Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

@marinus18
Kinda, it is in its military spending phase now, trying to compete with the West again. Success or collapse awaits them. I hope for another collapse followed by a new democratic Yeltsin 2.0.

Trump’s final campaign schedule.

Atrocious typos aside, Wisconsin is nowhere to be found. Seems Trump sees Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania as the best path to the presidency.

BUT…if he loses at least one of those states and Wisconsin, he’s done.

@SleepySteve
What’s Harris’s final game plan?

She’ll be in Milwaukee and Appleton today, Atlanta and Charlotte tomorrow, and in the final two days she’ll be in Detroit, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

@Background Pony #01F2
The Soviet-Union did not “collapse”. It suffered a military coup and it’s entire economic system was destroyed and that made it collapse. There is this myth that the Soviet-Union collapsed before but that’s just not true. It was in a mild recession but nothing worse than that.
However it fell due to the coup of Yeltsin and his supporters who didn’t like Gorbachov’s reforms.

And what do you mean “democratic”? Yeltsin was a dictator and a protest was crushed ruthlessly. They rushed through mass privitization cause they knew it was unpopular and it destroyed the whole economy and brought immense hardship. The utter collapse destroyed Yeltsin’s reputation which allowed Putin to take over and he brought back some of the Soviet principles which helped the economy recover. Yeltsin’s Russia was a disaster on every level and a lesson why unregulated capitalism and shock therapy don’t work. (A lesson Argentina will have to relearn.)
Another lesson from the fall of the USSR is to keep close taps on your military. Don’t let it grow too large and don’t let it get too autonomous. The biggest reason for the military coup was that Gorbachov wanted to make serious cuts to military spending.

The mass privitization did not mean more liberty and actually quite the opposite. Most of the people in charge of economic sectors in the USSR maintained control of them but they now were completely unshackled from any responsibility towards the people or towards the country. This let to a mass victory in the election for the communists and mass protests to stop the privitization. However Yeltsin with the support of the army crushed the protests and overrode the Duma.
Yeltsin is actually quite comparable to Trump. He wanted power and didn’t care what he had to do to get it. He also was a very willing puppet of the Americans kind of like how Trump is a willing puppet of the Russians. Considering that Putin was close to Yeltsin throughout the whole thing I think he takes a certain amount of joy in manipulating Trump.

It is scary to think about that the thing that happened in the USSR could happen to the US. That if congress made massive cuts to military spending, like 50% that the military could do a coup and put in place a puppet to maintain their power and prestige.

No matter how you dice it, he was fantasizing about putting her under gunfire, thereby threatening her with death.

Fuck MAGA and their weasel words, no one is more deserving of the qualifier of “garbage” than them.

You say that like any congressperson would dare vote for such cuts knowing it would get them curbstomped in the next election.

I am currently within viewing distance of where he’s going in Salem.

I’m going to be avoiding downtown like the plague all of Saturday.

@Ereiam
I would note that he’s in no particular rush to stand on the front lines in the battle against the cartels and Tren de Aragua.

@Kazapsky
Yeah, that is both the upside and the downside of the limited power system. One sector can’t make a move another sector hates so much they try to overthrow the government entirely.
Gorbachov was trying to dismantle the Soviet empire to get large cuts to military spending through. He just didn’t think about how upset the military industrial complex and the army would be about that. In the Soviet-Union being part of the army was a matter of massive prestige and it was also one of the very few ways of upwards mobility. For many the idea of cutting military spending was destroying their futures.

Though that is also kind of a fault of the Soviet system. That the amount of civil social mobility was near zero.

@marinus18
It vanished practically overnight. Gorbachov opened it up little by little and since it was in such a bad economic state the decline came fast, and the union’s member nations left the union when Yeltsin dissolved it in 1991. Yeltsin and the following “self-coup” was a Russian affair that happened in 1993.

By democratic “Yeltsin 2.0” I mean a new Russian leader with a non Soviet/KGB background that’s able to form a democracy.

@Background Pony #01F2
It wasn’t in a bad economic state. It was economically stagnated but it was still a powerful economy. The decline didn’t come from opening up, it came from Yeltsin’s disastrous economic policies. The destruction of the central planning without any process of replacing it destroyed the economic output which didn’t have a lot of margin to begin with.
The Self-coup was indeed a Russian affair because of the backlash to Yeltsin’s economic policies which were a disaster for everyone.

The Soviet economy was not suddenly outcompeted by the west or anything like that. It was Yeltsin that abolished it which collapsed the whole system. The East-European nations always wanted out as they never wanted Russian domination to start with. The central Asian republics though didn’t and the decision was kinda made for them when Yeltsin abolished the union.
Also your timeline doesn’t make sense. The coup happened in 1991 when they imprisoned Gorbachov in the Crimea. The dictatorship indeed came later but that was Yeltsin grabbing full power when his policies were failing and the Duma and the public wanted him out.

There is still this idea that the Soviet economy somehow didn’t work despite being the second largest in the world. It did work but there were issues which Gorbachov tried to resolve but failed. China in large part would learn from those mistakes and made sure not to antagonize it’s military or let liberal ideas get a foothold. But still making investment in consumer goods and semi state/private ownership.
The Soviet-Union didn’t “vanish”. It’s system was destroyed. If all private ownership and the coordination of the megacorps just went away and the government refuses to do anything the US economy would collapse too.

Interesting. Former Obama staffer Joel Wertheimer tweeted out these metrics outlining Google searches for a particular topic, specifically abortion and immigration.

Once again adding to the theory that the popular vote and electoral vote may not be as wide as before.

@SleepySteve
The problem with the electoral collage is that it flattens out political power between the states so people in small states get relatively more power than people in large states. California has a population about the same as the whole former confederacy minus Texas. However it’s voting power is far, far less.
The push for the popular vote is that the vote from someone in Wyoming shouldn’t be worth several times as much as a voter from California.

