The Air Canada disaster is Trump's fault

 So...I saw the disaster on the news but didn't think much of it. I found out today that the pilots were interacting with one VERY over worked air traffic controller. Why are they understaffed? Probably because of another government shutdown. Why are we in a government shutdown? because the orange manchild decided that no more legislation would be signed until he got his Save Act. Ya know, that draconian voter law that would gut American democracy. 

That's it. That's where we are. This guy is basically saying allow him to gut voting rights and establish these draconian voter ID laws that mass disenfranchise Americans, or the country gets it. Democrats, DO NOT CAVE. IF YOU DO IT COULD MEAN THE END TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AS WE KNOW IT. And let everyone know, this is Trump's doing. he could just fund the government, but he won't because he wants to rig elections in his favor. 

This is the kind of crap we gotta put up with this year. This guy wants to destroy American democracy, or at least gut it. Why? Because he knows his party is gonna lose if they don't. Quite frankly, I'd rather put up with some pain this year to avoid having to live in a hellish dystopia for the REST OF OUR FRICKING LIVES! Do the right thing. Don't cave to this guy. And let everyone know, this is all on him.  

I don't hate tech, but MAN I hate tech bro CEOs

 So...this is a bit of a rant post. So, I went out the other week. Took my bag with my I put my tablet/gaming handheld in when I go out. Had some earbuds in one pocket. I still used wired earbuds because I have a strong dislike of wireless for a variety of reasons I'll get to. Long story short, my bag flipped over at one point, and I lost my wired earbuds. Thankfully, my dad bought some wireless earbuds for himself and my mom, and my mom didn't really want them, and he offered me them a while ago, but I largely declined because I hate wireless earbuds. Well...now I'm using wireless earbuds. And it got me thinking about the state of the tech industry and the world right now. The predicament of us all having to use wireless earbuds now is a lot like modern AI trends. The reason we gotta do things this way is because some tech bro CEO with a god complex who thinks he's a "visionary" basically forced it on us. And that's kind of what I wanna talk about.

Once upon a time, most earbuds were wired. Earbuds were never a great option, but they were portable. If you had one of those old anti skip CD players back in the day, earbuds actually did a relatively good job at complementing them. I never got into the ipod era. Too expensive and given I listened almost exclusively to like...4 Rammstein albums back in the day, kinda pointless. But eventually, I did modernize and start using tablets and all. And Tablets and phones...used to feature 3.5 mm headphone jacks. And I could use like $5 earbuds from five below with them on the go. It wasn't intended to be the best quality, it's just a cheap, portable option. I got better options for home. But if I go out, ya know, I need something cheap and lightweight that's easy to carry and just stuff in a bag, and if I lose them, like I just did, it's not the end of the world. Eventually, the $5 kind kinda stopped being made at decent quality, so last year I got a slightly more expensive but still affordable $15-20 ones...which are the ones I lost. 

Anyway, at some point, Apple decided to kill off the 3.5mm jack. You know how apple is. They're the epitome of the whole "visionary" tech bro CEO types. They sell overpriced products with proprietary blah blah blah, and it seemed obvious that the reason Apple was doing this was so they can sell you their fancy $200 airpods or whatever. After all, Apple is relatively anti consumer, they got their fanbase by the balls making this closed operating system that only works with their proprietary blah blah blah. it's the reason I hate them and why I've never bought their products. I'm purely a windows/android guy, and while I have problems with windows and android, I never saw a reason to go apple. Their stuff is expensive, the value questionable, and it just reeks of anti consumerism.

Unfortunately for us all, apple is considered the "industry leader" in the smartphone and tablet industry, and when apple does something, all these other wannabe tech bro CEO visionaries copy it. Monkey see, monkey do. They think it makes them money, and over time, they've been waging war on the 3.5mm headphone jack, removing it from phones and tablets, to the point it's darned near impossible to get newer devices that have them. Still, I manage to patronize the companies that do. My razer edge handheld has a 3.5mm jack in the razer kishi controller attached to it, and my samsung tab a9+ also features it. So I'm good to go for the immediate future, and I dont wanna do wireless.

Why do I hate wireless btw? A few reasons. First of all, while yes, wires are annoying, you wanna know what I hate more? Having ANOTHER FRICKING THING TO CHARGE! My earbuds going dead because they havent been charged. I have enough devices to charge, i dont need more peripherals to charge. It's a pain. Bluetooth is a pain. I just want to plug something in and have it work. Not go through pairing, unpairing, blah blah blah. Third, price, earbuds are more expensive for the same level of quality. The point of earbuds is them being a cheap, lightweight, and disposable option. I just want something cheap where if i lose it its not a big deal, and i can stuff it into a bag. Not only are earbuds typically more premium, but the case these new ones come with are super heavy and bulky, far more so than my wired ones were. And for some reason it charges using...microusb? Why? Why would it use such an outdated charging standard? I've been on USB-C since like 2020. Again, pain in the butt. More complicated, blah blah blah. I thank my dad for them, but still, my complaint aint about him, it's about the way we do things now.

Some jack### decided he wanted to make money fleecing his customers by making them buy into expensive proprietary peripherals, and then the entire industry decides to copy the guy to the point that it's darned near impossible to get headphone jacks in mobile devices any more. I HATE it! I didn't ask for this change, but these tech bro guys don't care. They just decide "well this is how things are now, and you have to get with it, blah blah blah, look at my genius, muahahaha! look at my money! how dare you peasant not be happy with the way I made things, dont you understand that this is how we do things now? now fork over all your money to us for something you dont want, but you have to buy because what you actually want to buy no longer exists!"

Like, really. All this crap is, is the downside of consumerism. Consumerism is nice...in moderation. It's nice...when it's actually consumer driven. But the problem is, it's often business driven. Rather than appeal to customers based on need, you got these stupid CEOs with a god complex trying to make our lives harder to force us to buy more stuff. They do planned obsolescence. They literally expect you to constantly replace perfectly viable products by either making them break before their time, or just flat out reducing their functionality. They remove the ability to say, replace the battery, which used to be a thing in early phones and tablets. They try to take away your "right to repair". They update their apps where they dont work on the older versions of the OS, even though they used to. They design things to keep us on a never ending cycle of spending and consumption so number on chart goes up. 

I guess this is kind of adjacent to my big topics of work and capitalism, because consumerism is the alternative the powers that be came up with instead of working less. As we know from the benjamin kline hunnicutt books, we couldve worked less, but instead we implemented consumerism to keep people spending and people working, because people feared a world in which we no longer had jobs and businesses could no longer make money. So they designed a system in which we constantly have new needs to keep us spending, to keep us creating jobs, to keep us working. It's absurd, and when framed like this it's completely counter to a system based around actual human wants and needs. it's just a system designed to artificially keep us on a treadmill so that people keep working, businesses keep making money, and line on chart keeps going up. 

Like, if this were my ideal system, products would be made to last. Maybe some progress would be slower, but honestly, when it happens it would be more meaningful. We'd improve things because the improvements actually benefit people. We wouldnt be taking away the headphone jack standard that people like to force something new on them whether they want it or not. We shouldnt do planned obsolescence just to create more jobs, that's insane. We'd work to meet our actual wants and needs, and to improve things because the improvements actually matter. I'm not advocating for never ending stagnation. I'm just not advocating for constant change and never ending consumption either. You should buy something, it should be yours. And you should use it until eventually it either breaks (not because of design flaws, but actual age), or becomes genuinely obsolete. 

But instead we live in a world where rich people write articles yelling at you if you dont replace your phone often enough because youre ruining the economy...for rich people. Well, F the rich people and F the tech bro CEOs.

And it's not just headphone jacks or smartphones in general that has this behavior. It's this AI nonsense too. Look, I'm mixed on AI. I think it's an interesting tech, but I'm not really sold on it as this end all be all of everything. And once again, it's an industry run by the tech bro CEOs with a god complex. I reported on this in 2023 when I just got my i9 12900k. Suddenly new CPUs were gonna use NPUs meaning they'd have AI on board. But why do I care about that? I don't care, quite frankly. My main use case for having powerful hardware is gaming. That's all I care about. But suddenly they're trying to obsolete old CPUs with new ones that have an AI processing unit on it? And yeah. Ever since then, everything is AI, AI, AI. AI is the solution to everything. AI has to be shoehorned into everything. Every site needs an AI bot integrated into it. My fricking PDF reader (adobe) got taken over by AI nonsense. You realize most of us non professionals just use acrobat reader to read PDFs, right? I mean...I DONT CARE about AI, and I was very pointed with them when I uninstalled acrobat reader and they asked me why I did so. It was because the app no longer did what I wanted it to be. It was made overly complicated and taken over by all this AI bullcrap that I don't care about!

And here we are with talk of windows 12 being an AI centric OS with ridiculous system requirements because, again, these corporations don't care about making a good user experience. If anything they make things inconvenient for you to make you spend money on them. Subscription based everything? AI hardware required? No sideloading? Oh, speaking of no sideloading, let's go back to something I've ALWAYS hated about apple. All of their closed garden BS. Needing to use their apple store, and buy their stuff, at their prices, to get a user experience I can get for a fraction of the price elsewhere. But now with the internet going nuts over android clamping down on sideloading, and windows 12 possibly doing it too, guess what? That's the future! And what are you peasants gonna do? 

