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solowingpixy

the resident car guy

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joined 2022 September 05 02:43:31 UTC 

				
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solowingpixy


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
the resident car guy

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 02:43:31 UTC
				


				
					

					
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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yes, mid 30s, and I go out to the bar between 1-3 nights a week (usually closer to three, but it depends). How much? Too much, especially for my wallet (I, uh, spent over $6K on bar tabs last year...), and a doctor would likely be horrified if I made an actual count and told them, but hey, who needs to do that? This is actually an improvement, and I rarely drink alone these days, just keep some light beer in the fridge to finish off the night if I get bored and go home early. I've been working on the same 15 pack of Natty Light in my fridge for the last month.


I was a pretty ridiculous drink at home alcoholic in my early-mid 20s, such that I’m probably lucky to have survived and definitely lucky not to have wound up in jail. I didn’t do much day drinking but did peak at about a fifth of vodka a night worth of whatever cheap beer (Steel Reserve and Natty Ice were my go-tos.) I was going for that night. I don’t recommend it, even if it was an effective weight loss plan. There’s nothing attractive about self-pity, getting blacked out every night is an extremely inefficient method of working through your problems at best, and that therapist who fired me and wanted me to go to inpatient rehab had a point (even if I don’t think that rehab was the correct answer).


From there I spent the better part of a decade being an overpaid (SEC college town) service industry townie who hung out with other townie service industry/musician types. It was a much more fun way to spend one’s time, if not exactly more productive. I had a life pretty much perfectly catered to it: Work 11AM-10/11PM, hit the bars until they close at 2, rinse and repeat and before you know it you’re over 30 wondering where the time went. Covid, rent increases, and the delivery company I worked for dying ended that fun, though I tossed in a few years of playing the alcoholic bartender game for good measure before concluding that bartending was a dead end. There’s a difference between being passionate and knowledgeable about drinking and passionate and knowledgeable about drinks, and I was a mediocre bartender at best who’d aged out of liking most craft beer.


The last few years and especially the last year have put a major crimp in my barfly lifestyle, namely due to most of my friends from that era either moving out of town or aging out of that lifestyle, along with now working a job that requires showing up early in the morning and actually being productive. Losing that employee discount along with the old crew that was good for at least one or two drinks not rang in per night also hurts. With that, my favorite bar has transformed itself from a hangout for disgruntled adjuncts/professors and dilettantes into a nursing home that occasionally hosts children (aka. undergraduates), or maybe happy hour was always like that and I just never knew (Spoiler: It was always like that, which is why I hated working happy hour, though it remains my contention that our night shift is a shadow of what it used to be). I get bored and want to go to the bar and talk (I envy people who enjoy watching TV.), but then I show up to happy hour and am more often than not the only person aside from the bartender under the age of 55. I haven’t hit every happy hour in town but this seems to be the case in every one I’ve tried so far. Lately, I’ve found myself going out less and/or having two rounds and going home more often because the expected value of entertainment/conversation just isn’t there like it used to be.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For now, the latter. Black voters punch above their demographic weight thanks to being the largest and oldest minority in most swing states and black politicians/party officials perform similarly thanks to gerontocracy bias within the Democratic Party. Joe Biden in particular ran a very "on or east of the Mississippi" campaign that emphasized the black vote.


For the future, I am less certain. For one, what is "white"? Is it a (broadly speaking) married, high school educated, male Gen Xer who owns a car dealership (along with the self-styled "independent" mechanic who works for him), or is it an unmarried, college educated, female Gen Xer with a white collar job working for a large corporation, government, or a non-profit? The first group might outnumber the second, but if the latter is better educated, richer, and exercises a near-monopoly on the votes of educated immigrants the first group is in serious trouble.


