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Wednesday’s Forum
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22 responses to “Wednesday’s Forum”
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Details on the third soldier who died in Jordan.
The Department of War announced the believed to be death of an active-duty Soldier who was supporting overseas operations in Jordan.
Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, of Ozone Park, New York, is believed to have been killed in action on July 17, 2026, during an enemy attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, Jordan. The incident is under investigation. U.S. Central Command previously announced this Soldier as missing. The Soldier status was updated to a Duty Status–Whereabouts Unknown and is believed to be deceased.
From the Military Times
CENTCOM originally noted that a third U.S. service member was missing, however, the command announced on July 19 that, “After a thorough search, U.S. military personnel found unidentified remains at the location earlier today. An examination process to verify the remains is ongoing.”
Horrifically, I think this means is that this soldier’s death was so violent that positive identification of the remains couldn’t be done.
Going all the way back to Desert Storm, I always tried to not get acclimated to the death of anyone but to think and feel deeply about the reality of the situation. You got to keep hold of your humanity.
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A decent piece on DoD budgeting:
The $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget Without a Strategy
“This is not at all a strategy-driven [FY 2027 defense] budget. This is a budget-driven budget. If you look at the Truth Social posts by the President [Trump] and the statements of the people around him, he [President Trump] makes very clear that this budget was driven by a budget number, a budget target, an arbitrary level that was set based on five percent of last year’s GDP…They set this arbitrary level and then at relatively the last minute in the budget development process the [Defense] Department was told come up with a request that gets you to this number, this $1.5 trillion number. And so they did.”
Government funding can be confusing to the average American so here is DoD funding broken to its simplest form:
Remember, as I wrote last week, the Trump FY 2027 defense request is for $1.15 trillion with another $350 billion request to be placed in a FY 2026 reconciliation package; and there now also is the new FY 2026 supplemental request, which has another $67 billion for the Defense Department.
Budgeting is always a matter of choices. This administration refuses to make choices.
Last Tuesday, Harrison went on to explain what may have been going on: “I say it is absolutely not a strategy-driven [FY 2027 defense] budget because they didn’t have to make hard choices. They made some easy choices.”
As an example, Harrison said, “Do you want, you know, a fourth generation fighter jet? Buy some new fourth generation [F-15s]; or do we want to continue buying the fifth-generation fighters like the F-35 we have in production; or do we want to invest in sixth generation fighters? Do all of them, right? You can do all three at once, if you have a virtually unlimited budget, you don’t have to make those hard tradeoffs.”
And, in fact, all three are included in the proposed FY2027 defense budget.
Now it seems that all appropriations these days (and this has gone back decades) are disconnected from revenues and the ability to pay. Our politicians will brag about the expenditures they are making but, in the same breath, brag about tax cuts.
Don’t ask them about the Medicare and Social Security trust funds running out in just 6 years. Don’t ask them about the trillion dollar deficits that have been running for years now.
And I blame both sides.
If we want a $1.5T defense budget then demand that revenue be raised to support it.
My morning rant over.
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The GOP has long claimed that Dems are the tax and spend party, while ignoring the fact that they themselves have no problem with profligate spending – as long as that spending does nothing to give regular people a helping hand. Hence a constant Republican effort to cut spending on healthcare, nutrition, the environment and education, while throwing cash at the Pentagon, DHS, and any stupid renovation idea that bounces around inside Trump’s head…all the while choking off revenue with tax cuts (primarily for the Epstein Class) under the laughable and demonstrably false trickle down theory. I don’t blame both sides – one side is willing to pay for its expenditures, the other side wants to spend like a drunken sailor (or Secretary of WAR!) while reducing the revenue that could cover its costs.
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It’s a convenient narrative because it enables them to cast themselves as the adults in the room and the Dems as children in a toy store, something which hasn’t been true since at least Reagan but which much of the mainstream media lacks the knowledge to counter. None of this started with Trump, it’s been part and parcel of the party for decades, to back an agenda that objectively leads to higher deficits while claiming against all available evidence to be committed to keeping the budget in line.