Honestly, at this point I might consider linux/steam OS in the future at this rate. It's so ridiculous. These companies are trying to ruin and monetize everything. There's a term for this. it's called "enshittification", or because I try to avoid the curse words, let's call it encrapification instead. These companies are making stuff worse to extract more profits from you. And it's not just some of them. if it was the userbase would fight back, probably leave en masse, and these guys would go out of business. but because we have so few options at this point, and they're all doing it at once, we really dont have a choice but to go along with this stuff. They're ruining the open internet, the open operating systems. In the future it's not gonna be open anything. "You will own nothing and be happy" as a lot of people covering this issue are saying.

Hell, in the future, it's being speculated that the same will be true of PC hardware. Because these same tech bro CEOs with a god complex are why PCs are so fricking expensive these days. They're all buying all of this hardware to build AI datacenters...to force AI on us...because it's supposed to make them money at some point, even though it's not profitable because everyone hates it.....but hey, in the future, if you wanna game, maybe you wont be able to because no one can afford a PC any more. So...guess what? You can just do game streaming. All future computer needs will be run through these massive servers they're building which they own while you get some locked down peasant device with anemic specs where you have to pay for subscriptions to LITERALLY EVERYTHING. That seems to be the future these guys want. They want to kill tech as we know it, to replace it with their apple like walled garden BS, and consumers have little choice in the matter. because like 3 companies control everything, you gotta go through one of them, all of them suck about as bad, and if you dont like it, screw you! What are you gonna do? They're forcing us into their bullcrap ecosystems one way or another?

Again. I'm a tech nerd myself. But Im kinda old fashioned. I like my gaming PC, which I built myself. I like my open OSes like android and windows, I like my fricking 3.5mm headphone jacks. I like being able to put whatever software i want on my stuff, and use it as I want. And I don't give a flying fudge about AI. Honestly. At this point, give me the 2000s back. Things were better in the 2000s. Even the 2010s are looking great compared to the modern 2020s hellscape at this point. I used to think the future was gonna be cool. We'd have flying cars and robot maids. But instead because of capitalism's excesses, we have the death of traditional computing and OSes, and being forced into walled gardens because it makes some tech bro CEO with a god complex money. F this decade, F the tech bro CEOs. I want nothing to do with this, and I'll resist trends to get on board with it for as long as humanly possible.  

Reacting to Andrew Yang's "The Last Election"

 So I'm a bit late on this one, but Andrew Yang wrote a fictional book about his vision of how the 2024 election would play out. It's not as good as The War on Normal People or Forward, and it's an entirely different kind of book. Rather than being a nonfiction and fact based book, it is a fictional novel set during the 2023-2024 election cycle, ending in early 2025 with the next president being elected. The names of the candidates are changed or left out altogether, although they seem based on real people. The third party "Maverick Party" candidate is basically an analogue to himself, running on things like UBI and human centered capitalism. The republican is very clearly Donald Trump, and the democrat seems to be based on Jared Polis, based on the contextual clues in the book (white male Colorado governor who happens to be a billionaire, all the primary candidates seem based on real figures too). It follows the Yang like character and his campaign through the election cycle, with different days being different pivotal moments. He faces scandals, there's talk of extreme political violence, a plot by the military to seize control and to call for a contingent election. Public officials are assassinated, party conventions erupt in violence. and it seems like America is breaking down at the seams. 

 Given Andrew Yang has been talking about America heading toward a civil war, it makes sense, but it really does express the worst case scenario of his fears. The fact is, he seems to "both sides" things too much. On the one hand, I admire his emotional distance from the democratic party. Even if I hate the dems and kinda have the same views as him, I still believe we should stick by the democrats, and that, ultimately, change needs to come from within them. And given that we do face threats to our democracy, we need to rally around the democrats to prevent America from descending into the worst case scenario. He looks at the democrats from the outside in, viewing leftists as figures who eat their own and can't be pleased, while seeing the liberal democratic establishment as being completely and utterly worthless. if theres anything I agree with him on, its his portrayal of the democratic party and figures like chuck schumer, who are quite literally going down with the ship as it sinks. The republican party he seems to ascribe as being more violent and more authoritarian, and let's face it, even if he doesn't say it, we all know the republican candidate is trump, and that many points in the book are very similar to how trump would act. From pardoning J6ers, to inciting violence and undermining faith in the election system, yeah, it's trump. 

Of course....again, he both sides it in a way. He acts like this breakdown of America and its norms and faith in democracy and the polarization is a both sides issue. It isn't. I blame the republicans FULL STOP. They've been constructing an alternative reality for their officials and voter base to live in, a "post truth world" if you will where many people no longer know what's up or down, left or right, and quite frankly, I fully blame the disease of modern partisanship, polarization, and loss of faith in our institutions and elections on them. Yes, democrats are worthless and complicit. And maybe they're shady with their primaries, but those are the worst things I have to say about them. If America IS in a civil war, it's one where one side is fighting and the other is refusing to fight back, for the sake of those institutions. 

Still...despite the greatly exaggerated takes on political violence, there are some events that werent all that different from the real world. Like in the book some guy tried to assassinate a SCOTUS justice. In real life, a similar figure took potshots at Trump but failed, and many of the same forces of polarization and the blame game happened. We had Charlie Kirk get shot last year by a sniper. We had Luigi Mangione shoot a heathcare exec. So yeah, we are in a period of political violence, just not as extreme as indicated.

 **SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT** 

Ultimately, Yang's character, who was named Cooper in the book, basically ran as an independent against the republicans and democrats, taking it all the way to election day and screwing up the vote in a way where it did force a contingent election. No candidate secured the popular vote, no candidate secured an electoral college majority, so it was thrown to congress and the republican candidate won because most states are red leaning. Our contingent election procedures are basically a vote by geography, not people. And the result was very undemocratic. While all 3 candidates all won roughly 1/3 of the vote and won 1/3 of the electoral college, the republicans won because they controlled the legislatures. And they defended it in traditional fashion. "Well it's a republic, not a democracy." Yeah yeah yeah. Weasel words of weasel people who have disdain toward the will of the people. That is, by the way, how the contingent election would play out. Doesnt make it right, but it is the system. I agree it should change in that regard. 

But yeah, that's why it's considered "the last election", the republicans win, undemocratically, and it's wondered if we even will have future elections. The country is so divided, again, there was a plot by the military to take control of the country, and it looks like the country is so fractured and no one trusts the institutions that it's unclear if there will be elections. ANd it is assumed that the republicans probably won't let there be anyway. They consolidate power, and yeah, that's the end of the system. 

Im not sure if this yang scenario is better or worse than what happened. In the real world, the violence was significantly less. Yang's third party run didn't happen (and i wonder if this book is why it didn't happen....he knew that if he did run it would screw things up and split votes), but due to low voter turnout on the democratic side, a democratic president whose mind turned to jello, forcing harris to step in last minute, and a general malaise surrounding inflation, immigration, crime, gaza, etc., Trump won. I know he didn't have to win. I even considered the race a tossup on election day, and I already dramatized my reaction to the results as they came in. And I myself wondered if this was the last election. After all, Trump is a danger to democracy. He's been so since January 6th. He was the one who undermined american faith in elections in Yang's book. HE did. By making up fake narratives of it being rigged and inciting his followers to attack. And in the real world, we tried to hold him accountable, but failed because the legal system didn't act fast enough. He talked about how if you vote for him "you'd never have to vote again." He had that project 2025 ready to go. The American people shouldve known what they're getting into and they didn't.

To some extent, I do blame the democrats for this. Their complacency and internal problems are responsible for this mess. They forced Biden on us without much resistance, covering up his mental decline. They were the ones who pushed party unity so hard that we never had a fair and open primary process. And when Biden stepped aside, it was Harris. To be fair, even I supported Harris. She was the best for the job on such short notice. However, all of this comes back to the democrats core problems. Even now, democrats like to make Biden out to be a scapegoat. But let's face it, the rot of the democratic party went deeper than that. They were supposed to stop trump, and unlike in the book, there wasnt a third party insurgent mucking everything up. The closest thing was RFK Jr and Trump disarmed that threat by bringing him into his administration and letting him do his MAHA thing, to the horror of thinking Americans with at least a high school level understanding of medicine.  And...btw....if you ARE gonna run a third party campaign, THAT is the end goal. It's a pressure campaign to pressure the party closest to you to give you concessions. if Yang ran on UBI, it would be to pressure the dems into supporting UBI. In RFK's case, he ended up appealing to anti vax cranks and Trump basically brought him into his administration, giving him a prominent position with real world policy concessions to keep him happy. Arguably it helped win him the election, because those RFK voters went to MAGA. Again, if you're gonna go third party, that's how you do it. You ideally dont take it to election day. And if you do, you do it in an election year where the consequences of that isn't the system imploding followed by a republican coup. You do it where the assumption is "oh well, the dems lost, maybe they should listen next time." But if it really is potentially the "last election", and 2024 very well could have been....that's suicide. So basically, democracy committed suicide at the hands of Andrew yang's character in the book. In the real world, again, we didn't have that insurgent campaign, and what happened instead was that Trump just outright won the election. In some ways i guess the real world scenario is preferable, after all, the results were so straightforward that they were called the night of, and they were largely beyond (reasonable) dispute (I add the word reasonable because if Harris won by similar margins Trump would've thrown a tantrum and probably incited more violence). 

