Let's see how it goes now with McCarthy out. — ssu

I think it's going to be a complete fiasco. Commentators are saying that the reason McCarthy was dumped was because he had the gall to work with Democrats to avoid the massive consequences of a US debt default and later to keep the Government open. This clique of hardliners (let's just call them 'fanatics') may be willing to precipitate such catastrophes just to prove their point - even though they don't really have one, other than hating Democrats and defending Trump. They're not the least interested in solving the problems of actual government. One of them has said more than once that Government is useless and should be abolished. So there's every reason to think that come November, when the temporary funding resolution expires, there will major Government shutdown conducted by the MAGA fanatics and Trump minions.

It should be shouted from the rooftops that refusing to fund the Government (and a large part of the debt that was incurred under Republican presidents!) on pain of massive cuts to social welfare, is not a legitimate form of political discourse. It is essentially blackmail and extortion which has become almost business-as-usual through several decades of Republican malfeasance. It's a dreadful state of affairs and a sign that the ship of state is listing dangerously.

Here in Australia, there is a mechanism for what happens if the Government is denied funding (it's called 'blocking supply') or reaches impasse through some other means. A double-dissolution election is called ('double' meanining both Senate and House of Representatives, equivalent to Congress.) We've had some, over the years, and it breaks the deadlock by allowing the electorate to essentially re-make the Government. There doesn't seem to be any such mechanism in the US political system, so a deadlock appears quite possible.

The only possible silver lining to this very dark cloud is that in the end, Republicans are harshly punished at the ballot box next year, losing both Congressional majority and the Presidency.

I think it's going to be a complete fiasco. — Wayfarer

I agree with you.

The way it's going I really think they will let the US have a default. The theatre has perhaps been played so many times that some people will say let's get on with it.

Of course, as it's the US, nobody will call it what it actually is, a debt default. And likely when the markets start to howl too lowd, then something will be done. Only through a crisis will anything be done.

The way it's going I really think they will let the US have a default. — ssu

Actually I believe the next debt limit vote is not required until 2025 - that was part of the agreement between Biden and McCarthy signed off in June (and one of the causes of his overthrow). But the next round of appropriations are due Nov this year - that's the next crisis on the menu.

Actually I believe the next debt limit vote is not required until 2025 — Wayfarer

Usually they are required far more earlier than anticipated.

Perhaps. There's some murmurs around that Jim Jordan might win the Speaker's Ballot. God help us all if that's true.

I'm not familiar with Jim Jordan.

So why would he be a bad choice?

(If you have enough time to enlighten a foreigner on this subject, I'd be happy.)

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/06/donald-trump-backs-jim-jordan-house-speaker

“Jordan is one of Trump’s biggest champions in Washington DC and has been leading spurious investigations into prosecutors who have charged the former president. He was also part of a group of Republicans who worked with Trump to overturn his defeat, ahead of January 6.”

What Michael says. He's a ignorant blowhard and diehard partisan.

Fiasco for sure. I'm surprised the Dems voted for removal TBH. It would have been a good move towards forcing the GOP towards the sort of compromise politics they should be pursuing considering they hold just one chamber and on razor thin margins.

But apparently the GOP leadership has reneged on several previous compromises, so I can see why the Dems decided to let them deal with their own mess. Still, it isn't good, it makes a shutdown highly likely. And the idea that a "shutdown is good because Republicans will get blamed for it in an election year," is the same sort of politics that has destroyed the GOP's ability to govern.

It's insanity. It's going to be an absolute nightmare if Trump wins again, which seems quite possible. I really, really wish Biden would have stepped down. It seems the height of hubris for him to run again at his age, with his abysmal approval ratings, during one of the most consequential elections in US history. Then again, from what I understand, he basically got the nomination by threatening to stay in no matter what, giving the nomination to Bernie and thus, in his and his rivals' estimation, making a Trump victory far more likely (probably true). Despite the media blitz to boost his image, his actual actions at key moments make him seem a good deal like Mitch McConnell, e.g. "if I can't sit in the important seat I'd rather watch the ship sink."

But, on the plus side he's generally staffed the Administration with competent leaders, so my problems are more political than on policy.

