I honestly don't think people would accept a 'tax' in exchange for Universal Healthcare as a policy position.

Not because we don't tax labor already for a mostly universal system, but because we'd have to unwind the wild distortions to wages that the hidden tax imposes.

First step would (of necessity) be to return the wages to workers -- which would have very very strange effects -- as in this: imagine two working partners: 1 of them has the health insurance, the other does not. The person with the health insurance gets a $20k raise (assume a family), the other partner doesn't. But, what's *weird* is the other partner's co-worker *does* get a $20k raise, so they are doing the same labor for different pay. And so on and so on.

That's the problem with getting to universal healthcare... in order to 'tax' it into existence, you have to raise all the wages first. Else, it's a massive windfall for business... and a huge hit to take-home pay.

But, that's the rub, with the massive and *hidden* distortions to labor costs we have a sort of gordian knot.

So, one way or another, *first* you have to return the taxes back to workers in some sort of way that doesn't crater your labor markets... and *then* you can re-collect those wages in a broad tax on labor (like FICA).

People would trade employee health insurance for a guaranty of a lifetime of health insurance -- but not for a govt. run system of health -- based on a broad tax on Labor. Then you just have to solve for incentives to drop out of the labor force if health insurance is guaranteed. We hate to admit it, but the absurd cost of health insurance is absolutely a motivator to seek employment.

Which is all to say, there's a path to a better insurance program... but it isn't a straight path, and it won't reduce costs, and it will probably involve tiers and trade-offs... but there's a path, just not one that isn't painful.

I think it's time we stop outlawing the Pike Square... we have countermeasures.

You know what all the Mercs say: Halberds for show, Sig Sauer for dough.

Given the distances involved, have we thought of making the Earth go faster?

Would like to request a whimsical renaissance guard. Swiss if possible. Blue, gold with an accent of orange.

and he's only got one lung...

My gut says he'll recover ... not getting the 'there's nothing to worry about here.... oops he died' vibe we usually get. But, he is 88 with only one lung... so you never know.

Yeah, there are a lot of things I like about it... appreciate that the systems are simplified into big 'chunks' e.g. Food, Gold, Culture without the tiny micro-management of VI. I like Generals too.

But yeah, a lot of odd choices for the GUI and interface.

My meta-concerns are that while the systems are good and chunky (vs. micro management) we seem to have lost a connection between building things and feeling the improvement in the gameplay.

Plus, I don't really feel like I'm in a race... so far I just build almost everything in a single age and try to hit the major objectives, best I can. Feels extremely plodding without any real meaningful choice or sacrifice or gamble.

Lastly... I *like* the 'clean-up' moving from age to age, but I really feel that they made a very, very bad decision forcing us to chose an entirely new CIV (wtf) for each age? The 'correct' approach here would have been to have you chose how you wanted to play Rome in the next era: MedRome1, MedRome2, MedRome3... and then Modern Rome has options depending on choices in Medieval Rome.

I feel like the last one is a pretty big miss... but so far the bigger issue is that on Average difficulty I just seem to plod along building all the buildings and not really needing to specialize or have a significant grand strategy.

Yeah, I agree with the original comment, and that's why I wanted to add an explicit rationale for *why* expanding NATO isn't the right path for Ukraine.

NATO membership restricts our options and it's just bad strategic thinking to reduce our options while simultaneously expanding our obligations and reducing effectiveness by weak countries like Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltics.

To paraphrase the intertubes, the best time to pivot was the 90s, but the next best time is now.

That's not what I'm suggesting. I don't care about Russia's security or their feelings about their security. My point is that we've deprecated NATO's effectiveness... for what? I'm not sure.

I was explicit that we should have multiple layers of treaty obligations *in addition* to NATO... but each layer shifts primary obligations to local/regional actors with US support.

Just because we've made bad decisions in the past, doesn't mean we have to keep making them... Ukraine in 2025 shouldn't be a NATO project, it could and should be the start of a new project.

