What AMD isn't getting in the current market

 So, Hardware Unboxed had a Q&A session where they were asked what AMD doesn't get about the current GPU market, given their tiny and rapidly declining market share. As a GPU customer myself (a gamer), I'll give my thoughts. 

This is gonna be hard for AMD to hear, but they're basically considered the "cheap" brand. Nvidia is the brand everyone wants, they get the best cards with the best silicon, and the best features and longevity, and AMD is kinda that cheaper brand that cuts corners and tries to compete. AMD has always been the underdog throughout my life, on CPUs AND GPUs, although on CPUs they've improved their standing significantly. AMD is known as the "value" brand, the "price/performance" brand, and from an economic standpoint, the only thing standing between Nvidia just being a total monopoly. 

Honestly, I've bought several AMD products throughout my life, and my experiences are always somewhat middling with them. Here's my overall experience:

HD 3650 AGP (2008)- Needed an AGP card for an aging HP desktop to turn it into a makeshift gaming PC. Nvidia wanted like $200 for a 7600 GS which was insane. They were offering like $60 for a 6200 and $80-100 for a 7300 GT. These were all poor value. AMD offered $60 for a HD 3450 or a x1600, $80 for a HD 3650 which was on par with the 7600, and $130 for a HD 3850 which was just a step or two below the venerated 8800 GT. Given I was rocking a single core CPU at the time, and had a limited budget to upgrade, I saw little value in going for the 3850 so I went for the 3650.

It was kind of a crapshow. The day I installed it I booted up FEAR combat, a game I wanted to play...and it crashed. The whole computer. I booted it up again. AND it crashed again. I thought something was wrong with my build, but googling the issue, I found that it was a driver issue. Apparently the drivers for the card were old and limited and had a weird compatibility with athlon XP processors, and I had to literally use some dude's custom hotfix drivers just to get the issue to stop. So yeah...not a great experience. Good enough given how cheap the cards were but yeah. 

HD 5850 (2010)- Got this for my first REAL gaming PC. Nvidia had no real competitor at the time as the 460 didnt launch yet and my options were the GTS 250 for like $150, the GTX 470 for like $380, or I could go for like a HD 5750 for $150, a HD 5770 for $200, or a HD 5850 for like $300. So basically AMD dominated that price range at the time.

It was a good card, but I did have some issues with it. Crysis had a weird driver crash with it. Dishonored was a chore to get running at all. Long term, AMD GPUs at the time suffered poor longevity. By 2015 drivers were dicontinued. The 460, however, got drivers through 2018. 

In 2012, my friend gave me an old 580, wanting to go up to a 680, it was a significant upgrade, although it died and EVGA upgraded me to a 760 eventually. And...my friend was big on Nvidia. he hated fussing with drivers and the like, and nvidia "just worked." I cant say nvidia performance was as seamless as people act like it is but between this and the 1060, I went team green for a solid decade after this.

I feel like this is where it's time to really discuss, as a gamer, what AMD does wrong. You got cheap products that typically have inferior support, more issues, and yeah, then you lack features like physX or ray tracing. I'd argue at the right price, AMD is worth considering, but a lot of gamers got turned off from it, and honestly, if AMD offers cheaper products, Nvidia will just cut their prices too and yeah. AMD wins short term, but it's argued their strategy sucks long term. So now they don't even cut prices and seem to be doing an Nvidia -$50 strategy which isnt working either. 

Anyway, let's fast forward to the present:

RX 6650 XT (2022)- I went AMD again purely because nvidia stopped trying. They got greedy. They introduced features like DLSS and ray tracing i didnt care about and bumped the price up significantly, making their "60" cards $300+ and ultimately phasing out their lower price ranges. Occasionally they'll offer a $250 "50" card like the 3050 or 5050, but yeah. 

