I was recently a staff sergeant in the us army. I was not an officer so take this with a grain of salt. Officers and senior nco's are promoted via centralized boards that make the determination based on the leader's records. An officer's supervisors do influence their careers via annual performance evaluations but there are other factors considered. I'm sure there's still some politicking but I wouldn't necessarily take the Vietnam era as indicative of how things are today. There have been reforms to the nco corps in the meantime to emphasize education and professionalism. I expect the officer corps has changed too. I've heard networking can be essential to make it to colonel and beyond but at that point the officer would often be considering retirement anyway. militaryonesource's article military-promotions-what-friends-and-family-should-know gives a pretty good description of what it looks like today.
Hi Agent Smith, I'd like to add some details to the breakup of the German coalition. This will be very simplified but kinda long, but here goes: 1. The Trafficlights coalition was under a lot of pressure for a year now. In 2023, the German Federal Constitutional Court ("Bundesverfassungsgericht") ruled the second supplementary Budget act 2021 unconstitutional and void. In early 2022, the government tried to retroactively repurpose unused credit authorizations (60 billion euro) taken up during the COVID crisis (possible through an emergencaly-exemption from the "debt-break"). The goal was to use these funds as a "climate and transformation fund" in the coming years. This was unconstitutional because a) the addendum came in 2022, not 2021 b) the conditions for the exemption from the "debt-break" were not met c) the budget and thus the exemption from the "debt-break" holds only for the respective year (2021). With this ruling, the german government "lost" 60 billion euro from their 2023 budget on November 15. 2. The Trafficlights coalition started with a promise to transform the german economy and push for social(SPD), digital(FDP), and climate(Greens) improvements. (The previous governments under Merkel neglected many investments in the infrastructure, while abiding to the "debt-break". We basically traded euro-debt for infrastructure-debt.) With a 60 billion deficit, they started fighting over where to cut spendings. The SPD and Greens wanted to reform the "debt-break" (or at least declare an emergency to get an exemption again), the FDP (and the CDU in the opposition) opposed this strongly. 3. After the break up of the coalition, the CDU started to favour a reformation of the "debt-break", since they expect to get into power next year and they know they will need a lot of money for infrastructure investment (fiber connection, railroad, bridgets, the Bundeswehr, to name a few). But reforming it takes a 2/3 majority and depending on how elections turn out they might not get the 2/3 für CDU, SPD, Greens (even if governing coalition and democratic opposition work together). FDP is struggeling to make at least 5%. They may not make it into parliament if they don't. And nobody wants to work with AFD (they probably won't agree in the "debt-break" issue either). Lastly, the BSW (new party founded by a former leader of the Left party) could get into parliament and agree to a reform, but they would want something in return, like no weapons for Ukraine or diplomacy with Putin. I'd like to hear your view on how governments can find a balance between not making any debt even if they need to invest and making debt without constraints even for consumptive spendings ( and the younger generation has to pay for it). Obviously, politicians will find some kind of loophole in any definition of "good" debt.
Thanks for the forecast! A bit off-topic, but I wanted to ask: I have a SafePal wallet with USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). How should I go about transferring them to Binance?
When your co-host mentions "I read a report about..." where do they get the reports? I would like to start keeping up with current events more myself and would like to expand the sources I read.
Besides the sources Neuro listed, I also subscribe to a number of newsletters. Politico has some good ones that cover American politics, Matt Stoller's 'Big' for anti-trust commentary, Americas Quarterly for Latin America, Center for Strategic International Studies and Council for Foreign Relations both have several covering other regions, Caixin News for China, Defense News for military news, and some think tanks for general public policy commentary (e.g., Brookings). I don't read all of these regularly, but from what I've read of them they do a decent job of covering and critiquing major developments and trends.
Hey Agent Smith, now that he's been in office a while, how is Javier Milei doing with Argentina's fiscal situation? Has he had good results so far or is there trouble brewing?
