The Launchpad

The Launch Pad

  • Forts and Senators

    On Thursday, Donald Trump went to the Home of the Airborne- Fort (Roland Bragg (ex-Liberty, ex-(Braxton) Bragg) to gawk at a staged demonstration by the 82nd and other attached forces and give a typical Trump-rally speech. Normally, Presidential appearances at bases are at least somewhat discrete, with the caveat that Presidents of both parties have…

  • June 6th

    Eighty-one years ago yesterday, the Western Allies launched their long-awaited ground invasion of Normandy, opening a third front in the war against Nazi Germany. It wasn’t subtle or unexpected, but the specifics were nebulous- and masterfully protected by a massive counter-intelligence and subterfuge undertaking. D-Day was a triumph of courage, of arms, and of logistics.…

  • Slave Catchers

    -Summary compiled by Google’s AI. I’m a huge proponent of learning from history. There ain’t much truly new under the sun, just new expressions thereof. With that being said, let’s dive into a bit of America’s real history. European settlement of the Americas has always been fueled by human exploitation. When Columbus and Cortez arrived…

  • A New Era

    Today, the Ukrainians launched “Operation Spiderweb”, the culmination of eighteen months of planning, setup and staging of what appears to have been a relatively modest quantity of hardware and a fairly small number of covert operatives. Cargo trucks, hauling trailers of one-way suicide drones and fused to detonate after their launch or upon tampering, were…

  • Alabama in Japanese

    Just a quick little venture through Gemini’s VEO2 image generation. First prompt: “An anime version of Alabama’s 40 Hour Week video” Not going to lie, this is awesome. You know what? If it’s Japanese work ethic and quality management, American grit and resources, and masculine steel, I’m a billion percent in on it.

  • Half-Right, Plus

    Today, President Trump celebrated the recently-announced “merger” (read: buyout) of the beleaguered U.S. Steel Corporation by Nippon Steel, its Japanese competitor. If we ignore the ignominious and prolonged, multi-decade failures of national policy, capitalist greed and market forces that strangled U.S. Steel, one could even be convinced that federal intervention and facilitated partnership with a…

  • Injunctions

    This month, the U.S. Supreme Court took on the question of nationwide injunctions. In this case (as I discussed in my earlier post), the precipitating case was in regards to an injunction levied in the matter of birthright citizenship, but the question becomes much wider. In the American legal system and government, the injunction has…

  • Memorial Day

    Today is (hypothetically) a “holiday”, and is practically viewed as the ‘official’ start of summer, but it’s a holiday with a bit of a more somber purpose- it is supposed to be be about enjoying what’s good about our society and culture while remembering the sacrifices that made this society possible. At least, that’s the…

  • Birthrights

    On the last day of his presidency, in his last speech, President Ronald Reagan recalled what someone had once written to him: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or…

  • Emoluments

    In old-timey English speak, “Emoluments” refers to “a salary, fee, or profit from office.” Salary for the President is pretty easy to figure out- $400,000 a year, plus a $50,000 annual expense account; so in a 4-year term, he’s making $1.6 million dollars gross, plus a generous pension. Not chump change, but to be honest,…

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