If we just simplify things by remembering that the GOP wins the white vote outright in most places, we're left with everyone else. The GOP hasn't been competitive with educated, legal immigrants (not just Asians, but, as a shorthand, Asians) since Bill Clinton was in office, but they tend to cluster in already blue cities in already blue states, so they're not a major electoral force. Legal, educated immigration remains a major boon to the Democrats in terms of House seats, human capital, and powering the economy of blue-leaning America, however. The GOP couldn't offer black politicians and voters the sort of representation they have within the Democratic Party even if they wanted to, and educated black Americans aren't conservative by and large, so moving the needle there is difficult. The GOP/Conservative Inc. have long been desperate to diversify, but have found few takers, hence the massive disparity in minority candidate quality the two parties have to represent them. Democrats have some dummies in their minority caucus, but broadly speaking they don't have to resort to the likes of Larry Elder/Herman Cain/Ben Carson or worse (Herschel Walker/Mark Robinson) because they have better options. Things haven't looked much better for the GOP in terms of finding high quality Asian or Hispanic candidates either. Maybe they're just unlucky that Marco Rubio was/is more comparable to Cory Booker in terms of charisma than Barack Obama.


This leads us to the problem of Milton Friedman's idea that immigration is best if it's illegal. Was Trump being competitive with Hispanic voters in 2024 a realignment or a mirage? Even in the best case scenario in which the GOP keeps Floridian Cubans in their column and in which Hispanic voters start to look a lot like "independent" whites, they're left with the problem that the same education polarization that pushes them away from the Democrats makes them less reliable partisans and less valuable in terms of building competent institutions. In their worst case scenario in which 2024 looks like an '04 style mirage aggravated by the Harris campaign being poor at Hispanic outreach they're...screwed for now. Can the Texas GOP win the Hispanic vote with a candidate slate that's as white if not whiter than an SEC frat house?


Racial politics within the Democratic Party could look interesting. Jim Clyburn isn't going to live forever and if SCOTUS were to curtail the Voting Rights Act the Congressional Black Caucus would face some attrition. There's also the old white problem. Are Gen X whites going to stay loyal to the GOP as they age out of their prime taxpaying years and into their prime healthcare spending years, especially if the GOP tries to revert back to some variety of fiscal hawkishness? It's entirely possible that oldmaxxing is the easiest electoral strategy for the Democrats in the near future, especially if they can promise most of the Dream Hoarders that they'll tax someone richer than them to pay for it (see: the SALT deduction), in which case any racial argument gets kicked down the road.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The short answer is that the upper/educated class and state got a lot bigger and more secular.


One could add a longer answer involving economics (Societies as a whole became vastly richer, and we had a whole new class of jobs in which women were competitive in doing, increasing the opportunity cost of keeping women out of the workforce.).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Mathematically someone has to balance the books here.




Until the bond vigilantes say otherwise, this empirically hasn't been the case, as evidenced by G7 sovereign debt levels since 2000. Unfortunately, since the Silent Generation RJ Reynolds and Phillip Morris (aka. cigarettes) haven't been utilized to their full potential, and those pesky doctors have gotten better at keeping people alive, so balancing the books is getting harder even before we take falling fertility into account.




You wouldn't pay Mom's rent anyway




I did pay my mom's rent, because she was poorly paid, exited the divorce with no property, and, shocker, the man she divorced for being bad at paying the bills defaulted on the alimony as soon as their child was off to college and out of the blast radius. I was the only kid who wasn't still in college or flat broke ("Lying flat" is absolutely the winning strategy when it comes to avoiding familial obligations. No one expects any help from the broke fuckup sibling, but is that really how you want to live?). If not for some dubious VA disability (Semper-Fi!) my mother would presently be begging me for money. Boomer UBI just stops this from happening to a potentially large amount of people at ~65. It's easy to say "They'll just have to accept a lower standard of living.", but do you want to have to tell Mom to eat shit or move her into your house?


Maybe I'm missing something and my family are filled with an atypically large amount of fuckups (This is definitely the case for my father's side; on mom's side at least the Gen X men have their shit together.), but I'm pretty sure that Boomer welfare is the only thing sparing large amounts of the working and middle class from dealing with this sort of stuff until Mom becomes too old to live independently for medical reasons.


I'm not even endorsing fiscal gerontocracy, necessarily. I'm just giving a reason why people support it, and we haven't  even gotten into how many people's jobs rely on the government subsidizing retirees' bills.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


young people do not rebel, they mostly submit and place the blame on other things as the system.




You have to think in the context of the fact that most people aren't exactly "Nick, 30 ans, big net taxpayer" and of generationally falling fertility. Old people welfare and healthcare are beneficial to the old, yes, and maybe too generous, but the government subsidizing the polite fiction of most retired people being financially independent is also an implicit subsidy toward working people in that they are generally spared having to feed/house/care for their elderly relatives.