Mixed record thus far. Inflation fell in his first couple months, but has since been stuck at about 40% per annum. His government has been reporting the first budget surpluses seen in years, but the poverty rate has also increased. A lot of his government's time has been spent navigating some difficult political calculus. Milei's party only holds very small portion of seats in the legislature, which has meant compromising with establishment parties of the right and left to get his agenda passed. Obviously they want concessions that Milei doesn't like, so there's been much back and forth over the past year, with Milei pressuring them with various forms of presidential leverage and the legislature stonewalling his initiatives. He's won some victories, including his omnibus bill, but he hasn't been able to do anything especially radical that I'm aware of. The economy will have to improve much more than it has for any gains in fiscal viability to be consolidated. As is, the public is still very divided over his administration and could easily turn on him and his reforms if there are not more tangible gains in economic conditions.
He’s right about enlisted vs commissioned personnel, enlisted personnel up to a high rank are essentially on rails for promotion. You get “points” for various things like awards, deployments, certifications, physical fitness test and weapon range performance, and if you meet the requirements you get promoted. Your promotion can be held up if someone higher up really wants to but you don’t need preference like officers do. He’s wrong about DEI not being an issue, example: an Air Force generals emails were leaked explicitly saying no more white male candidates would be considered for fighter pilot training and they wanted to prioritize black women regardless of performance gaps.
That just isn't true. The leaked emails were simply about meeting goals of increasing non-white male applicants to officer programs. As more non-white male applicants applied, the %age of total applicants that are white males will decline, but the total number of applicants would increase. The emails are not about acceptance into the program at all either. Just about applicant numbers.
@@RxBando example: an Air Force generals emails were leaked explicitly saying no more white male candidates would be considered for fighter pilot training and they wanted to prioritize black women regardless of performance gaps. I cant find this info.
Albania 2: Crypto-Boogaloo is my prediction for the next 4 years for the US. As for "the Tsar is good, but boyars are evil" ... it worked for russia since inception.
Intel is one of three semiconductor manufacturers in the world competing for the leading edge, and the last one in the US. They are trying to catch up to TSMC but that'll take at least a couple more years and in the meantime they doing pretty badly. What does Agent Smith think Washington's approach to dealing with a failing Intel is? If the aim of the CHIPS act is to bring back semiconductor manufacturing to the US then Intel is pretty much the only option for leading edge.
They won't deal with it. I'm sure Washington would like an American company to spearhead a significant increase in high end chip manufacturing in the U.S., but if its a foreign firm that does it instead they will accept it so long as the result is greater chip capacity within the U.S. That's why so much energy was put into incentivizing/coercing TSMC to invest in the U.S., they are already market leaders and thus in a position to immediately increase said capacity without needing years to "catch up" first.
Intel will come back they have a new chip design about to be released and went the same way AMD did. Intel has the infrastructure and money they take all the heat for mishappens, but they push R&D like no other and in my opinion if you are pushing the limits, you will find them. Intel found the limits and got hate for it because the consumer felt that hit. Intel has made it right with customers though most of the complaints are from internet harpers and gamers not people using the chips in production work or professional office work. Gamers will never be happy unless you give them free stuff.
The false quips about RFK aren't very interesting. Talk about his actual views instead of what some headline you read tells you to say. Regardless of whether you like him or not, at least represent his views accurately. Too many Reddit takes for my liking. But still here supporting.
Isnt rfk the guy who has no medical background or any understanding of science and sounds like he has smoke cigarettes his whole life scaring people about vaccines and sweetners...
@@NeuroZerg Appreciate the reply. The claim of him being anti-vaxx is a good example. It is often used to make him seem crazy so people disregard his arguments. The same could be said of fluoride removal. RFK's biggest stance on vaccines is that they are not tested in the same ways other medications are. I believe him and his family is fully vaxxed for whatever that is worth. It is very difficult to find long form interviews of him talking about his vaccine stance on UA-cam when searching RFK vaccine. Of course all there are are news pundits telling you what he supposedly thinks. I would recommend watching his concession speech when he endorsed Trump. I found it very moving and well intentioned. His 3 mandates he has proposed for being head of HHS are as follows: (i) evidence-based medicine, (ii) clean up corruption and conflicts of interest, and (iii) end the chronic disease epidemic, with special emphasis on our children and concrete results within two years. I apologize for being overly snarky in my original post. Comments and social media don't always bring out the best. But I appreciate you responding.
Just like and commenting to keep the show going always look for to World discussion with Agent Smith, Neuro and also chat!
This is how I keep up with current events 😅
Better than tik tok or Faux News..