Anyway, for me, $300 was the max I was willing to spend on a GPU. Because that's what I always paid and I saw the price increases as insane and unjustified. And post COVID, when GPU prices dropped, AMD caved first. Their RX 6000 series cards got REALLY cheap REALLY fast. My options were RX 6600 for around $190, 6650 XT for $230, 3050 at $280, 3060 for $340, or 6700 XT for $350. I went for the 6650 XT as it was the best bang for the buck, offering 3060 performance for over $100 less. Which is like a 30% price cut. 

I have to admit, 3+ years later, I'm mixed on my choice. 8 GB VRAM is kinda limited. AMD is already limiting RDNA2 driver support and throwing its buyers under the bus to some degree. Game developers seem to be just expecting you to use upscaling, which looks like crap compared to native. DLSS is the best upscaler and its just expected you'll use that, but the AMD options are worse and that can impact things. And yeah, it's kind of the same issues, you get cheaper cards, but you also get inferior features, more limited support, etc. People dont wanna buy AMD cards if they dont feel like they'll last. And it's not like cards are cheap any more. 

10 years ago when they had polaris, the idea was OH LOOK, THIS 1060 KILLER FOR $200. Yeah they never competed at the high end, but honestly, I think the products they did have were good for what they are.

Fast forward to now. If I were to buy RIGHT NOW, I'd go Nvidia, and here's why. 

AMD has basically discontinued its older cards like the 6600, the 6650 XT, and even the 7600 is an iffy buy as its like $280 or what amounts to like a....5050. Yeah, Nvidia has that $250(260 currently) 5050 and that itself is kind of a poor buy, but it's better than buying AMD. At least AMD will likely support the card well into the future. Meanwhile my RX 6650 XT feels half abandoned despite being roughly as powerful. 

The 5060 costs $330, and launched at $300. It was significantly better than the 5050. And it likely would have been an option for me if I bought late last year. The 9060 XT was AMD's equivalent and was $270. It also was a possible option, but unlike in 2022 it went up FASTER than the Nvidia cards and is now $345 at minimum...for the 8 GB version. ugh....8 GB. But yeah. Until october last year, RAM was cheap, they couldve added 8 GB to a card for like $20-50 and instead they charged like $100 more with the 9060 XT 16 GB being like $370 (now $440) and the 5060 ti 16 GB being $430 (now $550). I cant blame market conditions too much NOW, but yeah they were overcharging BEFORE we got to this point, basically leaving you with the same 8 GB RAM for like $250-300 that we've had since the RX 480/580 in 2016 ten years ago now. Now it's just a no go. 

Anyway, at this point, you gotta bite the bullet and get 8 GB, but let's talk about the overall lineup.

AMD....competes too much with Nvidia. For the past 3 generations, (6000/7000/9000), they've been competing too much at the high end with cards like the 6900 XT, 7950 XTX, 9070 XT...and here's the thing...why would ANY premium buyer buy AMD? Even if raster is good, they lack the ray tracing, they lack the technology, they lack the long term software support. They're the cheap brand, and yet, they seem to have forgotten their place in the market. They compete with nvidia head to head in premium segments when their tech is still very much behind Nvidia. No one is gonna wanna spend $500, 700, 1000 on premium GPUs when they can just...buy Nvidia. Their products are worse than Nvidia. They age worse. They lack features. They lack support. Drivers are still a nightmare for some people (I've had occasional issues but to be fair Nvidia isnt spotless either, I had issues both on the 760 and 1060). 

For me at the new "low end" of $200-300, you're getting a card with 8 GB VRAM where you're expected to upscale to get acceptable performance in games (an industry problem), and AMD lacking an answer to DLSS is painful. It was fine using FSR on an aging 1060 for a while, Im glad AMD had SOMETHING but in order to compete with nvidia, they need new features, and to get those new features they gotta screw over existing customers. And the fact is, we're far enough into Nvidia's new upscaling and ray tracing driven ecosystem where buying AMD kinda locks you out of features needed to make modern gaming good.

