Coffee Break: Senate Dems Throw Teetering Trump a Lifeline
Senate Democrats threw a teetering Trump administration a lifeline by folding on the U.S. government shutdown. Let’s parse the kayfabe.
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Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – The Future of Elite Forces
The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have exposed a new reality: the battlefield is becoming too transparent, too fast, and too automated for mass, low-skill infantry to survive. In that environment, militaries will not get rid of human fighters — they will narrow them. The future elite will be smaller, more cognitively trained, and embedded inside human–machine combat cells that can sense, decide, and act without higher headquarters. Their defining virtue won’t be brute courage but restraint: the ability to override automation, to make lawful and proportional choices when AI reaches its limits. But we should not mistake this refinement for stability. As more states adopt AI-enabled elite formations, the competition for speed, autonomy, and informational dominance may actually make escalation easier, not harder.
Read more...Coffee Break: Mamdani’s Battle With Entrenched Power Begins
New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani won the election, but now his real battle with entrenched power begins.
Read more...Coffee Break: Wither Sport, Unwellness, Chimpanzee Metacognition, The Sokal Hoax, and a Political Temblor
Part the First: Wither Sport in This Modern World? The World Series ended last week with two games for the ages. These were the only MLB baseball games I watched all season, and as a baseball man of the old school, I picked well. Both games between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue […]
Read more...Bill Gates Wants to Set the Environmental Agenda Ahead of COP30: It’s Not Surprising
Bill Gates’s bid to reframe the environmental agenda suggests it’s often set top-down, serving a particular set of interests, in this case, AI
Read more...Coffee Break: Zohran Mamdani Wins New York City in a Youthquake
Zohran Mamdani’s youthquake overturned the New York power structure, and his victory has national implications.
Read more...Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – The Poseidon Problem
Russia’s new Poseidon weapon, a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed undersea drone, threatens coastal cities with massive radioactive destruction. Its speed, stealth, and long range make very difficult to defend against, forcing adversaries to consider ruinously expensive countermeasures. This article examines Poseidon’s capabilities, the challenge of undersea defense, and why renewed arms control is the only rational response.
Read more...Coffee Break: MAGA Civil War – America First vs. Israel First
A major MAGA civil war has erupted pitting Tucker Carlson against what Nick Fuentes calls “Israel First” Republicans.
Read more...Coffee Break: Political Grownups, Bending Time, CDC at Sea, Snakebites, and AI Again
Part the First: Where Have All the Grownups Gone? Corey Robin is always worth reading (the first edition of The Reactionary Mind is much better than the second), and lately he has been more active publicly, here asking about the grownups: For a long time now, I’ve thought that you’re never really a grownup until […]
Read more...Sudan War: Gold, a Key Port, and Two Armies With No Legitimate Claim
Sudan is being ripped apart by a conflict fueled by gold, international interest in a port on the Red Sea and two factions with no legitimacy.
Read more...Coffee Break: ICE Barbie on the Bleeding Edge of Trump Era Conflict & Corruption
ICE Barbie Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, is on the front lines of Trump 2.0 era conflict and corruption alongside Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.
Read more...Coffee Break: Armed Madhouse – Gunboat Stupidity
For over a century, U.S. warships projected power through the simple act of showing up offshore. That age is ending. The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program, conceived as the modern tool of gunboat diplomacy, has collapsed under the weight of strategic obsolescence. This article examines the LCS program’s structural failures, the rise of anti-access/area denial technologies, and recent real-world challenges in Venezuela and Yemen that reveal why coercive naval presence no longer works.
Read more...Coffee Break: Follow the Money Under Trump’s East Wing Ballroom and Behind Dem Progressive Campaigns
Let’s follow the money to The White House east wing ballroom and the hidden Dr. Strangelove bunker below. We’ll also follow the money into Dem progressive politicial campaigns like Sanders’, Mamdani’s, Platner’s, Porter’s, and Fetterman’s.
Read more...Coffee Break: Casey Means MD and MAHA, Health Insurance, Coffee Scat, and Big Brother at the Home of the Free Speech Movement
Part the First: Casey Means MD Is Still Awaiting Her Closeup. We discussed the Surgeon General in waiting some time ago in a review of her book, Good Energy. Her confirmation hearing in the US Senate is apparently still in the works. Dr. David Gorski has an update at SBM, Surgeon General nominee Dr. Casey […]
Read more...Reward and Retribution Is the New U.S. Policy for Latin America
Reward and retribution is the U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. Dollars for allies (Argentina) and bombs for challengers (Venezuela)
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