Probably (my guess) with the AI set to “if you lose connection, try to hit any humans in this area”

What could go wrong there?

Which one of these two do we think is going to run out first?

Setting aside that this is largely wartime propaganda horseshit - both militaries are relying on conscripts and mercenaries, both are heavily invested in cheap long-range drone artillery, both are saturated in “Victory is just around the corner” propaganda which has degraded support for their civilian leadership - Russia has 5x the population of Ukraine. If this really is just a Bodies-In-Spaces conflict, the Russians can drown Ukraine in their own blood over a long enough timeline. Ukrainians still need someone to fire those bombs and bullets, ideally before Kiev looks like Tehran.

But then nobody is “winning” this war in a material sense. Putin is shedding what political allies he has as the war drags on - Romania, Hungary, Turkiye, Syria. Zelensky is fully fucked the next time Ukrainians bother to have a domestic vote. Both of their economies have tanked, with further economic pressures coming from the conflict with Iran and the climate change threat.

The issue isn’t whether one runs out first. It’s how long the political leadership can drag this forward before someone pops them and brokers a settlement that ends the bleeding. Netanyahu is in a similar position in Israel, with endless war being the only excuse he has to stay in office. And domestic revolt might be what brings all these governments down long before the actual wars are ended.

This commission is the “some other body”

They don’t need “some other body” because it already empowers Congress.

If the worst thing they do to each other in the next few years is to exchange leaflets and trash balloons, I’d call that a win

Theoretically. But if Ukraine won’t negotiate without full return of territory (presumably even including Crimea, which is fully outside their political influence) and Russia won’t cede territory they’ve entrenched…

Feels like a North/South Korea situation is the best case scenario. They stop fighting but never really declare a peace.

I’m not entirely clear how you add Ukraine in the middle of a war, particularly when a chunk of the country isn’t even under their control. If EU states wanted to openly war with Russia, they’d have just done it already. Admitting Ukraine mostly means opening the doors to a massive migrant wave, which nobody else in the EU (particularly neighboring Poland) seems to want.

Of course, sending them €90bn in Russian assets so the Ukrainian government can liquidate it and send it right back to EU arms dealers? That’s a no-brainer.

They haven’t even broken ground for that one yet.

Spot price of oil goes up, domestic producers get richer.

On the flip side, we’re also seeing a surge in mass transit use and big cuts in the number of flights planed for the rest of the year. Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a blitz of new alt-energy construction and surge in sales of EVs in the next few years, either. Not unlike after the Bush-Era $6/gal gas spike during the Iraq War.

Trump’s crusade for $500/bbl gas is doing more to de-carbonize the economy than anything Biden or Obama tried.

Pressure is growing for windfall taxes on the war profits of oil and gas companies, with the European Commission considering a request from the finance ministers of Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Austria to “send a clear message that those who profit from the consequences of war must do their part to ease the burden on the general public”.

Has this ever actually been implemented? I see “windfall taxes” legislation floated every couple of years, when price gouging goes to 11. I never see anyone ballsy enough to implement it.

Every dollar that goes to this illegal, unconstitutional, corrupt and unaccountable Fed Renovation Project is a dollar that’s being stolen from the Glorious, Fabulous, Immaculate, Perfect in Every Way White House East Wing ballroom.

Congress can, indeed, create a commission

Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office

Nothing in here about a commission. A Congressional majority could just announce the President unfit and kick power over to the VP immediately.

Obviously, Republicans aren’t going to agree with this. Obviously, JD Vance is a fucking hack who would continue the atrocities. That’s why Dems needed to block the 2026 NDAA back in December when they had leverage over the Pentagon’s budget. Now they’ve already rubber stamped the checks and there’s little left to obstruct or apply leverage against.

But this just illustrates why “Forming a Commission” is bullshit. Is this really their plan for 2027? Spend a year fucking around on a vote to form a committee to research a bill to have another vote? So they can maybe hand JD Vance the keys to the White House? Assuming some dissident Fetterman tier Senator doesn’t spike it while drapping himself in an Israeli flag?

Pathetic.

any potentially positive action

potentially positive

potentially

:-/

And of course it’s hard to get him thrown out of the White House, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

Critical Support to Thomas Matthew Crooks for giving it the old college try.

I just see the bigger picture

how things actually work

some fantasy where Dems have power

S.1071 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026

On passage Passed by the Yeas and Nays: 312 - 112 (Roll no. 320)

Motion to proceed to consideration of the House message to accompany S. 1071 agreed to in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 75 - 22

Senate agreed to the House amendment to S. 1071 by Yea-Nay Vote. 77 - 20

The majority of Dems are complicit - occasionally even enthusiastic - for these atrocities.

robots will fight each other, so no need for soldiers.

Ukrainian remote operators are killing Russian soldiers today.

In another few weeks, a Russian advance will take territory containing Ukrainian operators. At which point, well…

If it makes you feel any better, these are all being remote controlled.

So while you’re off from your day job of piloting the robot that hunts down dissident Filipinos, some Filipino operator is driving the drone that bombs your car for its “Impeach President Newsom” bumper sticker.

Something Something Just Like Communist China.