Again, it would be fine if GPUs were cheap, but they're not, and that's another problem. I keep saying it. We used to have a market that went from around $100 up to $700. Now we got a market that goes from $250 up to $2000. And AMD is kinda abandoning low end customers just as Nvidia is. They dont have answers for low end gamers. For a while it was just "buy a 6600" and now those have dried up. Their lowest end options worth a crap are now the 7600, which competes directly with a 5050 and fails for the reasons mentioned above, and the 9060, which fails vs the 5060. 

They need lower prices. They just do. They need to aggressively break into the low end market and flood it with cheap GPUs. Why do they not have a 9050 XT? They could charge $200-250 for that and have it compete with the 5050 (ideally, I think $200). They could offer a sub $200 card as well, something 3050/6600 level. A 9040 so to speak. Again, why have these guys abandoned the low end market? They have these kinds of SOC configurations in mobile devices like the rog ally and steam deck. They should exploit the market for something above the steam deck level but below their current entry level offerings. 

And they could do what they did with zen, aggressively price them to make up market share. I mean, we gotta remember that. I was crapping on zen early on because AMD was STILL a budget brand. But at least they knew their place. And they priced their products accordingly. And they were still the value kings for a while for that lower-midrange consumer base that no longer exists. 

Honestly, I think there's an adage I hear in PC gaming a lot. There are no bad products, only bad prices. To be fair, you CAN make a bad product, like an exploding power supply or something, BUT....assuming it passes basic QC...the adage holds. AMD is actually a good mass producer of GPUs. They power most modern consoles like the last 2 generations of Xboxes and Playstations, shipping millions of units. They have entry level graphics for handhelds. But then their discrete GPU division is a hot mess. They are trying to compete with like the 5070 ti with the 9070 XT, and they're matching Nvidia roughly on price/performance...but with inferior features and support. And a lot of us gamers are like..."why buy AMD? why not just buy Nvidia?" 

And that's why Nvidia has more market share. AMD has given us no reason to buy their products for the most part. Now, again, I'm open minded to buying them. I run AMD now, I've run it in the past, but what's the trend? AMD had its hooks into markets that Nvidia ceded ground on. Nvidia is a company that makes very good products, but they get arrogant. They get too big for their britches, they overcharge, and then AMD comes in and exploits the market. 

Right now, there's arguably a whole market out there for budget GPUs that AMD is barely touching. And while, again, I get it, kind of a bad market right now with the rampocalypse, but yeah....AMD has to offer cheaper GPUs, like not just a few dollars cheaper, but to shake up the market. If they cant do that they need to somehow offer better products with more complete feature sets and longer driver support...and to make up over a decade of poor good will from the community. 

 Honestly, I think the cheaper GPU route is better. Maybe right now that involves a lot of sub $300 8 GB GPUs. Maybe in the future it means offering 12-16 GB where Nvidia offers 8. But yeah. When I think about why I bought AMD GPUs in the past, it's always because they were cheaper and filled a niche that nvidia simply didn't. The quality of the products often arent up to nvidia's standards, but they're normally a whole lot cheaper to make up for it. But when you're literally at Nvidia +/-10% price, and you offer inferior features and less support, why would anyone buy them? AMD has trouble selling stuff at a discount, which IMO is because, in part, they dont offer enough of one. Again, when nvidia products are similarly priced, most would rather buy nvidia so you gotta be the value brand and sell cheap stuff. You gotta be that guy offering a 6 core 12 thread CPU when intel offers 4/4 (looking at you, 1600x vs 7600k). You gotta do that, but for GPUs. Idk, it seems like AMD gave up actually competing and would rather preserve profit margins on what they do sell, but in doing so they lose volume. And now Nvidia has like 94% of the market. I dont think AMD is gonna command a majority any time soon, but they could get in the double digits just by offering better products for less money. I get it, it sucks being the "cheap" brand, but that's what AMD is, and they gotta play the hand they got, not the hand they want. As long as they make any sort of profit, they should be happy. And maybe over time they can actually do what they did with ryzen, but let's face it, that's probably gonna take around a decade for them to actually come back. Kinda like it took AMD a decade to fully come back after bulldozer. Just how I see it. 

