Good Morning.
We're back to class today, and back to a normal schedule for a while. Due to our financial circumstances, I expect my next day off will be Columbus Day; your mileage may vary.
In any case, let's dive right in.
Since slavery wasn't that bad, we're right back to
honouring traitors to the United States, as well as owners of fellow human beings at our military academies.
A portrait of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in his Confederate uniform with a slave guiding his horse in the background will be rehung in West Point’s library, the Army confirmed to Military.com on Friday.
The reinstallation, which was first reported by The New York Times, marks the latest effort by the Trump administration to reverse the work of a congressionally mandated commission charged with scrubbing tributes to the Confederacy from the military.
I'm not going to give it any more space here than that. Let's move on. "Alligator Alcatraz" might be closing, but
do you think that will stop the fascists in any way? Of course not.
WASHINGTON — When President Donald Trump's administration last month awarded a contract worth up to $1.2 billion to build and operate what it says will become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex, it didn’t turn to a large government contractor or even a firm that specializes in private prisons.
Instead, it handed the project on a military base to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a small business that has no listed experience running a correction facility and had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million. The company also lacks a functioning website and lists as its address a modest home in suburban Virginia owned by a 77-year-old retired Navy flight officer.
The mystery over the award only deepened last week as the new facility began to accept its first detainees. The Pentagon has refused to release the contract or explain why it selected Acquisition Logistics over a dozen other bidders to build the massive tent camp at Fort Bliss in west Texas. At least one competitor has filed a complaint.
The secretive — and brisk — contracting process is emblematic, experts said, of the government’s broader rush to fulfill the Republican president's pledge to arrest and deport an estimated 10 million migrants living in the U.S. without permanent legal status. As part of that push, the government is turning increasingly to the military to handle tasks that had traditionally been left to civilian agencies.
A member of Congress who recently toured the camp said she was concerned that such a small and inexperienced firm had been entrusted to build and run a facility expected to house up to 5,000 migrants.
Perhaps the only place that is friendlier territory than Florida is Texas. So, that's where we'll all end up one day. Blecch.
Ah, but consider this. With the National Guard deployed domestically to pick up trash and do general gardening these days,
how are they training for their original purpose?
Earlier this year, speaking at a press conference in Qatar, President Donald Trump categorically declared that “nobody can beat us.” He continued, “We have the strongest military in the world, by far. Not China, not Russia, not anybody!”
We do have a strong military, but we are woefully unprepared to fight a modern war. That’s because, despite all of the major technological advances in warfighting in recent years, manpower is still absolutely critical, and understanding how those boots on the ground interact with emerging drone warfare is still in its infancy in the U.S. military.
Ground warfare has evolved over the past three and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine. I've spent considerable time studying this conflict from strategic, operational and tactical angles, and I’ve conducted multiple interviews with combatants on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides. The picture that emerges explains not only why Russia’s progress is slow and Ukraine is gradually losing ground, but also why the U.S. would face serious challenges if forced into a similar fight today.
It's not even been a full calendar year yet, and the United States seems to be irrevocably damaged, on the wrong track, and is caving in to our enemies all around the world.
Are we Great Again yet?