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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • F16’s won’t give Ukraine much of an advantage until sufficient numbers of pilots are a trained. There are two weapons that could immediately change the battlefield landscape. GLSDB’s and ATACM’s are long range precision bombs that would allow Ukraine to target Russian supply lines and ammunition stores far behind the front lines, including into Crimea. They both have backup inertial guidance systems in order to mitigate GPS jamming… which is a big problem for their current guided munitions.










  • In Israel the right-wing government is currently using the same argument to try to muzzle the supreme court so it can push through legislation. It’s always a bad idea. Anytime we Democrats remove these mechanisms it always comes back to bite us. In 2013 Harry Reid led a vote to reduce the Senate supermajority requirement for bench appointments from 60 votes to a simple majority. The direct result of that was the Republicans removing the supermajority requirement for the Supreme Court which culminated in the mess we have today.

    The founding fathers built in these safeguards to force us to seek compromises. The alternative is rule by the extremes which is what we see today.


  • “Vested interests create “checks and balances” primarily to make political systems non-responsive to demands for social reform.”.

    It is thanks to checks and balances that we don’t currently have a dictator Trump running this country. Anyone who thinks checks and balances are a bad idea need only take a cursory glance at the world over the past few years to realize we would be far worse off without them. From Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Boris Johnson in the UK, would be autocrats were thwarted in their quest to remain in office by these same checks and balances.



  • No matter which side you are in the statement “The Taliban’s successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world.” is objectively true. The shortfall in opioid production will easily be made up from other sources, likely adulterated with synthetics that cause more harm. As for the Afghan farmers who grew the stuff they’ve not been given another alternative…they just had their crops destroyed and have no other sources of income.





  • So if corporate greed is responsible for things like high oil prices what happened on April 20, 2020 when oil prices touched 0.01 per barrel? Do you think the oil companies were suddenly overcome with a spirit of charity?

    It’s true there may be some profiteering during times of economic instability but those are exceptions and they certainly don’t account for the high profits experienced after the pandemic…those were a result of supply chain bottlenecks and a release of pent up demand. Corporate profits are now trending back down, at least in the US. Do you think the companies there have suddenly become less greedy?


  • The article confuses cause and effect. Stratospheric corporate profits are the result of too much money chasing too few goods and services, the same as it’s always been. The culprits are not corporations but rather profligate spending by rich world governments.

    During the pandemic central banks reacted by opening up the money spigots, injecting vast amounts of cash into economies trying to keep them afloat. It was the right thing to do. The problem was that they never turned off the taps, nor did they raise interest rates or taxes to try to balance the books.

    The fact that companies raise prices in response to shortages is not only natural it’s also desirable. There is no other way to align supply and demand short of rationing.