It's insanity. It's going to be an absolute nightmare if Trump wins again, which seems quite possible. I really, really wish Biden would have stepped down. It seems the height of hubris for him to run again at his age, with his abysmal approval ratings, during one of the most consequential elections in US history. Then again, from what I understand, he basically got the nomination by threatening to stay in no matter what, giving the nomination to Bernie and thus, in his and his rivals' estimation, making a Trump victory far more likely (probably true). Despite the media blitz to boost his image, his actual actions at key moments make him seem a good deal like Mitch McConnell, e.g. "if I can't sit in the important seat I'd rather watch the ship sink." — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's insane to me that the Democratic party did not foresee this situation and make plans right after they won in 2020. It was always clear Biden would not have a great chance at a second term.

It is beyond me that this massive, powerful party is apparently incapable of coming up with a suitable replacement candidate and unable to enforce the necessary discipline to get them nominated.

It's like they want to be defeated. Perhaps the party leadership secretly agrees with the GOP plans and would rather live in a "managed democracy" where the rabble cannot question their wealth?

Parties can enforce discipline on rank and file members by threatening to withhold fund raising assets, donations, endorsements, committee assignments, etc., but once the person is famous enough and has their own funding resources and runs their own patronage network they are hard to contain.

Biden entered the 2020 race with enough name recognition and support from his association with Obama that he could be a spoiler, throwing the race to Bernie, and that seems to be what got him the nomination in the end. Parties have a much easier time punishing less well known candidates or legislators.

Plus, the Dems were gunshy about using party influence to corral the number of nominees after their near coronation of Clinton blew up in their faces.

Ultimately, the other candidates threw in with Biden to avoid what happened in 2016 to the GOP, a candidate the RNC absolutely did not want winning because there were too many other people fighting over the remaining votes (seems likely to happen again).

Truman and LBJ ultimately didn't run because they themselves thought it would hurt the party, not due to party discipline for example.

I don't have a particularly high opinion of Biden but his administration has been fine. But because of his history, I feel like this has more to do with him bringing on a ton of Obama people simply because they are part of his patronage network and Obama was a good leader/selector of talent. Biden's history shows his stands tend to blow with the direction of popular sentiment in most cases, not unlike McConnell. But I'd call Obama one of the best Presidents in the past century, so to the extent parts of Biden's administration is Obama 2.0, I don't have too many complaints, his ability to pass legislature
being hamstrung anyhow.

The whole last 8 years has turned me sour on presidential term limits. Obama would have won against Trump in a landslide. Taking him out was like removing Pedro Martinez or Randy Johnson from a game because of the pitch count when your bullpen is trash.

e's a ignorant blowhard and diehard partisan. — Wayfarer

I guess being partisan is the trend now.

I really, really wish Biden would have stepped down. It seems the height of hubris for him to run again at his age, with his abysmal approval ratings, — Count Timothy von Icarus

So Trump is young???

Anyway, it's actually the problem of parties that they don't have good people in the wings growing up. Isn't the geriatric leadership of the both parties obvious case of this? It should be.

The whole last 8 years has turned me sour on presidential term limits. Obama would have won against Trump in a landslide. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Democracies ought not to be dependent of one man.

I don't know if "being better than Trump," is necessarily the standard to aspire to. But yeah, the lack of a focus on developing young leaders is a problem and I would also argue that the reason mid to long term problems are so hard to tackle in the US, and in the developed world writ large, is partly because of gerontocracy. Climate change is likely to be far more of a problem in the second half of this century, a US debt crisis is probably a decade + away, etc. It's rather enraging to hear politicians dismiss issues that might come up as soon as 2040 as ridiculous to consider. If you're having a child today, they aren't going to get out of high school until 2041.

The population has grown older, but the representation is not at all in line with this growth. People under 45 are over a third of the adult population but represent 6% of legislators and a very small share of cabinet level positions too. And it's not like being in your mid-40's is young. It's middle aged. The Baby Boomers took over a majority in Congress and the White House at close to the same point in the "generation's" aging.



Unfortunately, across the West, the lopsided age-wealth gap also tracks very closely with ethnicity, so the two become tangled together in politics, forming a destructive witches' brew. "Why build schools, it's for those people," versus "why pay for pensions? Those are the racists who didn't want to pay for our schools."

And then on top of that you have the issue of the debt in the US, and funding the massively expensive entitlements for retirees (a problem everywhere), running smack dab into the time bomb issue of appropriate levels of inheritance taxation. This issue will become acute because wealth has come to skew very heavily towards older citizens, and inheritance will tend to keep that wealth very concentrated as it is passed on because Baby Boomer's had way less children on average, with most new growth coming from migration instead. Inheritance split between 8 kids does a good deal more to level it our, but 1 or 2...