The James Talarico crowd is insufferable

 So, I'm gonna start this with a disclaimer. I formally support James Talarico for the senate. He's the dem nominee. He won fair and square, and while I hate the dude's aesthetics, he's pretty decent on policy.

But man, can we STOP fricking fawning over him? People need to stop treating this guy like he's this big rising star in the party, and how Crockett sucked, and Talarico is so great. Aesthetically, I liked Crockett. I liked her direct, confrontational approach to politics. I dont like Talarico's soft spoken obsession with religion. People seem to treat this guy like a novelty. Can you imagine? A hyper religious guy ON OUR SIDE, TURNING THEIR IDEOLOGY AGAINST THEM. Yeah, but it's still...their ideology. Sure, there's a lot of interpretation in the bible as far as economics goes, and one can make a strong progressive Christian case for left wing politics.

However, I'm gonna be blunt. It's not MY case. Again, I'm too reddit atheist to appreciate this guy. And Im gonna be honest, I define my politics in large part by my moral opposition to evangelical christianity. It's a fundamental worldview thing for me. And seeing this guy using that worldview against the right...doesnt endear me to him, because to me, it's still a bad worldview. i tolerate the guy, because he is the nominee, and because he has a good chance of winning texas, which is basically the buckle of the bible belt. But...I dont LIKE the guy...I dont wanna see more of him. he kinda alienates me. And his die hard supporters alienate me big time. 

I want to see a nonreligious left fighting against the evangelical nuts, and I see the moderate christians as this sort of swing vote. And keep in mind my views on moderation. Even if moderation is sometimes necessary, i dont value it for its own sake. And it seems like a lot of his appeal is because he has this unique "electability" among religious moderates when in reality, I'd rather just see people leave Christianity. 

Maybe had my life gone a bit different, I would be a "James Talarico" in a way. I could see a potential alternate life path where I remained christian but turned progressive. But at the same time, in stark worldview terms, I just see it as contradictory. Sorry, it is. I dont value the idea of having one foot living a myth and the other living in reality. I'd rather just...ya know...live in reality. 

I hope he turns texas blue, but my support for the guy is more transactional than full throated. And I wish my fellow lefties would stop acting like he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. 

I mean, maybe it's good some dems have enthusiasm for the guy, but I sure as fudge dont. Sorry, I can't just get hyper enthusiastic for good old christian boy over here.  

The marine was right: no one wants to fight for Israel

 So...there was a marine at a congressional hearing that yelled "no one wants to fight for Israel" and got unceremoniously escorted out of the room. That's what really got attention here. Because his arm got stuck in the door, the use of force caused a very loud crack to be heard on camera...which was the guy's arm breaking. And apparently Tim Sheehy (R-MT) helped the security push the guy out. After taking like $600k in cash for Israel. 

And I'm gonna be frank with you, I think the marine was right. We can debate whether what he did was acceptable. I'm not always a fan of loud self righteous anti war protesters. But idk, in this case it seemed somewhat justified. This isn't just an abstract "over there" issue like Palestine was. This is putting our troops on the line for what? And you know what? That soldier was right. Why the hell should we die for Israel? Screw Israel. I want nothing to do with Israel. And neither do most Americans. This is a fundamentally unpopular war.

However, even if we do say "okay well is interrupting a hearing justified? is security removing the guy justified?" Okay. But let's face it, this amount of excessive force was not. The dude's arm was jammed in the door and they kept pulling. Quite frankly, he got a much harsher treatment than 99.9% of January 6th rioters who unceremoniously stormed the capitol building. The only one you could argue had it worse was Ashli Babbitt. And you know what? In THAT situation, I could see breaking a dude's arm if he was trying to get into the capitol chamber. But here? nah, this is excessive AF. 