I was recently a staff sergeant in the us army. I was not an officer so take this with a grain of salt. Officers and senior nco's are promoted via centralized boards that make the determination based on the leader's records. An officer's supervisors do influence their careers via annual performance evaluations but there are other factors considered.
I'm sure there's still some politicking but I wouldn't necessarily take the Vietnam era as indicative of how things are today. There have been reforms to the nco corps in the meantime to emphasize education and professionalism. I expect the officer corps has changed too.
I've heard networking can be essential to make it to colonel and beyond but at that point the officer would often be considering retirement anyway.
militaryonesource's article military-promotions-what-friends-and-family-should-know gives a pretty good description of what it looks like today.
Hi Agent Smith,
I'd like to add some details to the breakup of the German coalition. This will be very simplified but kinda long, but here goes:
1. The Trafficlights coalition was under a lot of pressure for a year now. In 2023, the German Federal Constitutional Court ("Bundesverfassungsgericht") ruled the second supplementary Budget act 2021 unconstitutional and void. In early 2022, the government tried to retroactively repurpose unused credit authorizations (60 billion euro) taken up during the COVID crisis (possible through an emergencaly-exemption from the "debt-break"). The goal was to use these funds as a "climate and transformation fund" in the coming years. This was unconstitutional because a) the addendum came in 2022, not 2021 b) the conditions for the exemption from the "debt-break" were not met c) the budget and thus the exemption from the "debt-break" holds only for the respective year (2021). With this ruling, the german government "lost" 60 billion euro from their 2023 budget on November 15.
2. The Trafficlights coalition started with a promise to transform the german economy and push for social(SPD), digital(FDP), and climate(Greens) improvements. (The previous governments under Merkel neglected many investments in the infrastructure, while abiding to the "debt-break". We basically traded euro-debt for infrastructure-debt.) With a 60 billion deficit, they started fighting over where to cut spendings. The SPD and Greens wanted to reform the "debt-break" (or at least declare an emergency to get an exemption again), the FDP (and the CDU in the opposition) opposed this strongly.
3. After the break up of the coalition, the CDU started to favour a reformation of the "debt-break", since they expect to get into power next year and they know they will need a lot of money for infrastructure investment (fiber connection, railroad, bridgets, the Bundeswehr, to name a few). But reforming it takes a 2/3 majority and depending on how elections turn out they might not get the 2/3 für CDU, SPD, Greens (even if governing coalition and democratic opposition work together). FDP is struggeling to make at least 5%. They may not make it into parliament if they don't. And nobody wants to work with AFD (they probably won't agree in the "debt-break" issue either). Lastly, the BSW (new party founded by a former leader of the Left party) could get into parliament and agree to a reform, but they would want something in return, like no weapons for Ukraine or diplomacy with Putin.
I'd like to hear your view on how governments can find a balance between not making any debt even if they need to invest and making debt without constraints even for consumptive spendings ( and the younger generation has to pay for it). Obviously, politicians will find some kind of loophole in any definition of "good" debt.
Thanks for the forecast! A bit off-topic, but I wanted to ask: I have a SafePal wallet with USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). How should I go about transferring them to Binance?
For the Algorithm
When your co-host mentions "I read a report about..." where do they get the reports? I would like to start keeping up with current events more myself and would like to expand the sources I read.
BBC, foreignpolicy, theeconomist, reuters to name a few. He can probably give a more complete answer
@@NeuroZerg Thank you!
Besides the sources Neuro listed, I also subscribe to a number of newsletters. Politico has some good ones that cover American politics, Matt Stoller's 'Big' for anti-trust commentary, Americas Quarterly for Latin America, Center for Strategic International Studies and Council for Foreign Relations both have several covering other regions, Caixin News for China, Defense News for military news, and some think tanks for general public policy commentary (e.g., Brookings).
I don't read all of these regularly, but from what I've read of them they do a decent job of covering and critiquing major developments and trends.
PagMan Agent Smith!
Hey Agent Smith, now that he's been in office a while, how is Javier Milei doing with Argentina's fiscal situation? Has he had good results so far or is there trouble brewing?
