Supah_Schmendrick
No bio...
User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
I hope you're right.
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
Doesn't that just make people more sympathetic to her, and more likely to give her the benefit of the doubt?
Supah_Schmendrick
11mo ago
Frankly, it would be unprecedented for the polls to not change to some degree. Things happen, especially with modern short attention spans/news cycles.
Supah_Schmendrick
10d ago
Welp, that's outed me as an online far-right autist, I suppose. (tongue very much in cheek)
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
If you're using the latter ottoman and tsarist empires as your models, that's kinda telling. Neither was a particularly fantastic place to live, were intellectually and culturally stagnant, and were so politically unstable they suffered fairly frequent and serious revolutionary insurrections.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
If there's a high and specific mens rea requirement like "corruptly" or "willfully," you can get away with less specificity in describing the actus reus
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Fair enough. To be clear, I didn't ask the question rhetorically or as a "gotcha." I'm not even sure there is a single "correct" response there.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Did Obama's USDS administrator purport to be able to fire any government employee? Cancel federal government contracts? Impound congressionally appropriated funds?
What is the functional difference between DOGE administrator firing someone and DOGE administrator "recommending" the firing to the Executive Office of the President who rubber-stamps it?
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
Two wrongs doesn't make a right, buddy.
Actually they do; tit-for-tat-with-forgiveness is a pretty great strategy for incentivizing everyone to behave.
Supah_Schmendrick
4mo ago
I think "free speech culture" in the context of the 1850's - a far more legitimately democratic (in the sense that actual political and physical power was exercised directly by the demos upon and against itself rather than via an elected/appointed expert/governing class) is something of a category error. The people who mailed Preston Brooks canes in encouragement of his beating of Charles Sumner on the Senate floor were exercising speech just as much as Lovejoy was. So was Cassius Clay in his antislavery advocacy. So was Thomas Wentworth Higginson and the other Secret Six fundraising for John Brown. People clearly were not deterred from expressing their political views.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
I mean, all of this is percentages and magnitudes across large populations, so of course there are going to be outliers of all kinds.
Supah_Schmendrick
5mo ago
Well, rhetoric goes a lot of different directions for a lot of different reasons, but no, a lot of it is aimed at the most dedicated and smartest people out there, because that's where your activist hours and donor dollars come from. Moreover, there is evidence to show that smarter people aren't necessarily better at seeing through bullshit, but instead are just better at constructing and adapting bullshit to defend their own aesthetic and personal preferences and pre-existing intuitions.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
I said the lion's share goes to higher salaries and higher admin costs. The abstract of the study I linked in my comment:
The United States far outspends Canada on health care, but the sources of additional spending are unclear. We evaluated the importance of incomes, administration, and medical interventions in this difference. Pooling various sources, we calculated medical personnel incomes, administrative expenses, and procedure volume and intensity for the United States and Canada. We found that Canada spent $1,589 per capita less on physicians and hospitals in 2002. Administration accounted for the largest share of this difference (39%), followed by incomes (31%), and more intensive provision of medical services (14%). Whether this additional spending is wasteful or warranted is unknown.
31% + 39% = 70% - over two thirds of the U.S.'s increased per capita physician and hospital spend over Canada's is down to those two things. That's "the lion's share" by any measure.
Supah_Schmendrick
7mo ago
Gaetz immediately resigned from his house seat...maybe this is a bureaucratic poisoned chalice for the senate, which has the choice of either confirming Gaetz as AG or facing a potential appointment of Gaetz to Rubio's vacant seat?
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
Government jobs (at least the ones with policymaking discretion) are highly sought after.
Supah_Schmendrick
8mo ago
Settlement expansion, supported by the Israeli state, is essentially enough for me to conclude Israelis were never serious about peace with Palestinians.
So the Palestinians get to demand to live in a judenrein society? When did that become a reasonable demand?
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
since the foundation of the NLRB.
As we discussed below, the 5th Circuit is working on that problem.
Supah_Schmendrick
9mo ago
Not in the vernacular.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Except our version of the Amazon - the Mississippi basin - has incredible natural soil quality while as I understand it the actual Amazon does not.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
One can argue that the UK got WWI because they were too obsessed with trying to balance (or at least because Grey and French were). And after the horror that was WWI, it's completely understandable why the Brits would have a reflexive allergy against an assertive and powerful Germany, specifically. After all, what was the point of the millions and millions dead and maimed, including the best and brightest of a whole generation, if it only bought thirty years before the Boche came back, and this time in an even less couth guise than the Kaiser? It's the ultimate sunk cost.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
From first principles, wouldn't you assume that if the US cabinet and White House was full of names like Chang, Zhang, Yuan and Dongfeng, the US would lean more pro-China than makes strategic sense?
Not necessarily. I could also paint a just-so story that diaspora emigres could be significantly more hawkish towards the governing regime of the land of their birth if it's out of step with their personal values - a cabinet full of Miami Cubans wouldn't be pro-Castro. And indeed, because U.S. Jews are overwhelmingly liberal, secularized, and assimilated, support for Netanyahu's nationalist government was a minority position in the U.S. before and after 10/7.
Certain items would never make it onto agendas, some policies would be carried out enthusiastically and others would be given up at the first sign of trouble. People could find reasons why military aid to China was a good thing - stabilizing the region, countering Russia, Vietnam and so on. They could find reasons why China causing problems for the US was acceptable, they have certain legitimate interests and mistakes happen. They could create framing where China is a traditional ally of America, we fought together in WW2 against those awful Japanese, it's a vital trading partner, predestined to be a superpower...
Yes, but people do this all the time for all sorts of reasons unrelated to ethnicity; allegedly FDR had a soft spot for the Chinese because his family had a longstanding history of involvement in the China trade and with yankee missionary efforts over there. Similarly the british foreign establishment has had a reputation of being fairly arabist without any significant muslim or arab component in british society; they just felt more comfortable with those relationships. Almost nothing works on hard strategic logic.
Alternately, if the US cabinet was full of Muhammeds and Husseins, I expect Israel would encounter lots of problems. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are amongst the least pro-Israel politicians in America.
Sure, but I don't know how to disentangle their ethnic and religious interests from contemporary American leftism, which is quite happily third world-ist and "anti-colonial" without any arab/muslim immigrant help.
People have natural sympathies for those of the same race and creed.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Except balance of power politics had been British strategy for centuries at this point
Everyone always says this, but I'm not so sure. The Brits had no problem with a post-Napoleonic Europe dominated by Russia and Austria in the Holy Alliance; France was prostrate and Prussia was small and reforming. Sure, Britain pushed back against Russia when it started pushing up against British interests in the middle east and India (e.g. the Crimean War), but other than that the Brits held themselves aloof.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Sure.
Supah_Schmendrick
10mo ago
Israel is a state fundamentally opposed to western values that causes constant headache for the west.
I mean, yeah; a state organized around blood-and-soil nationalism premised on a mythic past and present-day military conquest is pretty opposed to the modern deracinated, pacifistic, cosmopolitan western ideal. A bit surprised that you're in favor of the latter over the former, but wonders never cease!
What about European women's right not to be raped by the migrants IsraAID is bringing into Europe?
Clearly the gentile governments of European nations don't care about protecting that right. Sounds like a problem with the Gentiles.
What about the christians in the middle east that are being destroyed by the hostile nation of Israel?
Sounds like another failing of world christendom. You should probably get on that.
The graft and bloat isn't good, just inevitable. If it wasn't getting laundered through Israel, it would be getting laundered through South Korea, Japan, Australia, the Saudis, etc.
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