Hypocrisy hasn’t been a gotcha for Republicans for decades. You at least got to give it to Democrats for learning this lesson.

In the worst way possible and in defense of the worst policies, of course.

This is why Che gave Allende a gun.

I went to a bar in Ghent and the bartender told me that British students would constantly wreck themselves because they wouldn’t adapt their drinking culture to Belgium’s.

However, in true Belgian fashion, I think the thing that bothered him the most (even more than the vomiting) was that they’d order round after round of the same beer, which would exhaust his supply of the appropriate glassware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944_Democratic_Party_vice_presidential_candidate_selection

The US was considered reliable because, until Trump, both parties had identical foreign policy.

Ah but it is rules-based. The rule is that the US gets to do whatever it wants. And if other countries don’t do what the US wants, then the US gets to punish them.

There absolutely is an excuse for Hamas’s actions because their two options are to fight or to live forever in an open air prison.

Their actions are just as justified as MK’s during Apartheid.

You’re super letting the CIA off the hook here. Operation Gladio killed a generation of leftists and leftist resistance in Italy.

I’d rather have a novice who has a chance of supporting something good than an old hand using their experience to enact genocide.

I’m pretty well acquainted with the situation. I’d recommend this research on the subject that are mainly applicable to building transit, but I expect the same observations are generally true in other megaprojects: https://transitcosts.com/

From the executive summary:

In our New York case, we show examples of redundancy in blue-collar labor, as did others (Rosenthal 2017; Munfah and Nicholas 2020); we also found overstaffing of white-collar labor in New York and Boston (by 40-60% in Boston), due to general inefficiency as well as interagency conflict, while little of the difference (at most a quarter) comes from differences in pay.

Projects in the anglosphere are overstaffed for both design and construction, and there’s little evidence to show that there are better outcomes. Costs in Sweden are 20% those of the US, and yet you’d be hard-pressed to claim that Swedish workers are undercompensated or produce shoddy work.

As for “to spec”, the SF Central Subway, which opened 5 years after it was planned to and cost 3x as much as initially forecast, had delays because the contractor attempted to get away with using sub-standard steel. In order to save time and open sooner, the city kept some of the sub-standard rails in use in lower-traffic areas.

This report, funded by the UK government, takes the forced labor as a given. Their “research” is essentially, “we couldn’t trace supply lines, so we assume all green tech is tied to Xinjiang, and that anything made in Xinjiang has forced labor in the chain”. In fact the “report” is actually “investor advice”, and not purporting to be factual reporting of any kind.

I’m sure all the people who “worked” on this are enjoying their six figure e-mail jobs.

Spain and South Korea build high rail infrastructure for one tenth the cost of the US.

Do you think they are cutting corners in construction?

The cost of construction in the anglosphere doesn’t come from “too much safety”. It comes from a culture of consultants and managers and legalized graft.

Will anglo countries ever learn anything from other countries that can build things at reasonable prices? I’m guessing no.

Toyota’s announced they’ll be using solid state batteries in their production EVs before the end of the decade.

Nauru is a state completely dependent on foreign aid. I imagine their loyalties are pretty predictably motivated.

Maybe China is giving them aid without requiring them to hold deported migrants.

the last time the US “declared war” was 1942

It 100% is, but that doesn’t change the fact that Americans are still conditioned to be constantly afraid of terrorism.

Do you really think the US has any real concern about being attacked?

Well I still have to take off my shoes at the airport so I’d say yes. This country hasn’t stopped being afraid of being attacked in 22 years.

They can and will invent their own reasons just fine tyvm.

I’ll ask an honest question here: What do you think Trump would be doing materially differently from Biden in the handling of this conflict? Israel has essentially been given carte blanche, weapons sales are continuing without congressional approval, and humanitarian aid to Gaza is severely restricted.

What could Trump be doing that’s worse than this? Sending in US troops to massacre Palestinians is about the only place you can go, and that doesn’t seem like him.