Either way...idk. I kinda feel somber either way. I mean...here....we lost, it was straightforward, but it does have a weimar germany feel to it. There are questions of whether we will have fair elections in 2026 and 2028. I've covered a lot of the screwery Trump is trying so far. One story I didnt cover that I probably should have (I guess I'll mention it now) is how Trump trying to seize voter rolls in stuff in states like Georgia could be dry runs for him attempting to seize the ballots come election day 2026. After all, it's not the voters who decide who won, it's the person who counts the voters, to paraphrase Stalin. And Trump is a lot more like Stalin than many of us would like to admit. So can we come out of this mess that is Trump's second term? Well the history books arent written yet and it feels like reality is its own thriller novel. 

I guess I'll end it there. All in all, was it a good novel? Eh, it was okay. Quite frankly, the real world version of what happened is far more interesting and realistic. Mainly because its real. Yang's version is kinda just him playing out a hypothetical 2024 where he runs and his forward party splits the vote screwing everything up. Many elements are greatly exaggerated and unrealistic, compared to the real world version. 

All in all, I will say one more thing though. If Yang does run in 2028...he should run as a democrat, explicitly to stop this from happening. Will he win? Probably not. But honestly, I would like to see him try. I still believe in his vision of UBI and human centered capitalism. I just recognize that things are so screwed right now we gotta fight to preserve democracy first, and that means siding with the democrats and getting Trump and his goons out of office. Like, that's priority #1 for me. Even above my UBI crap. Third party protest votes make sense when democracy isn't on the line, but when it is, you gotta protect democracy first. Sucks, but that's how it is.

So yeah, yang 2028...but hopefully as a democrat, not as an independent third party splitting the votes. Unless your plan is brinksmanship with dems to get them behind UBI and election reform....don't even try it.  

If you thought Kristi Noem was bad, look at this guy

 So...I didnt actually cover this, but Kristi Noem is out at DHS. And it should be a moment of celebration. I mean she oversaw ICE locking people up into detention camps unconstitutionally and shooting people in the face, so that ain't good. Anyway, she's gone, but before you celebrate, get a load of her replacement. His name is Markwayne Mullin. The first time I mentioned him to anyone, I got a response like "oh that ###hole who challenged a teamster to a fist fight. And i was just like O_O what? Yeah....

But it gets worse, he's said things like he understood why Rand Paul's neighbor wanted to beat the crap out of him. He supports bringing back dueling. He even challenged a senator to a fist fight on the senate floor until Bernie basically shut that crap down. He seemed to romanticize the caning of Charles Sumner. So let's face it, hes a very violent psychopath. He's so bad he makes the puppy slayer look good.

Look. What we should want from the next director of DHS, who is also in charge of ICE, is someone who can cool down the temperature and bring a sense of levelheadedness to the situation. Someone who isnt going to advocate for wanton violence against protesters. This guy wants to throw down with anyone who disagrees with him, imagine what ICE will look like with him in charge. He will ramp up ICE's violence against Americans with that attitude. He's a bomb thrower, not a bomb defuser. I mean, what the fudge?

I mean, it is the trump administration, they dont give a crap. The cruelty is the point and this could just be a passive aggressive pick of "oh you didnt like Noem? Let me find the loosest possible cannon to serve as her replacement!" I mean, that's what this feels like, if this were intentional. Im not even sure if it is, because while Trump is cruel, he's also an idiot who puts comically incompetent people in important positions of power. It's hard to tell at this point.

Either way, this is a terrible idea. I will lose all faith in humanity if this guy is confirmed. Because holy crap this guy is insane. There's no way he's qualified for this, and his demeanor is so bad it's like putting Kristi Noem in charge of animal welfare. Just a terrible idea.

What we could have funded instead of this Iran war

 So...that discussion last night got me thinking. We've spent over $11 billion in the first week of this Iran war alone, and long term costs are looking to be $200 billion over the next year, if not higher. So let's be honest, $200 billion is the lowest estimate, with it possibly costing as high as $400-500 billion on the high end. That's a lot of money. And you know what? We might as well have set it on fire. I mean, in a way we are. Because a lot of it is going into fancy fireworks that blow up oil fields. We're literally setting the money on fire. 

So...say we didnt decide to set a bunch of money on fire as a giant F U to that middle eastern country who we hate. What could we have funded with this money instead? Obviously UBI and Medicare for all are off the table as they cost trillions a year, but there's a lot of other stuff that we could have funded for this instead. 

Build Back Better- $240 billion

I think the most poetically just choice we could have made for this money would have been build back better. After all this is an oil war. Trump wanted the oil, and now....oil is going up...because of the war. Been to the gas pump likely? Trump did that. "Iran your gas prices up", as the stickers now say. But you know what? We could have funded build back better with this money, which would have cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and made us carbon neutral by 2050. 

And this bill did more than just that. If you look at the estimate, it includes childcare, paid family leave, universal preK, an EITC expansion, and a Child Tax credit which acted like a little UBI for kids and would have cut child poverty in half. This is what Biden wanted to do for us, and I admit, relative to my TRILLIONS of spending with my UBI, its a little barebones on the social program front, but that's still a pretty progressive bill. 

But hey, we couldnt have that because "entitlement society" (F U, Joe Manchin), and republicans are against it for similar reasons. They always scream about how we're broke and cant afford anything and what about the national debt, but they're sure putting this war on Uncle Sam's credit card. How come we always have money for stupid wars in the Middle East and tax breaks for billionaires but we never have any for stuff like this?

Because they dont want to fund it, and they're waging a class war against you, that's why. This is just one of many proposals that could have been funded instead of this stupid fricking war. 

Free college and student debt forgiveness- $220 billion

And I'm not talking about Joe Biden's dinky plan either here, I'm talking the full Bernie. Bernie's plan would come out to $2.2 trillion over 10 years, or $220 billion a year. It would have forgiven all student debt and made college free. We could have invested money to make our next generation of young people smarter, but instead we're sending them to die in the Middle East. What a F-ed up sense of priorities we seem to have...

7.4 million new public housing units- $250 billion

Another Bernie idea, but yeah, Bernie's public housing plan would have produced over 7 million new homes that, at 2.5 being your typical household size, could have housed 18 million people. We have a housing crisis. A lack of affordable housing. While I dont doubt that we need more than this (and tbqh I think it could be done cheaper under the right circumstances, meaning more housing units), it would have helped secure more affordable housing for more people. 

A baseline public option- $200-300 billion

So, as you guys know, Im kinda iffy on Medicare for All these days due to the sheer costs and the fact that funding it on top of a UBI is quite....iffy. As such, I've looked into public options instead, and I'm quite sympathetic to the Medicare Extra for All model, or Medicare for America as it was introduced to congress. While I would say nowadays $300 billion is likely the entry point for the bare minimum option, back when it was proposed in 2018-2019, it cost closer to $200 billion. This isn't the full version of it. Just the most basic bare minimum part of it. The high end version is likely $450-600 billion, but to be fair, the $200 billion being requested to congress for this war is likely the bare minimum version as well, with costs possibly being that high if this war proves to last longer and be higher intensity than we thought. 

Instead, we actually cut healthcare through medicaid cuts and cuts to ACA subsidies. Man, we sure got our priorities straight. F U and your healthcare needs, we gotta set the money on fire in the middle east instead. 

A UBI/tax cut of $1,000 to every adult American - $250-270 billion

We can't fund a full UBI with just a few hundred billion. BUT...we could give every adult in America $1,000...given there are about 250 million of us who would be eligible (the actual number is a bit higher, but my last plan assumed 250 million eligible so let's go with that). Yeah. Who wants tax cuts? or UBI? They're kinda the same thing when you think about it, given I tend to fund my UBI through an NIT style benefit structure. 

Conclusion

I mean these are just some ideas. I honestly think of these proposals, I'd likely choose build back better in part because of the scope, but also because of the poetic justice of actually funding alternative energy sources to get us away from oil, making wars like this less necessary in the future. We invaded Iran partially over the oil, the oil markets are going out of control in response, and we could have instead invested in alternative energy that would make us less dependent on the stuff. 

Honestly, this administration is a joke. Not that it cares. Its priorities are way out of sync with where they should be. This war was unnecessary and its very costly. A huge reason I'm so against it. But it just strikes me as hypocritical that republicans always have money for stupid pointless wars but for things that help YOU? Nah, we're broke, what about the national debt? DOn't let them gaslight you. I dont ever wanna hear that crap ever again. We CAN fund nice things for the people and we should. A big criticism I heard against Biden is we spend so much on foreign stuff, why not invest in the people? While I think Biden's priorities were straight (as evidenced by Build Back Better), okay, where are these Trump voters saying this now? Still believe he's the no new wars guy? Wanna invest that money here at home? Vote democrat. Not saying they're perfect. I can assure you they're not. But they're a whole lot better than this. 

We canceled the green new deal to start a war that raises the price of oil

 So...yeah, we never had a full green new deal, but Biden did try to do build back better and we got some good things out of the inflation reduction act. The point of these efforts were move us out of our dependence on oil, and onto renewable energy. Not only would this have reduced climate emissions, reducing the long term effects of climate change, but it would have made us safer from a national security perspective. because most of our decisions are made because of, you guessed it, oil. It's what drives US foreign policy. It's the lifeblood of our economy and without it, everything grinds to a halt. It's why we're so imperialistic. If anything, shifting to renewables would make our foreign policy more benign since it would be one less natural resource to carve up the world over. 

But....republicans seem to have a weird kneejerk hatred for green energy. maybe it's because they're bought out by oil lobbies, but some of it is because it has become a weird culture war issue, and the right wants to see us suffer and remain on oil because F those libs, man. So, one of Trump's priorities coming in was to axe Biden's legacy on the subject. And instead, what do we get? Well, now we're spending like a billion a day on this war with Iran. Or $365 billion a year. And gas is now $4 a gallon and projected to rise even more. 

