's only shot at being president is if Trump dies. That's not particularly far fetched- Trump doesn't show many signs of ill health, but he is in his eighties. But Vance doesn't have a lane in the GOP primary.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Vance is not popular, though. He's certainly well spoken and has a good shot at being a conservative intellectual or vizier. But it's difficult to say who he appeals to; the Romneycrats that like his speaking ability prefer Rubio(and have since it became apparent they weren't going to get their first choice, ever).
hydroacetylene
2d ago
A Lutheran belonging to a body which split from the main Lutheran body in his country over the belief that that body doesn’t embrace the Augsburg confession anymore. In the USA the main such body would be the Missouri synod, very common in intellectual conservative circles and big enough to be locally dominant in some areas- but all the self proclaimed confessional Protestants here seem to be reformed.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Well yeah, a more competent regime would have focused on the fraud first, then followed up with immigration enforcement after using it to take down local political machine structures- or simply avoided the high-profile immigration surge, because it's Minneapolis and you just don't need that many boots on the ground.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
DOD schools might be outperformed by a small district in the Boston or DC suburbs, but they outperform any state. Yes, including Massachusetts.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
It's interesting to see the parts of the American conservative coalition that are represented even after we account for tastes in intellectualism(like duh, megachurch Evangelicals do not want to engage in philosophical political discussion. That's not to say they're stupid, but they simply have different tastes). We have tradcaths but no orthodox Jews and I've never seen a confessional Lutheran. We have libertarian techbros and NrX types but few of the deep red RFK fan lifestyle skeptics- you know, the real life Ron Swanson types. Really very few crunchycons at all. None of the black dissidents you see hanging around conservative intellectual circles but lots of white nationalists. We've had conservative housewives in the past, but I think all of our women are working right now.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
I still don't understand the flameout ban, although I totally get that he was going to have to be banned eventually. I miss having a different classical conservative on the board and maintain that implementing a smoke the whole pack rule would have been a better short term solution, sort of like how secure signals got the single issue posting rule.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Why are you using the ghetto spelling of his name?
You'll notice this chaos happened in Minnesota, and only in Minnesota. So the formula for successful immigration surges is clear- get the local authorities to cooperate. The immigration surge has to end in a particular location eventually, for allotment of resources reasons, so temporary cooperation is the fastest way for local authorities to go back to whatever mismanagement and petty corruption they were doing before. Obviously Minneapolis and Minnesota more broadly had ideological reasons for not wanting to go this route, but so did LA and Chicago- one has to wonder if the bigger factor was looming federal investigations into Minnesota fraud was a bigger factor. I wonder if Trump could have gotten cooperation by using these investigations as leverage, or by waiting a minute until the investigations had some results.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
I am registering my support for a schizo Saturday thread. Put conspiracy theories, manifestard ramblings, fringe science ideas etc in the second to last thread of the week. It'll be dead Monday or Tuesday, contain all that shit to one place.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
US bases include housing for soldiers and their families, like normal cookie-cutter suburban neighborhoods. Changing this changes the model of military service.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Hegseth is low human capital and so is much of the rest of Trump's cabinet.
You just said your primary objection to him was aesthetics. Which is it?
Marco Rubio will be in his sixties after an eight year Vance presidency, and he's already been waiting a while. Americans like to complain about how old their politicians are and he likely knows this, plus he's almost certainly more popular among the broader public than Vance. He doesn't have a lot of reason to take that deal.
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