VIM
1d ago
If you convert to Christianity or Islam then you're no longer a Jew but if you become an atheist you still count and can apply for your "Right to Return". Inversely, if a Palestinian converts to Judaism their requests to become Israeli will be rejected and they're just as liable to be gunned down at a checkpoint as any other goy. The only religious requirement is defiance of Christ.
VIM
1d ago
I honestly think he would, under my "Boomer Common Sense" model of Trump. "Sacrificing the presidency" is talk for nerds writing papers in college. It's entirely the wrong framing. Do you, or do you not, act to stop an avowed mortal enemy that is currently much weaker than you from getting the city-destroying superweapon?
This might hold up if Trump hadn't claimed to have obliterated the city-destroying superweapon program several months prior with Midnight Hammer.
VIM
1d ago
Trump looks even more impotent if the reason he's about to lose Congress is because he can't restrain the country entirely dependent on American support from blowing up the one asset that hurts him politically
VIM
7d ago
Deporting 1 million people in 1-2 years sounds like a success until you consider that somewhere between 5 and 20 million people entered under Biden. So at best he's falling short of reversing the change wrought by the previous admin and at worst he's bailing water from the lifeboat with a spoon. That's assuming you only care about illegal migration specifically; if you have a problem with H1Bs then it's even worse than that.
VIM
7d ago
Somebody needs to figure out how Jazz is doing, though that might be more dependent on the CIA
VIM
7d ago
I am genuinely surprised that the polls insist on a Democrat sweep at this stage.
Aside from Gas prices (which are trending down?) and a few bad candidates in races, the GOP is pretty well situated and the base seems motivated!
Wanna bet?
VIM
7d ago
Michigan in particular is a tough race for them with a DSA Muslim vs a turbo normie. Wouldn't be surprised to see Rogers win that one by 8 points.
How much you wanna bet? I'll take even odds that Rogers loses.
VIM
7d ago
Not exactly. The British are worse.
Putin levelled Grozny and Mariupol but he subsequently dumped billions into reconstruction.
The British obliterated Libya, leaving the country in a state of chaos with open slave markets and a giant path to migration, leading directly to the European refugee crisis.
VIM
9d ago
This argument might have more force when Britain invades France, massacres civilians, tries to annex half the départements and gets hundreds of thousands of British men killed in meat-grinder assaults.
Iraq? Libya? Syria? Yemen?
VIM
11d ago
I notice you didn't answer the second question so allow me to repeat:
What if Dems go on to win the Presidency in 2028?
Democrats retaking Congress is not an automatic “I win” button for the Iranians
Probably* not, but it does guarantee that Trump will spend the remainder of his presidency batting away subpoenas and special prosecutors rather than implementing the domestic agenda he was elected on, increasing the odds that his chosen successor loses to Ocasio-Cortez in 2028. That's the automatic "I win" button for the Iranians.
*Unless the midterms are genuinely cataclysmic, like Nebraska and Kansas flipping, Trump below Bush '08 approval cataclysmic. In that case you might find enough cowardly Republican traitors to vote to impeach and remove, particularly in the Senate.
VIM
11d ago
Allow me to repeat:
Are you willing to take even odds against Dems winning the Senate? Would you take even odds on Dems not flipping Texas?
If they do both, would that change your understanding of who really won this war? What if Dems go on to win the Presidency in 2028?
VIM
12d ago
These are two analyses from JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, not the American government.
Did I claim otherwise? JP and Goldman have, at different points in this conflict, predicted basically every possible outcome ranging from "total catastrophe" to "everything is fine in two weeks" so I don't put much stock in their claims. What matters is the actual market price which doesn't remotely reflect a reality in which everything is back to normal.
Prices are falling. We would expect that the longer supply stays at pre-war levels the closer prices will get to pre-war levels too.
When you began declaring victory the price was somewhere near $80, right now it's sitting around $95.
Fantasy world political predictions. It would sound more reasonable if you just said you thought Democrats were going to take the House.
If you prefer, Polymarket has Democrats winning the Senate at 63%. Are you willing to take even odds against the Dems winning the Senate?
VIM
12d ago
In 1944 the Allies made massive territorial gains. The only territorial gains of the current war have been the Houthis seizing the Red Sea coast.
VIM
12d ago
Oil is passing coming through the Middle East again, at essentially pre-war levels. Some of this is from oil bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, and some of this is from oil transiting the Strait under American protection.
So they claim, yet real prices are nowhere near pre-war levels. Reminds me of that old Stonetoss comic about Bitcoin.
Then: "Oil rises to $75!"
Later: "Oil CRASHES to $85!"
Later still: "Oil PLUMMETS to $95!"
All this without even mentioning that bond yields continue to soar despite Bessent burning billions in bond buybacks. At this point Trump's best chance to get prices back to normal is to hope for a global depression that kneecaps global demand sufficiently to make the Strait(s) irrelevant.
Meanwhile, Iran seemingly wants to end the war, although none dare call it "surrender":
I would dare, because it's basically an American surrender to expect all the sanctions relief up front, before any discussion of the nuclear issue. Trump obviously wasn't going to accept, the point was to make Trump look obstinate to the neutrals. "Look, we're reasonable but Madman Trump would rather crash the global economy than make any concessions!"
Contrary to expectations that Iran is biding its time in hopes that Democrats will retake Congress, Iran says that it would prefer to reach a deal before the midterms.
