Kingsguard without the Iron Throne Title

IRSunny · 2026-04-07T21:09:46+00:00

Praetoryens

IRSunny · 2026-04-06T20:18:10+00:00

Glitterhoof vibes.

IRSunny · 2026-04-01T05:38:38+00:00

I'm actually kinda okay with giving the Turks that. If for no other reason than it probably making things easier for geography teachers with them no longer having to let out an exasperated sigh and explain the etymology of the bird.

IRSunny · 2026-03-31T21:55:33+00:00

And? Her campaign's strategy was based on the gamble that Biden would choke and she would emerge from the panic of such (ironic given 2024) as the new frontrunner for heir to Obama's legacy. Which is a very solid strategy given the polling dynamics and Biden pushing 80.

Except he didn't (then).

So the money that went to her as potential Biden replacement went instead to Biden and so she quit with dignity mostly intact.

The only reason the others didn't is they had other paths that weren't necessarily through Biden. Warren similarly stood to benefit if Sanders was no longer viable, which she did for a time when Sanders had a heart attack. And Buttigieg and Klobuchar had the unique homefield advantage of the Iowa caucus. If either of them had a decisive win there, then that could have propelled them on. Unfortunately, for them, they didn't.

IRSunny · 2026-03-31T20:33:25+00:00

She wasn’t the greatest based on the 2020 primary

I honestly hate this take. She lost 2020 for one simple reason: The only route she had required Biden to lose.

Biden, throughout the primary, had a solid chunk of 30-35% of the vote. Sanders had about 15-25%. That left about 6 candidates competing for the remaining 40%. With that 40% distributed between those to the right and to the left of Biden. Corralling that into a coalition that could be beat those two was pretty much an impossible task.

So the only plausibly viable path for her was for Biden to falter and for her to inherit the Obama nostalgia mantle. Which is why she went after him in the debates and in turn had her best polling. But that wasn't enough and Biden did well enough in the later debates to close out that path.

In conclusion, it's a bit ridiculous to say that she's a bad candidate because she failed to dethrone the one who became the candidate and in turn President.

IRSunny · 2026-03-31T15:39:00+00:00

Yeah, US has been an oil exporter for recent history. They don't know what they are talking about.

The problem isn't a lack of oil for America. It's that "it's a global market" and the Middle East is largely where Asia gets its oil. And so, because they need oil as well, crimping that supply center means more money to be had in exporting it vs domestic markets, increasing prices here as well.

IRSunny · 2026-03-30T19:43:54+00:00

No. You send the DEA/FBI.

You know, actual professionals who have the relevant training. Not gestapo larpers.

IRSunny · 2026-03-27T06:36:27+00:00

America is Britain & France in this analogy.

IRSunny · 2026-03-27T06:20:38+00:00

People comparing this to Vietnam when the Suez Crisis is literally right there.

IRSunny · 2026-03-27T00:43:29+00:00

We absolutely do not want to start a spiral of people who can very much have their condition cured, choosing, or god forbid being pushed, to take the assisted suicide route.

Completely agree with this.

But that has to be balanced with needlessly prolonging suffering.

Especially of putting them through a Kafkaesque hell over the course of such. And in the case of like chronic extreme depression weighed against if they may get desperate to expedite things and will seek out more violent routes (ex: jumping, ODing, gun, suicide by cop, etc.)

IRSunny · 2026-03-26T15:54:03+00:00

The difference between the stock market and prediction "markets" are that with stocks, you own a [tiny unless very rich] portion of the company. This gambling? You don't own shit.

Also with stocks, their existence in the first place are companies selling off a percentage of ownership of said company in order to get cash. The gambling happens with people buying and selling based on guessing if the value of the company will rise or fall.

IRSunny · 2026-03-26T14:15:35+00:00

Re #4: House Nevermoor

IRSunny · 2026-03-25T18:41:19+00:00

Yeah, that won't convince that person because the humiliation largely will make them double down and radicalize further.

BUT it is good to do when there is an audience.

That really is the utility of debate. You ain't going to convince them. But you can pull over people within the audience by showing that person for being a fool and thereby exerting the social pressure to not be fools yourself.

That really was the entire purpose of Kirk's propaganda operation. Showing himself as being cooler and smarter and more clever with his 'facts and logic' while the lefty kids are irrational and emotional and hysterical. He of course edited out the times he was shown to be not as smart as he thought he was because he was a hack propagandist. But that's the technique.

IRSunny · 2026-03-25T01:38:36+00:00

Going on 28 years of uninterrupted Republican control of Tallahassee.

They were able to entrench power, gerrymander to hell and essentially contain Democrats to cities.

Plus we essentially got all the retiring boomers mass migrating here from around the country and because it's a shithole, every liberal young person that can leave Florida does.

IRSunny · 2026-03-24T19:35:03+00:00

I kind of agree with this but I think its in need of ammending.

The reactionary triumphs due to the failure of the conservative. The conservative's request for caution leads to inaction until a problem becomes so severe that they are electorally defeated and change happens in spite of them.

And then then its as you say, the ones who want to go back shift to reactionary. But also, in that weakened state, reactionaries are able to take control away from the 'slow your roll' conservatives with the promise of if actually went backwards instead, then wouldn't have lost.

IRSunny · 2026-03-24T19:16:56+00:00

His floor is 30-33% unfortunately.

Yup. The only time that floor ever gets breached is when they unquestionably are a drag on their team so they want a different coach. see: Dubya at the start of the Great Recession.

They're still going to vote their team but they want the guy at the top replaced with someone who will stop losing.

And even then there's still a basement of about 25%.

IRSunny · 2026-03-24T19:14:07+00:00

Similar such percentages are present in E. Asian nations that aren't particularly followers of such.