With $365 billion, we could've funded Biden's entire build back better agenda. Instead, we're using it to blow up oil fields, poisoning Tehran under an oil rain, and bombing little girls' schools. And for what? This war is, once again, so pointless. Iran wasnt a threat, the whole WMDs thing was just rehashing Bush's poor reasoning and anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see through it. And now oil is UP because Iran closed the strait of hormuz. And that's driving oil up to an insane degree. We're about to be like the 1970s again in all the worst ways. I thought Biden was this generation's Jimmy Carter, but Trump is about to be it, except his stupidity literally caused this situation in the first place. I dont normally blame presidents for the economy or the price of gas, but when you F up this bad, yeah, we can squarely say this is Trump's fault, and this wouldve never happened if we didn't attack Iran. Trump got us into a war he wasnt prepared for, because the dude doesn't think things through and fires anyone who actually does. And yeah. Now we're all suffering for it.

But yeah, one hell of a time to destroy our programs for clean energy. What makes us less dependent on oil? All those windmills and solar panels he doesn't like. Bravo, Trump. Bravo. *slow clap* 

The deevolution of my support of Israel

 So...given previous support for Israel, I figured I'd explain how I've shifted over time, and what caused me to sour on supporting Israel, ya know, for future reference if anyone asks how I got from my 2023 position to my 2026 one.

Ideological presuppositions

So...I'm basically a post Christian with a reddit atheist vibe despite not really being a hardcore atheist any more. And my position on the issue is similar to many new Atheist types. Kyle kind of covered this and how a lot of us went in this weird direction in which we began opposing radical islam at all costs because, well, those guys are absolutely nuts, but to be fair, I have gotten more nuanced with religion over time, recognizing extremists are the big problem, not all adherents (although leaving religion is still beneficial0. 

On the Israel-Palestine conflict, I've generally remained somewhat pro Israel. Post religion, it's less about ideological similarities or sympathies with zionism, but more just...well, they're our geopolitical allies in the middle east and seem more civilized than the Palestinians, and more ready to negotiate. 

These opinions tinged my initial reaction to October 7th, 2023 btw, where I was sympathetic to Israel because Hamas launched this horrible attack on them. And as I saw it, Palestine tends to do this stuff, and when they do, it's basically FAFO. They F'ed around, so now they find out.

The history of the conflict

 Israel in a modern sense was founded in 1948. Yes, it was an act of colonialism by the major superpowers who colonized the region but post WWII divested from those areas and gave them more sovereignty. Basically, they gave half of the land to Israel and half to Palestine. Palestine found this unacceptable, and declared war. And then they got their butts kicked. And because wars have consequences, well, the Nakba happened, and Israel had the upper hand since. In 1967, the Arab powers tried to gang up on israel, and we had the 6 day war where they basically kicked butt and came out the victor again. And...again, wars have consequences, and by that point, Israel owned it all.

However, this displaces the Palestinians, so eventually under international pressure they gave some land back and established some agreements. And...neither side fully abided by the agreements. Israel would do illegal settlements in the west bank, Palestinian terrorists would attack Israel, tensions remained high, and while we had several agreements since then, these guys didnt abide by them because they both want all the land for themselves and dont wanna compromise. 

Generally, I supported a two state solution to the conflict, recognizing israel needs to stop the settlement crap but Palestine needs to stop committing terrorism. The goal for me was to deescalate tensions, although I largely stayed out of it, taking pot shots from the side and posting this video whenever the topic came up. As a secular American, I dont think the conflict is my business, and while I typically saw Israel as the more reasonable of the two and the lesser evil, again, it's not like I sympathize with zionism. 

Initial response to October 7th

I honestly was very sympathetic to the Israelis. I mean just the month before I considered traveling to virginia for blue ridge rock festival to see Till Lindemann. I didnt go because logistics, but I seriously considered it. Im glad, I didn't. It was a nightmare. Till cancelled and the whole festival was...shall we say, a hot mess. There was extreme weather, people got sick from the porta potties being blown over, half the bands didnt play, there was a shortage of resources, it was a disaster.

But hey, at least it wasn't a bunch of terrorists paragliding into the festival and shooting everyone. So yeah, F hamas for doing that. And, of course, I was sympathetic to Israel initially for wanting to declare war on Hamas and eliminate them. And...let's face it. War is ugly. I knew there would be civilian casualties. Like when we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, it wasnt really clean. I knew civilians died. But the difference is Bush seemed to make it clear the objective was to HELP those people, and even if our help wasnt really...helpful, at least Bush seemed to have relatively good intentions. So...yeah, I kinda defended Israel initially, suggesting that they weren't trying to necessarily kill civilians, but war is messy and crap sometimes happens.

My opinion sours 

But...over time, it seemed obvious that Israel wasn't putting a good faith effort into avoiding casualties. As the war dragged on, it became increasingly apparent that Israel WASNT trying to rein in casualties. And support soured as a result. it got so bad eventually Netanyahu was accused of war crimes by the ICC and states were legally required to act on it. They didnt, and if anything, the US shut them down. 

My initial response to this stuff happening was that I didnt like it, but I also kinda figured well what else are we gonna do? Israel was basically our ally in the middle east, and while I didnt support this behavior, eh, I wasn't gonna upset international relations over it either. I kinda just soured on supporting Israel and wanted to stay out of it.

Response to anti war protesters and the 2024 election

Now, from the get go, there were a segment of leftists who got hyper mobilized over this issue and did all these stupid symbolic protests and acted obnoxiously self righteous over the issue. And I generally condemned that. To be frank, I dont care about Israel much. I really dont. This isn't our conflict and I generally dont care that much about it in the grand scheme of things. So I kinda opposed those guys. I kinda thought the left was doing the irritating thing that cost democrats the 1968 and 1972 elections where anti war protesters scream and disrupt things until they're heard, while most would oppose them. I didnt want Biden or Harris to go down over their support because tbqh, they seemed to be trying to moderate Israel somewhat, even if they were "complicit", and honestly, I REALLY didn't want trump to win. As I said, I had 99 problems and Israel isn't one. I cared more about most other issues. So I was trying to maintain party discipline if anything. 

The Trump Years

And...as we know, Trump won. And Trump just gave Netanyahu the green light to finish the job. So they basically went full genocide, with Trump talking about building casinos in the gaza strip and turning it into a crappy middle eastern version of atlantic city. And by this point, even the veil of a good faith effort to minimize casualties was gone. It was just, kill them all, let god sort them out. And by this point most liberals turned hard on the subject, including myself. 

Of course, we could've warned the 2024 protesters this was gonna happen. Harris wasnt a perfect candidate, and I get that people hate lesser evilism but she was the lesser evil here. Honestly, there is no "good" outcome for palestine and the sooner we all realize it, the better.  

Massive political influence

Something that's become increasingly apparent to me in recent years is just how deep Israel's influence in US politics goes. AIPAC spends MASSIVE amounts of money lobbying politicians for Israel support, and also spends massive amounts on destroying their enemies. Much of congress is explicitly bought out by Israel, with them running campaigns against any holdouts. The same goes with commentators. Between Nick Fuentes and Guy Christensen, it seems obvious that they do the same there. They pay generously to commentators who support Israel, but also seek to destroy those that don't, often to disgusting degrees. And I wanna make it clear. Im not sympathetic to Nick Fuentes, guy is practically a neonazi, but I will say this: he went in that direction because in his villain origin story, Israel's lobbying efforts tried to destroy him and they ended up turning him into the monster he is. When Israel turns any legitimate criticism against them into "anti semitism" and tries to destroy peoples' careers, eventually you're gonna get legit antisemite types rising out of that. I don't support those guys, but I understand why it happens.

But yeah, let's be honest. if this were Russia, or China, or anyone else, we'd basically consider this to be a hostile act against our country. It's the kind of crap we pull on third world countries in trying to depose regimes we dont like and get ones in that we do. And it shouldnt be acceptable. And I myself have turned quite anti Israel in response to this. Because I want my politicians to represent actual Americans, not Israel. Again, I dont care about Israel. 

The Epstein connection

 While this isnt entirely proven to my knowledge, there's reason to believe even the Epstein thing is a Mossad operation to get blackmail on politicians. You know, so they toe Israel's line. Epstein is speculated to be Israeli intelligence. And one of the reasons Trump is so willing to go along with Netanyahu is because, as we know, he was a big player in Epstein's operation. And if you read the Epstein files, you know how depraved that is. Like holy crap we're talking child sex trafficking here. And Israel helped set this up to blackmail US politicians? Wow....

The war with Iran

 This brings us to the current crisis. Israel wanted to go after Iran. Trump does whatever netanyahu wants, in part because he's a psychopath, but also due to the epstein blackmail stuff I mentioned. And now WE'RE getting in a war with iran...FOR ISRAEL. And...again, at this point, this is getting so unconscionable that I'm just like. NO. HEEEELLLLL NOOOOO!!!!!! I dont want us to send our kids overseas to die in a pointless war that didnt need to happen, for fricking Israel. F Israel. We should cut off all ties, declare them a rogue state, and let nature take its course. We should be doing to them what Europe is currently doing to us. Sitting there and staying out of it while we make ###es out of ourselves. Except we should also be on the sideline letting Israel find out. As I said before with palestine. Wars have consequences. If Israel wants to F around, let them find out. And if they lose...well...that's the way things should be. But now WE'RE getting involved, and WE'RE getting ruined for them. And it sickens me. I dont support this war. F this war. Whatever happened to "America first?" 

