Better than newt Gingrich idea, and yet strangely still involving nuclear radiation.

Instead of grappling with this dilemma, the Trump administration appears to be making it more acute. As the prospect of near-term regime change fades, both the United States and Israel seem to be flirting with fomenting internal fragmentation as a fallback. Reports indicate that the CIA is arming Iranian Kurdish militia forces in northern Iraq, while Israel bombs frontier posts, police stations, and military positions along the northern Iran-Iraq border to clear a path. In recent days, Trump has suggested he is backing away from this scheme, but Israel has not. Indeed, Israeli leaders seem to view the destabilization of Iran as a preferable backup if regime change proves impossible, potentially pushing Iran into the kind of state fragmentation seen in Libya, Syria, and post-2003 Iraq. In a country of 90 million people at the crossroads of Eurasia, that outcome would be profoundly destabilizing, not just for Iranians but for U.S. interests in the region and beyond.

From: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/what-endgame-iran

My guess is that they are moving replacement AN/TPY-2 radar and AN/FPS-132 as there are claims of 4 of the radars have been taken out across the middle east.

Reading into what this means strategically as well as for both the THAAD operability and Patriot systems probably guarding the high altitude ballistic defense is something I’m curious about, but am not going to speculate about at the moment.

I will say that was probably a good choice on the part of whatever Iranian’s which targeted them. The US needs to pull it’s head out of it’s ass on this.

Yet these detention dreams are hitting stiff opposition. ICE wants to buy a warehouse in Virginia’s Hanover County, which went for Trump by 26 points in 2024 and combines rural territory with Richmond’s northern suburbs. Residents recently turned out in force and angrily condemned the proposed sale, with local reports suggesting only a “handful” backed it. The GOP-heavy Board of Supervisors opposed the transaction. The warehouse owner canceled the sale.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, the Republican-dominated Roxbury Township Council, in slightly-Trump-leaning Morris County, recently voted unanimously to oppose ICE’s plans to buy a warehouse there, with some locals sharply protesting the scheme for humanitarian reasons. The Republican mayor of Oklahoma City came out against a proposed ICE warehouse, with the owner also nixing the sale. Officials in places like Kansas City, Missouri, and Salt Lake City, Utah, are also dead set against plans for ICE camps in their locales.

Guess what: The opposition is only getting started. As MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow noted in a useful overview of the opposition Monday night, we’re already seeing mass protests outside existing facilities. Those are smaller than some of the gargantuan new camps ICE hopes to create, yet migrant deaths are already soaring in the current facilities, and the bigger ones will be even worse. “If they build them, they will fill them,” Maddow said, labeling them “prison camps.” She added: “How do you think those facilities are going to be run?”

Anyone know the missiles fired to landing ratio? I figure it’s got to be a large number of missiles/drones to get through the various missile defense systems.

TACO thinks the world’s being hard huh? Not the deal maker he thought he was?

It is actually more about making the Democratic leadership as well as a all politician in national context become accountable to their constituency. Marketing through taglines is one of several of the multi-level ways they understand the constituency wants something. Other ways include the obvious email, call, visit, but to exert influence beyond that of the paid lobbyist, you have to create a item that rises above the noise. And the noise today is louder then ever.

The point I’m interested in is that the fascist in government need elected people with actionable paths (like Shumer and Jefferies) who can shut down the finances, use their oversight, write their own bills, use the house and Senate rules to change the tables, and turn down nomination of the executive.

This is not a time to be reasonable and negotiate as the Democrats are known for doing. It’s a time for action, a time for the politicians to put their jobs and selves on the line for the democracy they swore an oath to, for the people who elected them. It’s not a time to keep getting rich and just let the Republicans slide.

It they don’t, we have no reason to vote for them. And yes I get the two party system problem with that, but from ashes needs to rise at least one viable Democratic leader. No body is stepping up in a profound way. We need an Eisenhower, or JFK, or Teddy at least. We need profound change, real leadership, and yelling with emotional and reason at the enemy to inspire a population.

As it is the US has jumped the shark, so it’s just damage control.