Either way, I'll just repeat what he said. NO ONE WANTS TO FIGHT FOR ISRAEL. If Israel wants this war, let them fight it themselves, without our help. Stop making us do their dirty work. The vast majority of the public wants less foreign interventionism, not more. Even Biden was doing too much in the eyes of many voters, and I thought Biden had the balance right 95% of the time. Seriously, half the public is like full on isolationist. They might at best support the liberal world order and leading from behind. But the last thing around 75% want is a boots on the ground war for regime change. 

Discussing why we're invading Iran

 So...I believe we are invading Iran for 3 main reasons. It's not nukes, it's not them not negotiating with us. That's all just the pretext, and a shoddy one at that. Here's the real reasons:

1) To distract from the Epstein files

 This really is a matter of trying to take heat off of the Epstein files. It's a long known political tactic among the powerful that when the walls are closing in and you fear some sort of revolt (like MAGA turning on Trump in this case), that you distract with a war. it takes the heat off, and causes the press to focus on that rather than the inconvenient issue(s) you no longer want them to talk about. This is Trump's way to take the heat off of the Epstein stuff.

2) Israel

At best, Israel has a long term geopolitical ambition of security in the region. They are surrounded by potentially hostile powers and see Iran as the biggest threat to their national security. By knocking out Iran, we theoretically make Israel safer long term, or so the logic goes.

The problem with this mentality is, to paraphrase an old political science professor of mine, that preemptively attacking you because you fear being attacked in the future is like just going up to someone and punching them in the face because you fear them punching you in the future. And that kind of makes YOU the bully and YOU the bad guy. 

And let's face it, at worst, this is all imperialism. Israel wants to expand into a form of "Greater Israel" across the middle east, and obviously, Iran is a threat to those ambitions. The entire Muslim world is, quite frankly. Do you think they're just gonna lay down and accept Zionist rule? hell no. 

And then you gotta consider how much Israel is influencing our government. To go back to point 1, The Epstein thing was arguably a Mossad operation to get blackmail on leaders to get them to do whatever they want. And most of our government representatives take AIPAC money and Israel has an outsized influence on our politics that should be concerning. Remember that scene from 300 when it was found that a lot of people in the Greek legislature took money from Persia and were basically pushing government policy toward supporting them? That's how I feel about Israel right now. And that's why Im out of good will with them. They're unduly influencing our government, undermining our own national interests, and pushing us toward a war that has nothing to do with us. And Trump's going along with it, because not only is he a psycho, but because he himself is compromised, probably because they still got TONS of blackmail on him over the Epstein stuff and possibly other things. 

3) Oil

 Yeah it all comes down to natural resource. Trump is burning our bridges with the world market. We could've probably had a good oil deal with Canada, but because Trump's a bully, Carney walked away from the deal and is looking toward China and Europe now. And that could have long term geopolitical consequences. So....Trump wants to make up for that with Venezuela. I know Kyle Kulinski had a segment like a week ago or so that discussed how oil guys were like "if Trump wanted oil he shouldve invaded Iran, not Venezuela" because it'll take years to build up Venezuela's oil infrastructure and Iran already has it so I could see Trump being like "okay, so I'll invade Iran instead." Again, virtually all wars post WWII and a lot of wars pre WWII are over natural resources, and oil being the paramount one. So yeah, that's why.

I mean, there are more reasons too, but those are the three big ones. Other reasons:

4) Long standing grudges

 Iran has been a public enemy of the US since 1979 when they had their islamic revolution to overthrow the Shah. now, to be fair, they hate us because the Shah was a dictator that the CIA put in place back in the 1950s because...once again, we wanted the oil. But yeah the people rose up, overthrew him, and the regime that took over was basically....what Iran has been since. A theocracy that hates the US because of our imperialistic tendencies. 

Anyway, we were on a positive path to normalizing relations with Obama thawing things a bit with the nuclear deal, which allowed Iran have access to nuclear materials for power purposes, under careful watch of the IAEA. It worked. And then Trump tore up the deal because...well....he's both a psycho and an idiot.  

