I assume you’re referring to the Zumwalt class destroyer?
But yeah that whole thing sounds about right.
Oh shit, I forgot about the Zumwalt. I was conflating some of it with the LCS ships…
How the Navy Spent Billions on Failed Littoral Combat Ship Program — ProPublica.
JFC the amount of waste in that article is just ridiculous. We have several LCSes stationed here in San Diego, both Freedom and Independence class, and I’ve never heard anyone in the Navy say anything good about them.
Yeah, I only read about half of it before I posted it and then I read the rest. It’s insane, and exactly how I felt about government when I was in the service. We used old shit for as long as we could because often the new shit was worse, but billed as better.
Also, what is going on in our Ivy League schools is insane right now. Attacking Jewish students, removing Jewish professor’s credentials, chanting Death to America, all kinds of crazy stuff. Columbia looks like Lebanon did 30 years ago. I don’t understand how a country can have hundreds of people killed, kidnapped, and raped, and be the bad guy for retaliating. The smugness and superiority of some of the protestors is maddening, and the answer to any questioning is to say the questioner is brainwashed. The mayor of NYC has offered police, why is this an offer and not just some SWAT vans showing up on campus, it’s a college, not a diplomatic enclave. Tent cities growing on campuses 95% of the nation can’t afford to attend, and trapping people in their dorms through threats of violence.
IMO Israel’s response has been somewhat over the top and thousands of innocent people are dead because of it. I also know it’s complicated because Hamas are chickenshits who hide among the general population. I know Gaza used to belong to Israel and it was part of Egypt before that. Why did Israel leave and when they did why didn’t Egypt take it back? That last part is neither here nor there but I’m curious. A lot of this could have been avoided if the Jewish homeland had been placed literally anywhere else following WWII. Palestinans are understandably pissed that their land was taken from them.
However these campus protests are also over the top. You can be pro-Palestinian without being pro-Hamas. And you can be anti-Israel without being anti-America. I don’t expect them to understand these nuances because they’re young, but the fact that they’re threatening Jewish students is absolutely despicable. These people are not the Israeli government. I’d bet most of them aren’t even citizens of Israel. They’re American Jews trying to get an education and being threatened because of what people who look like them are doing halfway across the world. It’s not a good look.
Hamas is the legally elected government of Gaza. Hamas attacked Israel. Israel is now attacking Gaza. This is how war works. I don’t think Hamas thought Israel would treat it like war, but they are and it was an act of war. It’s important to remember that they didn’t barely win the election and that polls show the people support them completely. They aren’t just hiding, they are being hidden by their supporters.
If the Canadian military carried out a similar attack on the US from Maine to Detroit, even the most dovish president would be approving reprisals at a minimum, if not an actual counter invasion and levelling cities. I think I read somewhere percentage wise it was worse than 10 9/11s or something? And imagine they did this every 8-15 months on a smaller, but still significant scale. For decades.
If I have my facts straight the Palestinians who refused to return home or leave landed in Gaza, Israel didn’t want them if they didn’t want to integrate, and Egypt didn’t want them either, and still doesn’t. It’s easier to get into Israel from Gaza than into Egypt.
I personally think Israel is being cruel by dragging this out and not flattening all the resistance as fast as possible. Other nations are causing more deaths from unclean conditions and starvation by providing humanitarian aid to the fighters than would happen if Israel levelled the place.
I also believe that if Israel didn’t include the space that was historically Israel then they would have taken it eventually.
I think it’s interesting that when nations do the “right” thing and don’t eliminate the current residents of an area that it causes more death along the line than genocide would. I think peaceful co-existance would be totally preferred, but if Israel had pushed the non-returning Palestinian people into the sea any of the dozens of times they attacked then so many more people would not have died in the intervening years. Instead in every war they did the least they could to totally win and then let the other side pick themselves back up and rebuild.
And now, because of this we are dangerously close to issuing yellow stars on the highest universities in the country. People are being attacked and harassed and all over something they have nothing to do with. The same people who complain about violence against Muslims because of stereotyping are literally attacking Jews because of Israel. After calling their political opponents Nazis for years.
