F16’s won’t give Ukraine much of an advantage until sufficient numbers of pilots are a trained. There are two weapons that could immediately change the battlefield landscape. GLSDB’s and ATACM’s are long range precision bombs that would allow Ukraine to target Russian supply lines and ammunition stores far behind the front lines, including into Crimea. They both have backup inertial guidance systems in order to mitigate GPS jamming… which is a big problem for their current guided munitions.

Turkey won’t allow military ships to pass the Bosporus in any direction while there’s a war on. This prevents Russia from reinforcing their Black Sea fleet but also prevents Western navies from entering.

“Vested interests create “checks and balances” primarily to make political systems non-responsive to demands for social reform.”.

It is thanks to checks and balances that we don’t currently have a dictator Trump running this country. Anyone who thinks checks and balances are a bad idea need only take a cursory glance at the world over the past few years to realize we would be far worse off without them. From Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Boris Johnson in the UK, would be autocrats were thwarted in their quest to remain in office by these same checks and balances.

No matter which side you are in the statement “The Taliban’s successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world.” is objectively true. The shortfall in opioid production will easily be made up from other sources, likely adulterated with synthetics that cause more harm. As for the Afghan farmers who grew the stuff they’ve not been given another alternative…they just had their crops destroyed and have no other sources of income.

There’s nothing inherently bad about propaganda. The problem with Russian propaganda is that it’s trying to justify a brutal invasion that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, among them children buried in rubble by missile strikes. The US did the same after it’s invasion of Iraq. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.

Hopefully, examination of the wreckage will yield valuable information about the cause of the failure and help future designs of deep-sea submersibles.

I was thinking it was just a right wing, anti-immigrant politician, not an actual Nazi. Then I went to check… holy hell.

Hopefully the whole debacle will focus people’s minds on the real problem. The US government is spending more than it is taking in, and that’s a problem with only 2 possible solutions (continuing to raise the debt ceiling doesn’t count as a solution). We must reduce spending or increase revenue by raising taxes. There is nothing else to discuss… kicking the can down the road only hurts us more in the long run.

Spending money on worthwhile endeavors is a good thing, but you have to have the money to spend in the first place. If you don’t and you just kick the can down the road it puts a much heavier burden on future generations. We need to get serious about raising taxes on those who do not pay their fair share.