Ben Dreyfuss, probably from fear of being tossed in a reeducation camp, is trying to think of things he agrees with Donald Trump about:
He’s also right about shower pressure and making the Europeans pay their nato dues.
— Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) November 9, 2024
I have bad news for Ben:
- Republicans are sworn foes of YIMBY shit. They consider liberal efforts to end zoning restrictions and build higher density housing a sinister plot to force everyone into socialist beehives.
- Trump could reinstate his higher shower head standards, but hardly anyone would bother producing them. States and cities still mandate limits (1.8 gpm in California, 1.5 gpm in Miami, etc.) and the shower head folks prefer to make one product for the whole country.
- NATO has already reformed itself. It started in 2014 under Obama and then picked up steam under Biden when Russia invaded Ukraine. Only eight out of 31 NATO countries are still below the 2% requirement for defense spending:
.
Ben needs to make a more serious commitment here. Maybe offer up some family expertise on electrocution vs. being eaten by a shark?
"Maybe offer up some family expertise on electrocution vs. being eaten by a shark?"
Kevin Drum with the rare burn! Wow!
Nepo baby!
Brought a smile to my face (rare these days). Nepotism didn't cross my mind.
I've no idea who Dreyfuss is, but anyone who gibbers about members not paying their "NATO dues", as if it's one of Trump's clubs, is an indescribable ignoramus.
He's the actor Richard Dreyfuss' son and longtime Mother Jones writer.
He doesn’t appear on the Mother Jones staff page these days and his MoJo bio says “former” with his most recent writing there being from December 31, 2020. https://www.motherjones.com/author/ben-dreyfuss/
He’s a pundit and writer! who uses too many! exclamation points!!
And likes to be a bit of a gadfly/ provocateur/ sometimes edgelord on Twitter.
Not that there's anything wrong! with that!!!
Granted he's a writer who is getting 'paid' for his work, but in this particularly I'm proudly second to none in being a terrible writer with all sorts of annoying stylistic tics, commatitus among them.
About the only writer I can't stand is that dimwittedly smug George Will, the stupid person's conception of how smart people write.
Indeed. We (the US) constructed NATO specifically to curb the warlike tendencies of Europe's powers. That was -on purpose-. NATO is -designed- so that without US leadership, they can't achieve much: a great way to prevent them from getting into wars, natch. For us to now claim that they're shirking is .... well, it's a bit much.
Notwithstanding, I'm sure that if Trump does as he has threatened, and doesn't credibly support Ukraine, NATO will fall apart and Europe will rearm with a vengeance. And if Europe emerges safe and victorious, they won't be our supine allies anymore.
The end of American hegemony over Europe! Huzzah! [not, sigh]
Why would (remaining) NATO fall apart? I rather think, if the US were to pull out or prove unreliable, it would start a process of forming an integrated European force capable of credibly defending against Russia.
I think we agree on meanings, but I used different words than you did. What I meant, really, is that the US would end up withdrawing from NATO. That's what I mean by "NATO fall apart". I didn't mean that the rest of NATO would disband, sorry sorry.
No need to apologize. For certain if the US were to withdraw, it would be a very different NATO. You’re right that US leadership meant that European countries could maintain smaller forces that wouldn’t threaten neighbors. I don’t think that war among Western and Central Europeans is a worry anymore — the EU has bound them too closely.
Agree 100%. It really is underappreciated how much of our good rapport with Europe (collectively, an equivalent economic giant with 1/4 of total Earth GDP) is because armed conflict is completely off the table due to the US being a peerless military power. We may grumble about how come we're the ones paying for XYZ, but the only thing worse than having nobody's navy policing the sealanes is having two navies doing it.
I mean, FFS, do we really want France or Germany to have idle aircraft carriers etc., and large internal constituencies itching for them to be used, and a lot less need to check in with the US before they go adventurin' around the globe? Because that's what we'd get if the Europeans were to ramp up their military spending. And it certainly would not mean that the US would get to spend less; we'd probably have to spend more.
Maybe it sucks to be the sherrif, but it sucks far worse to be the sherrif in a town full of other sherrifs, each with their own ideas about who needs shootin'.
+1
Really need a copy of this and post it as reponse whereever somebody writes that the US should reduce the defence budegt. The US gets more out of it than it puts in.
didn't trump INCREASE the defense budget back in 2017 by 300B? what are US citizens getting out of that increase because unless I missed something it isn't going to the troops. I know what I'm writing is a joke but now that we have No New Wars trump the peacenik, I was hoping that elements of the DoD budget would be cut....