Put another way, have you ever had to pay your single mom's rent, or gotten a crying phone call from her saying "I'm about to be homeless."? For most 28 year olds, the cost of paying mom’s rent would exceed their entire tax burden. Worse, imagine the case of an only child with two parents requiring something expensive like memory care, or some other chronic illness. In that case it’s almost impossible to lose as a non-exceptional taxpayer when accounting for that implicit subsidy.


The implication of this is that as working age people are facing an ever more impossible expected task in terms of eldercare they will only become more desperate to socialize the cost of preventing this. Likely, this bargain will require subsidizing the not so needy as well. Upper middle class people want their expected inheritances, after all.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Where is a Man to Go?
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
FWIW, I also played a ton of videogames growing up. I lived in the middle of nowhere and "other kids to play with" weren't a thing that existed. I enjoyed the PS2 era, grew up on Grand Theft Auto, Madden, and Max Payne. My username is a reference to Ace Combat: The Belkan War.


Unlike you, I mostly played single player. LAN parties were a thing in boarding school such that I briefly became competent (but not good!) at Counter Strike: Source and had built a modest gaming PC, but I didn't get into the likes of WOW and wasn't very good at RTS games. Around 18 I mostly lost interest. PS3 games were slow to appear and Madden in particular was godawful after the switch. I never got into multiplayer online aside from Battlefield 3. That, and GTA 4 and the DLCs were the highlight of my time with the PS3.


I've occasionally had games reel me back in, but rarely. Far Cry 4 and 5 were fun but I wasn't impressed with Far Cry 6. Metro 2033 and and Ace Combat 7 were fun, but didn't keep me reeled in long term. My PS4 mostly collects dust these days and if anything I wish it could play the old PS2 games so I could give B7R another go.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for April 8, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In lieu of something actually interesting (We're nearing "Three months on a bootleg Chinese GLP" and "10 months in a trucking office"; the latter has potential.), I present an update on [my bum elbow].


A month later, and four doctor's visits (one urgent care, orthopedist No. 1, CT scan, and orthopedist No. 2) later my HSA is soon to be some hundreds of dollars poorer (On that note, why does every practice seem to have its own app, and how do I even find what I owe after the insurance discount to pay it? Is someone going to mail/email me a bill at some point? I'm used to just paying urgent cares cash up front like a pleb.), my elbow thoroughly scanned and X-rayed, and the answer is about what I thought it was, something along the lines of "not great, not terrible".


"Wow, that's an ugly elbow. Can you move that thing?", the nurse for ortho No. 1 remarked upon seeing the X-ray with a tone of bemusement that I found charming. The urgent care doc had supplied a decadron shot and prescribed some variety of steroid shots for the road as expected, but referred me to his buddy at the local ortho clinic to try and get to the bottom of my elbow seemingly going on strike at random. Both ortho appointments were remarkably short and the questions remarkably repetitive, be they from the screening nurse or the doctors themselves. One wonders if anyone takes notes given how many times I had to answer "Why are you here?".  "function normally limited but not intrusively bothersome, flare ups ranging from annoying to seriously intrusive and crippling, flare ups have become more frequent and severe with age". Ortho No.1 was more gung-ho about arthroscopic surgery. Ortho No. 2, apparently the "elbow guy" (Why didn't I get the elbow guy the first time?), was more conservative, advocating a "wait and watch" approach.


The verdict: Yup, the joint has lots of arthritis, the cartilage is gone, and there are some bone fragments floating around that might be catching and causing range of motion issues. Some nerve damage/muscle atrophy is visible on the left hand. That said: if it doesn't get much worse doing nothing might be the correct answer here. The bad news is that we're unlikely to achieve serious improvement with surgery (No lifting weights for you!). The good news is that it probably won't get much worse  or at least won't get worse quickly and if the situation does degrade we can probably get you back to "not great, not terrible" with a scalpel.