Bit of a side rant, but I find the whole thing very dispiriting, but also fascinating. I think it could actually help ease ethnic tensions for people to realize that they are, in part, also just the time old tensions between the priorities of the old and the young that exist in any society, and that the trick is to try to find a fair compromise.

I'm surprised the Dems voted for removal TBH. It would have been a good move towards forcing the GOP towards the sort of compromise politics they should be pursuing considering they hold just one chamber and on razor thin margins. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But that would have been dead in the water. Gaetz said before the vote, 'If the Democrats want him, they can have him.' So if he had been 'saved' by the Democrats, then he would have had even less sway with the MAGA faction than he had already had. And, as you note, McCarthy had already reneged on various deals to placate the fanatics, AND launched a groundless impeachment enquiry against Biden with no floor vote (in blatant contradiction of his own protests about Pelosi doing the same against Trump after the infamous 'Ukraine shake-down' call). It would have been beyond the pale for the Dems to have stepped in.

The election of Trump has kinda soured Obama's legacy for me. It seems evidence that, while a competent administrator, Obama has failed to be a transformational leader.

These days it seems to me his affable manner and generally positive policy goals did not amount to much progress in solving the US' most pressing problems, both domestic and international. It wasn't stagnation, but it also fell short of what's needed.

Obama has failed to be a transformational leader. — Echarmion

Alternatively, all we've been seeing since is the backlash. The transformation being resisted.

Fiasco for sure. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That fiasco is now seen when the US should react to the situation in Israel. (Yes, Israel needs more weapons and ammo for Gaza!)

(Yes, Israel needs more weapons and ammo for Gaza!) — ssu

Really? I would have thought they'd have plenty.

These are Americans thinking of the situation!

Remember it's not the AIPAC or the Jewish living in the US. Many of them who follow politics in Israel might actually not like so much the Likud. It's the Christian evangelist crazies for whom Israel isn't an ordinary country, but has in their heart this special place, because to be good Christians they have to support Israel. And if Israel is attacked, it's end times. The rupture. Everything as crazy like that.

Both parties just love them. And AIPAC.

Oh, you were being sarcastic. :up:

Yes. :smile:

Israel needs more PGMs because PGMs are expensive and no one has enough for any sort of sustained warfare. This was made obvious during Odyssey Dawn, etc. where the whole of NATO was running out of PGMs not that long into a (relatively) small air campaign in Libya. Even your cheapest base model Excalibur 155mm shell is $70,000 a piece, and those are only so "precision guided." They have a much better safety profile (for civilians and your own forces obviously, not for the targets), but you're still talking pretty wide variance in where you can expect the shell to land.

Missiles that are sure to get on target tend to be much more expensive and have to be used with platforms that are intrinsically expensive to utilize (i.e. aircraft). The safer they are to use in urban areas, the smaller their effective radius tends to be. So, something like the R9X Hellfire variant, which deploys spinning blades instead of explosives and thus has a very targeted lethal radius is great if you don't have many targets and they don't know you're coming and so aren't hiding under cover. But otherwise, they lose effectiveness.

The case for giving Israel PGMs at this point would be:
1. To deter Iran. The idea is that, if Iran thinks Israel isn't being resupplied, they might think they are low on munitions and decide now is a "window of vulnerability." This might in turn incentivize them to attack if they think it's likely they'll fight at some point, since it's better to fight when your opponent is weak than when they are strong. And to the degree that this calculus holds, and that it would not be good for a wider war to start, this makes a certain type of sense.

2. Using PGMs is safer for civilians. More accurate munitions let you use less powerful munitions. Most countries don't use 300lb 203mm shells any more because artillery has gotten more accurate and a 90lb 155mm shell will do. But obviously, when it comes to unintended targets, larger shells have a bigger blast radius and are more likely to hit civilians or damage civilian infrastructure. This problem simply scales up with we compare relatively small payload guided missiles that can hit a given window with 1,000lb dumb bombs used to level the entire building.

3. PGMs are more effective at hitting the intended target. The flip side of hitting unintended targets less is hitting the intended targets more. And if you can hit targets more effectively from the air you have less incentive to invade on the ground. And since pretty much everyone agrees that a ground invasion will produce significantly more civilian deaths, giving PGMs might be justified to the extent that it stops a ground invasion or makes it more contained.

4. If you're providing arms to a country you have some degree of leverage in that you can say "don't do x or we cut the sales/aid."

You had the same factors in play with US sales to the Saudi's vis-a-vis Yemen. The Saudis were in the war and weren't likely to leave if the US backed out of sales. So to the extent that they'd just use Chinese rockets and Russian dumb bombs, not selling them weapons wouldn't have made things better.