Of course, they cannot reduce the budget. Many Red States depend on it to survive economically.
You completely missed the point, presumably because you didn't the message I replied to. The benefits are indirect.
Americans gain from the defence budget because being "the sherrif of the world" gives the US government and bussinesses power to push things around the world in a way that benefits Americans.
Of course, electing a POS as president means that the government don't use this for the benfit of Americans, but that is a separate issue. I don't know about the 300B$ you mention and where they went.
+1
Completely. It would be one thing if the US were groaning under 12% of GDP annual defense budgets. But the 3-4% we spend it pretty affordable for a country as eye-wateringly rich as America, and in the bargain we get a lot of say, and buy ourselves a lot of stability.
(I know 2024 may not look that stable, but compare it to 1940.)
The Trumpian view that "we're suckers" who are "being taken advantage of" was always the crudest and most clueless of "analyses." He's basically Archie Bunker in a $4,000 suit.
Can you imagine what rolling back shower head GPM flow rates would do to water consumption in Arizona and Nevada? The Colorado River will never ever reach the Gulf.
I have a better proposal: Let's make it mandatory that all White males have their apocrine glands removed.
Also... GPM ≠ water pressure. Ugh.
Yeah, but the average person wouldn't know that, especially if they didn't take Physics, so I'm more forgiving about it, you know? 😆
It used to be such a pain trying to confirm if pressure in water lines were sufficient for a hydrant, sprinklers, and FDH until the water departments started putting all that data in their ArcGIS maps.
Oh, and there was the pain of making sure you sized water lines properly. You can go the prescriptive route in the Plumbing Code but we all know people like to add more fixtures to their residences and buildings after the fact. Good times.
Does the Colorado River even reach the Gulf of California today?
No, it doesn't...sadly
"The Colorado River no longer reaches the Gulf, and instead peters out of existence miles short of the sea. Two factors have conspired to turn this once mighty river into a trickle: climate change and overuse by the very states that rely on its waters"
So Rich, you nailed it.
(yes I see my spelling error within the editing time...but I kind of like it....lol)
Unintentionally, yes. Maybe changes will happen to make that more common. https://www.kpbs.org/news/midday-edition/2018/02/19/few-weeks-colorado-river-reached-ocean-will-it-hap
This Election Day will go down in history as Fuck You Tuesday.
And a lot of people will find out that it's 'F*ck Me' for the next few years. Of those, I expect only a few to know that.
Shower head thought by Mr. Drum is weak sauce. Congress could (and arguably should!) exercise its power under Article IV to preempt those state and local laws.
That's what both Trump and Dreyfuss are saying.
With this Supreme Court it's impossible to predict, but there is no obvious way Article IV could be applied to overrule such existing state regulations if they had legislative approval.
I'm pretty sure Congress's commerce clause powers would enable the federal government to enact a statute stating that all showerheads sold within the US must blast enough water to clean circus animals/scour off orange facepaint/whatever batshit pressure would satisfy Trumpers.
Unclear why Congress "arguably should" do this--I know Trump has a weird obsession with bathroom plumbing, but that sounds like a _him_ problem.
Ok: I'll admit to feeling a little bit, erm, squeamish, about Joe Biden's explicit vows (walked back by his subordinates, to be sure, but the President himself was crystal clear on multiple occasions) to enter into a shooting war with China over Taiwan if the latter attempts to force an annexation. The possibility that Trump makes a nuclear war over the Taiwan straight less likely is about the only silver lining I see from his victory. And even then we can't say for sure this will be the case (I used the word "possibility"), because the GOP in the main is hot for confrontation with Beijing, and so a lot depends on who gets appointed to which positions. It's obviously pretty possible tensions with Beijing will increase once Trump is in power.
(No, I am absolutely NOT in favor of throwing that brave democracy under the bus. It's a wonderful country—ever been there? But I'd prefer our involvement over this issue be similar to our Ukraine policy: large scale aid, sharing of intel, exhorting them to get their act together on national defense, strengthening our alliances in the Indo-Pacific, and so on—but no boots on the ground thank you very much. And yes, needless to say, I am white hot in my opposition to ending aid to Ukraine, a policy Trump looks set to implement).,
You were upset we might honor our promises and stand athwart letting another might makes right?