Here's hoping this has just been an anomalously bad spring, things will stabilize, and I'll have forgotten about this by the time its solidly summer. I do know that traveling up north for Easter, driving through a big storm, and then smack into a major cold front was most likely the faux pas that provoked the latest flare up.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for March 27, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
287, performed oddly well in cultural knowledge and most poorly in literary knowledge (The latter isn't surprising.).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The US already had those cards given its ability to sanction or blockade pretty much any oil exporter at will and/or blockade China. The only reason that Chinese purchases dominated Venezuelan and Iranian exports in the first place is that they were pretty much the only ones who would buy from them thanks to US sanctions, and as much as the sanction discount was easy money for the Chinese it isn't that important. China also buys lots of oil (much more than from Iran and Venezuela combined) from Saudi Arabia and the GCC countries, along with Iraq. Are we going to sanction all of them as well?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for February 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I did a long time ago (The initial injury and surgical repair occurred a bit over 20 years ago when I was in middle school.). Since then, that arm was weaker but functioned well enough in my high school/college years, and what has transpired since has been a gradual loss of function/escalation of symptoms on "bad" days, easy enough to ignore until it becomes impossible to ignore.


I actually learned something at the doctor today. I'd been told when the surgery happened that I'd had a plate and two screws put in but he had it X-rayed today and apparently this isn't the case. The only other thing I'd been told was in my 20s, at a chiropractor being X-rayed for a different issue (car wreck). That guy was like "Your back is fine, but who did the hatchet job on your arm!?"


Who knows...what I do know now is that the doctor who saw me today wants to refer me to an orthopedist so that we can figure out what is going on with the joint.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Wellness Wednesday for February 11, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is more yelling into the void than anything useful, but I managed to combine bad luck and bull-headed foolishness to reap myself a lot of pain.


Long story short, due to an old football injury that may or may not have had a "hatchet job" of a repair that I foolishly didn't fix in my 20s while under my father's health insurance (and until very recently lacked the sort of health insurance/savings to fix it since) my left elbow in normal times suffers from what I believe to be an entrapped ulnar nerve, a limited range of motion, weakness in the arm and hand, etc. Ordinarily it doesn't hurt that much, just makes for a weak arm that isn't very useful such that I can't do pushups, accomplish much lifting weights, or use regular dental floss. It's annoying but harmless and easy to sweep under the rug and ignore most of the time, especially when we're probably talking about needing a fairly serious surgical repair that until recently would've put me out of work for at least six weeks (Now I have an office job and would just be a slower typist.).


However, every once in awhile (and these seem to get worse with age, currently in my mid 30s) my elbow will suffer from a sufficiently severe arthritis flareup as to be crippled, and today has been one of those days. At best, we're talking about somewhere between 0-10 degrees range of motion in my elbow, constant throbbing pain that I'd rate around a 3 or 4 out of 10, and an instant jolt of pain if I move or twist the joint wrong. I'm pretty sure the cause of pain here is the swelling pushing the entrapped ulnar nerve into something solid, like someone with a screwdriver poking in at one's funny bone.


Anyway, duty called and a dear friend of mine needed an emergency car repair, stat, a brake caliper and rotor replacement (existing caliper was hyperextended and leaking fluid and the rotor was trashed). It was too late to get it to a shop, the friend needed it for a work trip tomorrow, blah blah blah. I knew it was going to suck but didn't see much good in saying "sorry man, good luck!" and going home to sit and feel sorry for myself so I worked through the pain, got the job done (I strongly advised said friend to run by a shop and have them check the torque on the caliper brackets, but am otherwise confident in my work and am reasonably confident that the bolts are tight enough, just not as sure as I'd like to be from working in the dark with limited space.), and the brakes work now.


Right/nice thing to do, but holy fuck that was the wrong move in the elbow department. We're now firmly in "joint is paralyzed" territory and that constant pain is now a more consistent four. I needed help putting my jacket on as I left. This sucks, and unless things dramatically improve tomorrow I'm probably going to wind up spending a few hours and a couple hundred bucks at an urgent care getting loaded up with enough steroids to fix this (This was likely the outcome anyway.). Ah well, such is life, and I have money in an HSA to pay for this now! Take better care of yourself than I have.


Oh yeah, happy coincidence: When this happens my elbow freezes at such an angle that my left hand falls in the right place on a keyboard and it's only slightly painful to type.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, he's definitely not a film guy, but he's fun for a casual shitposter.


On that note this season's Raiders were arguably the worst team they've trotted out since '06, so I didn't spend much time watching. That season ending tank bowl against the Giants was pretty funny, though.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for February 6, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This guy does it better than I will.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This isn't artful. It's impotent thuggery. ICE isn't in the business of prosecuting fraud and no Somalis or white liberals will be punished by their presence. Their bakers remain and will remain thriving, and that is what offends me.


