Archive for 2025

CDR SALAMANDER: So, we Now Have the ‘War’ in ‘Drug War.’

If this is not a one-off strike and we no kidding want to go kinetic against drug smugglers at sea, we can’t do it in an effective way with armed drones. We are not always going to have land bases nearby because we can’t cover all that sea with what few overworked and under-maintained ships we have.

Almost all our allies get itchy when we start making things go boom from their territory—so that leaves GTMO and Puerto Rico.

Problem is, we no longer have the proper set of tools to do the job. The Cult of Efficiency under-armed the P-8A, so it is not as effective as it should be. As such, a multi-platform kludge would have to be put together if this becomes an ongoing mission…a highly inefficient kludge that makes the mission less efficient and more costly than it needs to be. Again.

Over to you NAVAIR, again.

Speaking of costs going up, for the bad guys, the cost of doing drug business just went up too. How will the drug producers try to regain access to our markets?

Will they fight back? We’ve impacted the people smuggling business by closing our borders. That pissed off one set of cartels. Now we are blowing up product coming out of South America, pissing off another set of cartels.

Will they take this sitting down? We’ll see.

Exit Quote: “I am quite comfortable putting this in the same category as a truck carrying arms to Al-Qaeda west of the Khyber Pass, or a group of people planting an IED in Al-Anbar.”

Yes.

YEAH, PRETTY MUCH:

ATHENA THORNE: The Image That Killed the Democrats in 2026 and Beyond. “Right now, they’re trying to ignore it, the way they tried to pretend Hunter Biden’s laptop didn’t exist back in 2020. They were successful enough that time to push their vote machine over the finish line in Biden/Harris’s favor, but that won’t happen this time. This story, this image, is already out there.”

DAVID MASTIO: Dismal new job numbers might be a sign of Trump’s successes, not failures.

So far under Trump, federal government employment is down 97,000 jobs. It was down 15,000 jobs just in August and it is going to keep going down as those who have already been fired, but are still getting severances, still count as employed. State government employment in August was down 13,000 too, which may reflect cuts to state government grants. And those numbers come as parts of the federal government that Trump likes, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement are on unprecedented hiring sprees.

The Trump administration also has cut tens of billions of dollars (maybe hundreds of billions) in nonprofit grants, on which the government spends a fortune. The BLS doesn’t report monthly numbers in the nonprofit sector, but you can expect that these cuts are having a big impact in the government-adjacent parts of the economy. One clue in the data is that “Religious, grant-making, civic, professional and similar organizations” employment fell 3,000 in August. In recent months, the federal government has rounded up tens of thousands of often-employed undocumented immigrants all over the country in industries from construction and agriculture to transportation and manufacturing. That’s a net negative for job growth too. Employment among Hispanics was down 15,000 jobs in August according to the new BLS data. . . .

I am no fan of Trump’s mercantilist economic policies, but any analysis of these job numbers has to consider how much of this is a sign of MAGA success, not economic disaster.

Millei’s Argentina entered a short, sharp recession when his policies were enacted before roaring back.

Related: Joel Kotkin: Don’t judge Trump’s economic agenda on one jobs report.

OOOH. I AGREE WITH HIS SOLUTION:  Easy Fix.

WORSE, THERE’S ALSO USING THIS TO TRY TO START A RACIAL WAR:  The war on noticing: CLT edition.

Yes, the assaulter was black. He was also homeless and mentally ill and possibly/probably on interesting substances. Those are more of a dispositive factor in this, as well as the fact he was allowed on the streets because “not guilty by reason of mental illness.”

I’VE BEEN GETTING A BAD FEELING AT THE BACK OF THE BRAIN:  Things That Make You Wonder, Part???

Apparently I’m not alone. Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.