In some ways, we've already destroyed NATO - or, I should clarify - the effective deterrent that was once NATO. So, arguing for an expanded NATO really means arguing for a diluted and less effective NATO. Compared, that is, to what NATO originally intended.

That's ok, I suppose, as long as we realize that extending and diluting NATO makes challenging NATO and the risk of NATO failing in its obligations that much larger.

As I said at the top... I think NATO is already deprecated ever since we included the Baltics (2004). There's no chance we invoke the Nuclear Umbrella for Vilnius; and there's almost no chance we put boots on the ground for Estonia. That's a fundamental deprecation of what made NATO so effective. There was no doubt that invading Germany by Russia would trigger a massive retaliation - quite likely nuclear.

So... what is NATO now? It trades on a security promise that we no longer believe; it's a sort of UN Security force that works on paper, but isn't really the thing we imagine (and want) NATO to be.

So to that extent... sure, let's keep expanding NATO, but it isn't going to do what we think it will do... and we shouldn't be surprised when it fails in the predictable ways we know it will fail.

We should have kept NATO as the anvil of security for Europe and created secondary and tertiary treaty organizations. We can feel better and blame George Bush and the Neo-Cons (like McCain) if we want to know where we went wrong... but I'd rather we NOT invite Ukraine into NATO (such as it is) and instead create non-NATO strategies that have plausible deterrent factors, plus the ability to localize, or scale-up, and/or strategically reatreat from when needed. That's not NATO.

The key tldr here is expanding NATO weakens NATO... we should build layers of security frameworks, not break the ones that work.

and market research shows something like 1% redemption rates... so hard to go wrong. Plus, even if you give away tootsie pops, I have to believe the margin on tootsie pops is positively astounding... so hardly a COGS issue. The marketing win would likely dwarf any redemption costs.

Funny thing? They should totally give away the free tootsie pop. Maybe alter the printing 'algorithm' so it's as rare and special as it should be... then ride the legend to victory.

Nothing much going on here... not quite ready for outdoor projects and not quite motivated for indoor projects.

Lady Marchmaine and I negotiated a Valentines day truce early in our relationship -- the full terms of which are lost: probably written on the back of a tootsie pop wrapper. Working in restaurants ruined Valentines for me...

Heh... what if we wake up to find that *all* the narrators are unreliable?

From a box mysteriously labeled: CIA Grassy Knoll site survey.

No, the external funds are discretionary as part of the Grant. Could be $0 could be 200%... the Agencies have 'negotiated' rates with their beneficiaries.

The point of the Levin article was that once Trump pointed out that they could be altered at the discretion of the Grant process... *then* congress wrote in to the Continuing Resolution that the External costs *can't* be altered from what had been previously negotiated.

So, it's an example of Trump's inability to do Presidenting well such that even things he could do, he screws up -- because he doesn't understand the process nor does he care enough to do the hard work of reform.

Yuval Levin has a good review of the current fight over NIH Grant Overhaul (External costs) where he points out that while the Administration has the tools to do this... they actually squandered those tools back in 2018 and now external costs are legislated directly in the CR.

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/deeper-question-nih-grant-overhaul

Ok, I'll bite ... since this seems obliquely connected to my post :-)

Yes... there's very little hip-hop on any of my playlists; I have 'ordinary cultural exposure' to a lot of music.
Way back at the 2022 Superbowl this line-up hit the stage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdsUKphmB3Y

While not a single song would be on any of my playlists -- pretty much all of the songs were known to me as part of a cultural backdrop (hence my deprecating Vegas comment). And, while listening to it for this comment, it's ironic (to me) that the only song that I still hadn't heard *and* which made absolutely no memorable impact was the song by... Kendrick Lamar.

I'm not saying that he's not popular; based on his Spotify profile, he's a bit more popular than Nickelback! And, I'll note for the record that when I play Nickelback's 1B hit song? I don't know that one either.

