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 Why? Up until 2014, our defense contractors work building missiles in a way that maximized their profits but slowed down productivity . At best, we can sustain projectile-based fighting (offense and defense) for about a week . Also, a lot of the military budget is spent on Tricare .  Our stockpiles has been depleted (see also the above link) in other combat operations and replenishment is both costly and time-consuming (as in: would take years to replenish ).   All an opponent of the US Military has to do is survive the initial attack, kinda like:

Confused? Let NPR try to explain : President Donald Trump is suing the IRS and Treasury Department for $10 billion, as he accuses the federal agencies of a failure to prevent a leak of the president's tax information to news outlets between 2018 and 2020. The suit, filed in a Florida federal court Thursday, includes the president's sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. and the Trump organization as plaintiffs. The filing alleges that the leak of Trump and the Trump Organization's confidential tax records caused "reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs' public standing." In 2024, former IRS contractor Charles Edward Littlejohn of Washington, D.C. — who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a defense and national security tech firm — was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to leaking tax inf...

  Despite the recent UN vote on Gaza , the people's opinion of Israel is not expected to rise anytime soon and the push to consolidate conservatives has been less-than beneficial .  As a result, Zionists are, as Caitlin Johnstone puts it, are "freaking out:" Why hasn't the propaganda worked? There's a three-word response that explain: "Muslims aren't Nazis." Historically, Jewish people have garnered much-deserved sympathy for what happened during the rise of Nazi Germany. The concentration camps, the torture, the deaths...if any group had a reason to demonize Nazis, it was Jewish people (and it would be foolish to infer that other groups and/or nations didn't suffer from either being occupied or at war with Nazi Germany so let's keep this in mind as well). The thing is, Muslims did not preform a Holocaust on the Jewish People in Europe. Palestinians did not round up Israelis and put them into concentration camps. Neither did Iranians, the Le...

  The White House wants interest rates lowered, as soon and as low as possible . Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, doesn't look like he's going to budge . Enter the Federal Reserve's renovation project for their headquarters, which by accounts is self-funded . Word is that President Trump is trying to use the renovation ( the argument being it's gone overbudget ) as an excuse to kick Powell out before he retires from the position. The Fed has historically tried to stay away from the politics of the moment, but Trump has never met an institution that he didn't want to make bend to his will, and the idea of having the country's central banking system at his beck and call is too tempting of a prospect to pass up. 

 When you're indebted to the West and decide to not  play ball, you get a quick lesson on how much power you really have...

The "real estate mogul/crime boss" tactic doesn't really work on other nations, especially one who being lead by someone who earned political capital by going up against such types :

Via NPR : South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol declared an "emergency martial law" on Tuesday, accusing the opposition of paralyzing the government with anti-state activities. In a surprise late-night TV address, Yoon said the move was needed to protect the country from anti-state activities. He also accused the opposition of being sympathetic with North Korea. Yoon took office in 2022, and faces a parliament dominated by the opposition. He has been struggling with low approval ratings and has been involved in scandals, including some involving his wife. And here's CNN: UPDATE: South Korea's Parliament fights back . The draft-dodging, US-backed leader is not that popular with the people of South Korea, winning the last election by a margin of 0.7%

  According to CNN , no one knows where they came from or who's behind it. Maybe they should talk to their journalistic counterparts over at NPR, because they did some actual research : The National Park Service originally granted a permit to a group called Civic Crafted LLC to display the statue until Wednesday evening, but later extended it an extra week through the evening of Nov. 6 — the day after Election Day. NPR has reached out to the woman named in the permit. According to the permit shared with NPR, the statue is called The Resolute Desk and is meant to represent the heart of democracy. "Here, the power of the people finds its expression through the diligent efforts of those who serve the public good," it says. "When rioters broke in to destroy these ideals, this desk stands firm, so too must the principles of equality, justice and freedom that it represents." For the record: Washington, DC has " nearly 28,00 private security cameras ," inclu...

  Here's a story about the "U.N.-marked vehicle": TEL AVIV, Israel — The United Nations said one of its workers was killed and another injured when their U.N.-marked vehicle was struck in Gaza's southern city of Rafah on Monday. It was on its way to assess the situation at the European Hospital there. The Israeli military said in a statement that it had received a report from the U.N. Department of Safety and Security that two of its workers were injured. It also said that in an initial investigation, the vehicle hit was traveling in what the military declared an active combat zone. The Israeli military also said that it didn't receive notice of the vehicle's route.

 Case-in-point: an explosion at Northeastern University was possible caused by it's only victim : A Texas man has been arrested in connection with what authorities say was a false claim about an explosion at a virtual reality lab at Northeastern University in Boston last month. The alleged hoax triggered a massive response from law enforcement, including Boston Police and FBI bomb squads, and it forced the evacuation of a large part of the campus. But authorities say the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by 45-year-old Jason Duhaime, who worked at the lab. Duhaime, who was then the new technology manager and director of the Immersive Media Lab at Northeastern University, allegedly called 911 on Sept. 13 to report that a package had blown up in the lab and injured him. He repeated the story to investigators, according to the affidavit, saying that he opened a hard plastic case that came in the mail, and "all this energy, and like these things come flying out." But authori...