Conclusion

And yeah, that's how I went from being relatively pro Israel to now seeing them as public enemy #1 as far as foreign policy goes. They speedran our fall from grace after 9/11. We started out with widespread sympathy and public support and because we abused that support, we ended up alienating our allies through the Bush years. Obama rebuilt some of that trust again, but now Trump has trashed it. Netanyahu did that too. I went from being relatively sympathetic to seeing them as genocidal warmongers with WAAAAY too much influence over our government. Im to the point I wanna cut off all diplomatic ties with them and let them fight their own war. And if they end up losing, well....maybe they shouldn't have F-ed around. This was totally avoidable. But because we seem to be governed by literal monsters in moral terms, well....we all gotta suffer from it.

Idk how this war will end. It's possible this could lead to the unraveling of the entire US led world order, tbqh. We are coming off as weak and a paper tiger, we've alienated our allies, and this could be the stumbling block that destroys our empire. And that's not good, because if anyone replaces us, it's China. Way to go, America, way to go *slow clap*. 

Andrew Yang 2028?

 So...Andrew Yang is doing the rounds doing book signings and what amounts to town halls for his new book "Hey Yang, where's my thousand bucks?" I havent read it yet, but he's been posting these sessions as podcast episodes and he addressed 2028 in his most recent episode. He hasnt formally declared that he's running or anything, don't get me wrong, but he's floated it, and did mention if he runs on it, he's still for UBI and human centered capitalism.

Well, if that's the case, ANDREW YANG 2028! I mean, this is about as much of an endorsement as his podcast is a declaration of intent to run. But I'm floating it, much like he's floating running. On the one hand, no one else has ever run on my ideology. So...yeah. He gets major points for that. On the other hand, Yang kinda makes poor tactical decisions in my view and sometimes lacks the right temperament for the job. 

Is he what we need in 2028? Yes, but also kind of no. Again, dream candidate on the UBI and human centered capitalist front. But again, we need a fighter. We need someone who is gonna take the fight to the GOP. Who isnt gonna back down and be mr nice guy. And im not sure yang is that guy. Love his ideas, but we also need a fighter. Hence why Im on the fence here.

Still, given Greasy Gavin and Kamala Chameleon are the top democratic candidates, well....Yang is easily preferable to them. At least Yang has the right ideology and policy positions for the most part. And given alternative politicians that I would support DONT support UBI, although are stronger on other fronts (like AOC having a relatively strong progressive platform and Ro Khanna being fully on team prosecute the pedophiles), well...Yang does make it into that top tier.

It really depends how his hypothetical campaign develops. Does he support universal healthcare still? How does he ramp up his UBI policy (since even he acknowledged $1000 a month isnt enough any more)? What are his positions on hot button issues like Iran, the Epstein files, Trump in general? Like really, we do need to slam the door on trump for good. Admittedly, UBI would address the economic rot that does that, but we need someone who actually will fix our democracy. Well...I guess yang has ideas on that too. I dont fully agree, but we also need someone who will address trump himself, like....legally...judicially....hell, i'll say it, prosecute the guy and lock him up for his severe crimes. Idk if Yang has the temperament for that. To be fair, do mainstream dems either? No. But Yang...again...hes his own worst enemy at times. I love the guy but he also makes me cringe on occasion. 

Still, were never gonna get a perfect candidate, and the standards are so low right now that hey, yang still pops up in my top 3 candidates for 2028. Again, AOC and Ro Khanna are the other 2 there. We'll see what else happens. But yeah. Let's just say, I'm very interested in Yang running. And let's see how this develops through 2026 and 2027. 

Is China about to invade Taiwan?

Okay, so, multiple commentators I followed covered this story, and I feel like I should broach the subject too. Apparently China is ramping up its military presence around Taiwan, which can be said to be a sign of them preparing to invade. Why would they invade now? Because of Iran. Iran is tying us up and Trump is needing to pull troops away from the Pacific to deal with that mess he created, since it's requiring far more resources for us to properly fight a war there.

And...let's refresh ourselves on the Taiwan situation. When the PRC was formed in 1949, the royal family fled to Taiwan, where they established a capitalist government friendly with us. They claim to be the real China, the OG china, as they're basically based around the leadership that got overthrown in Mao's revolution. The PRC wants to take over Taiwan and reunite the country under communism. However, they've been reluctant to do so since that would put them into a war with us.

While we're not formally allied with Taiwan, we've kinda did this schrodinger's defense alliance thing. We threaten to back up Taiwan if China invades, and this serves to deter China from invading as it would mean direct conflict with the US. This is why it's important for us to promise to support Taiwan in the event of invasion. It's kind of a question that's up in the air, if China goes for it, will we ever actually defend Taiwan? But again, as long as it's on the table, well, the deterrence works. 

So why now? Because Trump is showing weakness to the world and exposing us as a paper tiger. Much of our military doctrine with major powers is driven around deterrence. We dont actually have the ability to fight a long and protracted war. We only got so many bombs and so many artillery shells, and so many aircraft carriers. And once that stuff is exhausted, it'll take years to replenish. An invasion of Taiwan that becomes a larger WWIII style armed conflict will be very devastating early on. We'll have our aircraft carriers be giant floating targets, China will sink them with hypersonic missiles. it'll take us years to rebuild, but china itself lacks the logistics to expand more than they are. Basically, we start out with our fancy toys, but then it ends with a long and protracted slugfest. Like look at Ukraine, it started out as shock and awe, but because Russia failed to capture them, it turned into WWI with drones. Ya know, literal trench warfare. And it's why we're struggling with Iran. For as much as we love to show precision strikes on the news, we're not actually winning with air power. Iran has a lot of drones, and while we have interceptors, we're quickly running out of them as they're expensive and limited in number. We've had issues with artillery shells for years, i know we were discussing this with us giving Ukraine stockpiles. We were burning through what we had helping them, and it would take years to replenish what we had. And the threat of Iran spiralling out into a hot war with boots on the ground could basically drain us of resources, leaving us unable to fight a war elsewhere.

To be fair, this is one of the reasons we spend so much on military. We spend like a trillion dollars and it's not for fun. And from what I heard next year its gonna be $1.5 trillion. A lot of this is to have enough military might to fight on multiple fronts. But...again, you spend the stuff you have, it takes time to replenish it, meaning that for some time at least, it leaves us more vulnerable. And China...has a long memory. They've existed for thousands of years, we've existed for a couple hundred. They think on a different time scale than we do. We think in terms of years and decades, they think in terms of centuries and millennia. They hold grudges for a long time, they hold political goals for a long time, and they are willing to wait for years, decades, even centuries, for an opening to achieve them. And that's how they feel about taking Taiwan. it's not about if, it's when. And they'll just bide their time until their enemies show weakness and then they'll strike.

Trump just showed our weakness in Iran. By failing to achieve a quick and decisive victory, and needed to keep ramping up hostilities and commit more and more resources to this war that no one but him ever fricking asked for, he's needing to pull resources from the Pacific to accomplish this. And while we're tied up in Iran, China might decide the time to take Taiwan is NOW. After all, what are we going to do? Our military is out of place. We can't necessarily stop them. We cant even open up the strait of Hormuz and take it back from a group of rag tag ships, let alone deal with a competent fighting force like China. Trump's military just made a massive blunder, and our enemies will capitalize on it. 

And let's face it, does Trump care? Probably not. He sees our international presence as a protection racket no one is paying for. he doesnt care about NATO, he probably doesnt care about Taiwan either. Unless they pay of course. I mean, Trump thinks in terms of sphere of influence politics. he seems perfectly fine with Russia taking Ukraine and China taking Taiwan as long as he gets to attack places like Venezeula and Cuba, since he's already signalling he's probably gonna go after Cuba next. I mean, it's sphere of influence politics. We get the Americas, Russia gets eastern Europe, China gets eastern Asia, etc. He doesnt care. It's all "Donroe" doctrine for him. Keep out of his sphere of influence and he'll keep out of yours. 

What will the result of this be? Well, disaster for the world economy. Currently most of the microchips that power computers, including these AI datacenters we all have come to hate come from Taiwan. Yeah, the entire microchip industry, minus some intel fabs, seems to be located on that tiny island. And if China takes it, well...you think computer prices are bad NOW?! We're totally screwed if China takes that (don't quote me on this, I'm not an expert, but that's the impression I get). Again, Biden and Trump have been trying to get stuff made in America, in part to serve as redundancy against that and in part because jerbs, but let's face it, it's not gonna be enough. Nvidia is located in Taiwan. AMD's stuff is too. Intel has some stuff made in America but they've been outsourcing to Taiwan recently.too to my knowledge. Both RAM manufacturers left are in Taiwan. Yeah. That tiny island really is the center of the entire computing industry, and whomever controls it controls the world on that stuff. So if we lose Taiwan, we're in trouble. Because the AI stuff is the new space race. For years it's been who can build the faster super computer and now it's who builds the faster AIs. because AIs can be used for warfare. AIs can take down an entire other country's infrastructure in theory. And if we do get in a hot war, it's gonna be their AI vs our AI. Scary crap. But yeah. That's what happens when you have a country governed by an authoritarian moron, who demands the military be governed by a bunch of loyalists and yes people, rather than experts. We really did fricking vote for Wheatley here, to make a portal reference. And we're paying for it. 