Anyway, we could've invaded at any time, but we're doing it now for the above 3 reasons.

5) Trump wants a legacy

 Trump sees his legacy as expanding the US borders. He has outright imperialistic ambitions, pre 1945 style. He wants to take over places. Venezuela, Iran, and he wants to rule them directly. He also has interests closer to home with places like Greenland, Canada, etc. He's likely to attack Cuba next from what I heard. But yeah, he thinks it's still the 19th century when this made you a great leader when in the post WWII environment, it's not. It makes you look like a rabid dog that's just biting people. And that makes the world less safe. The modern world is based on respecting the existing order and NOT doing things like this. The UN and NATO, both institutions trump despises, exist primarily to discourage this kind of behavior. We want stability. We dont want war. But Trump is a madman so he's causing one. He really is America's Hitler. And I'm not just saying it to be hyperbolic. This is similar logic to lebensraum. This guy is gonna start World War III, if he hasn't already, with us being the new Axis powers.

Speaking of which, wanna know what some people are calling this? The axis of Epstein. Makes sense given the reasoning behind #1 and #2. 

6) Evangelical end times screwery

I do not believe Trump to be a religious man. Not for one second. However, he knows how to utilize that stuff and leverage that stuff to make us base happy and get what he wants. And a lot of conservatives and evangelicals literally support Israel because they believe they're essential to some end times prophecy regarding the return of Jesus. And we need this war to happen to bring that prophecy to fulfillment. Basically, a bunch of nutcases who want the world to end have heavy influence in our government. Can we like...take away the keys to the car at this point? Go home, America, you're drunk. 

Conclusion

We are living in very trying times. This is a very dangerous point of history. Some will wonder if we would still be here if Trump wasn't in office. I doubt it. Democrats supported the liberal world order and the institutions that guaranteed international stability. They acted reactively to problems, not preemptively. And recognizing most Americans simply dont have the stomach for war, including a lot of MAGAs, they've largely led from behind, mostly influencing the world through sharing of tech, weapons, and intel, and limited targeted action, but never boots on the ground. This is looking like it might be another Iraq War: an unproductive quagmire that Americans want nothing to do with and is a huge waste of lives and money. Way to go Trump. 

And...hate to say it, I know I also rip the dems for being as pro Israel as they are these days too, but how are my "i refuse to vote democrat because of gaza" voters doing right now? I mean, I get it, Biden's foreign policy wasn't perfect, and the longer the 2020s unfold, the more I realize the anti war faction was right all along in a way, but let's face it, giving the keys to Trump was not really the answer here. To be fair, because Trump IS letting the crap hit the fan it's causing public opinion to rapidly shift against Israel and American interventionism, keep in mind approval for Trump's current actions are somewhere in the 20s on this issue, but yeah. Was this worth it? Was it worth it. This isn't worth it. And this is why even I voted for Harris in 2024. I know a lot of those types arent gonna wanna hear it. I know i hated hearing it too when I voted green in 2016 and 2020, but you guys kinda F-ed up on this one. Say what you want about Biden and Harris, but they were orders of magnitude better than this, flaws and all. At least they weren't bringing us to the brink of World War 3 and the apocalypse.  

Discussing the Texas primary results

 Okay, so, Texas had their highly anticipated primary yesterday.

On the republican side, no one won, because apparently the candidates had to secure 50% for there to be a winner and no one did because it was a 3 way race. Cornyn got the most votes, which was surprising, as Paxton was expected to win, but again, that can still change since Hunt will likely be eliminated next round. 