 Here's a story of how a person from rural Michigan ended up creating his own local broadband company.

  Assuming that they weren't petty during the height of COVID: This week, the Bureau of Prisons told NPR that 442 people who were released during the pandemic have now returned to prison. Only 17 people out of more than 11,000 who were released committed new crimes, mostly drug related ones, while they were out. More than half, some 230 people including Eva Cardoza, got sent back for alleged alcohol or drug use. Other cases involved technical violations. Sakira Cook of the racial justice group Color of Change explained what that means. "It could be as simple as failing to answer the phone when your probation officer calls you. It could be as simple as the ankle monitor giving an incorrect signal about your location," Cook said. Cook has personal experience with that last problem: a relative recently left federal prison on home confinement, only to get an ankle monitor that didn't work. Fortunately, she said, the probation officer understood the situation. Kevin Ring ...

 NPR does a story on RIP National Debt, a group dedicated to doing exactly what the name implies . 

  You take the good/you take the bad; you take them both and there you have : After two decades of insurgency, the Taliban exhausted the world's most powerful military and their NATO allies, which agreed to withdraw from the country in a deal signed in February 2020. As Western troops were concluding their withdrawal last summer, the Taliban oversaw the rapid surrender, defeat or co-option of Afghan security forces — forces they saw as aiding a foreign occupation. Today, the Taliban's particular interpretation of Islamic law is being imposed in fits and starts, largely over women and girls: Most girls cannot attend secondary schools. They may not travel long distances without a male guardian. Women report being hounded out of their jobs. They've been ordered to cover their faces in public, although the rule is only applied to women on television so far. There are changes perhaps less noticed outside of Afghanistan: Afghans are living in relative security for the first time ...

 What is Governor Greg Abbott of Texas doing? He's busing immigrants to New York City : New York City Mayor Eric Adams is criticizing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for sending busloads of migrants to the city, saying that Abbott "used innocent people as political pawns to manufacture a crisis." "Unlike Governor Abbott, New York City will always do our part," Adams said via Twitter, after his office posted images of the mayor greeting migrants and refugees arriving at the Port Authority bus terminal in midtown Manhattan. "This is horrific when you think about what [Abbot] is doing," Adams said on Sunday, according to the Gothamist website, which reports that more than 4,000 immigrants had arrived from Texas so far. New York isn't alone: Abbott's office says Texas has already sent more than 6,100 migrants on buses to Washington, D.C., as NPR reported. Both cities are now the main targets in Abbott's program to send people who recently crossed the U...

Combine racist policies with a lack of infrastructure needed to generate generational wealth and top it off with a recession, and you get financial trouble for minorities .

 Just in case someone tries to convince you that "things are back to normal": When the pandemic started, Tomeka Kimbrough-Hilson knew she had a small growth inside her uterus. She was first diagnosed with uterine fibroids back in 2006 and had been able to have the non-cancerous mass removed through outpatient laser surgery. Over the years, she'd also been able to manage her symptoms with medication and changes in her lifestyle. But when those symptoms – a bloated belly, irregular periods, nausea – returned in 2020, Kimbrough-Hilson was unable to get an appointment with a specialist. "March 27th came and everything got shut down," says Kimbrough-Hilson, 47, of Stone Mountain, Georgia. "I wasn't at the tier of care that needed [immediate attention], because of all the precautions that had to be taken." But even after the lockdown in spring of 2020 was lifted, Kimbrough-Hilson, a mother of five who works in the health insurance industry, was unable t...

 And no, it doesn't involve the phrase "shot innocent person": VINCENT, Ala. — A racist text message sent by a police officer has prompted officials in a small Alabama town to disband their police department and fire the police chief and assistant chief. Vincent Mayor James Latimore on Thursday confirmed that Police Chief James Srygley and Assistant Chief John L. Goss had been dismissed, al.com reported. The Shelby County Sheriff's Office on Friday condemned the two officers' actions and said it stands with the city "in providing emergency law enforcement related service to the citizens (of Vincent) at this time." In the message, which recently surfaced on social media, someone identified as "752″ texts: "What do y'all call a pregnant slave?" An unidentified recipient responds twice: "?" and "??" "752″ answers: "BOGO Buy one, get one free" "This has torn this community apart. It doesn't matt...

  Just saying :

 Director Ryan Coogler knows this more than most, especially in the wake of Chadwick Bosesman's death in 2020. Still he and the cast and crew have pressed on and the new trailer for " Black Panther: Wakanda Forever " looks promising.