Because...again...those experts kinda were important. They were the people who knew wtf they were doing. Trump doesn't, his leadership doesn't. They're the epitome of dunning kruger syndrome. They're really stupid and incompetent people. They're the kinds of people you see in science fiction movies where you got some experts warning the leader of something that something is a bad idea and then the leaders gets belligerent and says I DONT CARE DO IT ANYWAY, and thus, the movie begins and the disaster that could have been avoided happens. That's what Trump's second term is. It's like that on many things, but especially on foreign policy. And trump is doing so much damage it's scary. We might be witnessing our crumbling as a superpower because of this. We might be witnessing the pivotal moment where china begins to surpass us. All because this fricking moron started a war that was more than we bargained for and he's showing us to be a paper tiger. 

Again, Trump has this idea that if you disagree with him, I hate America. but no, I actually "love" America here. I want america to succeed, ESPECIALLY against authoritarian regimes like Russia and China. But it's not succeeding under this idiot, because he doesn't know what he's doing. He's the one bringing the end to our reign as a superpower, because he's burning all of our relationships, overextending our military for no fricking reason, and destroying our moral superiority on the world stage. Again, he's an idiot and he's fricking ruining us. If anyone hates America, it's him. As Kyle Kulinski often says, it's hard to tell if this guy is a manchurian candidate, because even if he isn't, he's behaving in such a bad and erratic way that he is doing as much damage as one would do anyway. This dude's presidency IS a threat to our national security itself, because this moron us making us LESS safe in the long term due to his sheer incompetence. And yeah, that's where I'll end this. 

All I'll say is this. If the other old guy was still in charge, none of this would be happening. Maybe he was sleepy, but he and his administration still knew wtf they were doing. This guy doesn't. And it's gonna cost us big time long term.  

A reality check on the democrats' senate odds (Election update 3/16/26)

 So, I'm seeing betting sites are now favoring the democrats to win the senate in the 2026 election. And....uh....it's still republican favored. Trust me.

We've discussed the map. Long time readers will understand just how insane it would be for the democrats to actually win the senate. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely to happen? Eh, probably not. I still consider the senate to be lean R. 

Here's where things stand right now:

 Yep....still republican led....

Now, with all of that considered, let's consider how insane it is that the democrats are doing as good as they are here. As it is, they need to keep all existing seats and flip four new ones.

They're at risk of losing Michigan. We will need to see how the data shifts closer to the election on that one. Two candidates are very similarly likely to go up against the republican nominee, and one favors the dems by 1.3, and the other the GOP by 1.5. It averages out to R+0.1, so basically a tossup.

And then we need four new states. North Carolina is a shoe in. Maine is looking increasingly likely to lean dem given Graham Platner is now the favored nominee. If Mills runs, the GOP will probably win that though. Mills has very low enthusiasm. 

 And then you need two more. Right now, the races most covered are Ohio, where we just got a new R+2 poll there, making it shift to R+1.4 from R+1. James Talarico won the dem primary in Texas, but the whole Paxton vs Cornyn thing is in the air right now, Paxton is R+1, Cornyn R+2. So that averages to 1.5. 

All that being said, I still give the senate to republicans. Democrats CAN win it, don't get me wrong, but they're not FAVORED to win it based on current polling data. I still give the edge to republicans retaining control. 

A lot can change between now and November. Remember, polling has shifted roughly 7-8 points in the democrats' favor since 2024. And we're now at a point where if it shifts any more...yeah, we COULD see the kind of democratic landslides that make something like democratic control of the senate possible.

But as of now, the odds of that happening are roughly 1 in 3. 

Let's not get high on hopium here. Remember 2024? So many dems had this idea that we'd just magically outdo the polling data, and while, if anything, I would expect the error to work in favor of democrats, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. We'll need to win several rather red leaning states to pull off an actual senate victory here. We're talking Ohio and Texas, and if not them, something like Florida, Iowa, Nebraska, or Alaska here. Again, it can happen.  I dont even have polling data on those states. Would I count on it though? No.

So...again. 1 in 3. Nice, healthy odds given the circumstances, but no, they're not favored...at least not yet. Of course, I expect this year to be packed with all kinds of Trump behavior that alienates voters. We got this war with iran, gas prices going up, talk of a draft, talk of him trying to steal the 2026 midterms somehow. I mean, really. It baffles me he's doing as good as he is, but that's why I keep saying his supporters are in a cult. They seem to be very resistant to our country seemingly being on fire and still act like "this is fine." No, it's not fine. But...that's where the voters are. And that's what the map for the senate is. 

The Guy Christensen situation is wild

 So, Kyle Kulinski just had a guy named Guy Christensen on his show, and man, this situation is WILD. So guy Christensen is a pro Palestine activists. Ya know, one of the more annoying "free palestine" ones who were super early and super militant/opinionated. However, despite whatever disagreements I might have with him, I would say this, as long as he's expressing his views peacefully, he deserves free speech.

But did he get free speech? NOOOO!!!!! And that's concerning to me. His story kinda sounds parallel to Nick Fuentes' villain origin story on the right. THis guy started out apolitical, but felt what was going on about Palestine was wrong and started talking about it. This led to all kinds of crazy crap including being bribed, doxxed, threatened, censored off of social media, kicked out of his college, etc. over his views on Israel/Palestine. Like, they basically tried bribing him to be pro Israel, and when that didnt work, they basically censored him, and even tried to ruin his life. It's wild.

Honestly, my opinion on free speech is this: unless your views are so extreme you're inciting violence or calling for actions that would, in some way, fundamentally violate peoples' rights in an extreme and obvious way, you shouldn't be censored. We have a free market of ideas, and that should be respected. I wont say I'm QUITE a "free speech absolutist" any more after witnessing the rise of literal open fascism in America, but I still try to push it to as much of an extent as reasonably possible. And I think being critical of israel and supportive of palestine falls within that realm of acceptability.

But...here's the thing....Israel....is basically committing information warfare on social media and the American people. Christensen even discussed this in his view. They view social media as a new battleground, and they wanna win at all costs. And apparently that involves bribing our politicians, and bribing influencers, and trying to silence and censor and violate the rights of those who wont play ball. It's all about total information control and crushing dissent. And we have a good picture of this. Some on the right have discussed this, heck, it's why Nick Fuentes went into the full anti semitic nazi direction, and some on the left are reporting the same thing. So this is all over the spectrum. It's an establishment/anti establishment thing, with the establishment waging an information war against the anti establishment factions. And they're trying to control all levers of power, lock down the internet, and shape discourse in their image. 

And....it sickens me. This is why I've been turning on Israel SO HARD lately. I mean, again, let's go back to October 7th 2023. I was sympathetic. I saw them as the victim. I saw Hamas as radical terrorists (and quite frankly, they still are, let's not get it twisted). And I studied the conflict's history and was more sympathetic toward Israel. But then Israel started bombing more and more civilians, and lost the pretense of being the "good guys" in this (there are no good guys in the israel-palestine situation tbqh, just different factions of genocidal radicals), and buying off our politicians, and censoring the opposition, and honestly? I've just soured on them more and more.

We have this foreign power coming into OUR country, centered on FREEDOM, including FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND RELIGION, and basically trying to limit what we can say and tell us how we conduct themselves. And my honest opinion, as a freedom loving American, is that they can kindly F off. 

I know they love to cry foul and scream anti semitism any time they get push back, so I wanna make this clear. 

In America, we have freedom of religion. I have nothing against "all Christians", or "all Muslims" or "all Jews." I mean, I'm critical of ALL religions, don't get me wrong, I'm basically a secularist who thinks that we're better off without religions, including all three Abrahamic ones. Really, I'm kinda soured on religion in general. BUT...you know what? You have freedom of speech and freedom of religion too. 

My problem is with the EXTREMISTS. It's with the people who try to inject their BS into politics and use it to force people to live a certain way. We always love to scream about how extreme some muslims are and how they're for sharia law and oppose western values. I dont believe all muslims are extreme, I think a lot are peaceful people, but you know what? Some are. And F those guys. I don't support Islamic terrorists. But that said, we say this stuff about Muslims, but then we ignore the Christian extremist problem in the US, with Christian nationalists being up to 40% of the population and being a very scary political coalition that threatens the foundations of our democracy. But they somehow get a free pass despite wanting to impose the Christian version of sharia law on us.

And what of Jewish extremists? These "zionist" types? They are those extremists. They're fighting a war straight out of the book of Joshua against their neighbors and acting like they alone are entitled to the land they live on by the fiat of God. And that it's totally okay if they just wage war and slaughter their neighbors to do that. I mean, again. It was okay in Joshua, why is it not okay in the modern day? But that itself IS the problem with religious fundamentalists. They dont understand their texts were written in different times and in the modern day come off as barbaric. And they just decide, well, it was okay then, it's okay now, God said so, and they basically want to impose their beliefs on others and oppress them. That's my BIG problem with religion at this point. I mean, again, im critical of all religions, but if you're peaceful, meh, live and let live. I mean, I'm not so much of a new atheist I'm gonna insult the beliefs and customs of someone who isn't even challenging me to a debate or isn't trying to make their religion somehow political, and therefore, ALL of our problems. It's kinda like the "predator" aliens. Ya know, they only go after warriors, not innocent civilians. Same with me, I'm to the point, I'm not gonna really push the religion thing with you unless you make it my problem, or everyone else's problem. So get the hell out of here with that "antisemitism" crap. I have nothing against you as long as youre sane enough with your religion that you're not imposing it on others.

but that's the problem with these militant zionist types, they ARE making it political. And they ARE waging an information war against us. And they ARE trying to impose their beliefs on the American population through force. And THAT'S my problem with these guys. I feel like THIS IS SPARTA, ya know, we're living in 300, and these guys are the persians buying off our senators in order to sow discord from within. And that's my problem with Israel here. 