Nobody gets fed more conservative propaganda than America

I don’t know how you measure that, per say, but it’s not an issue of raw volume. You can receive less conservative propaganda than your neighbor and still end up with a conservative worldview.

yet a full 2/3 are absolutely against our War in Iran, and most of that remaining 1/3 are lying

Americans are largely against the Iran War because it spiked the price of gasoline. That’s not a position rooted in morality. It’s the same consumerist reactionary sentiment that powered Trump to election the last two times he won (and Biden, the time Trump lost).

The Israelis have had ample opportunity to reign in their aggression toward their neighbors for years

‘Prefer Death Over IDF’: Israeli Jews RIOT In Jerusalem; Refuses To Serve Military & Fight Hamas

I’m so sick to death of hearing the “police state isn’t a big deal, you just need to fight armed goons on the street harder.” Tell it to Alex Pretti and Renée Good.

Do you really think the violence of the Israeli state is limited to Palestinians? It is applied to every dissident group.

the Israeli citizens, who are mostly Jews, are nearly fully behind all of the atrocities their country is committing.

The Israeli lay citizens are at least we immersed in Zionist propaganda as any American or Brit. To crib from Glenn Beck, it’s always 9/12 over there

“Israel” isn’t synonymous with “Judaism”.

What we have in Israel is one more instance of British colonial Divide and Conquer imperial strategy. Select a minority group, grant them favored status, heavily arm them and use them as your proxies to secure territory, isolate them geopolitically so you’re their only friends, then use them as de facto mercenaries to suppress the majority ethnic groups for their labor.

The inversion of this strategy has been the degree to which Israelis have played this against their imperial sponsors. They’ve converted far right Christians into their own proxies, they’ve infiltrated the police and intelligence agencies of their benefactors, and they’ve exploited anti-Islamic sentiment to send Europeans to war against the majority ethnic groups across the Middle East.

The lay Jew isn’t having a say in any of this. They’re just more pawns on the board for Israeli, American, and European power brokers to push around.

Ignoring the racist and patriarchal solution they came up with, it’s hard to disagree with their conclusion that average people don’t make for a reliable voting population.

“Average people” aren’t voting.

Profile of Voters vs. Non-Voters

Whites, Christians, partisans, and the elderly are all over-represented in the official election day tally. Education level, wealth, suburban/rural populations, and married households are also disproportionately represented. And that’s before you weight the ECs by state population. The state of Wyoming - population 587k - enjoys 3 ECs to California - population 40M - and its 54 ECs. That’s 3.5x the weighted representation per citizen.

To say “the founders were right to structurally exclude 80% of public and then disproportionately represent the rural backwaters against the urban core because voters are dumb”, you need some really funky understanding of what constitutes a functional elected bureaucracy.

It should further be noted that the Founding Fathers generation of Presidents and Legislators largely sucked. They were genocidal both with respect to their First Nation’s neighbors and their ethnically homogeneous neighbors. They accelerated the slave trade directly into a civil war while telling themselves it was going to die out. They inflicted nightmarish ecological harms to their local agriculture via excessive tobacco farming. Their fiscal policy was a forty year long trainwreck, culminating in Andrew Jackson and a generation of cyclical depressions.

It seems that 1/3 of the population doesn’t give a shit about anything, 1/3 is certifiably insane, and 1/3 put in a reasonable amount of effort to understand the issues and proposed solutions.

None of that is true, though. It’s just back-of-the-envelop vibes math.

What you have is serial nationalist indoctrination at the primary school level, mass media misinformation straight from secondary school to retirement, and a partisan political economy that thrives on pitting half the labor force against the other half through “wedge issue” campaigns.

“Oh, well, these people are just crazy” is the lazy man’s analysis of someone with divergent priors and media diet. For the most part, they’re using the same logical fundamentals as you are, they’ve just got different inputs. Similarly, “these people don’t give a shit” is a casual off-the-cuff response aimed at a population that is chronically overworked, underpaid, and routinely rug-pulled.

Consider who is actually on the ballot in some of these races and you might understand why folks express apathy. When campaigns boil down to a bunch of personal attacks between two corporate hacks who hold all the same policy positions, what you’re voting in is barely more than a vanity contest.

I don’t know how you can address it without creating a system just begging to be abused.

Systems beget abuse when they allow for power imbalances between haves and have-nots. This is particularly true when quality of life is predicated on being in the first group over the second.

At some point, the only system that is beyond abuse is one that holds the least person in it as an equal to everyone else. But it is very easy to agitate against such a model when you are able-bodied, property owning, and racially in-group, while the person you’re profiteering off of is not.

The electoral college is the dumbest fucking thing to ever become a thing

The original US system was designed to limit democratic input as much as possible. The EC is a holdover from a time when we thought Senators shouldn’t be directly elected to begin with and only white male land owners should be afforded a vote. It was warmed over liberalized feudalism on its best days.

Next up, ranked choice voting.

I like ranked choice by-and-large. But I think the super-massive 700k person House seats and the two-Senator state seats are a bigger problem overall. Our voting districts are so enormous that only celebrities, millionaires, and deep party insiders can operate within the system. That strangled control of the bureaucracy affords phenomenal amounts of control to unelected party officials and entrenched partisan leadership.

Keep in mind that ranked choice voting gave us Eric Adams in NYC. It does nothing to guarantee quality candidates.