Marshall said of World War II "I doubt there was any one thing, except the shortage of LSTs, that came to our minds more frequently than the political factors."

At the top level our job mostly reduces to putting cards in the hands of FSOs to negotiate a new status quo that's both favorable to us and stable enough that we don't spend our careers deploying to the same places over and over. Also, the FSOs are honestly better at this job than we are.

RIP to the first actor who portrayed a toxic Marine in a movie that made valid and incisive criticisms of us, and accidentally drove recruiting by making the Marine Corps look like a blast. youtu.be/JJ0IOFvfu3Q

Up until like 2012, when the scout sniper SS rune flag story broke, the Marine Corps still had idiots who got moto tats that they didn't know were white power shit, like valknuts because hur dur Valhalla blah blah blah. I don't believe for one goddamn second that's what happened with Graham Platner.

On the one hand, nice to see comments on a Stars and Stripes story. On the other hand, disheartening to realize how little the left knows about the military. You guys should probably know we relieve commanders all the time for loss of trust and confidence, especially from destroyers and battalions.

Texas plans death by chocolate execution.

This reminds me, we should all agree now on who's writing which op-eds in the wake of the coming military disaster where a SOF Wile E. Coyote plan doesn't work and they all get captured/killed. We can just write them now and have them ready to go.

USSOCOM investing in cruise missiles is a kind of mission creep that, if you saw Wendy's abandoning The Baconator and instead buying riverboat gambling paddleships, you'd think the management had completely lost the plot. But since it's The Innovation Ecosystem and there's no scorekeeping at all...

Been toying with the same thought. Pointless barriers to voting pitched as a solution to an imaginary problem are a bad idea in principle, but Republicans seem very sure it will help them on net, and that’s not really obvious to me.

No idea what happened here, but three thoughts. First, UNREPs are very difficult, it's insane we've made them routine. Second, we're very good at them because they're routine. Third, when we screw up like this the PLAN should be sweating bullets over their ambition to become a true ocean-going navy.

As long as this has come up, Eurovision should be an Olympic event.

Okay, here's my plan to fix this. We add a sub-category to the reading lists for bullshit from an airport book store. It will act as a heat sink to absorb all the bozo recommendations, and we can just tell leaders "Well, we're set for airport books, sir, but we have to do history and leadership."

First thought:

NEW: Intel whistleblower accuses director of national intelligence of being Tulsi Gabbard www.duffelblog.com/intel-whistl...

For those of you here in the UK it seems that ‘Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire’ is one of the £1.99 kindle daily deals on Amazon. Which is a heck of a discount! www.amazon.co.uk/Star-Wars-Ri...

Let's see the GOP searches - how many checked for their own names?

A simple rule is that if you're in a tense situation and think even once about your health insurance deductible, even if you realize you've met it for the year, you should defuse the situation or run away instead of fighting.

So, if Alito retires, are we thinking Trump's going to nominate Jonathan Mitchell, Alina Habba, Jeanine Pirro, Lindsey Halligan, Rudy Giuliani, Tiffany Trump, or Kid Rock?

Woman with service elk sues airline.

Man, I didn’t think there was a way for this story to get dumber but… “DoD loaned the high-energy laser weapon to DHS, who promptly shot down some mylar balloons with it without telling anyone, resulting in the FAA closing airspace and disrupting air travel nationwide” …sure did the trick

The Atlantic’s profile of Bondi has some wow. @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

Worth noting there's a parallel problem of kids who were told they were good at math, but were really just good at following instructions, then made it to grad school before realizing they have no talent. Lockhart mentioned this in A Mathematician's Lament. profkeithdevlin.org/wp-content/u...

If you saw today's headline that Gallup will stop measuring presidential approval, they did the same thing in 2018. They do it whenever Trump is president.

One. Just one. We eat one billionaire and all the rest will fall into line.

Again, the homeschooled people I've met fall in four groups. First, the smartest people you've ever met, who received the great education politics makes impossible. Second, people who talk/act like alien scientists because their overeducated socially awkward parents didn't think to socialize them.

"If you tax billionaires, they'll just leave!" Well, if they don't pay taxes, there's no net loss, so happy trails, motherfuckers.

Executive summary: America's second lieutenant antagonizes America's range control.

The USS Fat Leonard class Riverboat, Casino, Coal (RCC) fleet will be the largest in the world.

“Who is buying ‘Melania’ tickets?”

"Rehabilitation? One night? Doesn't sound so bad." youtu.be/cLts-sXlLEM

We're one step away from federal agencies going into court and saying sovereign citizen shit like "We refuse to acknowledge rulings made under the gold-fringed flag of an admiralty court."

Can anyone check on 3/6 real quick?

This is why you don't give the mouse the cookie.

As plausible a theory as I've heard, to be honest.

Nuclear launch infrastructure undergoes routine maintenance.

Honestly, it is pretty funny how every news story on the matter has “Unknown US intelligence official is Russian spy” next to a picture of Tulsi Gabbard.

You can tell the German people you're winning bigger and bigger victories, but sooner or later they're going to notice those victories are getting closer and closer to Berlin.

With the driver stuck, the doors locked and the vehicle quickly filling with water, the Marine began bashing the windshield open with a hammer.

NYT Opinion: Rats Tried to Warn You About Hubris of Claiming Ship Was Unsinkable

Xi honestly has a couple Putin level diplomatic achievements besides this, like enhanced military cooperation between Japan and the Philippines.

These idiots are going to blow up the Five Eyes relationship, assuming they haven't already.

This is waaaay better economic analysis than the major outlets are doing.

NEW: Comic Sans named official font of Department of War www.duffelblog.com/comic-sans-n...

People are making light of this, but this is an incredibly dangerous situation. I hope someone has warned his captors not to sign anything Prince gives them because he's just going to get them jammed up.

“They don’t speak our language.” Well, nobody worried about that when Puerto Rico’s 65th Infantry deployed to Korea in 1950. By war’s end, six men had been awarded DSC’s, 130 were awarded SS’s, and 3,800 were awarded PH’s. They remain one of the most heavily decorated NG units.

No Kings includes Draft Kings