They're getting so involved in our politics, that they're violating the free speech rights of critics against them. They're getting so involved, they're buying off our politicians. They're getting so involved, they're getting us involved in WARS that should have nothing to do with us. Including Iran. Six more valiant American soldiers fallen today. Six people with their lives ahead of them. And for what? For Israel? F Israel. Let them fight their own goddamned wars with their own goddamned money. Leave us out of it. And when you commit war crimes, yeah, some people are gonna be critical of you, as they should be. Just because you were a victim on october 7th doesnt mean you have an unrestricted license to commit war crimes, just as just because we were victims on 9/11, doesn't mean Bush was justified in all the BS he tried to pull. 

And yeah, that's my view. Let Guy Christensen go to college, let him get a degree, and let him speak truth to power on a literal fricking genocide happening in our midst. The rules based US led liberal order....is morally superior because it is rules based. It is those rules, and those high minded ideals behind those rules that make them superior. Without them, we just have might makes right. Being rules based means following the fricking rules. Israel is not only not following the rules, but not even showing the pretense of trying to in good faith. So F them. Expel them from the world order. That's how I see it.

  And before people ask "but what about Trump?" Yeah. I believe he should be tried for severe moral/legal violations too in so many ways. He already had 34 felonies, and shouldn't been punished for them. He should've been tried for the other 60something that were against him too. He should be tried for the many many numerous severe violations that he's incurring during his presidency. He never should have been allowed to be president again after the crap he pulled on the way out last time. I'll stand by that. And I honestly think he's complicit in the Gaza genocide too. I believe he's committing serious war crimes in Iran. In Venezuela. I believe his immigration policy is basically a literal crime against humanity. And yeah, the list of crimes this guy should be tried to is just getting longer and longer. 

Again, the rules are what make us morally superior. They're supposed to be what separates the west from the authoritarianism of the east. Of the likes of russia and china. Of the likes of theocracies like, say, Iran, since that's a big topic in the news these days.  Again, the rules and morals those systems are based on, are what give them our moral superiority. They ARE why we can say that we are better than the rest of the world, and that the world should follow our lead. They're literally what makes us the good guys. Without them, we have nothing. We are just another bad guy. No better than the people we regularly criticize. Israel is no better than Hamas. We're no better than Russia, China, or Iran under Donald Trump. Because we dont support those rules, we dont support those values, and we lose all moral claims to being the morally superior party. 

 So yeah. Again, I know, this is getting rambly, but that's how I see it. I'm framing it like this because it's so easy for people to say 'well you just hate the Jews" or "you hate America", bull, fricking, crap. I love the moral values that are supposed to make us superior. And I still believe in them. Those I'm criticizing don't. And that's the problem. I believe in free speech, I believe in freedom of religion. I believe in human rights. In freedom. In live and let live. My issues are with those who don't, because they're just another tyrant that are a real threat to those values. And if you have an issue with what I'm saying while cloaking yourself in self righteousness, well, look in the mirror. Maybe you're the baddie. Just saying. 

Yeah...that coalition with MAGA TYT was trying to build was a stupid idea

 So...as we know, Cenk Uygur of TYT tried to reach across the aisle with MAGA to appeal to them on the idea of populism, and...it's not really working. And the humanist report just had a video basically gloating about it in a 'see i told you so" kind of way, and while I understand it content wise, I kinda didnt like the tone.

I mean, I was always skeptical of TYT reaching out to MAGA, because politics is a left/right issue, and the problem of the establishment is one of corporate power. But that doesnt mean that you try to build a coalition with these irrational right wing populists. As noted in previous articles I wrote on it, it's largely a worldview issue. And that's where THR and I agree. Mike talks about trying to reach out to MAGA family members and those guys being so insanely brainwashed they're unreachable, and they are. Like...80% of the MAGA base, or around 40% of voters, are like this. They're a lost cause. Which is why no matter how bad trump gets, he seems to stick around a certain floor of support. Trump's numbers are resilient despite how bad he's doing because his supporters are just too far gone. They really are. I mean, we saw this with Iran recently. originally, 20-27% of people seemed to support the war in Iran. This seems to be going up to 40% now. What happened? MAGA decided to suddenly back a war because Trump did it. And these are the kinds of people Cenk was trying to reach. Oh, they're anti war? Are they? I mean they were, until they were for it. And they kinda flipped on a dime here. The fact is, they're very much now pro war, because they got marching orders from their boss and now suddenly support him. These guys are the kinds of people who would drink the Kool Aid if Jim Jones told them to. 

And that's the problem with trying to appeal to MAGA. Sure, maybe like 15% of Trump 2024 voters are reachable. However, these are the people who supported him last year when he had 50-51% approval rating in line with his vote share...and now he's down to 42-44%, where he is toay. Yeah, things can shift something like 7-9%. And that's what we see in polling. But again, that's only around 15% of Trump's base. The rest of them are die hards for him. 

And yeah. Mike talked about something that's important, and it's what I mentioned in regard to ideological trajectory too in the past. What determines trajectory is worldview. Worldview is an anchor. When people talk about "leaving the left", often times it's because they're just ideologically unmoored from it. However, with me, it's different. Because my values are consistent, and I know what my values are. I am mature enough to know where i do and dont fit into the coalition and how to pick and choose my battles without turning into a rightoid. Many fear people "leaving the left" because they fear people questioning and rejecting their ideology. But what makes me so consistent is i can actually have certain debates over specific topics or nuance, whereas most actual "left the left" types just have no coherent worldview or set of values. i do believe at the end of the day cenk does have some left wing values, although they do shift right on some issues, and that they disagree with the so called "max left", which is the topic of this video, Mike kinda going full blowhard in saying the max left was right. Well...yes and no. I do think there are issues worth considering a tactical retreat from based on polling, some of the less popular trans stuff with 20% of the population, some level of immigration and guns. Being a dogmatic extremist idiot just turns off people who dont share those values at times. You gotta bend. but you can only bend so much before you either break or make a poorly aging tactical error. I dont think cenk sold out, but he did make an error in thinking he could align with MAGA. And yeah, Mike called it, as did I. It's always been an ill advised alliance with them not having a good chance to win people over.

And you know what? You need to hammer that home with that 15%+ of MAGA that is reachable. Some have shifted already, others may be thinking about leaving. And right now with the war in iran, if you notice, I kinda frame things on "america first" terms sometimes. Now, I do it from a point of genuine conviction, but I do spin it like "okay so werent half of you anti war? where are you now? dont say WE hate the troops, we arent the ones causing another iraq, etc." Ya know? Use that crap against them. Because to some degree theres nothing wrong with a country prioritizing its interests. It's just a matter of actually identifying what those interests are and how to best achieve them. And that's where i disagree with "america first" types most. I dont think pure isolationism is a good thing. i think it's short term thinking. I dont think this "murica F yeah" attitude is helpful and it creates resentment. The best way to achieve "america first" goals is through multilateralism and the rules based liberal order that we had until trump undermined it. And I know this because 1) i've studied this academically in college, and I understand international politics quite well, and 2) I've lived through the bush years, and even Trump bashed Bush for getting us into unnecessary wars. 

And again...if these people cared about principles...they SHOULD be against this war. But they're not. Because they're in a cult. Period, plain and simple. And yeah, most of MAGA is a lost cause. And you cant exactly reason people out of positions they didnt reason themselves into. You need to BEAT them and DEFEAT them. And this is why i hate the "compromise" people. F compromise. I dont wanna compromise with views I see as fundamentally evil, or out of touch with reality. I wanna BEAT them. Rather than try to compromise with the right, I wanna get the rest of the population to reject their values so we can build their own coalition. I dont care about meeting them half way. I care about DEFEATING them. That's been my goal from the start. To defeat them so thoroughly and generationally that their coalition collapses and becomes unelectable. By building a supermajority around the alternative. Not playing pattycake with them and meeting them half way. As I said back then in reacting to Cenk's idea of compromising with them, the problem with the establishment is they're already too conservative and they already compromise too much. No, I wanna DEFEAT the right, not by offering a moderate version of their values, but through an outright rejection of them and the building of something else. Only then can we actually move on from MAGA productively. Otherwise youre compromising with a bunch of unreasonable nutcases. Have fun with that. 

Oh god, can we NOT herald Talarico as the future of the democratic party?

 So, kyle Kulinski had a video today about so called "Talaricoism" and asking if he is the future of the democratic party. And, while Kyle's take has a lot of the same skepticism I have toward the idea, I just wanna say, can we PLEASE, PLEASE stop glazing this guy?

The problem with Talaricoism is that it's a substanceless mess that doesn't have a consistent set of philosophical principles. It's just a new form of moderation and centrism. For me, the right's worldview is dominated by evangelical Christianity. The left's should be dominated by the opposite of that: which is secular humanism. My introduction to the left is through the New Atheist movement, and quite frankly, I always kinda saw liberal Christians as being a bit of a contradiction. They have one foot in the religious world, one in the secular, and they kinda just pick and choose a la carte. maybe they dont see it that way. They love to act like they have a more "sophisticated" take on religion and reality, due to the fact that they express some nuance, but to me, it's just sophistry. It's being caught in between two worlds, and being inconsistent as fudge. It's being a lukewarm christian, and God in the Bible didnt like the lukewarm. He spat them out of his mouth. Well, that's how I feel about these kinds of liberal Christians. Maybe in their heads they can make all the internal contradictions of the religion work with a secular reality, but for me, it is just a lot of unnecessary complexity that shrouds one's vision.