That seems like the opposite of someone who wants peace.
Taiwan wouldn't have the warning and isn't as broad as Ukraine.
Taiwan is an island, and amphibious landings under fire are extremely complex and difficult operations, with which the PLA has no experience at scale. Taiwan has been acquiring and producing antiship missiles in large numbers. The invaders would suffer enormous losses.
No one has experience in them. There's just no way to have experience.
But they'd basically do the same airdrop thing Russia tried, but there wouldn't be villages in the way of those boats' advance.
The US has experience with amphibious landings. Most of it was in WWII. There was Grenada though that may be considered more of a scrimmage.
No one from then should still be in service.
Institutional memory is a thing.
China really has no experience with amphibious assaults, as in, in its thousands of years of history, they've never mounted an opposed blue water assault at scale. While American experience is largely out of date, even 80 year old experience and the small scale stuff we've done more recently provides better institutional memory than China has.
More, an amphibious assault of Taiwan would be the largest, most complex such operation in history. To date, the invasion of Normandy has that honor, but this would be a lot more complex. The distance to cross is roughly the same, but China is unlikely to have established the air and naval dominance that the Allies spent 18 months establishing in 1943-44.
As daunting as the landing at Omaha Beach was, Taiwan would be worse. There aren't many suitable beaches on the island, which means that the Taiwanese defenses are more concentrated than the Germans' were. The bluffs behind Omaha Beach were about 150 feet high. The beaches in Taiwan generally have bluffs that are 600-700 feet high. The Taiwanese coast is also littered with small islets that control the approaches to the beaches into which the Taiwanese have dug tunnel complexes and placed large amounts of artillery.
The Chinese would have to establish air and naval dominance and deal with those little fortresses before they could mount an actual invasion.
Critically, the British and, especially, the Americans started small and worked their way up to the Normandy invasion. The most important experience came at Tarawa eight months before. The Marines learned the importance of minimizing troops' exposure between leaving the landing craft and hitting the beach, and the value of amphibious tractors. They gained experience in how to coordinate airstrikes and naval gunfire with the landings. They saw the overwhelming shock that the first waves of landings experience when they leave the boats and run straight into a wall of fire, and that the men in those initial waves would have to be trained how keep going when half of their unit became casualties in the first ten minutes.
Without Tarawa, Normandy would have been a fiasco. The Chinese won't have any opportunity for that sort of trial run.
I do agree with you that the Americans will have to be involved. The US Navy would be crucial in maintaining sea and air superiority. But, if we're there, I put the odds of a successful invasion very low.
Agree. I hope Xi’s general staff is giving him honest assessments, not bullshitting like Putin’s generals (who were covering for their graft, which shortchanged materiel and preparedness).
Thanks for your knowledge/expertise.
The Ukraine war says to me that Navies have had their day. If there would be a landing of personal it will be by air.
Anti ship missiles do seem to have a substantial edge. Moskva had multiple CIWS mounts; I just saw a report that only two Neptunes were needed to send it under.
We also see in Ukraine that neither side has been able to establish anything like air superiority; air defense also seems to have the edge.* I don’t see any chance that an invasion attempt by air would succeed. Losses of invader personnel and materiel would be enormous whether coming by sea or air.
*Russia deals with this by overwhelming Ukrainian AD with numbers. Don’t know what Ukraine is doing lately, but they have struck targets deep inside Russia. They have destroyed a number of Russian AD installations, and seem to have very good intelligence on how to evade the remaining ones.
I’m upset Biden *made* the promise. Strategic ambiguity was better
But it's the same posture we've always had.
Exactly.
But it's the same posture we've always had.
Huh? I want to return to that. Biden blew it up.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/19/joe-biden-repeats-claim-that-us-forces-would-defend-taiwan-if-china-attacked
I'm not sure where the ambiguity still resides. Again, I'm aware his aides tried to backtrack, but it doesn't get much more "official" than the literal President of the United States—the Commander in Chief of the country's military. We're already setting up semi-automated systems to attack PLA forces in the wake of an invasion. I doubt the POTUS will even be consulted, much less Congress:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/10/taiwan-china-hellscape-military-plan/
I'm ardently pro-Taiwan. It's a fantastic place, and it would be an utter tragedy on multiple levels if that vibrant democracy were swallowed by Communist China.
