Yes, but literally three quarters of the US presence is on Okinawa. Just saying I think Tokyo is okay with that, as they get a the full military force multiplier with, from their perspective, a 75% discount on awful American behavior because the Ryukus are physically isolated and culturally distinct.
The August report, titled “Fracture From Within,” was compiled by experts in the CIA’s Red Cell, according to two U.S. sources who described the contents of the report to Drop Site News. The Red Cell, which is the unit responsible for providing “alternative analysis” within the agency, produced the assessment through a combination of open source information and U.S. intelligence… The CIA’s “red teams” are tasked with developing analysis and ideas that challenge prevailing assumptions and expose groupthink or blind spots that can take hold within the intelligence apparatus.
Basically, this is “what’s the weirdest shit that is kinda plausible if things don’t go how our consensus expects.” Useful I assume, but by definition unlikely.
Although building on that, I think the “Mainland” Japanese have been pretty content to have the Americans corralled on one little island (Post WW2, it was bases on the home islands that were shut down), with their easily othered country-cousins the Okinawans being the ones who have to deal with the American troops day-to-day, many of whom are dumb kids on their first tour. I can guarantee you that neither my dad in the 60s nor my brother in the 90s was interested in good-faith cultural exchange while stationed there with the Marines.
Very possible, and you’re right that nothing will be the same, but America will be a rich and powerful country for a good while yet, and I imagine that after a (very hypothetical) generation of good behavior, many countries would be happy to revisit some of the arrangements that worked for 60+ years post WW2, or at the very least stop specifically planning around how to do without the US like they are forced to do now.
Not permanent, but it’s gonna be a while this time. US foreign policy regarding its allies used to be predictable enough that they could make long term plans and expect things that were patently useful to both sides would not be indiscriminately torpedoed. Now, you can mostly hope that the Democrats are on board with that as a broad philosophy, though they’re navigating populist waters that could get rocky with isolationism, but right now the other party in a closely matched two-party system can’t even be trusted not to tweet the economic system into existential peril or threaten literal invasions of allies, to say nothing of their simply being quite bad at efficient governance or diplomatic messaging.
America’s allies will welcome any Democratic administration, and anything that can get better for the duration of one probably will (e.g. Visas, retaliatory tariffs, etc.), but diversifying from the dollar as a reserve currency, building trade networks that can minimize exposure to American political volatility, and even exploring security arrangements that imagine post-NATO scenarios, all that is going to continue unless we see a good two decades or more of non-insane foreign policy from both US parties. Not even humane or optimal, just not batshit crazy.
Orange turd ate the onion. He reposted an AI slop memebait that at least had the subtlety to mention Starship Troopers.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/09/08/space-force-uniforms-starship-troopers/
Frankly, it had to be very bad to get these guys to go as far as “non-concur” in writing at all.
Hegseth is literally unqualified to manage a large bureaucracy of any kind, evil or not, much less one with bombs and guns. I am guessing that it’s a day-to-day operational shit-show, on top of being the same type of moral and long-term-strategy shit-show that Iraq was.
Look, if you’re running such a shit-show that the fuckin’ Bezos Post publishes your leak, maybe you look in the mirror once you wake up from your post-workout everclear shots (gotta minimize them empty calories!).
Those flag officers are probably just low-T poindexters.
It’s hard to tell from the article whether the professor was protesting the Chinese government or intentionally getting the page blocked specifically so no Chinese students would apply.
Yeah, this is exactly what Trademark was made for. Same market category, same size, same art style, same font on the Latin characters, and same location and box for the Kanji. At a glance, I would absolutely assume Tokyo Banana was branching out. For me personally, that would mean I’d avoid them, because Tokyo Banana is overpriced “meh,” but the berry one is obviously intended to cause confusion and poach sales.
Too bad, because whatever the hell the Korean company was making was probably better than the upjumped twinkies that are Tokyo Bananas.
You know how in sporting events, they shut it down for 30 minutes if there is lightning near the stadium, and every single bolt of lightning resets that clock?
America’s “allies” need to do the same thing, except switch sporting event to “meaningful international commitments,” minutes to “years,” and bolt of lightning to “any GOP Administration.”
Important context: he’s talking to Laura Loomer, so trying to communicate to a skeptical White House that supporting Ukraine is supporting the values of Trump’s base. Ukrainian propaganda is real and I don’t judge them for deploying it, but we also don’t want to presume that statements like this are not calculated. That said…
I mean, he’s not wrong. You can (and I’d argue should) stop well short of confiscation when trying to keep religion from being a toxic voice in a country’s political discourse. However, raising it in this conversation, when Putin seems more interested in co-opting religion rather than suppressing it, and that in a way that MAGAs would frankly find to be a useful model, makes me think of it more as a hail mary (LOL) than anything else.
The last line of the article gave me pause, so in investigating this source, it appears to be an arm of the UOC-Moscow Patriarchate, and while I am concerned by any curtailment of the free exercise of religion, the Russian Orthodox church has been largely co-opted by the Putin government, leading the ecumenical patriarch in Istanbul to cut the Ukraininan church free from Moscow, and now the UOC-MP seems to be trying to have its cake and eat it to with regard to respecting Moscow without fully toeing the line on the ROC’s pro-war rhetoric. The argument would come down to whether the Russian Church is de facto an arm of the Russian state. At any rate, the site definitely has an agenda here.
I mean, that’s a better choice than “fuck my waiter, specifically and today, while not affecting his bosses’ bottom line at all.”
But here’s the thing, it ain’t the owners’ problem either. They’re winning. The whole reason they do this is to externalize labor costs and do ad hoc market segmentation, except it’s based on customers kinda being dicks. When you don’t tip in the US, you have sided with the owners and have said to the server, “you are worth minimum wage.”
Agitate the rest of the day. Tip at mealtime.
Primaries are primaries. People walk back comments made during them all the time, and to a certain extent they’re the time to push your party where you think it needs to be.
I will be interested in what happens for the general. Can’t do much of importance if you pout and let the perfect be the enemy of the good (or the good be the enemy of the kinda okay), and thereby get evil elected.
It is so fitting that what may quite literally be Trump’s only sincerely held belief about public policy is short-sighted, inefficient, bad for the world, and based on shallow considerations of aesthetics.
Which is the point of the phrase of course. It’s meant to simultaneously acknowledge and dismiss the “well ackshully” crowd. No, Switzerland is not fully surrounded, but also it doesn’t matter in any politically meaningful way.
Fair enough.