Agiel

"Mandrake, come over here, the Redcoats are coming!" Royal Marines DLC for Afghanistan '11 has dropped, cashing in Blackhawks and Huskies for Lynxes and Terriers, which makes me recall a certain passage from Rudyard Kipling's "The Young British Soldier": "When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."

On a lighter note some interesting tales from aviation history. The first the saga of No Kum-Sok (AKA Kenneth Roe) and Operation Moolah (recounted in much greater detail in the excellent book "The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot" by Blaine Harden) And a Soviet flyer who performed the same feat in a MiG-29 in the closing days of the Cold War:

Once again, the thing my mind comes back to whenever there's a Trump rally: https://streamable.com/czf9b

That cat actually kind of reminds me of Gaahl:

Got a crack out of this:

Or the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop thread. As of late been prepping my Harlequin army for my local Games Workshop's "Armies on Parade" Harlequin Troupe Master with Power Sword and Shuriken Pistol (weapons currently magnetised): The old 4th Edition Shadowseer (yet to be properly based): My kitbashed Solitaire (followed by one of my favourite extracts from the lore relevant to the model):

That's pretty well appreciated, for 'elective' wars which even with Mexican Telegrams and unrestricted submarine warfare WW1 was for the US. WW2 though wasn't, doesn't matter how isolationist your population is if you're actively attacked by Japan and have Germany declare war on you; that's the one thing that will usually get all isolationists on board for a war since isolationist doesn't mean pacifist. I suppose it just goes to show just how poorly appreciated it is. In part why those not in the loop with the Manhattan Project balked at simply continuing the conventional firebombing campaign of Japan and blockading her into submission was because absolutely nobody could give an exact time when Japan would accept the Allied terms of surrender (remember that Leningrad was besieged for two and a half years), and there was concern that the cost of the blockade and simply having the five million strong invasion force indefinitely mobilised would wear down on public support for the campaign. Even in Western Europe Hitler's Hail Mary play to save the Third Reich was based on the the Ardennes Offensive inflicting horrendous enough casualties on US forces and, failing that, succeeding where the Germans had failed at Dunkirk encircling British forces and potentially bargaining for an armistice with the Western Allies, then swinging those forces over to the East to stabilise the Soviet Front (the chances of success were uncertain of course, but it was pretty much this or Hitler curling into a ball and sucking on his thumb in his bunker).

What tends to be poorly appreciated is just how fragile the United States' commitment to foreign wars was. While American casualties were certainly light as compared to the European powers in WWI, it nonetheless left a scar on the American psyche that pushed the country into isolationism quite well into the 30s, a sense that was not helped by the fact that the troubles of the rest of the world seemed so distant to Americans given that they had the luxury of being an ocean away from them. This sentiment would coalesce into anti-war, isolationist movements such as the America First Committee (and you thought Trump and Bannon were being original), with one of its founding members being Charles Lindbergh, as much an American hero in his time as Eisenhower was in the direct aftermath of the Second World War (in fact the Philip Roth novel "The Plot Against America" from which the quote in my signature comes from posits on what would happen had Lindbergh ran for and won the Presidency). Even the long drawn-out slog of Korea would eventually push the US to settle for an armistice with North Korea (the unpopularity of the war would play a key factor in Truman having the lowest ever recorded approval rating ever since Gallup began collecting that data and the decisive defeat of the Democratic candidate by Eisenhower in the 1952 election).

As an aside some of these claims should be taken with a grain of salt given the political ramifications of the atomic bomb. As the nascent US Air Force had a monopoly on the atomic bomb in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War there was an incentive by Navy brass to downplay the impact of the bombs as it could possible result in the Navy getting sidelined by the Air Force when it came to funding, and to a large extent this fear was well-founded, as it was under Eisenhower that US military underwent its largest downsizing in conventional forces, with funding diverted to the Air Force in service of the doctrine of "Massive Retaliation," in which the US would respond in a disproportionate fashion with nuclear weapons to any offensive action taken by the Warsaw pact. The US Navy even attempted to demonstrate that the effect of atomic weapons against naval vessels was negligible in Operation Crossroads, to somewhat limited success (while physical damage was indeed light, the sheer amount of radiation the ships absorbed made it wholly impossible for them to be operated by human crew without a substantial decontamination effort). Ironically the US Navy would go on to become the most important leg of the American triad as Polaris and the "41 for Freedom" ballistic missile submarines came online (later to be succeeded by Trident, which today constitutes fully half of the US arsenal).

Worth pointing out that while today we consider it a no-brainer that the ultimate authority to launch nuclear weapons, at what targets, and, relevant to the Nagasaki bombing, when belongs solely to the top level civilian leadership this was not so obvious to military and political leaders at the time. This meant that the bombs were to be dropped at Lemay's discretion as weapons became available to him, so his primary consideration on the timing was actually favourable weather conditions rather than geo-politics (Japan in late summer was known to have particularly temperamental weather, so it was either use it now, or potentially wait another few weeks before the weather permitted). In fact the delegation of weapons release went so far that the aircrews of Enola Gay and Bockscar were given alternate targets in the event that weather conditions were prohibitive (as happened to Bockscar, of which the primary target was Kokura).

I've been trying to tell Trump supporters this for years: Obviously, the most elemental feature of populist politics is to associate one’s opponents with “elite.” But Trump is unable to maintain the pose because he cannot stand the stink of the people upon him.