Uh, obviously the Iranians would prefer Trump give up immediately rather than having to endure two more months/years of fighting.
Regardless, the Iranians have already done enough to ensure that the Dems retake Congress. Kalshi has them at 91% for the House and 63% for the Senate. They're already predicted to win Republican strongholds like Texas (62%) and Alaska (70%). The only real question is whether they think they've hurt Trump enough politically to establish deterrence or whether they decide to escalate and give Trump an October Surprise big enough to flip Kansas and Nebraska too.
VIM
14d ago
I do not think the "diesel thief" theory is plausible - diesel thieves would not have travelled all the way from London to rob a US airbase.
Wouldn't be the first time diesel thieves tried to rob a US airbase
Sure, but they demonstrably did a quite a bit to Be'eri.
So did the IDF tank that responded to the ongoing hostage situation by opening fire on the hostages
And Dresden was largely carried out by American forces: no American cities were even modestly impacted by enemy violence during WWII. The total number of civilian casualties in the 48 states during the war is countable on a single hand. Even London with the Blitz wasn't hit anywhere near as hard as Dresden or other German cities.
The antizionists who will be destroying Israel aren't Palestinians but Americans and Europeans. I wasn't saying that Palestinians were going to somehow amass the power to obliterate Tel Aviv in a decade but that the political changes in developed Western countries caused by Israel's campaign in Gaza and the subsequent mess the Middle East has devolved into will ultimately lead to Israel's destruction.
At any rate, the original example I gave was of the Red Army in East Prussia where none of these differences apply. The point is that even a bloodthirsty, vengeful horde led by a brutal tyrant committing the worst atrocities imaginable can still be viewed as the lesser evil when they're up against a genocidaire. "Armed resistance" is far, far short of what Stalin's troops did to the German civilians who fell into their clutches.
Does "the Germans were a decade away from possessing the power to demolish Washington" (roughly true) mean that FDR was the baddie there? I personally don't think so, but YMMV.
Was Stalin "the baddie" in WW2? I personally don't think "the baddie" is a meaningful term; in the vast majority of wars you don't have a choice between the "good guy" and the "bad guy", you have a choice between the "bad guy" and the "worse guy". Stalin and FDR were bad guys (obviously FDR less than Stalin) and Hitler was the worse guy. If Israel is guilty of genocide then it follows that armed resistance is justified; that doesn't make Hamas the "good guy", it makes them the "bad" to Israel's "worse".
VIM
25d ago
No it isn't. How long do you think Israel would survive a European trade embargo combined with an American blockade?
VIM
25d ago
I think any other direction has darker implications: to reverse your claim (which, to be fair, is factually accurate to my knowledge), those that would commit mass ethnic cleansing of Jews in the 1940s were stopped by making their cities look like Dresden. Why wouldn't "Never Again" mean turning cities (Rafah) to such in 2026 for the same reason? "Which river? Which sea?". I don't agree with it, but I can at least understand the position.
With the crucial difference that Rafah was demolished, whereas the antizionists are still a decade or so away from possessing the power to demolish Tel Aviv. I'm not inventing a new standard, just taking the existing one and applying it consistently.
Ultimately, the cycle of violence is only broken when one side loses or admits defeat — the West Germans were to some extent lucky the Western Allies were more magnanimous than many other historical examples — or when "hippy-dippy peace-and-love attitudes" prevail. In most cases I can imagine, I'd prefer the latter.
The "hippy-dippy peace-and-love attitudes" only came out after Germany was defeated. If the Wehrmacht had been greeted by a bunch of protesters waving peace signs instead of millions of heavily armed Red Army soldiers then the war would have gone very differently.
I'll grant that there is a range of actions that are more extreme than total pacifism and less extreme than Dresden but basically anyone who isn't a total pacifist is going to say that armed resistance to an ongoing genocide is justified.
VIM
25d ago
these people don't understand that Hamas is still fighting
Hi there, ignorant peon here! Could you explain how "Hamas is still fighting" when there's a ceasefire and there have been precisely zero (0) reported instances of Hamas attacking the Israelis since said ceasefire began?
If you want to side with the weaker side in a military conflict because that is your philosophy, then just say that. But it is, to me, disgusting and evil when people reward the use of human shields and false flags and piracy and the like with sympathy. The crybully tactics of modern Islam need to be punished like they would have been by the Brits and French of the 19th century. And, quite frankly, given the current set of belligerents, the Brits and French should have been mounting up to do it themselves years ago under a sane system.
Ironically Hamas learned their "crybully tactics" from the Zionists who liked to, for example, hide weapons caches inside synagogues.
If the Brits and the French had applied your reasoning consistently Israel wouldn't exist in the first place. They'd have been wiped out after kidnapping and murdering British soldiers instead of being rewarded with international recognition and protection from the consequences of their actions.
VIM
25d ago
Why does opposition to genocide require a "hippy-dippy peace-and-love" attitude?
The Nazis weren't stopped by hippies waving signs but by the Red Army tearing through East Prussia committing enough war crimes to make Hamas look like humanitarian organization.
If you think that Israel is committing a genocide then it logically follows that violent resistance is justified, assuming you aren't a full on pacifist.
The term Trump used for the Iranian nuclear program after Midnight Hammer was "obliterated". Not "damaged", "delayed" or "set back": "obliterated". Perhaps English is your second or third language but by using the term "obliterated" Trump indicated that he thought that Midnight Hammer was, in fact, decisive. Unfortunately he left no room for this brand of copium.
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