one described it as “clumsy, chaotic and poorly planned.” Hmmm, do I detect a hint of bias in the writing at the AP? Why does this need to be included if all but one of the groups seems to ‘welcome’ it?

It’s all up-front costs! /s

It’s like they were trying to jump the Gorge Dukes of Hazzard style. Crazy to watch.

Username… checks out?

Don’t give them any ideas.

Now I’m sitting here trying not to laugh, thinking about the old adage: how do you know if the Pope is venomous or poisonous?

If you bite the Pope and you die, he’s poisonous. If the Pope bites you and you die, he’s venomous.

I feel like he would spray holy water though.

That’s the next game in the Dark Souls line: Bright Souls: YHWH’s revenge.

Now I’m imagining laser derby matches.

There’s multiple levels so the answer is “sort of.” Very generally, the Minister of Defense (or equivalent) has a national defense council that will have heads of armed forces and maybe a few senior civilian members. The council creates the overall battle plan with specific generals or admirals creating plans for specific battles or campaigns that conform to the overarching goals set by the defense council. The Prime Minister has a cabinet. The cabinet will receive info from the defense council. Intelligence agencies and departments involved with any economic warfare. The PM and cabinet can give direction to individual councils and departments to coordinate the overarching strategy of the entire country. The defense council will then adjust plans based on Cabinet’s directives. The PM is probably given detailed briefings of battlefield progress and aims for the military for the short-, medium-, and long-term for the conflict and can veto specific plans. But the PM won’t help to plan attacks or modify those plans usually. That’s the purview of generals and admirals.

BE Man, Amazon must be really pissed off about this…

I think most, like me, read the article and found it wanting. The USA has limited resources and has to decide what’s going to get priority. The Biden Administration’s decision to focus its foreign policy on countering growing Chinese global influence is a decision that has to be made in the context of these limited resources. So blaming the US for a war that both sides have wanted and worked toward for 50 years while every US President has put in far more resources to try to prevent that war seems like the journalist doesn’t understand the basics of practically anything having to do with foreign policy. But must be the USA’s fault because we didn’t decide to spend more of our limited resources on a conflict that never goes away.

36.005970N , 114.976380W

What about Cool Hand, Luuke?

Honestly, that comes down to philosophy. The Sith are about domination. You gain power through fear and anger. They don’t understand anything else. So they rule based on their philosophy. Also, in Lucas’ vision, creating the Empire was to spread fear through the populace. That fear would reinforce the Dark Side and make the Sith stronger. Every time you have some person get angry and kill another person, or a family scared for their lives, it adds to the Dark Side’s power. It’s a metaphysical reinforcement of Sith ideas that make it impossible for Luke to really stand up to Palpatine. But the Jedi way is not to fight using power, but to embrace others as they are. When Luke accepts his father and himself as they are, he becomes a full Jedi and his father sees what he thought was impossible: that getting angry and accessing the Dark Side is NOT a permanent pathway to doom. You can CHANGE YOUR PATH and try to atone for your sins. Being a Jedi is about the idea that NOTHING is absolute. This is why Obi-wan and Yoda fail and Luke succeeds, he is the only person to try to change and improve and not see the Dark Side as a permanent hell but something to be overcome. (This also makes the Luke we see in TLJ nearly impossible to support, he’s undone learning that cost him nearly everything to earn in such a silly way, it’s practically unbelievable.)

Your own comment above basically supports the definition of tankie. Specifically, this:

The term is also used to describe people who endorse, defend, or deny the crimes committed by communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin,[9][10] Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Enver Hoxha, Pol Pot, and Kim il-Sung. In modern times, the term is used across the political spectrum to describe those who have a bias in favor of illiberal or authoritarian states with a socialist legacy or a nominally left-wing government, such as the Republic of Belarus, People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of Nicaragua, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Serbia, the Syrian Arab Republic, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Additionally, tankies have a tendency to support non-socialist states with no socialist legacy if they are opposed to the United States and the Western world in general, regardless of their ideology,[4][11] such as the Islamic Republic of Iran. (emphasis mine)

I would take issue with the single word ‘fascist’ that @figaro@lemdro.id is using, as the government doesn’t need to be full-on fascist to it qualify for tankies to defend it. It only needs to be illiberal with a socialist legacy or nominally left-leaning government. So the definition is more broad than what figaro defines. But all the elements of Figaro’s defintion are literally there in your own linked Wikipedia article.

Someone has to take Ted Cruz to Mexico.

ADL would almost certainly file an anti-SLAPP claim and probably win. California’s anti-SLAPP law even says that it’s contents should be broadly considered as a bulwark against assholes using the courts to prevent public participation. If ADL does win an anti-SLAPP motion, Musk would end up paying their lawyers fees down to the cent.

So you’re telling me that Excel is very good at stuff?

It’s more like 2.5 billion for R&D and then 2.5 billion to create the factory that builds them and the first thousand units. The per unit cost is initially high and then comes down once all the front end work is done.

And as with many programs, the R&D phase may lead to a brand new use-case for drones or an entirely different purpose for one of the drone prototypes. So there can be unknown benefits too.