A thought occurred to me while brooding on Cyberpunk 2077: It would be interesting if players who skewed their builds heavily towards the Razorgirl, Molly Millions side of things but had the option to make up for their relative lack in technical skills by contracting hackers for jobs (a Henry Dorsett Case, if you will), the downside of course being you would have to split more of your earnings with him or her (or something like a monetary fee for every hack beyond your means).

The nuclear weapons historian Alex Wellerstein notes that it's difficult to disentangle the events of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and precisely which played the biggest role in Japanese decision-making (worth pointing out that upon learning of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 7th Stalin ordered the the timetable of the Red Army's invasion moved up from the middle of August, so evidently he believed that further atomic bombings would bring about an end to hostilities before the Soviet Union could make its own land grab). Also keep in mind that even after the Soviet invasion and the bombing of Nagasaki the Japanese would not announce their surrender August 15th, a full six days after the bombing of Nagasaki and the invasion of Manchuria, and even then it was only after a coup launched with the intention of preventing this had been quashed.

At least as compared to the Division the bullet-sponges can in-universe be attributed to sub-dermal armour, automatically-injected morphine, implants that shut down pain-receptors, or plain just too hopped up on narcotics to notice the pain.

Now that I think of it, the part at the end with the "corpo" has shades of that one scene from Layer Cake.

Have to say that when the demo was behind closed doors at E3 (and even at Gamescom) I thought a 2019 release was hopelessly optimistic. Now a Holiday 2019 is conceivable in my mind (or at the very least, that gets announced at first, before it gets pushed back into Q1 or Q2 of 2020).

If my character can't ride a bike straight out of Akira or Bubblegum Crisis then no buy.

As of now at approximately 1700 Zulu of 27th of August a stream of the first public gameplay reveal of Cyberpunk 2077 is on.

Holy **** that is a good quote. world has gone topsy-turvy. whenever we explain how eisenhower-nixon were the doves and kennedy-lbj were the hawks, we get blank stares and disbelief. kennedy were elected in large part 'cause o' his rejection o' eisenhower era pacifism. robert mcnamara's adoption o' metrics for determining success o' a military campaign (body count) were transformative and seeming irreversible as those in the pentagon desirous o' promotion knew they needed show progress and achievement through metrics. I should point out that things are a _little_ more complicated than what may seem at a first glance. While it was true that Eisenhower heavily favoured a large draw-down in conventional forces his administration still sought to address the balance of force in Western Europe that favoured the Warsaw Pact by investing heavily in strategic forces. After all, it was Eisenhower's Secretary of State who coined the term "Massive Retaliation," in which the US would respond disproportionately to an offensive action taken against a NATO power with nuclear arms (helped by the fact that in his time the Soviet Union's ability to respond in kind against the US was extremely limited; there wasn't even a guarantee that they would be able to hit targets in the UK). Was this cheaper than a large conventional force stationed in West Germany? Undoubtedly yes. Was it particularly wise if, had the dice rolled a little differently, the Warsaw Pact to call the United States' bluff? Well... probably best not to dwell too much on that prospect if one wants to sleep soundly tonight. As for Kennedy it should also be noted that under his administration a bewildering array of white elephant programs started under the Eisenhower administration such as SM-62 Snark and SM-64 Navajo, (surprise surprise, nuclear delivery platforms) were quashed. Granted this was largely done in service of what seemed to be far more long-lasting and useful systems such as the UGM-27 Polaris and LGM-30 Minuteman (the former was the grandfather of what is today considered the gold standard of nuclear deterrence, the UGM-133 D5 Trident II, while a derivative of the latter remains in service today).

Satanic temple sparks uproar by unveiling statue of goat-headed, winged creature called Baphomet in Arkansas state capitol I would have recommended getting Wolves in the Throne Room for the proceeding.

Must have some MKUltra contraption in my car since that was largely my sentiment when I heard about it over the radio this morning. It's a deregulation proposal that is of that rarest of breeds: One that actually favours regular Joes over Gordon Gekko types who can shrug off the capital gains tax penalties for short-selling. The pressure to deliver favourable earnings calls every quarter seems to tie the hands of executives trying to invest in the long-term health of the company, perhaps exemplified by analysts grousing things like "Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers."

...and postponed. Heartening to an extent that the current administration isn't totally immune to, putting it mildly, bad press, particularly in light of the proposed Space Force, a defence budget that only offsets real decreases as a result of inflation, and Trump's own avoidance of service. If the Democrats don't seize defeat from the jaws of victory and the "Blue Wave" pans out, who knows? Maybe this can keeps getting kicked to the right indefinitely.

I suspect where some were hoping for something more like the traditional homecoming parades where serving men and women in ACUs and caps waved to crowds while walking down an avenue to a marching band Feldmarschall Bonespurs had this in mind: I would think Mattis was in the former camp, and may have leaked this himself in the hopes that the bad press might convince Trump to at the very least settle for a far less costly spectacle. The original news piece belaboured the point that this is far more expensive than exercises originally scheduled with the ROK, and given the history of Trump tweets I imagine Mattis rubs his temples whenever Trump tries to lay out defence policy without consulting him first. Trump's draft-dodging also seems particularly egregious in light of Mulvaney's attempt to drop protections against predatory loaning practices to veterans.

Addendum piece from Mackenzie Eaglen at AEI:

Emphases mine.