A monkeys tail! Third hand, balancing, grabbing, etc.

The graph doesn’t give enough context, nor does the article IMO. China is a third party in this, as well as the Ukraine War, etc. And Trump seems unlikely to be good for the economy in his time in office so next year might be up, but there are many more factors.

With Donald Trump preparing to cut taxes and increase tariffs, US inflation is forecast to stay above 2 per cent throughout the whole of 2025, according to predictions compiled by Consensus Economics. Eurozone inflation is on the other hand forecast to drop below the ECB’s target of 2 per cent as soon as February.

“We expect a divergence to open up between the loosening cycles of the Fed and the ECB as mounting inflation risks cause the former to take a fairly cautious approach, while the latter responds forcefully to economic weakness,” said Jennifer McKeown, chief global economist at Capital Economics.

Thanks, I’ll add them and look forward to it.

My distilled understanding is that we are not psychological well built by evolution for this much information in the forms we now have technological. When you take our cognitive biases–which makes us persuadable–and couple that with a degenerating lack of taught fundamental critical thinking skills, it leads to irrational choices and mindsets which are not accounted for in our governing systems, let alone cultures, and economic. Indeed the latter point is that the capitalist system has a fiduciary responsibly to take advantage of any niche and exploit it, which has been let loose due to deregulation in various forms. Executive have little moral incentive to not be evil and instead to manipulate people in whatever manner best suits their shareholders. All of this creates echo chambers and self-reinforcing irrational behavior.

Obviously there is much more to it, but this is the elevator pitch version… Which I look forward to comparing against the books you indicated, plus any correction you might add.

This is where truth is crazier then fiction, but perhaps we can begin to get to grips with it.

How to avoid a techno-apocalypse brought on by the internet. Talks of several books where this is a core part of the plot.

THE nuclear blast that takes out Moab, Utah, in Neal Stephenson’s 2019 novel Fall; or, Dodge in Hell is “epistemic ground zero”. That is because it doesn’t actually happen. It is an online-only 9-11, a viral conspiracy theory that becomes the fault line along which the US fractures in two.

On one side, the people who believe that Moab is a no-go zone, and that the event has been covered up by swamp-dwelling politicians. On the other, the people who can freely travel to Moab to see the town is untouched.

The know-nothing side of the US devolves into Mad Max anarchy, becoming a no-go zone in its own right, which Stephenson brands Ameristan. The rest continue unimpeded into the technological future.

The book is one of many recent ones that tackle one of the questions of our time. As comedian Ronny Chieng put it in his Netflix special: “Who knew all of human knowledge could make people dumber?”

Perhaps it’s time for Elon Musk to trade in his rockets and tweets for something a bit more, well, boring. After all, digging tunnels seems less likely to land him in hot water—or at least less likely to attract the attention of every regulatory agency with an acronym. With the FAA reportedly raising eyebrows over SpaceX activities and the SEC keeping tabs on his social media shenanigans, maybe subterranean ventures are the way to go.

The Boring Company might just be Musk’s most grounded idea yet—literally. No satellites to launch, no cars to recall, and best of all, no character limits to consider before hitting “send.” Just good old-fashioned dirt and a machine that goes “brrrr.” Imagine the peace and quiet (well, except for the drilling sounds) of focusing on tunnels that could one day alleviate traffic woes—assuming they don’t accidentally tap into a subway line.

And let’s not forget, digging holes has a certain metaphorical elegance to it. If you’re already in one, why not keep digging? It’s a strategy that’s worked so far, right? Plus, it’s hard to get into legal trouble when you’re underground—unless, of course, you accidentally tunnel into a vault or something. But hey, even then, it would make for an exciting twist in the ever-entertaining Musk saga.

So here’s to hoping Elon swaps his Twitter tirades for tunnel trajectories. At least in the depths of the earth, there’s no Wi-Fi to tempt him into late-night tweets that launch a thousand headlines. Maybe being boring isn’t so bad after all.

Sounds like what US Special Operations does on the CA side plus or minus some.