America Fuck Yeah
Toil
It is worrying that countries like Germany, Canada and the UK have thrown their whole economies in the toilet and don’t seem inclined to do much about it. We were strongly considering immigrating to Canada, but with their downward trajectory it’s not even a real option any longer.
The US at least is on some sort of track to try to correct the worst of this tendency to self-destruction. But if we could just defeat rampant NIMBYism, we could do a whole lot better.
Pax Out
People will miss Pax Americana when it’s gone, despite all the flaws and mistakes made.
Long Drive
Something people who spend their entire lives on the East Coast of the US don’t appreciate is just how much emptier the West is than the East. It’s a huge difference. There’s not many places in the East that you can drive for a few hours and not see many obvious signs of human habitation.
But in the West, that’s trivial to do.
Stand In the Place
Even though I was already cynical politically and jaded, Obama burned me badly. I’ll never be excited about a candidate again. I am absolutely certain Harris will break most of her promises and will most likely be a middling president. In our system, that’s pretty much guaranteed.
But I believe she will stand against China and will not be a senile, chuntering old man obsessing over past slights and grievances while America burns. And that is far and away enough to get my support.
About Dem Time
Weird that the Dems have become the patriotic party and the Repubs are ready to hand over the country to Putin. Never thought I’d see some shit like that.
But I’m on board for the Dems being pointed the right direction for once.
Patriotism Transition
This is really revealing as to the so-called vibe shift of the last few months:
Nuclear Destruction
It’s going to end up being a bipolar world (America, China) at least partly because other countries insist on just voluntarily fucking themselves over. What Germany is doing is pure goddamn insanity.
Policy
Even though we have been kinda shit at it and in many ways doing it from a Machiavellian mindset, providing arms so that Ukraine doesn’t get overrun is the best thing the US has done in a long while. If we allow enough to permit Ukraine to win, it’ll be an insurance policy against 100,000 American deaths in Poland in 2030.
Port
The harsh reality is that 99% of Americans don’t give a crap what’s happening in Gaza or Israel and it won’t have any effect on the election one way or another. Being a large geographically-isolated country makes the US very inward-facing.
Hardly anyone cares that Kamala supports Israel or doesn’t support Israel. I certainly don’t and I know more than most voters.
Trusted
Harris to Call For ‘Price Gouging’ Ban on Food and Groceries.
This is just a poorly-worded attempt at anti-trust action, which is great. We need a lot more of that. These are not “price controls” in any traditional (or harmful) sense.
Harris, in her speech, will specifically single out the highly consolidated meat industry, deeming its processing middlemen “particularly egregious” price fixers with a history of being found to have illegally controlled prices.
She also plans to direct her administration to carefully scrutinize proposed mergers between large food companies with an emphasis on considering whether they will result in higher grocery prices for consumers
That’s exactly what the FTC and DOJ should be doing a whole lot more of. We need to get American trust enforcement back on track as illegal consolidation and related price fixing is causing unnecessarily high inflation. I support what she’s doing 100%, but not the speechwriter who put those words in her mouth. This statement also makes it more likely she’ll keep Lina Khan in place at the FTC, who is the best chair that org has had since the 1950s.
Kampaign
Kamala is a much better candidate than I thought she’d be, and actually has energy for campaigning and fundraising. This’ll be a good natural experiment to see how much that matters1, especially if the economy continues to hum along about the same as it is now.
I am glad that I was wrong about her capabilities and prospects.
Blasted
Indeed. Tight, coordinated combined-arms exercises is what the US military really fucking excels at. Ignoring prep time, the US military could completely spank the Russian forces in Ukraine in 6 weeks. It’d be an embarrassing slaughter. All the drones in the world would not change that. A passel of AGM-88 HARMs for a few weeks, a wing or two of A-10s, many more Bradleys and a healthy sprinkling of JDAMs dropped from F/A18s and F-22s and Russia would be routed just by air power alone. (Not that Bradleys are air power, but you get what I mean.)
To the extent that the Russian military looks good, it only seems that way in comparison to a country with 1/4 its population, 1/10 its GDP, nearly no close air support and a severe lack of ammo. The US would absolutely annihilate the Russians without much effort.