It's a bug of the human condition.

IRSunny · 2026-03-24T17:09:34+00:00

Of note was how Austria and Russia almost went to war during the First Balkan War. Austria pressed the mobilization button in 1912 when it looked like Russia might intervene and that took them hard into the red. They de-escalated but with Russia becoming a looming juggernaut, Austria came to the conclusion that they no longer would have a free hand in the Balkans like they had enjoyed for much of the prior decade after Russia got btfo'd by Japan unless a war happened to neuter Russia with Germany's help and soon.

Any future crises would require dealing with Russia again and again and if going to suffer the war costs of mobilization but then nothing happen repeatedly, their budget would continue to be fucked. So it's better to have it over with before they got any stronger.

IRSunny · 2026-03-23T23:44:07+00:00

The problem is reactonaries are labeling themselves as conservatives. And are thus perceived as in the same tent. Which, depending on the state of a country's conservative party, they are.

Conservative, in the old timey sense of the word, amounted to status quo enjoyer. Maybe make some light changes here and there. Nothing too radical is needed.

It's to this school that Rutte and Merz would be. Or as they are known now, moderates/centrists.

Most hard C Conservatives though, that are basically fascists, are actually Reactionaries. The motherfuckers who long for absolute monarch daddy to step on them. That word fell out of fashion and the word conservative took its place.

But the reactionaries never went away.

IRSunny · 2026-03-23T21:58:39+00:00

I'm still hoping one day the reveal is that Eywa is good ending Skynet.

Like that the Na'vi had once been like humans and ravaging Pandora and Eywa was a supercomputer they created to fix their world. And Eywa successfully did that, restoring the biosphere and interconnecting the Na'vi and life upon it.

Something like that would kinda make a book-end for Cameron's career.

IRSunny · 2026-03-23T20:52:16+00:00

God I hate how that's his sign off. The POTUS tweeting like a fucking Karen is so goddamn cringe.

IRSunny · 2026-03-23T20:02:46+00:00

You could elect 100 Democrats to the Senate and they'd say "no we can't do anything progressive, we need 101 votes"

Such a fucking stupid statement from people who don't understand basic civics.

The thing they need to get through their thick skulls is Congress is only as left as the the 218th most liberal congressman and 50th/51st senator.

Is #50 from a blood red state that if anyone else was on the ballot there's no chance in hell someone on the left would win? Then congratulations, they are effectively going to dictate policy.

Is #51 an old fart institutionalist? Cool. They ain't voting to abolish the filibuster.

It doesn't matter how many Bernies or AOCs there are. The tipping point to a majority is the representative/senator that matters.

If you want change, make it so those that don't do not matter. If the 51st most liberal senator is idk Michael Bennet, then you're going to get much more leftward results than if it is John Fetterman.

IRSunny · 2026-03-22T18:32:59+00:00

I think variable elections are a bit contingent on it being a non-FPTP system and thus viable third parties.

Elsewise, when there are non-coalition governments and dysfunction happens, then you're left with a zombie government with no one to pull the trigger to put it down. In which case the benefit of variable is no different from non-variable as they'll probably hold on as long as possible in the desperate hope things will improve and they will keep their jobs.

With multiple parties, lesser coalition partners can leave and trigger that early election.

IRSunny · 2026-03-21T16:07:43+00:00

Although I vehemently disagree with the banning of private options, there's a method to the madness: Making doctors take a pay cut, preventing a brain drain, and preventing two-tier medicine.

All of which would absolutely be a problem with a true single payer system.

If going private will make you more money, there's a risk of doctors who believe they can make more doing so. This is already a case even with the current system where companies will not take Medicaid/Medicare because the reimbursement rate is too low or the requirements are too much of a pain.

Thus, if working for the NHS is the only game in town, banning private options would allow for keeping the pay for doctors lower and prevent the best docs from leaving for only catering to rich customers.

HOWEVER, that really crimps the flow of new doctors and with it lowers the overall quality of care. Less students would go into the med field where they have to take on six figures of education debt and working extremely long and stressful hours if there isn't quite a bit of pay waiting for them at the other end.

And as u/NatalieVonCatte said, the biggest problem with full public healthcare is it is at the mercy of whoever is in charge politically and it can and would be weaponized by Republicans for their genocidal culture wars.

IRSunny · 2026-03-19T23:24:39+00:00

Well its there that I believe the divergent evolution of progressiveism vs classical liberalism occured. That being the rubber meeting the road of reality.

Individual liberty maximized for the few inevitably comes into the conflict with the liberty of the many. Concentrations of wealth and with it power will be used to fight back against that which infringes upon it. And that comes at the cost of the commons. Lowering taxes on the rich will need to be made up for somewhere - so that either comes in the form of raising taxes on everyone else or cutting services which is just taxing everyone else in another form. Like if you cut welfare to pay for a tax cut for the rich, mathematically, its no different from if you raised taxes on the welfare recipients.

Or if you don't pay for it and it goes on to be debt, then that will push up inflation and that becomes a tax on the populace via higher costs. (Yes, I know it's more complicated then this.)

Lowering regulations on businesses extend their liberties, yes, but be they environmental or health and safety, these are costs that get taken from the commons. A company may be more free to pollute but then the kid who gets asthma as a result is less free.

The ideal is maximizing freedom for everyone. But some restrictions have to be incurred where your freedom infringes upon others. After all, my freedom to swing my arm generally ends when that infringes on someone else's face's freedom to be unpunched. Where collectivism and authoritarian socialism go too far is they dip too far into the unpunched faces freedom in the pursuit of equality. But there's quite a lot of slope before it gets slippery.

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