On the democratic side, James Talarico won. In a way, I'm a bit relieved. Even if I liked Crockett better, if Cornyn actually has a chance of being the republican nominee, it's better we go with the candidate that has a higher chance of winning. To be fair, Im not really sure Texas CAN even flip here. But Crockett vs Cornyn is the worst possible matchup for democrats with only a 20% or so shot, while Talarico vs Paxton is the best outcome for democrats, with them having a 40% shot at flipping the seat. So Talarico can double our odds under the right scenarios, although Texas is still an underdog regardless. I will admit, I liked Crockett better on policy, I liked her attitude better, I liked her not bringing up Jesus every 5 seconds, but yeah...if we want to actually secure power, Talarico is admittedly a slightly stronger candidate on that front. 

So...yeah. Guess we gotta wait for the runoff for the republicans before we know what's going on for sure. I mean...don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of first past the post but I think runoff voting is like one of the worst possible alternative election methods. if we just did ranked choice voting, we'd already know what we're doing. and peoples' second and third choices would already be known, and we could just calculate it all at once. No need to bring everyone else to vote in like 12 weeks or whatever, inconveniencing voters and keeping us all in suspense. I mean, why hold a completely separate second election now? Again, there's just...better systems than this.  

Discussing the religious fundamentalism of the Iran War

 So...this is disturbing, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is reporting that they received over 200 complaints that the troops over in the middle east are being told that this new Iran war is about bringing about end times prophecies from revelation so that Jesus can come back and we get the rapture and the end times. I wish I was kidding, but this is serious.

Guys, if anyone dares question why I'm such a hardliner against religion at times, THIS IS WHY. These people are MENTAL. They're psychos. Again, how can you look at reality properly when you believe in a book that says the world is only a few thousand years old? How can you make sound policy decisions when THIS is your cosmology? You cant! And I dont believe Trump believes this stuff himself, but his underlings like Pete Kegsbreath (yes, I know what I said) does. 

I feel like I'm in the covenant with the prophet of truth going on about how genociding the humans will bring about the great journey or something. Or about how we must light the rings because blah blah blah great journey. Same crap. This guys are a death cult. For all the talk we have about Iran being full of religious hardliners, our fundie Christians are just as scary as any Islamic fundamentalist that I've heard of. It's the same mindset of religious radicalism. 

Nuts. Truly nuts. These people are nuts. And they're in charge of the biggest military in the world. We're going to war in part because these people want to literally usher in THE FRICKING APOCALYPSE (thankfully I dont believe most at the top believe that stuff, rather they use it to justify their stuff to the masses, so at least some people in government are slightly more sane, even if it doesnt make them less evil). Idk what else to say here.  

I am livid

 So....the first American soldiers have fallen in this Iran war. It's already three too many. 

 I am livid over this. What cause did they die for? Oil? Israel? A convenient diversion from the fact that our president is a pedophile? 

Ya know, people gave dems a lot of crap for still being somewhat interventionist and leading from behind. But you know what? Clinton, Obama, and Biden rarely put troops on the ground. Clinton did ONCE, and when the "Black Hawk Down" incident happened in Somalia, it backfired badly on him. And dems have largely avoided doing that since. You might not like the fact that Obama did drone strikes, or Biden funded Ukraine, but hey at least they didn't commit American troops to die for some cause on foreign soil of questionable importance. 

And this Iran invasion is just entirely unjustifiable. It really is. The WMD thing was a pretext. We should know this by now. Again, the real causes were the three I mentioned above. So for all of you who voted for Trump because you saw him as non interventionist and a "peace" president, what say you now? This guy is worse than George W. Bush. At least Bush didnt threaten to invade our allies. 

I know this is unpopular, even with Trump's base. I got the numbers. 21% support, only 40% among MAGA. 49% opposition, 25% among MAGA. I don't ever want to hear about how this guy is such a dove ever again. He's not. He's George W. Bush again on foreign policy if not worse.

Say what you want about sleepy Joe or Kamala, but this wouldn't have happened on their watch. 

Oh, and did you see Trump's speech last night? Straight out of fricking Shrek. This guy is a walking parody. Impeachment now, but we know the republicans at best don't have the balls or at worst are into this crap.