Good point about Hamas being the elected government of Gaza. I want to know how the hell that happened in the first place.
As for the college kids attacking Jews, it’s not a good look. And this encapsulates my frustration with the American left. They don’t understand nuance. Everything is an absolute. You’re either with them or against them and they’re just as bad as, if not worse than, the far right when you disagree with them. Also none of them seem to have a plan for what to do after they burn everything down and that’s a recipe for disaster.
It’s honestly why I don’t talk politics that much with other queer people who are under 35 or so. I’d call myself a progressive. But I’m acquainted with a bunch of peeps online who are actual radical leftists, not the kind Trump accuses Biden of being (which is hilarious in its own way because Biden and the establishment Dems are arguably center-right. These people are almost impossible to talk to because it’s their way or the highway and also because they want everything in one fell swoop. Not going to happen without violent revolution.
But as I said, none of them seem to have a plan for what comes after said revolution. And anything that does some of what they want but not all, they immediately dismiss it. Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, as it were. I’ll say this for the far right. At least they know how to work together to play the long game to get what they want. The far left is too busy fighting with itself to do much of anything.
It’s wild how campus and police response snowballs across the country. Some places were putting up with protestors vandalizing offices and buildings and beating students they thought were Jewish, while others were just trying to contain things, and then Bam, the switch flipped and now everyone is going to jail.
We are where we are now because they burned so much down in the 60’s and didn’t have a plan. Deconstruct all the heroes, and then what? Eliminate the family, and then what? Level the scales, pull the poor up, and then what? Turns out just getting rid of a cause of a problem doesn’t actually solve the problem.
Quote of the day.
You’d think that college students who were passionate about such things would have older kaffiyeh that they have been wearing for years already and their tents would be well worn.
Lots of money moving on these.
We have the technology for a Star Trek future. Or at least to be well on our way. Religion, capitalism, and human nature are standing in the way and if we’re not careful we’ll end up with Dune instead but without the cool giant worms and martial artist space nuns. We may be on our way there already.
Yeah, a real post scarcity society cannot exist with people. Simply because we value things that cannot be unlimited in supply.
As for religion being in the way, we are where we are so far because of religion and capitalism, not despite. The Crusades pale in comparison to the Killing Fields, or the Great Leap Forward, or the Holodomor.
Its the extremism of religion and rogue capitalism that hurts
Well, it’s official. We have another four ahead of us of Trump whining about elections and the GOP has another four years of willingly or unwillingly going along with it. When asked if he would accept the results of the 2024 election, his answer was very much like his previous answers:
“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results. If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”
He already answered this question last year by saying there will be cheating/fraud/etc. in the 2024 election. So right there, in his mind, the upcoming election is not going to be honest. He will not accept the results.
He says he will because he also said, “I expect an honest election and we expect to win maybe very big.” That also answers the question of what he considers to be an “honest election”. An honest election is one that he wins. That’s in line with his statements throughout the years (paraphrased):
- For the 2015 Republican primary: “The only way I can’t win is if there’s cheating.”
- For the 2016 Presidential election: “The only way I can’t win is if there’s cheating.”
- For the 2020 Presidential election: “The only way I can’t win is if there’s cheating.”
- For the 2022 mid-term elections: “There will be cheating.”
And so, on Wednesday, November 6, 2024, we’ll start all over again with the law suits and contesting of the results and Trump saying, “I won by a lot” and everything else he says so he will still be a winner.
If he wins, then the claims of cheating will be swept under the rug unless he feels he didn’t win by enough in a given state. Then he’ll contest those results to get them adjusted so he’s more of a winner there.
The bigger question is if he’s even going to be on the ballot. There’s several factors going on at once and one or more of them could be what prevents that.
There’s a few states that have tried to get him off the ballot via the Insurrection Act, but there also seems to be a couple of other cases where something else might come into play. I need to find out what that was.
