Finally, the Catholicism I remember from 12 years of Catholic school

My "Littoral Commander: Baltic" #wargame is featured in Defense News! www.defensenews.com/global/europ...

I’m pretty mid… better polish off the ol’ resume…

Functional areas created by the Army in the 70s are accused of causing "brain drain". @strategerist.bsky.social & Halleran argue they're key to retaining hi-quality ofcrs, w/ nearly 2/3 surveyed saying they would have left w/o the option to switch #WARROOM warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/fun...

🪖 NEW ARTICLE 🪖 Since the creation of functional areas for Army officers, there has been the dual worries about a “brain drain” of talent from combat branches and a concern that officers are “quiet quitting” in “easier” billet… so which is it? warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/fun...

Just to keep the record straight, yes, it was. The Baathist regime was killing tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Shia in horrific attacks. After needlessly attacking Kuwait and sacrificing tens of thousands of their people. After needlessly attacking Iran sacrificing tens of thousands.

What the hell is the National Guard doing?!?!?! Everyone knows the active duty force trains for this exact mission every Red Cycle. Get these amateurs out of here and let’s get a Battalion of OPERATION Clean Sweep veterans for this vital mission.

I’m no historian but… Was the negotiation in Carthage just haggling over the price of salt? Was the negotiation in Berlin “who’s gonna put this shallow ditch out? It’s on fire with Hitler in it” It seems like there’s a serious knowledge gap here.

Calling All Army Functional Area Officers!!! If you have 5 quick minutes (even on your phone) could you answer this short survey about how functional areas impacted your mid-career decisions to stay or leave the Army. duke.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Important perspective from @risabrooks12.bsky.social, one of the sharpest civ-mil experts around. The military can't save democracy, but in my judgment they can and should save their profession by defending its values.

The Department of Homeland Security is holding up more than $100 million preapproved dollars intended to help hurricane-battered North Carolina clean up storm damage and fix infrastructure, according to documents obtained by The Post.

Is anyone else expecting Putin to open a second front declaring the longstanding and traditional status of Alaska as Russian territory and launching a deNazification campaign?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the “Border Tsar” on CNN saying ICE was detaining people using “physical appearance” as being “reasonable suspicion” of a crime? Man, that’d be an embarrassing example of hypocrisy… www.cnn.com/2025/07/13/p...

Besides the hilarity of Derek Guy’s response, “Alex” and his ilk bother me. They want Derek to not comment on matters outside his narrow expertise but have elected football coaches into high office. Which is it?

Gentle souls, This movie is LITERALLY shown in the Defense Nuclear Weapons School’s course on Nuclear Policy. But considering how many tropes from post-apocalyptic movies we’re all now living through, I’ll forgive you if you don’t have it in you to imagine this nightmare too.

Advertise your account with a gif

As always, I’m eager to hear @proftalmadge.bsky.social ‘s thoughts on this development. www.stripes.com/theaters/us/...

Use its proper name

News Anchor: “Local man continues his intellectual hunger strike, refusing to consume even crumbs of intelligible ideas. More after these words from our sponsor.”

A reminder: military build up in the face of threats is not a way to make an adversary “docile”. It is a way to credible signal to that adversary that you are going to increase the costs of aggression. Particularly with the hope that the cost will seem too high and the adversary won’t invade.

More evidence that US efforts to coerce China in a Taiwan conflict by closing Straits of Malacca unlikely to be successful www.wsj.com/world/china/...

6 figures is a rounding error to the Federal Budget. It’s less money than the $6 million (7 figures!) the government obligates every single minute of every single day, all year long. An unelected bureaucrat put that over children’s lives, without shame or remorse.

“Adversaries will see this hasty withdraw as yet another example of flagging American will.” -NYT, or Foreign Affairs, or maybe The Onion. Who can tell at this point.

This is basically my issue with Western policy on Ukraine. There’s no consideration on how the Russians fear us and how we can use that to our advantage. The conversation is only ever about Russian escalation.

Okay, just in case this happens, I’m publicly laying claim to the new theory about comedy overcoming authoritarianism. President Colbert 2028?

So I’m no economist, but if you have a supposedly high-end luxury good and you think an extremely inexpensive substitute is cutting into your sales then you’re item/brand isn’t worth the $100 markup as a signal of conspicuous consumption. Apropos of nothing, I’m really like my new Kirkland pants

Listen, I love Mexican Coke as much as the next guy, but if you’re trying to re-shore industries and appeal to a rural, domestic base, how does cutting a major consumer of US corn products and shifting their purchases to a resource that the US does not have a comparative advantage in?

I am no legal scholar (re: earlier posts) but as a card carrying political scientist, this does not end well regardless of the judge’s sentencing decision. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/u...

With emergency ruling issued that confuse constitutional scholars, but ordered without outlining any logic or reasoning, it is only a matter of time that people begin to ask if certain members of the judiciary are implicated in the Epstein files.

Ah here it is… the History and War Studies Dept isn’t a two week seminar. Starting from a bad analogy -> applied passionate but biased analysis -> wrong conclusion. A better analogy would be something like King’s College London’s War Studies Dept or Security Studies majors at Georgetown.

Except that’s not what this is. A brief read of the actual department website would show that. “Cadets also have an opportunity to examine their subject of study through the lenses of multiple individual disciplines, from English and philosophy to law and psychology.” Also, it’s one of 30+ majors.

Everyone seems to love dunking on this, but no one seems to want to check anything. This is not a muh lEthALiTy moment. It’s just combining the History Dept with the Defense Strategic Studies major that was housed in the Dept of Military Instruction. No need to pole vault over mouse turds here.

Can anyone please describe this phenomenon as anything other than gender-affirming care? Because this same demographic told me that gender-affirming care was a bad thing.

What’s the over/under on how long it will take for ICE’s new inflated budget to be nothing more than a slush fund used to pay out wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution lawsuits?

Exactly: THe stories on what didn't get done bc Noem required her personal signature (in additional to call centers, the rescue teams) aren't stating clearly that one reason Noem is doing this is bc she's $1B over budget bc she has blown it all on kidnapping grannies.

I think international relations scholars need to develop a more concrete, cohesive definition of a “global power” or “great power.” Any reasonable definition, not influenced by a Mercator projections distortion of size, would exclude Russia.

Apropos of nothing, BUT a Juris Doctorate makes you able to understand legal scholarship. Treating a lawyer like an International Relations scholar or foreign policy expert has the same result as asking a Philosopher to perform surgery. It’s dumb and we shouldn’t do it.

Tim Kennedy’s public statements constituted fraud as he absolutely profited through endorsements, favors, and public notoriety for a statement, repeatedly made, that was patently false. www.military.com/daily-news/2...

David Attenborough voice: “The Mons Pubis Tank shows it’s ready for full combat maturity by sprouting lush hair. Unable to see or hear, it wanders the battlefield, unbothered by drones until it finds a small ripple of earth to throw its track, and die. Completing its ridiculous life cycle”

This line of logic is akin to “Soldiers (at least we used to) get Law of Armed Conflict training regularly, therefore they should be immune to charges of war crimes.” It is patently wrong and public statements like these should be entered by every complainant as evidence of unlawful profiling.

Look, we’re all trying to find who did this.

"The institutional guardrails will protect democracy"

I am announcing a new policy for the Dept of Paul which denies lactose from affecting my gut! It should work out exactly as well as this policy.