Fact is, Trump is a tough talking liar who lacks conviction and echoes the last person to give him advice. Most of his coterie are corrupt and/or incompetent. He would've been a respectable mayor of NYC but is out of his element as President and the rest of the GOP are mostly worse. Voting is cheap and Hillary/Kamala losing was fun but giving these people an iota of support or emotional energy is a waste of time.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This is a punitive expedition and I could not support it more




So what happens when it turns out that the Somalis are overwhelmingly citizens and/or legal immigrants, thanks in large part to George H.W. Bush and the Republicans who held Congress throughout the 90s, and then a bunch of churches juiced up with money thanks to George W. Bush? For the record if there's going to be punishment I think that it needs to start there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But to win, maybe you have to bring the fight to middle class and upper middle class liberals in blue states. Maybe white progressive Democrats in Minnesota have to fear ICE. Maybe that’s what it takes.


I'm sympathetic to that take, but until Republicans so much as sniff toward taking on the business lobby I will assume that they are not serious about immigration restriction and remain the anarcho-capitalist liberals that were Reagan through Romney concerning immigration.


Remember: Business owners are the original open-borders lobby, always have been and always will be. Fealty to capital is not governance but failure to govern and an invitation to be defeated by anyone who values things other than money. One would think that the GOP would've learned from the last century but they did not and will not.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Congress and the Judiciary are overwhelmingly pre-2020 and Twitter is not real life. No Republican politician, let alone Democrat, would dare utter the words "Black people destroyed urbanism in America". Steve King was castrated by the House GOP for less.


Illegal immigrants (and, really, most first-gen legal immigrants) have almost nothing to do with woke. Those people are mostly Made in the USA Americans like Kimberle Crenshaw with a helping of highly educated second-generation children of legal immigrants.


The GOP does have some genuine restrictionists (motivated by, if nothing else, being able to read exit polls), but the party as a whole is squishier than their rhetoric and quick to sell out to whatever lobbyist shows up. The old school labor types who used to act as a brake within the Democratic Party are all but extinct.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The libertarian idea echoed by Republicans that business owners are too special a class to fill out paperwork or obey laws is what is "primarily responsible" for widespread illegal immigration. Business owners are the original open borders constituency.


Yes, filling out paperwork has a cost. Paying competitive wages that command American adults and/or building one's facilities in a place that people actually live instead of staffing one's factory with migrant children in a rural nowhere county with less than 10K working-age residents is indeed more expensive.


Failing to govern also has costs. Republican politicians have spent the last 20 or so years either lying about being opposed to illegal immigration or being too spineless to actually enforce immigration laws if it meant irritating the Chamber of Commerce. Lying/failure to deliver has expensive consequences like incompetent populists winning primaries and becoming the face of your party. CPB/ICE's budget increase for the sake of deportations exceeds the budget for the entire Department of Labor.


If the right can't tell the Chamber of Commerce types (who, last I checked, are entirely incapable of mobilizing voters, let alone street protests) to take one for the team or try their luck with the Mamdanis of the world they don't stand a chance in Hell of accomplishing any goal that faces any organized opposition.


At this point the Republicans might as well give up and go back to the Reagan/H.W. Bush position of open borders.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You write the regulation such that "Compliant Employer" is vicariously liable for any violations by the subcontractor, as is done to varying extents by OSHA and the NLRB.


For an example: busting Hyundai for using child labor. You would want to make the fines larger, but the principle applies. The factory and the temp agency are both fined for the labor law violation.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It should be remembered that George Wallace was more of a showman than a committed segregationist, the stand at the schoolhouse door was an engineered photo op, and that most of the Southern Democrats were to the left of their voters on segregation. Wallace himself campaigned hard on segregation mostly because he lost the '58 primary while endorsed by the NAACP to a guy endorsed by the Klan (who lived long enough to endorse Barack Obama; Southern politics can be funny like that).