You’ve got the hush money coverup trial where he’s unhappy with his lead attorney because the attorney isn’t following Trump’s instructions and going on the attack, when the attorney is supposed to be the tactician that determines how to present that side of the case. Trump’s trying to keep an attack going when not honking off the jury and/or judge would be the smart thing to do.
He keeps falling asleep in the trial. That’s also not winning him any points with the jury. There’s one doctor that’s identified it as being a symptom of dementia, part of the disconnect between the mind and the body. His team of lawyers are having to find ways of trying to keep him awake, like having him eat mints, making sure one of them stays with him while the rest go talk to the judge for a sidebar, and giving him papers to look at to keep his attention going.
You listen to him at a rally and there’s a good chance there will be one instance, if not several, of slurring words or being unable to say words. More symptoms of dementia. He might not be on the ballot because he might not be physically and/or mentally healthy enough to be on it. That’s not even considering what a conviction in the trial would do for the independent and undecided voters in helping them make a decision.
He’s still paying more in legal fees than he takes in with donations. Every day he’s in court is another day he can’t be out holding a rally to raise more money.
I’m going to say right now that for as much as I don’t like Trump, I don’t want it to be Alzheimers and/or dementia that is his downfall. I’ve pointed them out several times because the likelihood has been there that he’d get one or both eventually. It can run in families, his father had dementia and it really looks like Trump’s got it.
Both of them are nasty. They take so much away from a person, leaving very little of the person behind. For all that Donald Trump’s done, that’s not something I wish on him.
If there is to be a downfall of The Donald, having to face the consequences of a lifetime of his behavior when he can no longer push the consequences aside would be the proper downfall. But not having his mind stripped away from him.
My mom has Alzheimer’s and she definitely falls asleep a lot if you don’t keep her attention. She’s not slurring words (yet) but sometimes she doesn’t make a lot of sense and I’m seeing that with Trump as well.
A real honest medical exam of Biden and Trump would take both off the ballot.
Biden is telling more lies about his past than truths at this point. And with his latest gaffe calling Japan, India, and China xenophobic and blaming their declines on a lack of immigrants he is really starting to screw things up. The White House transcripts have corrected him 140+ times on 108 speeches already this year. By either adding language “he meant to use”, changing mispronounced words, or flat out fixing errors, some without proper notation.
Calling Japan and India xenophobic may be closer to the truth than not in some ways, lumping them in with China is just over the top.
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I’d love to have a Democrat other than Biden. Which would probably be VP Harris at this point and I’m not exactly a fan of hers either. But you vote for the candidates you have, not the ones you want.
The candidates the media has selected for us.
The candidates the Uni-party has selected for you to choose from.
The famous look what we found in Trump’s basement picture was staged, they added all the classified folders and the rest. And it took forever to get them to admit it. Also, the documents aren’t in the same order in the boxes as they were when they were seized, causing some consternation on how they were stored by the FBI and who might have gone through them. Again, they claimed they weren’t tampered with despite the fact that the order is different than what they recorded.
Starting to look like this.
I didn’t have dead brain worm on my bingo card. I want a refund.
Also, in good news the batshit crazy woman running for county auditor lost by a huge margin in my county. Stopping these people before they get a foothold in local politics keeps state and national politics safer.
And in further news, WTF Fetterman? From slouchy confused progressive to slouchy determined conservative? Not Republican, conservative. Will the real Fetterman please stand up? I think conservatives are better off with traditional liberal Fetterman than squishy TV Carpetbagger Dr. Whatever
Oh, Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. You’re hurting even more financially than I though you were. You tried claiming that you needed your condo to live in yet had monthly expenses of $43K. Somehow that got approved, then your accountant that was making the reports of your monthly expenses just up and quit on you. He did give you a list of other accountants you could contact, but none of them want to go near you.
And now your daily talk show on WABC radio has been canceled because you keep denying the results of the 2020 election even after being warned about this multiple times. Probably didn’t help that you sent the owner a text that you weren’t going to stop doing it.
Hey, at least you’ve still got your podcast.
For now.