yunyun333
1d ago
The Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage, not treason. The last person executed for treason was during the Civil War.
yunyun333
3d ago
China, or any other country, cannot just snap their fingers and go to war. Spinning up the war machine takes time and is very visible. If there were any inkling that they were seriously moving towards a war footing, this pseudo regime change op would end.
The bigger relevance is that of volume. How many interceptors does the US have, and how many can it produce? Any Chinese invasion would be kicked off with missiles aimed at every US airfield in the region; can they be protected? What does the supply of radars look like? Etc.
yunyun333
4d ago
A month ago the airspace around El Paso was closed because a military AA system shot down a DHS drone. Probably not relevant, but you never know with this administration.
yunyun333
5d ago
Pre FDR there was essentially no federal welfare of any kind, just local poorhouses and a single mothers/elderly pension at the state level. Then you had social security/welfare with FDR, medicare/medicaid/food stamps with LBJ, clinton's overhaul, and ACA medicaid expansion, to name a few.
The uniquely American aspect of spirit that prevented socialism from ever getting a serious grip appears to have washed away somewhat. Now people look to European countries that spend 2-3x federally on welfare.
yunyun333
6d ago
9/11 was carried out by (mainly) Saudi nationals based from Afghanistan. The Beirut bombing would be a better example.
yunyun333
8d ago
The problem in Iraq and Afghanistan was never 'getting in'. In Iraq we were actually there to nation build and the CPA fucked it up. In Afghanistan we could conceivably have declared 'mission accomplished' and left if we got OBL, but alas...
Warlord Hajji Zaman spelled this out for me one evening poolside at the Intercontinental, one of Kabul’s two luxury hotels. He wore rimless gold glasses and sported a pristinely coiffed beard, a look that belied his adventurous past as a commander in eastern Afghanistan. In December 2001, when Osama bin Laden and hundreds of other Arabs fled to the Tora Bora Mountains along the Pakistani border, Zaman had pocketed huge sums of money from the United States for his services in hunting them down.
“The Americans came to me because they knew only I could get the job done,” he said, raising a glass of scotch to his lips. He sat stiffly straight, a Kalashnikov leaning on one leg. On either side lolled a pair of bodyguards, who seemed to have had a few too many. The tinkling of a piano filled the air, and Western women dangled their feet in the pool. “This whole land,” he said, sweeping his hand across hundreds of tiny house lights studding the mountains around the city, “this whole land is filled with thieves and liars. This is what you Americans have made.” He ordered another round. “I know this game, I know how to survive.” He was slurring his words by now. “I went to the Americans and said, ‘I can find bin Laden.’ I told them, ‘Give me $5 million and I’ll bring you his head.’ So they went and talked to their bosses and arranged it, and I got $5 million. Then, a few days later, I went to al Qaeda and told them, ‘Give me $1 million or I’ll turn you over to the Americans.’ So they gave me $1 million, and I convinced the Americans to stop the bombing for a little while. I told them we could use the time to find Osama, but really it was so those Arab dogs could escape to Pakistan. Then I went to the ISI,” the Pakistani intelligence agency, “and said, ‘Give me $500,000 and I’ll give you al Qaeda.’ They pulled a gun and told me to get out of their face.”
yunyun333
10d ago
https://x.com/i/status/2027578652477821175
Not insane enough for OpenAI, swooping in for the steal.
yunyun333
11d ago
The funny part is that a large part of the funding is from the Saudis.
Anyways, it will probably work itself out. Paramount was financially struggling, and massively overpaying for Warner Bros famously hasn't worked out for much healthier companies.
yunyun333
18d ago
Georgia expanded Medicaid with work requirements (which are coming to every state soon) in 2023. So far they've paid Deloitte about $90m to enroll about 10k people, with 2/3 of that cost being administrative. Surprisingly, that's not that terrible compared to Georgia's average of $5k medicaid spending per enrollee, but still quite a bit of waste to cover what should be a healthier population.
yunyun333
20d ago
"Hard" and "weak" are simply so vague as to make the theory virtually unfalsifiable. And there are so many other factors going into military prowess and conflict that make the connection extremely weak at best. Did the hard times of Vietnam and the 70s make the US better at kicking Saddam's ass, or were the two wars too different for any comparison? Something like the Schlesinger liberal-conservative cycle lays out somewhat clearer parameters.
Judging by the assessment of John McNaughton (assistant secdef for international security affairs) in March 1965, we achieved 20% of our aims.
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