There is some data to suggest that Google search interest corresponds with voting interest. It’s not super deeply researched, but it is there.

@marinus18
You have a very different view from mine then. From everything I know communist planned economies have never worked right. That’s the reason China is doing much better for itself now, they replaced the planned communist economy with a market economy based on supply and demand, and just kept the one party dictator arrangement on top.

Trump might have given up on Pennsylvania too. He canceled his appearance at the Penn St.-Ohio State game.

@Background Pony #01F2
事实上，现在任何一个国家都无法走入共产主义，更不用谈论计划经济，这里前置要求的“物质文明极大满足。精神文明极其丰富”实在是太难了，这不单单要求人人都能有中产精英及其以上的物质，还要求人人都要有为人类的明天所自觉奋斗的精神，太难了

@Background Pony #85F0
You are correct. Human nature makes it impossible.

Neither of that is true. Planned economies have worked, the Soviet-Union was the world’s second largest economy throughout it’s existence. It managed to surpass Germany in that which is something the Russian empire never did.
Also China’s economy is still very centrally planned with massive investments, production quota’s and deliberate allocation of capital. The central planning of China is still there, they just build a market economy on top of it. More improtantly though they imported western tech and started exporting and offering themselves for cheap labor by foreign capitalists. They also started modernizing via massive state investments in infrastructure and crucial industry. It was done via a 5 year plan but in a slightly more hands off way, GDP growth was mandated and so targets had to be met.

China has a capitalist non-market economy in many factors. The economy of South-Korea is very similar to China’s, more similar than North-Korea’s is. South-Korea is also a very centrally ran economy with the megacorps being given all kinds of special favors and their day to day operations are closely monitored. This is why it grew so fast during it’s dictatorship cause the dictator made it grow and had the power to crush anyone who objected.

When it comes to economies it’s actually the opposite and no true market economy has ever worked. 1990’s Russia was the closest thing to it and it was a disaster. The Soviet economy which had problems but was functional was destroyed and nothing took it’s place. All successful “capitalist” economies were build by planning, regulation, subsidies and other such things. Germany’s economy was very strictly controlled, the British economy was closely tied to the aristocracy and regulations of land, France’s economy was very deliberately build with large investments and the US economy was build in a very similar way.
The Soviets when they were industrializing were very much taking Germany’s industrialization as a model though they pushed it a step further. And, it worked. They did duplicate Germany’s success and even surpassed them. The idea that you can surpass 1930’s Germany with an economic system that “doesn’t work” just makes no sense on any level.

The idea that China replaced a non working central economy with a working capitalist one is a gross oversimplification of a very complex reality. If central planning doesn’t work then it makes no sense that the countries to rule are the ones with strong centralized governments but that is the reality. China’s strong centralized government is a big reason it was able to make the investments to make it grow. It also allowed it to take advantage of foreign capital without becoming subservient to it like many other nations.
Building an economy doesn’t just mean letting markets work and then everything will happen by itself. It takes work, good governance, imports/exports, luck, an effective bureaucracy and much, much more.

@marinus18
Even an idealized market economy, of the sort that only exists in economics textbooks, requires a strong government. Someone who can enforce contracts on and punish malfeasance by the most powerful private actors.

@Background Human
The reality though is that “markets” are constructed and created by fallible humans. People can be manipulated, make poor decisions, not have all the information, have little choice, be put in a vulnerable position.
Scientific markets exist only on paper and have been pushed mainly by propagandists to protect the profits of capitalists. They have very successfully convinced people that markets are “natural” rather than a construct and so are “fair” evne though neither one is remotely true. In a market power dominates and being able to dictate to suppliers or get in front of people first makes all the difference.
Amazon uses it’s power to disadvantage any potential competition since they know no one can refuse them so they put any item that is sold somewhere else much further down on their recommended list. Something that is a blatant abuse of power and illegal but who dares pick a fight with Amazon?

The actual industrialization of Europe and America was done by strong centralized governments who wanted to do it usually for imperialistic reasons and each one is it’s own complex tale. Germany is a great example as it was industrially behind for a long time until it was unified by Prussia who enacted a strict and aggressive industrialization policy. With high import fees, high taxes and massive spending and subsidies as well as widespread public services including the first mandatory education system. Germany grew incredibly fast cause the German government was putting an enormous amount of effort into making it so.

Same thing with China. Rather than try to chase some strange ideal or just centralize power for the guy in charge they focused on growth by whatever means neccecary. Investing massively, pushing production quota’s up but also learning by letting a market emerge to stop waste. Getting rid of incompetent people, having heavy punishments for corruption and so on.

It’s why the EU is lagging behind economically cause they did buy into that fantasy after the fall of the USSR. That if you just let markets be markets they will do all the economic growth and investment for you. But European markets are no match for American and Chinese investment. Electric cars in the US and China get enormous subsidies and no amount of “markets” can compete with that.
Ironically the roles of China and Europe have largely been reversed from the 1960’s. Now Europe is getting hamstrung by chasing an ideal that just doesn’t exist while China just does whatever works be it private, public or some combination.

Europe now is just trying to cut taxes on the rich and hope they will invest in the right areas rather than hoard it. Cuts are made on education, healthcare and all sorts of crucial areas in the hope that the market will replace it even though America’s healthcare is really bad and the project was already tried and failed in Britain.

Musks “America Pac” has apparently, for months, known that its outsourced canvassers have been lying about the number of doors they’ve knocked on. With one internal report suggesting that 20 to 25% of reported attempts were fraudulent, with canvassers simply hitting “Confirm” on an address without actually visiting the home.

Trump’s ground game is atrocious.