But I assume even the most ardently pro-Taiwan people don't think trying to prevent that outcome would literally be worth a nuclear war.
So I conclude people who disagree with me on this score must simply have a good faith difference in opinion as to the probability that a direct Sino-US military conflict goes nuclear. Which is fine: different people view things differently! But I believe this is the mother of all tail risks and must be avoided.
There have already been minor conflicts between nuclear powers, that have not triggered nuclear exchanges, namely, India-Pakistan, India-China. These were mere skirmishes, but it might indicate that national leaders will show restraint.
Don't worry! Trump has shown (and will show!) that US promises are worthless, so no harm done!
Didn't George W Bush (the Lesser) let that cat out of the bag over 20 years ago? Biden's statements were nothing new.
"exhorting them to get their4 act together"? They do have their act together. They generally pay for the weapons we send them. They have mandatory military service. They are very aware of the threat.
You've GOT to be kidding me.
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2024/05/11/2003817679
"The possibility that Trump makes a nuclear war over the Taiwan straight less likely is about the only silver lining I see from his victory"
Unless the government of China figures that Trump is scatterbrained, failing and eminently bribe-able. They might also figure that the same GOP which deliberately handed Ukraine over to Putin through love of fascism might not protect Taiwan.
So we should let states decide woman's health and uterus care, but the Federal Government should get involved with shower pressure?
Might not that be backwards?
Why would you conclude that the Republicans intend to let states decide the abortion issue?
You mean the GOP was lying? I am shocked, just shocked to hear that.
I expect they will introduce a bill to ban abortion withing 666 minutes of the Congress being sworn in. "To bring clarity to the issue."
Oh, they do believe that the Federal government should be involved in women's healthcare. They just like to delegate it to the states when and only when those states are doing what the GOP desires.
When those states don't, then 'leave it to the states' is stuffed into the Memory Hole.
Looking for a silver lining in the piece of shit that is Donald J. Trump. Good for him.
Oh wow, a yummy undigested kernel of corn! We dine tonight!
Maybe not all Republicans are NIMBY. I thought the lack of zoning made Texas real estate more affordable.
"lack of zoning made Texas real estate more affordable"
Actually, housing is cheap in Texas because incomes are lower here, the stock is all poorly built,* and there's tons of land. The zoning thing may play some small part, but it's way overblown (not least because the vaccuum left by the lack of zoning laws is generally filled in by ridiculously restrictive homeowners associations and other private covenants).
______
*Example: every single winter, pipes freeze all over the place in Texas. Why? Because, despite the weather occasionally reaching freezing temperatures each winter (y'know, in the way it does virtually every single other non-Hawaii part of the US), houses don't have basic insulation.
I remember back in the late 70s going on a trip to Arizona on a programming assignment in the winter - working for DEC at the time. Phoenix was building housing rapidly and they saved money by not burying infrastructure. There was a major cold snap while I was there and a whole lot of water pipes ruptured, along with NG pipelines and some sewer lines.
Kind of like what happened in TX in early 2021 because they did a bad job insulating NG pipelines, storing coal outdoors (creating coalburgs), and not insulating vital equipment in their nuclear plants. Housing codes also contributed to water lines exploding in ceilings and walls.
Then they repeated the debacle in the summer - lots of failures due to high heat.
Agreed 100%. Texas also lacks a forward capacity market, so generators have zero incentive to actually be available when called upon beyond whatever the spot electricity price would be. So they don't invest in readiness (unlike everywhere else in the country) and when even mild disasters (like cold weather) occur, the grid goes down.
Example: a very mild hurricane glancingly hit Houston this summer, and it knocked out power to millions of people for a week. Why? Despite everywhere on the Gulf Coast being exceedingly vulnerable to storms, the utilities had done basically nothing to prepare, and had never invested in any way to assess from a central location where the grid had been damaged. Thus, they wasted nearly three full days dicking around physically eyeballing all the powerlines before major repair efforts could get underway.
This sort of thing isn't even that uncommon--every couple of years, there is a major multiday power failure (such that a lot of houses rely on gas-fired generators as backups; anecdotally, I know of at least one household nearby whose generator blew up and set their house on fire). And yet Texans, when confronted with this, will just start proudly talking about Texas being the energy capital of the world, and how the alternative would (somehow?) be too expensive. Point out that other states don't suffer these kinds of problems, and they'll frequently start grumbling about Californians moving to Texas, and/or start blithering about liberal states and drag queens and pronouns.