But, of course, the key question at play here is "would the country getting the weapons actually still pursue the war, and pursue it as long and as widely without the sales? And if not, then aren't the sales making things worse even if they do make civilian deaths less likely in local instances?"

Those are very important questions, but also maddeningly hard to answer.

I would say this probably was more applicable to the Saudi situation, in that I think they would have quit Yemen earlier if they had more losses and less success due to not receiving the same weapons systems.

But Israel is probably going to attack to try to heavily damage or destroy Hamas no matter what the US offers in the short term. If that's true, then it doesn't really do Palestinians any good for them to be trying to accomplish that by raining down old dumb fire artillery shells except in the jaded sense of: "but maybe if they kill enough civilians they otherwise could have avoided killing if the IDF had more accurate weapons the world/Arabs will unite to turn on Israel." Given the number of atrocities we've seen in the world, and in that same region, and given how little has generally been done about it, this seems like a pretty long shot thing to hope for, a sort of nihilistic millenarianism where somehow its better if more, less accurate, higher payload weapons go flying into an urban area because some unlikely cascade of geopolitical shifts might happen.

The best justification for US sales/aid to Israel would obviously be if they could somehow convince Israel not to do a ground invasion in exchange, or do only a limited one. And who knows? They might not. I have considered that the mobilization could be to force Hamas to mobilize and build fighting positions and give out weapons so that said activity can be spotted from the air and Hamas soldiers targeted that way, but that might be too much to hope for.

Given the number of atrocities we've seen in the world, and in that same region, and given how little has generally been done about it, this seems like a pretty long shot thing to hope for, a sort of nihilistic millenarianism where somehow its better if more, less accurate, higher payload weapons go flying into an urban area because some unlikely cascade of geopolitical shifts might happen. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That just sounds crazy. I've been figuring the point was to just use shock and awe to make an impression... tamp down violence until the next generation gets it going again.

However there is another side to this, what we have quite well seen in the war in Ukraine and is an obvious fact:

If the stocks of missiles, guided munitions and overall ammo supply gets low, armies you them less frequently. If they are plentiful, then you can use them far often and not only when the most urgent need arises.

The case for giving Israel PGMs at this point would be:
1. To deter Iran. The idea is that, if Iran thinks Israel isn't being resupplied, they might think they are low on munitions and decide now is a "window of vulnerability." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Uh, I'm really not sure about that, apart from weapon systems that can hit Iran itself. Israel isn't facing a conventional enemy, hence it's not fighting a conventional war. Just look at the videos and photos that come from Southern Israel: it can park equipment next to each other and mass the troops who walk in large groups. This would be absolute suicide in Ukraine... if Israel would be facing an enemy like the Russian armed forces.

In a conventional war you truly get to be short in all kinds of ammo as you have the urgent need to destroy the conventional enemy before it's artillery and aircraft destroy you. Hence the wars against Egypt and Syria were actually quick with the Arab side being the one that had gone through it's ammo and vulnerable to Israel marching to the Capital, basically.

If the stocks of missiles, guided munitions and overall ammo supply gets low, armies you them less frequently. If they are plentiful, then you can use them far often and not only when the most urgent need arises.

Sure, but Israel is at risk of running low on PGMs in the short turn, not "all munitions." They would run low on dumb munitions only after firing 60 years of surplus into a heavily urbanized area where the population has nowhere to flee from. You see the problem, right?

By the time they have to start rationing shells Gaza could be destroyed. Second, in Ukraine the front line could be evacuated. What do you think would have happened to civilians in Bakhmut if they had been there as Wagner human waves rolled down the street? This is why everyone agrees that a ground invasion will produce more civilian deaths.

Uh, I'm really not sure about that, apart from weapon systems that can hit Iran itself. Israel isn't facing a conventional enemy, hence it's not fighting a conventional war.

And the guided munitions used in either case are radically different?

JDAMs aren't long range. Hellfires aren't long range. The drones and fighters they are used with are long ranged. The weapons being used in Gaza are exactly the sort of weapons that would be used to fight Iran in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, or Iran itself and are being deployed off the same platforms. You don't need special "long ranged weapons," for your strike aircraft.

Hence the wars against Egypt and Syria were actually quick with the Arab side being the one that had gone through it's ammo and vulnerable to Israel marching to the Capital, basically.