It’s one of the reasons why I never use the phrase “fiscal conservative.” Many Dems like to say their party are the true fiscal conservatives, but I think the phrase itself contributes to the myth by linking fiscal prudence with conservatism. It’s a phrase that’s usually invoked as a contrast to social conservatism–how often have you heard people claim to be fiscally conservative but socially liberal–even though the economic program of the GOP, even if you completely divorce it from issues like abortion, LGBT rights, and so on, is anything but fiscally prudent. What Dems should be saying is that there’s no incompatibility whatsoever between being a liberal and being fiscally prudent, and that the vast majority of people who call themselves conservative are uninterested in smaller budgets, it’s just part of the entire scam of taking money from the taxpayers’ pockets and using it to enrich themselves.
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The Terminally-Online Narrative:
Left-wing challengers are beating House Democrats. These incumbents could be next. (Washington Post)4. Kai Newkirk, who describes himself as a democratic socialist and is endorsed by Our Revolution, is challenging Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Arizona) in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District. Stanton has represented the district since 2019. Newkirk has attacked Stanton for his support for Israel, his vote for the Laken Riley Act and his opposition to Medicare-for-all. Stanton, who boasts support from local politicians and unions, is campaigning on fighting Trump and lowering costs.
Socialist surge rocks Arizona Democratic primary (Fox News)
Rising Momentum for Another Progressive Champion (American Prospect)
A sleeper race in Arizona could see community organizer Kai Newkirk upset Rep. Greg Stanton in a House race in the Phoenix area.
The Boring Reality:
Stanton easily defeated progressive organizer Kai Newkirk, who hammered the moderate over his acceptance of corporate donations as well as his vote in support of the Laken Riley Act last year.
The incumbent, who previously served as Phoenix mayor, is on track to easily hang onto his House seat in the blue district this fall.
Guessing this result won’t inspire a bunch of breathless scaremongering Substack bro cum NYT think pieces about a Democratic Tea Party or whatever.
Current count with 85% in (and isn’t it a crisis that Arizona doesn’t count all the votes in one night?)…
Stanton/AIPAC 65%
Scaaaaary Socialism 35%-
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Probably did, but had to abort and shelve the essay upon discovering said voters were not blue-haired communists holding fundraisers for Hezbollah while performing sex changes on kindergarteners, just regular ole New Yorkers who think the US should invest its trillions in housing, healthcare, mass transit, Ukraine aid, food/farm aid, debt relief, and paid leave. Instead of on stupid MidEast wars and handouts to oligarch welfare kings like Trump and Musk.
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With the Republicans pounding the SAVE Act (which probably won’t pass) and which adds administrative hoops to getting an ID valid enough (in their eyes) to vote, why doesn’t someone in Congress propose a free, national ID card for every citizen of the US. Could take a couple of years to implement but still…
Pros and Cons?
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AI is getting ready to take over. And there’s little we can do.
https://apnews.com/article/openai-gpt56-sol-hugging-face-63ab84fed5612af04d8a160d60f6def3?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share -
I may have mentioned I’ve been using LLMs as sounding boards for my fiction. Yesterday I tried one from a French company called Mistral. the bot is called Vibe (formerly Le Chat, in typical French fashion). One good things about these things is they all seem to understand several languages.
Well, at first it was far less sycophantic than other models. It told me the outline I uploaded had a good story, then listed several flaws with it.
I typed some corrections, and explained the villain was foolish and incompetent, because the real conflict happens among the good guys*. then it got very agreeable and more than a little bit sycophantic.
Le sigh.
I also noticed other things. I’ve a penchant for having aliens mess with humans, and then depart forever (in story terms). I’ve reasons for this, and much of it gets explained over time.
The other thing is I’ve two protagonists, in different unrelated stories, who are both young girls (14 and 16) who have great power they use with care and restraint, and find wisdom very early in their lives.
I’m not sure which of these will be harder to sell to the reader.
*Also that character is modelled on a real public person.
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