So it's not even pennywise/pound foolish sorts of stuff. It's just deadweight loss attributable to a delusional sense of superiority.
If he's actually willing to post about "paying NATO dues," he'll be going full-on MAGA well within a year. It's the first sip of the kool-aid. I'd bet a 3.5 gpm showerhead on it.
Since there’s no such thing as NATO dues…
When is somebody going to say, "Presidents have little control of inflation, least of all over food inflation. They cannot control the weather." This idea that Presidents like God are omnipotent is a stupid idea.
Yeah. Too bad no Democrat or pundit or even a talking head bothered to mention this when it counted, during the campaign. Why Democrats never pick the low-hanging fruit, or even the windfalls, is just beyond me.
‘Because when you’re explaining, you’re losing’. The kind of people you need to reach aren’t going to say, “Oh, yeah, that’s the difference between capitalism and a centrally-planned economy, where prices are low but you have to stand on line for hours when the butter allotment is due, to get your half-pound.”
The American public is woefully ignorant and doesn't know it, but we don't dare try to inform or enlighten them, because that would mean "we're losing"?
Faux and Fiends "explain" every hour of every day! They gaslight a whole different "reality" and ... it works! So only Democrats aren't allowed to enlighten? Is that how the game works?
No, Democrats should definitely do their best to enlighten the public. Just not the Democrats who are actively engaged in campaigning for office. The Murdoch conglomerate, the Koch-funded groups, Cato, Heritage, the Manhattan Institute -- they all operate around the year. The left and center-left need to be doing the same.
Implementing mass deportations is the exception to that rule. The president does have authority to do those, and the likely outcome is increases in food prices.
A trade war sparked by tariffs could make some food cheaper. If our foreign buyers of soy beans look elsewhere, I guess we can eat more of those at every meal!
A conservative eating tofu? Not likely.
True. However a President who sets his mind on CAUSING rather than curing inflation will have numerous options to do it. Trump is going to try with tariffs (if he indeed does what he said he would). And my bet is he will succeed.
I agree with Trump about this one thing: Modernist gray-box architecture is ugly and bad, and public architecture should shift to neo-neo-classical or neo-art deco or something that actually looks nice and will age well.
That doesn't come within five orders of magnitude of making up for his defects, but it is not zero.
Yet every building with the Trump name on it is quickly outdated architecturally and only at best only signifying wealth and displaying what had been fashionable before it was built.
He bought the Commodore hotel next to Grand Central and spent a lot of money sheathing it in glass to make it look "modern" but by then most people didn't care about that any more and old looking hotels became at least as fashionable. He had the lobby which was known as one of the most beautiful ones in the world when it was built turned into 1970's junk interior design. It was all becoming out of style by the time it opened. The room interiors and furniture were all tossed and redone maybe a decade later.
It's all a commercial version of 1950's thinking (old bad, new good, plus make as much money as possible), which is basically what MAGA is also all about. Make America Great like it was when I was a child living in a mansion in Forest Hills.
Although I like any kind of good current architecture, he doesn't. I live in Brooklyn and appreciate even the lower end of all kinds of prewar architecture vs the gray box token balcony junk often being built today. Most of it is not architecture but commercial engineering to a price. I would endorse reviews of proposed buildings for their contribution to the visual and practical environment. That would be MORE regulation which these people are dead set against.
Were you thinking of King Charles III?
I don't think you should even give him that. Agreed that it's five orders of magnitude less important than the really bad things about him, but Trump also has absolutely horrible taste. Look at the photos of his homes--he seems to think that the best design element is gilded marble, like something a mob boss or a middle eastern dictator would think was cool.
What, we've already moved on to shower heads?? Whatever happened to the rants about the commodes that you had to flush 6, 7, 8 times before the Top Secret dox would go down?
Every time I've bought a new car (4x now!), it's gotten better mileage than the ones before. Those days are over.
There a term 'Pundit Fallacy', for the idea by pundits that if Dems take the pundit's pet issue as their number 1 issue, then they'll win ('obviously').
I'm going to make up a second term, 'Punditus Ignoramus', for when a pundit lists a set of issues which Dems support and the GOP opposes, and says that the Dems should support them to win.
Ben Dreyfuss is an idiot and there is no reason to talk about him.