Mixed record thus far. Inflation fell in his first couple months, but has since been stuck at about 40% per annum. His government has been reporting the first budget surpluses seen in years, but the poverty rate has also increased. A lot of his government's time has been spent navigating some difficult political calculus. Milei's party only holds very small portion of seats in the legislature, which has meant compromising with establishment parties of the right and left to get his agenda passed. Obviously they want concessions that Milei doesn't like, so there's been much back and forth over the past year, with Milei pressuring them with various forms of presidential leverage and the legislature stonewalling his initiatives. He's won some victories, including his omnibus bill, but he hasn't been able to do anything especially radical that I'm aware of. The economy will have to improve much more than it has for any gains in fiscal viability to be consolidated. As is, the public is still very divided over his administration and could easily turn on him and his reforms if there are not more tangible gains in economic conditions.
He’s right about enlisted vs commissioned personnel, enlisted personnel up to a high rank are essentially on rails for promotion. You get “points” for various things like awards, deployments, certifications, physical fitness test and weapon range performance, and if you meet the requirements you get promoted. Your promotion can be held up if someone higher up really wants to but you don’t need preference like officers do. He’s wrong about DEI not being an issue, example: an Air Force generals emails were leaked explicitly saying no more white male candidates would be considered for fighter pilot training and they wanted to prioritize black women regardless of performance gaps.
Also o7 elite dangerous is a good time
Report please...
That just isn't true. The leaked emails were simply about meeting goals of increasing non-white male applicants to officer programs. As more non-white male applicants applied, the %age of total applicants that are white males will decline, but the total number of applicants would increase. The emails are not about acceptance into the program at all either. Just about applicant numbers.
@@CrimzonClover report what
@@RxBando example: an Air Force generals emails were leaked explicitly saying no more white male candidates would be considered for fighter pilot training and they wanted to prioritize black women regardless of performance gaps. I cant find this info.
Albania 2: Crypto-Boogaloo is my prediction for the next 4 years for the US.
As for "the Tsar is good, but boyars are evil" ... it worked for russia since inception.
Intel is one of three semiconductor manufacturers in the world competing for the leading edge, and the last one in the US. They are trying to catch up to TSMC but that'll take at least a couple more years and in the meantime they doing pretty badly.
What does Agent Smith think Washington's approach to dealing with a failing Intel is? If the aim of the CHIPS act is to bring back semiconductor manufacturing to the US then Intel is pretty much the only option for leading edge.
They won't deal with it. I'm sure Washington would like an American company to spearhead a significant increase in high end chip manufacturing in the U.S., but if its a foreign firm that does it instead they will accept it so long as the result is greater chip capacity within the U.S. That's why so much energy was put into incentivizing/coercing TSMC to invest in the U.S., they are already market leaders and thus in a position to immediately increase said capacity without needing years to "catch up" first.
Intel will come back they have a new chip design about to be released and went the same way AMD did. Intel has the infrastructure and money they take all the heat for mishappens, but they push R&D like no other and in my opinion if you are pushing the limits, you will find them.
Intel found the limits and got hate for it because the consumer felt that hit. Intel has made it right with customers though most of the complaints are from internet harpers and gamers not people using the chips in production work or professional office work.
Gamers will never be happy unless you give them free stuff.
The false quips about RFK aren't very interesting. Talk about his actual views instead of what some headline you read tells you to say. Regardless of whether you like him or not, at least represent his views accurately. Too many Reddit takes for my liking. But still here supporting.
Isnt rfk the guy who has no medical background or any understanding of science and sounds like he has smoke cigarettes his whole life scaring people about vaccines and sweetners...
Any corrections? I don’t know a ton about him so just going off what I’ve heard
@@NeuroZerg Appreciate the reply. The claim of him being anti-vaxx is a good example. It is often used to make him seem crazy so people disregard his arguments. The same could be said of fluoride removal.
RFK's biggest stance on vaccines is that they are not tested in the same ways other medications are. I believe him and his family is fully vaxxed for whatever that is worth. It is very difficult to find long form interviews of him talking about his vaccine stance on UA-cam when searching RFK vaccine. Of course all there are are news pundits telling you what he supposedly thinks. I would recommend watching his concession speech when he endorsed Trump. I found it very moving and well intentioned.
His 3 mandates he has proposed for being head of HHS are as follows:
(i) evidence-based medicine, (ii) clean up corruption and conflicts of interest, and (iii) end the chronic disease epidemic, with special emphasis on our children and concrete results within two years.
I apologize for being overly snarky in my original post. Comments and social media don't always bring out the best. But I appreciate you responding.
I Love Trump!!!