Stoker

Seems like a very Rube Goldbergian way to learn how to fly drones. It's like enlisting in the Navy to learn how to swim - sure, it might work, but there are probably easier ways.

Breathalyzers are notoriously prone to false positives. The reason the US uses the .08 standard isn't because we're okay with people driving around buzzed, it's because if you arrest everyone you test who has a .02 you're going to be arresting a ton of people who are stone cold sober. Blood tests are what have actual evidentiary value.

I mean, are these files newly convincing anyone that Trump has an unsavory personal history? It's like people who were suddenly shocked to see Joe Biden was old after his poor debate performance - like, where the hell have you been the last couple years?

I've asked this before, but imagine a defense contractor built a magic button that, once pressed, meant that our primary land threat simply wasn't a consideration for a decade. How much would that button be worth? Got to be at least a few tens of billions.

Definitely agree! But you know as well as I we aren't going to do that.

Didn't the Marine Corps acting commandant literally work himself into cardiac arrest a year or two ago? I recall him saying something along the lines of "my work schedule starts at 0430 and I make sure it stops at 2200 no matter what." Gee, I bet he's really reveling in the luxury. Adam Smith had it right in 1776 that there are three ways to pay someone - pay, working conditions, and prestige. We aren't paying our flag officers anywhere close to what they could command in the private sector. We are working them to death. So we might as well at least try to give them the prestige of being a general. Or, don't complain when the leaders who remain are the folks who you least want in charge. "Unyielding self sacrifice" might be heroic but it doesn't pay for your kid's college.

Calling someone a general is really cheap if it keeps them in the service instead of bailing for a legacy CJO, for the Air Force's perspective. We certainly aren't paying GOs commensurate with the workload and job market competition. Which is fine when we are fighting an existential war with defined end goals, not so much if you want quality people to serve long-term during peacetime. It's easy to say people should sacrifice personal gain, family quality of life, and job satisfaction in exchange for the pride in serving their country, but realistically that has never been the case in the US during peacetime.

These tariffs won't do a darned thing to encourage "reindustrialization." No company is dropping a billion dollars on a factory that will open in five years on the assumption that the administration will remain consistent on tariffs for that long.

Because the few people who directly benefit from the tariffs have far more incentive to demand them than the many who are indirectly harmed have to fight them. Steelworkers don't give a damn that every steelworker job saved by tariffs costs American consumers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. The pitiful handful of American shipyards don't care that the Jones Act has basically strangled one of America's greatest natural advantages (access to internal shipping), they just like producing their handful of insanely overpriced ships every year. If you concentrate the benefits and disperse the costs, you can accomplish a lot in life (not necessarily to the benefit of the whole of society).

We aren't even going to point out that they spelled it "secertary?"

Germany in 1917 looked invincible, Germany in 1918 was retreating about as fast as they could walk and the military dictatorship handed over control to the civilians and said 'make peace, we're doomed.' We see the lines on a map, you don't see the guys on the other side making sausages out of sawdust and scraping the hospitals for new recruits.

Doesn't Ukraine's constitution specifically disallows elections during a period of martial law? If Zelensky did a 180 and held elections today, the US right would immediately pivot and say they're illegitimate because they didn't include the more pro-Russian voters who used to reside in Crimea and the Donbass (who are mostly dead conscript/cannon fodder in the "separatist" armies at this point). And to be fair, how legitimate would elections be in the US if New York was occupied by the Canadians, California by Mexico, and Florida by the Cubans? You talk as if the wood chipper is an option to avoid, but if you're a Ukrainian man your options aren't wood chipper / no wood chipper - they're Ukrainian army, Russian army, gulag. I know which one I'd pick.

What's the alternative? The Russians have been perfectly happy to massacre Ukrainians or conscript every man from 18-65 in occupied territories and use them to clear minefields with their feet. The Ukrainians should roll over and let bad things be done to them because at least then one side will survive (to invade the Baltics in a few years, at least)? Regimes that don't have moral compasses are often confused by those that do. The Russians and now the US government doesn't understand why the Ukrainians would fight for freedom when it will cost them so much. Much cheaper to accept a degree of oppression than to fight. We're lucky we felt differently when it was us against the British.

Don't worry, everyone unlawfully fired will eventually be getting full back pay, which should help with the deficit somehow. And we'll have to increase federal civ salaries in the future, because a lot of their total compensation was job security, and that's gone. I'm honestly somewhat confused that the administration didn't even try to cover their tracks and pretend to do things lawfully - like, you'd think with some of Musk's patented AI they could have invented some BS that actually alluded to a reason to be fired. Firing every single probationary employee for "poor performance" means you're just bunch of liars. Which, I guess, is the point - if you're willing to lie and fire people who you hired, you're probably loyal enough to say the sky is green if the boss says so.

You can flatten the rank structure if you increase the pay. It isn't surprising we don't track good talent to be GOs when an O-7 makes less than a 3rd year FO at mainline. Our military pay structure hasn't been "designed" in any meaningful way in decades - we've just done percentage increases across the board, and it isn't reasonable to expect people to serve out of self-denying patriotism absent an ongoing existential war. More leadership positions is a long trend in military history. I'm sure Alexander had some folks complaining about paying for front and rear file leaders in the phalanx, when the Athenians used to get away with just front file leaders.