Don't want to root for the Irish but also do not want to see an Ohio state win.

Go astroid!

POSTED BY NERFHERDER

Did you MARC down for a viewing?

I considered it but a buddy went and was in line for 5 hours and the weather has been beautiful but sh-tty to be outside for that amount of time in DC.

This could have been the start of a cargo cult situation if this occurred 100ish years ago

Skimmed all previous comments, and it appears that no one mentioned that Obama did not choose his seat, it was assigned seating in chronological order of presidency.
Clinton, and Hil, GWBush and Lara, Obama (Michelle opted out as she would have been next to Trump), then Trump and Melania.

VPs and their spouses (TIL that Gore and Tipper are separated but both were present) were seated around their Potus, also chronological.

Cheney was absent, but perhaps retired from public life.

Ray Lewis and John Lynch would be banned in today's NFL
Instead, they're Hall of Famers

I'd like to see either party test the theory on presidential height, and in a head-to-head matchup, have a woman running for president emerge as the taller candidate on stage.

The voter trend toward taller candidates is mixed in the 21st century (GWB was slightly shorter than both his opponents), but was nearly consistently leaning toward the taller candidate from 1900-2000.

It is unclear whether there is any remaining federal government entity tasked with collecting and analyzing foreign nation-state propaganda.

There may be some small lines of effort within the US IC, but unlikely to be on the same scale, and intention to publicly share their assessments on the same level, as the now-closed Global Engagement Center.

I co-sign wildman62's reading of the various motivations behind the discussion over Greenland's strategic value in the near future.

Grok (Twitter/X's LLM agent) is kind of trash - or at least disappointing.

Then again, most executive branch Czars don't hold much political capital and they're forgotten about until the Exec branch needs a scapegoat "subject matter expert."

I've read a couple sources on this incident and the following quote was the most succinct:

"It was a tanker crew returning to land on the carrier about 10 miles out. They recognized the missile was guiding and punched out about three seconds before the missile hit the jet."

"An F/A-18 Super Hornet " flying a few miles behind the Hornet that was shot down " was forced to take evasive maneuvers after a second surface-to-air missile was fired from the cruiser USS Gettysburg, narrowly missing the second jet by 100 feet while it prepared to land aboard the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman, a source with knowledge of the incident tells Fox News."

At least they didn't go after the recovery helicopter too.

Merry Christmas folks!

Bad day for whatever SWO was working targeting

Of the various ideas that the 2024 vintage of the Trump administration has thrown around, growing a strategic defense partnership with Greenland and Panama are the two most interesting.

Disregard the headlines of "buying," or "takeover."

IMO, you have to distill Trump's ideas from rhetoric to the most possible form of implementation. In the two cases mentioned above, the only method would be defense partnerships - and that is actionable and realistic, and actually useful in Panama for logistics, and Greenland for Arctic security (similar to the more recent growing partnerships with Northern Norway).

Being term limited as CA governor and out of office after 2026 would give Gavin Newsome ample time to prepare infrastructure and early networking for the presidential primary contest.

In comparison, it is devious to think of a politician running in 2026 for Governor - of CA, one of the world's largest economies by GDP- as a part time gig, while also preparing for a presidential run less than two years in the future.

A role in any sort of Congressional operation, beholden to rules and standards set ages ago would absolutely bore Elon.

From a passive observer of Musk and how he handles his business operations: he flies from project to project, kicks over a few trash cans, slams a few doors, fires off some "directives from the top" emails, breathes down the necks of the actual day to day professionals, then leaves to his next company.

Elon Musk locked into a situation where Congressmembers are doing Congressional activities would be dreadfully boring compared to his current optempto of going places for the perception of being everywhere and doing everything.

On face value this award is comedic, but you have to hand it to Tom Cruise - the outstanding portrayal of the service in Top Gun films fueled some generations to pursue military aviation as a dream job.

And even if they didn't achieve that dream - those flight school drops make for decent officers in other designations.

It's a thank you or End of Tour award for impactful contributions on a DoD-Hollywood project partnership ;).

that the Pentagon has adequate competition in its space programs to prevent over-reliance on the billionaire's SpaceX

SpaceX is the only current program which is capable of delivering the quick-launch LEO cape that is a key priority for the Space Force. Boeing was once viewed as an opportunity to diversify the field to ensure a competitive bidding process, ensure some redundancy for the continuation of operations if one org is over tasked, underperforming, or otherwise unable to perform.

It is true that there are a handful of other alternatives with the most recognizable name being Bezo's Blue Origin, but it is a sad fact that nothing is currently as reliable for high value, high priority assets as SpaceX launch systems.

In my headcannon of funding government operations, the DoD should be fully funded and not subject to political whims for paying troops who are already pre-positionedon a global scale.

Alas, it does feel like military pay is kept in stasis to be used as a forcing function to get these CR or funding measures passed, as there would be less bipartisan political will to fund operations which are predominantly federal civilian dominated.

Having been military, only working in joint environments with all services + federal civilians + DoD contractors ...

Government shutdowns do not save any money whatsoever! The civs get furloughed, and any holiday leave they have planned for next week will be cancelled as they are also not allowed to come to work* (and not allowed to take leave). Over the last decade+, the unpaid, unworked hours from those folks have all received full back pay for ... nothing!

Military members have to show up and often USAA and NFCU cover military pay to their AD members until a CR or funding bill passes.

Contractors in fully funded contracts will be there, ensuring the lights stay on - as long as the facility is declared essential, and there are some military members or essential/excepted gov employees to enact action/change/implement the products done by contractor employees ... but is this whole situation what people want as taxpayers?

*there will be some limited essential/excepted fed civs, ensuring the totality of operations aren't being run by contractors and semi-unpaid military members.

From a business sense this might make sense, but I wonder what the parts of such a joint venture vehicle would be in implementation. I could guess at some complicated trickle down effects when it comes to maintenance and repair.

Posted from a friend.

#4 | POSTED BY BOAZ

lol c'mon now, who is writing fan fiction about Retorters?

I was wondering what happened to Pam Bondi the other day when I read a list of other FL politicians who may either be AG or fill the appointed senate seat in FL.

Figured she was passing the time at Morgan & Morgan with other in between jobs politicians.

10 | POSTED BY MADBOMBER

They must have really wanted to live in the District. 1.4m can get you totally different property types whether it be over the bridge in North VA, DC proper, or the portion of Maryland that'son the DC metro line.

Hey LFTy ...

I've been on an "eating through history" YouTube/recipe kick recently, and into the 21 century, most of our politicians in Congress eat garbage - I don't even want to waste ingredients or time on the cookware to cook the slop that some of them call their favorite dishes.