Quite frankly, I have enough trouble consistently justifying my belief in something supernatural that isnt christian, and I make FAR fewer assumptions than those guys, and my worldview is FAR more consistent. I just can't do the moderate christian crap. I just can't. It makes me wanna spit it out of my mouth to go back to that quote.

And that's the problem with Talaricoism. It isnt what we need in this moment. We need a philosophical opposite of the right. We need a new set of principles, a new ideology, something rooted in fundamental opposition to the GOP and its ideology. All Talaricoism offers is a compromise. Maybe its a different compromise than we see with a lot of centrist new democrat types given Talarico can be more economically progressive, but it's a lot more similar than people realize. Again, keep in mind, my first exposure to the guy was the Jubilee debate and how he basically defended progressive economic ideas on right wing terms. But that's the thing, it IS right wing terms. And i dont wanna argue on their terms of work ethic and who deserves what, rather I want to throw all that out and think entirely differently. 

And really, that's what annoys me. The left looks at him like a marvel because he take's the right's value system and throws it back at them. but here's the thing, I kinda hate the right's value system at the core of my very being and my stomach turns at the idea of having to listen to this preacher fellow use THEIR ideology to advocate for OUR ideas. It kinda feels like ideological surrender. 

And this is what kyle kinda instinctually realizes here. He realizes that this guy has the same appeal of like Obama, and speaks in a similar cadence. Which makes him very charismatic, but also...isnt he kinda substanceless? Maybe what we need isnt someone who tried to heal divides, but someone who takes on the right directly and actually fights. 

But that's what talarico doesnt do. He is more the "let's not fight, let's all get along" guy, where he basically reinforces an ideological consensus around christianity, when my views are fundamentally against the religion in several key areas. And that's why I can never accept the guy as a thought leader on the left and resent the very idea of it. It literally goes against every fiber of my being. I tolerate the guy. he won his primary, he's arguably good for Texas, which is basically the heard of "jesusland", but honestly, I dont find the guy that endearing, and I feel like he's just creating this new brand of moderates who think they're so cool and edgy because they like christianity AND have mildly progressive views. And they just use it as a cudgel against people like me, considering me an unsophisticated brute for being a new atheist type while acting like they're so...sophisticated for having nuanced views. Like please, this is just hillary clinton 2016 wrapped up again. She did the same exact thing. She just bashed us for being "bernie bros" instead. But the whole religion thing was part of that schism too. And it played into the whole "oh you silly bernie bros, you just dont get MODERATES, blah blah blah', like, F off. I get them. I just dont see them as standing for anything, and that's the problem. Same with this guy. At the core of his ideology, we're just left with this philosophical mess, and one that does not rise to the moment to properly challenge the right for ideological dominance, but again, tries to cement it by offering a consensus with it. I dont want consensus around christianity. I want religion out of politics and I want us to debate topics based on reason and evidence, not religion, vibes, or feels. Ya know? I'm for using my brain and arguing ideas from deeply held principles, not just appealing to people with charisma and vibes. Sorry, not sorry. 

No, we anti war people don't hate the troops, Trump does

 So...this is a common retort being used against democrats by MAGA when we dont wanna fund the war with iran. The argument is we're unpatriotic, that we hate the troops, we hate America, blah blah blah.

And it's BS. 

First of all, let's not even BEGIN to discuss the ways Donald Trump hates the troops. Isn't he the "losers and suckers" guy? The one who had disdain for combat veterans who died over seas for being losers? Oh, and are we talking the guy who dodged the draft because he had "bone spurs"? Yeah, we got your number, Donald. Keep the idea of others hating the troops out of your mouth.

However, there is one thing Donald WAS right about, and it was the fact that Iraq was a mistake and we shouldnt get in more unnecessary regime change wars. If a war is necessary, it's one thing. But Iran did nothing to provoke this war. We just created some BS jusifications to rationalize it that were flimsy AF and we went in. And, again, the big reasons we're there? Epstein, Israel, oil. That's it. That and religious nutjobbery about bringing about the end times. There's no legitimate reason to be in this war.

And if there's no legitimate reason to be in this war, then guess what? Maybe we shouldn't be. And maybe we shouldnt be risking our own soldiers over such a pointless endeavor? What did I do the second I heard the first troops died in this war? I wrote an article about it. And I condemned the war. Because I don't hate the troops. I want our troops to remain safe. And the best way to keep them safe is not to deploy them in unnecessary conflicts. unncessary conflicts puts our soldiers in harms way, which means they come home in caskets. But for Trump, that's an acceptable sacrifice. "Oh well, it's war, some people will die." Really? And after he has that cavalier attitude the right has the gall to say WE hate the troops? We're the ones trying to protect them. 

There's a lot of talk about "America first", but for all that talk, the right never delivers. Bush campaigned in 2000 on not getting involved with UN peacekeeping missions and kinda just minding our own business. But then 9/11 happened and he turned into a massive neocon who got us into two major wars. Admittedly, Afghanistan was at least SOMEWHAT necessary. I do think Bush could've negotiated with the taliban better and got Bin Laden that way. But let's say we didnt agree with their terms. Okay, so we go in. I kinda think it was unnecessary. The american people wanted blood after 9/11 and being alive and remembering that time period quite well, they weren't gonna take no for an answer. And then Bush got us into iraq, which...at best was due to his own incompetence, and at worst was because of malicious intent. But at least Bush had that whole plausible deniability insofar as the nefarious option goes. He really kinda was that stupid.

Trump though? No. This is pure malice. He lied to get us into a war that he campaigned against getting us into. Why? Again, Epstein, Israel, oil, and religious nutjobbery. None of which are legitimate reasons. And he's putting our troops on the line, for a war that has no clear goal in mind, with shifting goalposts, and is already getting good American soldiers killed. For what? I ask, for what?

See? I keep saying it, that's the big reasons I'm against interventionism. I dont wanna see our troops getting killed for no reason. If we gotta send people to their deaths, let it be for a good cause. Ya know, like storming the beaches of Normandy or Iwo Jima. Necessary sacrifices for the good of the nation. This serves no one, but Donald Trump himself, Israel, a foreign power I'm hating more and more by the day, and oil companies. And it feeds into a bunch of delusional religious nutjobs' delusions about end times prophecy. But the American people? We ain't being served by this. This isn't making us safer. It's actually making us less safe. Because now we gotta worry about retaliation because we started an unprovoked war. 

Trump and republicans would be best to know that there's a difference between hating our troops/hating the country, and hating the current leadership of said country. And that's what applies to the Bush era, and the Trump era. You can support the troops and the country, but think current war was a terrible, stupid idea, and that the leadership was daft or evil for getting us into it. And that's where I'm at. That's where most of us were during the Bush era, and that's where we're at now. 

I ain't saying there isnt a small but vocally loud contingent of anti war leftists with deranged ideas that hate the US no matter what we do. But that's not what around 85% of the opposition to this current war is saying. And one can check my posting history, I was heavily critical of those guys during the Biden era and believe that they are a detriment to the left as a whole because they fall into the same stereotypes we're often lambasted on. 

Believe it or not, I actually would say I like the idea of "America first" in theory, just not the execution. I believe that a nation state's first responsibility is to protect its interests. I just believe that soft power and multilateralism is the way to do it. I believe that institutions like NATO and the UN serve our collective security, and that liberal democracies are all best served by working together in mutual alliances. I believe that the US led ruled based order that we had under Biden served America's interests, and was shaped in our image. Im not saying it was perfect. We clearly only applied the rules when we felt like it while exempting ourselves and our allies from them when convenient, leading to some global resentment, but still, I believed in the idea of it and largely supported Biden's leadership there. 

But it was Trump that upset that because his type of thinking is stuck in the 19th century. he only understands hard power, spheres of influence politics, and imperialism. His way with the world is might makes right. He is the hunter from starfield, whereas I am the emissary. He's might makes right, we're all rules and principles. Both are self serving in their own way, which is the hunter's point, but at least one has some philosophical legitimacy. The other is just a raw execution of power. And that's what Trump's foreign policy is. A raw execution of power. Might makes right, unmasked. 

But again, I'm not against the US looking out for its interests. I just believe those interests are best served in that international order, and using soft power, ie, relationships, alliances, rules, and legalism, rather than the raw "MURICA F YEAH!" stuff of the Bush/Trump type people. One builds alliances, leaving a global network of rules and allegiances that serve our best interests, and the other alienates everyone and makes them hate us. And trump is the latter. 

So yeah, dont ever get it twisted. We on the left dont hate the troops, we dont hate the country. We just have a different and better idea of how to make us safe, and it generally works better. It's the intelligent way to run the world, while trump is a stupid and boorish cave man who only understands how to swing a stick. But the problem is if you swing sticks too often, people start swinging back, and then we're LESS safe. The damage trump is doing to the US in the long term is stacking up, and it could do immeasurable damage to us in the future. Is that really "America first?" Not really. it might seem like it, but it's a 70 IQ take on leadership when we need a 130 IQ take instead.  

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.