My de gustibus comment is that even going and seeking out his music? For me there's no hip-hop hook, sick beat, melody or anything memorable. His profile says: "Kendrick Lamar is known for his top-tier lyricism, virtuosic microphone command, and sharp conceptual vision". I'll take everyone's word for it. The music didn't grab me...

Ok, it's probably me not aligning the subject, verb, objects here... are we saying that when people like Chris Hayes invoke 'unprotected' labor to do things he's being disingenuous so that normie libs will cheer-on exploited labor in the name of cheap strawberries and back-breaking work?

And Freddie is being intellectually dishonest for calling that out?

That's how I'm reading it and it doesn't quite compute, so where am I off track?

I think this is closer to the mark... I'm not entirely convinced the fight over 'Power' is against Congress... it's against the 'Fourth Estate' (The Press has been demoted to Fifth Estate).

Congress has itself only notionally funded a lot of what happens... and clearly has lost oversight control in all sorts of areas.

But, Contra MAGA Conservatives, the remedy is within the grasp of the executive acting within the legal parameters of the Bureaucratic framework... it just requires diligence, several funding cycles, and follow through... all of which seem to be beyond their capabilities.
Douthat's last article is pretty balanced on this: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/08/opinion/trump-usaid-maga.html

Contra Liberals... Bureaucratic oversight has really not been a conservative strength; AND, while conservatives felt like they could use various agencies and funding to their purposes... well, live and let live. The gravy tastes good for everyone. As more and more institutions/agencies have shifted from indirect ideological ownership... well, it's ripe for backlash. I'd say that 'Science' during the Covid era opened a lot of eyes and is acting a bit like a hockey-ref letting skaters fight a bit before stepping in.
The Chronicle of Higher Education had a good overview of this: https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-ruthless-politicization-of-science-funding

My counter-intuitive take on this is that Congress should end the filibuster because Congress is the broken party in this fight... and only by acting and re-acting can they get back into it.

There was... but I'm oppressed here without a proper click-button com-box for link formatting.

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/we-have-to-take-some-kind-of-an-l

Heh, how I long to remove the hidden thumbs on food production that the NeoLibs pretend are for 'farmers'.

Good point; could do that. Lots of new and different consequences.

"That’s why Bernie Sanders used to be a pretty passionate immigration restrictionist, because of the way that undocumented labor undermines the fight for better labor conditions."

Not sure what makes the existing Neo-Liberal regime of exploiting labor a red herring though. Seems like an ordinarily colored herring.

Freddie, raising rabble:

Hayes is the host of a show on MSNBC, while Blitzer is a staff writer at The New Yorker. I say this as neutrally as I can - this is, correspondingly, as clear of a dispatch from elite establishment liberalism as you could ever find. And the conversation, to me, is deeply frustrating. It reflects the inability of contemporary liberals to embed moral reasoning in a broader framework of feasibility, legal defensibility, political sense, and simple pragmatism.
[...]
Who's going to re-build Los Angeles? Undocumented labor, that's who:

If [the elite establishment liberalism] express this just slightly differently, you can see that it’s exceptionally racist. “You know what would be great? If we let a bunch of people of color into our country and have them do hard, dangerous, demeaning jobs. And get this! We’re going to sneak them in secretly, so they won’t be protected by minimum wage laws, OSHA, regulations on work hours and overtime, and all manner of other labor protections. And most of them are going to be paying into Medicare and Social Security but won’t ever be able to practically draw from those programs that they’ve contributed to. They’ll also be constantly subject to personal, economic, and sexual exploitation because they won’t be able to call the police due to their undocumented status.

And that's from an 'Open Borders' guy... no wonder everyone hates him.

My two takeaways:
1. Tom Brady is a B- media personality; too much Tom Brady. Also, he's not that good of a color commentator; the novelty has worn off.
2. Now that I'm no longer the target audience for the Halftime show, my usual experience has been... oh, so that's who does that song I heard on repeat in Vegas. That didn't happen at all this time... is Vegas getting old too?