- How to Survive America’s Kill List (Rolling Stone) Matt Taibbi documents the Kafkaesque journey of an American journalist trying to get himself removed from our kill list.
- Multimillion-dollar award against PwC is window into typically secret auditor settlements (MarketWatch) The FDIC is prohibited by law from entering into sealed settlements. Much hilarity ensues.
- St. Louis Uber driver has put video of hundreds of passengers online. Most have no idea. | Metro (St. Louis Today) This should surprise no one. He streamed videos to generate more revenue. He drives for Lyft too.
- Your phone company’s sh%$ty security is all that’s standing between you and total digital destruction (Boing Boing) You know how apps do 2 factor authenticatation with a text message? Well text messages are trivial to intercept.
- Here’s the real reason the US must talk to Russia (Asia Times) An article about how the Russians are 10 feet tall and have super-weapons. I thought that this genre died around 1991.
- Bernie Sanders on Labor’s Future and Why Democratic Socialists Keep Winning (In These Times) A bad something beats nothing, and the Democratic Party establishment is dedicated to make it a party about nothing.
- Mark Janus quits state job for conservative think tank gig after landmark ruling (Chicago Sun-Times) The plaintiff for the Supreme Court decision emasculating public employee unions gets his payoff.
It appears that Trevor Noah really pissed off much of France in his World Cup Comments:
IDK, the S300 and S400 are apparently the best air defense systems in the world. The US stuff doesn't' seem to work very well (Patriot and Aegis). Russkie airplanes always seem to do fine, as compared with the useless F35. And the nuclear powered cruise missile (strange isotopes recently detected over the N pole, huh…) is actually pretty dangerous. Hard to detect launches and intercept. Kalibr cruise missile is already tested and performed well in Syria. And then there is the utterly useless US littoral combat ship
You are well versed in defense, I depend on you to correct me…..
Clearly, their SAM capabilities exceed those of the US. AAA been an afterthought in US capabilities ever since the USAF became independent.
But in terms of thing like logistics and C4ISR, the US is superior, as are the electronics capabilities, naval aviation, and (critically IMHO) in the training and retention of senior NCOs.
Also, even with the massive waste, the US military industrial complex massively outproduces the Russians (and the Chinese, and the Indians, and the British, and the French, etc.), and quantity has a quality all its own.
The consequence of waste at the Pentagon is not so much the loss of combat effectiveness, our military dwarfs all others in the world, but rather that it is a millstone around the neck of society as a whole, which could lead to a collapse like that of the Soviet Union.
Quoting Ike, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
Thanks for the educated reply. Always appreciated.