Egypt and Syria got more munitions and hardware in 1973 than Israel did through Nickel Grass. The problem wasn't that the Soviets weren't resupplying them, they even escalated to nuclear threats to bat for the Arabs, the problem was that the Syrians kept lying to the Egyptians about their successes and forced them to abandon their modest, quite successful attack for "push them into the sea," antics where they left their SAM umbrella and chaotically tried to advance into defenses. The Arab offensive didn't collapse because they ran out of PGMs, which they had virtually none of anyhow, or because they ran out of munitions more generally, but because poor strategy and leadership led to a rout once the tide turned. Essentially, the problems documented in De Atkine's influential "Why Arabs Lose Wars," which have more to do with training, culture, trust, NCO structure, centralization, etc.

Israel probably isn't out of PGM's, but out of anti-air missiles for their Iron Dome.

Iron Dome was designed to intercept sporadic attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. and they may not have had stockpiles to have it operating under the conditions we see today.

Obviously they can't go around saying their Iron Dome is out of ammo.

Sure, but Israel is at risk of running low on PGMs in the short turn, not "all munitions." — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Israel probably isn't out of PGM's, but out of anti-air missiles for their Iron Dome. — Tzeentch

Here's a perfect example how peacetime policy goes out of the window once a war starts. Israel can look at the past statistics of how many rockets has it had to shoot down, and then make the calculation how much it needs lets say for the next five years. I'm pretty confident that at no time did they acquire an arsenal of missile for "what if Hamas shoots 1/3 or half of it's rockets in a couple of days". But now they basically ought to have such an arsenal. And do note that this arsenal of expensive missiles has an expiry date, when you simply have to destroy them and make new ones.

(Did you bring the popcorn? Israelis watching the bombardment of Gaza: )

Yeah, but the US can't do much about Iron Dome, that's the Tamir. The US co-production with Iron Dome is on Arrow 3, which is for long range missiles. The US jumped on because its need to to deal with Chinese ACBMs and to support the general anti-IRBM, ICMB, SLBM umbrella its built for itself. From what I understand, the US couldn't really support Israeli AD without deploying its own hardware there (obviously it could scramble fighters for some threats, but not the type that actually exist now).

The US has two SkyHunter batteries that are (maybe) compatible, since they are based on the Tamir, but they wouldn't be on a forward deployed carrier, so that can't be the impetus for that move. IDK if they even work together because that was a Raytheon - Rafael project and has a different "brand name." But sometimes they just name stuff differently under license, "Trophy" APS is called something different in Israel and is an Israeli system now used on the new M1 tank variant.

But rocket fire has trailed off substantially, including a 13 hour gap without any fire. Which might be:

1. Hamas trying to signal desire for a truce (I really don't think they expected their attack to be near as successful as it was or what it would mean. With a competent defense, you would have expected many of those parties to be turned back in short fire fights).

2. Hamas is unable to fire as many missiles because of the extent of the bombardment as a whole, i.e. wide spread destruction making logistics impossible.

3. Israel is being very effective in destroying launch sites, hitting Hamas targets, and destroying munitions storage.

Or some combination of the three, but we can hope less of 2.

The only good news I've seen is that Netanyahu and the far-right are getting blamed and are tanking in the polls such that they will be absolutely crushed if an election is held before a reversal. Makes sense to me. Much of the attack was not remotely sophisticated. The para-gliders could have been shredded if just a handful of people were on watch with GPMGs. It's clear that the party that campaigned on strength left the border incredibly weak, in part because of infighting over their most prominent member's corruption.

Most say Biden has acted either illegally or unethically in his son’s business dealings

Most adults say President Biden has at the very least acted unethically in his handling of the international business dealings of his son Hunter, including about a third who say he did something illegal. Only 30% of the public think Biden has done nothing wrong regarding Hunter’s business dealings.

The idea of impeaching the corrupt Joe Biden is wrong, in my opinion. It isn't up to congress to decide who should or should not be president, especially when the "high crimes and misdemeanors" under discussion occurred when he is not in his current position of power. It's enough that most adults believe that he is unethical and corrupt.

Just one of the many lunatic ideas of the MAGA fringe is cutting budgets for the Internal Revenue Service, which they’ve tied to approval for Biden’s foreign aid request. They’re constantly whining about out of control deficits, yet they want to eviscerate the only government department responsible for bringing revenue in, rather than spending it. It’s because all their Wall St lobbyist buddies want to shield the wealthy from paying tax, of course. Another stellar example of the stinking hypocrisy of the Right, as if any more were needed.