Immigration is another one of those issues where the vast majority of politicians from any party are to the left of their electorate. Steven Miller might be serious about mass deportations, but the Congressional GOP is not and has spent the last 20 years desperate to enact IRCA: Part Two. Funding ICE instead of doing things like employer-based enforcement is meant to show that immigration restriction is impossible. Even Trump spent most of his political career calling Pat Buchanan a Nazi before aping his platform.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
More fun than H.W., FDR's Democrats won WW2 and proceeded to get smashed by a then presumed extinct GOP in 1946 over a messy economy.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of December 29, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Assuming that this person is correct and that ACA enrollment is increasingly becoming dominated by early retirees I would expect the enhanced subsidies to be reinstated fairly quickly A. because Bill and Shelly vote in midterm elections and B. because doing so is easier (and maybe cheaper) than expanding Medicare eligibility to 55+ or whatever.


I've already said that Mike Johnson's crusade against gamer NEETs on Medicaid is a smoke and mirrors show to distract from the fact that unless we undo the ACA's Medicaid expansion (which mostly covers the working poor), there isn't much we can tweak in terms of eligibility that will actually cut costs.


An unfortunate occurrence in the last few years is that the Great Recession through Covid era of stagnation in healthcare spending has ended and healthcare spending is again growing faster than the economy, such that we're rapidly heading for healthcare spending making up 20% of US GDP.


The above is why I assume that we're nowhere near a universal system. No country with such a system spends as much of their economy on healthcare as the US does. Germany is the closest and the US spends about 50% more of its GDP on healthcare than Germany. For reference, if we moved to a German level of healthcare spending we could nearly triple the defense budget (which is currently about 3.5% of GDP). For another fun comparison, what we spend on healthcare now is pretty similar to the entire revenue of the federal government. Put simply, I don’t think that the US has either the capacity to bring healthcare spending in line with other OECD countries (which would require mass firings and/or salary cuts that would hit a well-educated and engaged chunk of the electorate) or the ability to raise taxes enough to cover said spending, so I assume that the system will remain largely as-is.


Even if you’re cynical enough to regard health insurance companies as make-work programs for bureaucrats, they’re a necessary evil because they’re also the paypigs that keep the whole thing afloat. Privately insured patients are the only ones that medical providers actually make money treating (Off the top of my head, Medicare patients are close to break-even, Medicaid patients are a net-loss, and of course the uninsured are near-total write-offs.) and unlike House representatives are able to impose payroll taxes on corporations and the upper-middle class without getting kicked out of office in the next midterm.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 28, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Maybe I'm that guy? I try not to be a bitch about it, and probably call out sick a day every year or so, but I'm prone to being whiny about being sick in a way that I'm not about being, say, physically injured.


Like, I'm sick right now, have been since waking up with a sore throat on Tuesday, and things have been trending more worse than better over the last few days. It's not worth going to a doctor (stocking up on real sudafed and maybe some throat spray, on the other hand, is on the to-do list for tomorrow) over, and I'm not seriously ill, but this sucks and is a crappy way to spend my vacation. My throat/tonsils are sore as fuck, I'm still freezing under this blanket, and the super dry conditions (visiting family in the desert when I live in the humid South) plus nasal congestion are not a nice mix.


Oddly enough, I don't think I ever caught Covid in spite of having a roommate hospitalized with it in the pre-vaccine days. If I did it was a light enough case that I couldn't distinguish it from "generic flu-like illness that's over in a day or so", or a really bad hangover.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The fun fact is that there's never been much of a right. The pre-FDR Republicans were either capitalists (Coolidge) or progressives (Hoover). Eisenhower was a general for FDR endorsed by Truman. Nixon was a pre new-left liberal. Reagan was an open-borders capitalist. H.W. Bush was the dream candidate of /r/neoliberal. W. Bush was a "compassionate conservative" whose signature domestic policy was more welfare for old people (Medicare Part D). Trump is an incoherent populist.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Take out the word "Jews" and insert the word "Russians" and I think you might get somewhere. This is especially fun given that American Jews overwhelmingly came either during the Russian Civil War (how we got Ayn Rand and most of the neoconservatives), during the Jackson-Vanik era (how we got Max Boot), or after the fall of the USSR (how we got Julia Ioffe).


"Well behaved" is a matter of opinion. Successful? Sure. Is having our politics Russified for the better of the country? I don't think so, and IMO neoconservatism is just Russian imperialism or anti-Russian imperialism waving an American flag.  That they overwhelmingly subscribe and contribute to bog-standard anti-American Yankee progressive politics back at home is also not endearing.