https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking_allegations

According to Tim Weiner, the Central Intelligence Agency “has been accused of forming alliances of convenience with drug traffickers around the world in the name of anti-Communism” since its creation in 1947.

This was part of a more all-encompassing effort to leverage organized crime syndicates and other black market networks as methods of infiltrating, subverting, and ultimately dissolving Soviet Socialist Republics. Because the drug trade was such a lynchpin of the colonial-era plantation movement, you had a lot of anti-communist sympathizers already forced underground in the face of communist revolutions (which also, incidentally, tended to be anti-drug use).

replace them

Don’t worry, you’ll still be doing the work. You’ll just get half the pay and none of the credit.

Nazism is when you… surf TikTok?

This is why Democrats lost the last election. Liberals are absolutely brain poisoned.

90% of this is just good hygiene.

This is a tale as old as the Reagan Era Tax Revolt.

People getting rich on the coasts, then moving to Texas to become greedy shithead landlords has been common practice for decades

All the worst Texans are transplants

The situation tells us that there are very few decent Texans.

The state is comically gerrymandered and rigorously disenchrancised. We have majority black counties where a single voting location will have a seven hour queue, sky high incarceration rates intended to disenfranchise huge swaths of the public, and some of the most reactionary public TV and radio combined with the most poorly funded and badly administered education.

This is a controlled population. People will talk shit about Russia and North Korea. But Texas is running right along beside them.

Only question is how long until Texas fully embraces the kind of ethnic cleansing common to Israel.

Given the Democrats’ long history of picking the worst possible candidate at any given time, I’m genuinely confused as to how Harris landed on Waltz instead of Shapiro.

Alas, they don’t want to stop Trump or fascism.

Republicans move the country to the right. Democrats stop the county from rebpunding left. A beautiful political ratchet that’s been marching us further and further towards full blown fascism since the Nixon Era.

They are the only game in town, particularly at the state and local level.

Republicans are in a suicide pact with their party. If you try to leave, your peers will kill you that much faster.

Stock Market is Up.

That’s all these people care about. The US can become a country that only knows how to make weird AI advertisements and MLM scams, and so long as GDP goes up these people will think everything is fine.

The most conservative estimate I’ve seen for the IDs intercept rate is 80%

IDF report highlights failure of air-defense system on Oct. 7

Israel’s air defense system failed to intercept half of the rockets fired by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, Hebrew media reported on Sunday.

The finding is based on an Israel Defense Forces investigation whose findings were presented to the military’s chief of staff, according to Channel 12 News.

…

In the first 20 minutes of the attack, Hamas fired an unprecedented 1,400 rockets into Israel. Many Iron Dome batteries were depleted in the face of the massive barrage, according to Channel 12

Pretty textbook strategy in the face of missile defense systems. Anti-missile systems typically need two to three munitions to counter one attack. This math hasn’t changed since the ID was created.

The primary mechanism Israel has to protect its citizens is its network of air raid sirens and fallout shelters. The secondary mechanism is the threat of retaliation (to the point of systematic genocide of a region) which requires an enormous perpetually-standing army. The ID is only materially beneficial in combating small scale, low-frequency attacks. And only when they have ample time to repair and reload. And even then, the modern IDF has been rife with nepotism, graft, and institutional neglect such that a lot of their military readiness has degraded.

It always crazy to see people try so hard to blame it all on the Democratic party.

When there are two teams on the field and one of them sits down on defense, what else do you say?

you are just playing into the political blame game

I wish more people were into it. The theory that Democrats are legitimately impotent in power and impotent in opposition only ever benefits Republicans.

Iron Dome does an amazingly good job at defending from the threats it was designed to handle

So did the Maginot Line

How does this article change that?

It’s always crazy to see Democrats walk into office, sit down, say “we literally can’t do anything because we don’t have permission”, watch a fascist win, passively hand power to the fascist, and then insist it is the six swing voters in Penstucky who are to blame for everything that happens next.

Meanwhile, all the war crimes presided over by Obama and Biden are just… ignored. The bailouts? Ignored. Inability to prosecute ousted corrupt politicians? Ignored. Jails full of migrant children? Ignored. Genocide by our allies that we gleefully fund and tacitly encourage? Ignored.

No no no. It was those handful of swing state voters who did this. They made Gavin Newsom start a podcast that pays Charlie Kirk to come on and say slurs. They made Ruth Bader Ginsberg get COVID at a wedding, 10 years after she should have retired and been replaced by another Democrat. They are singularly responsible for Gitmo, for the invasion of Ukraine, and for Chinese AI.

If they’d just given Biden one more term in office, and a House/Senate supermajority, and all the state governors and legislatures, and maybe a few friendly governments in Latin America and Europe…

Then maybe Biden would have permanently forgiven an extra $10k in student loan debt.

This is like going to a coal miner’s convention and telling them fossil fuels are going to be outlawed.

It’s going to a coal miner’s convention and saying “the days of cheap coal are over, now coal is $1000 lb”.

And when the coal miners ask “won’t that lead to more people going to alternatives” replying “we will make alternatives illegal”.

Like, it’s not a material change in policy. It’s a delusional assumption of what the US is capable of imposing on the rest of the world.

Handing over world leadership directly to China.

Americans have decided to abandon their role as World Police and embrace the role of World Privatized Security Service.

This isn’t handing leadership to China, it is extorting Chinese neighbors into paying for the privilege of American occupation.

Only 26 states

So, more than half?

The fact that it’s not an easy sell now highlights how bad Trump is at everything.

What Trump is pitching is the same snake oil Reaganite “Star Wars” program that was scrapped 30 years ago. The Israeli Iron Dome can’t beat Yemeni intercontinental bottle rockets, nevermind Iranian SCUD missiles. These programs don’t meaningfully protect a country that is under bombardment. They’re wingnut welfare for the MIC and always have been.

The only successful nuclear deterrent was detente. JFK picking up a telephone and telling Khruschev “We’ll pull our Jupiter Missiles out of Turkey if you pull your missile out of Cuba” saved the world from nuclear annihilation. The fantasy of missile defense only escalates these conflicts.

The rest of HS2 got cancelled.

Practically as an act of economic sabotage. British people hate their country and are actively trying to destroy it from within

Why don’t they do lay-down-only seats?

Bigger and older passengers would find it more difficult to get into the top bunk than to ride a standing-only seat.

But it’s all shit regardless. Boeing can barely even make planes that don’t fall apart on the runway. The American airline industry’s fleet is increasingly defunct. The FAA is gutted. Airports are falling into disrepare due to mismanagement. You’ll be lucky to get any kind of air travel in another decade.