Lugal

The vast majority of those things like "voter confidence" in Liberia and "Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening" are, to my cynical eyes, probably for the interference in other countries to guarantee favorable governments to US business interests. Although I won't cry if they went away, but either Elon Musk, who is a major business interest himself, is really that stupid (a possibility) or those efforts will be shifted to something more obscure and harder to trace. Looking at those numbers, they add up to about $729 million. But it should be noted that the B-2's original cost was per unit was $737 million in 1989, it's overall cost is now about $2.1 billion. It costs $135,000 an hour to operate. The F-22 Raptor stopped being made in 2012 due to production costs and maintenance difficulties, but the Air Force plans to keep flying it until 2060. Meanwhile, the F-35 Lighting has an estimated lifetime cost of 1.7 trillion dollars. But the good news, it can now fly in the rain! So when is DOGE going to look into the Pentagon? I'm not holding my breath.

Plus there's a chance that you'll end up time traveling back and have to fight in the actual battle!

A bit of gemstone trivia: The stone we call Sapphire, a form of blue corundum was not originally what the ancients referred to as a sapphire. The name comes from the Latin sapphirus which comes from the Greek word sappheiros (σάπφειρος) which itself came ultimately from Akkadian šipirtu which referred to the gemstone we call lapis lazuli. The Greek scientist Theoprastus referred to "The sapphire, which is speckled with gold." Sapphire Lapis Lazuli And since corundum occurs in various colors, you can get descriptions like green sapphire or yellow sapphire, except red corundum is always referred to as a ruby. Sapphires come mostly from Sri Lanka and Kashmir but are also found in Montana. Lapis lazuli has been mined in Afghanistan for 7000 years with other sources in Chile, the Lake Baikal region and California. Besides being gemstones, sapphire has industrial uses in infrared optical components, and high durability windows, while lapis lazuli has been used as the base for ultramarine pigment.

It's so sad! I saw her on the Korean Leverage too and I thought she was really good. I was also hoping for a season 2 and would have loved to have seen her turn up on Redemption.

I'm just going to post there here to peruse at your leisure: Mammy, Uncle Tom, Indian Princess, Noble Savage

I loved her in the Korean version of Leverage.

The way the actor delivers his lines, Kai reminds me of Jason Mendoza from The Good Place.

True, but when they pursue aggressive policies that can lead to nuclear war they are dangerous. No, they're not.

I know this is an outlier, but I never saw Trump as deferential to Putin. During his first term he sent tanks to Estonia, trained Latvian and Polish fighters to resist a "Russian Invasion," sent 1000 troops to Poland, as well as selling Patriot missiles to Poland. He also ended the Open Skies Treaty and the INF Treaty at the same time called for more "low yield" nuclear weapons as a deterrent against Russia. Not to mention he sent weapons to Ukraine to begin with, even when Obama considered that too incendiary. And since returning he threatened Putin with sanctions to end the Ukraine war. If anything, I just see Trump swapping out Biden's Russia Hawks for his own China Hawks and Iran Hawks. That won't happen, since we don't owe China anything. Our debt is denominated in dollars. But it probably will accelerate de-dollarization.

My problem is with stupid, empty, jingoistic gestures when there are real problems to be solved. It's too pathetic to really get outraged over. We're going to call it a new name that is not recognized anywhere outside of America just because Trump doesn't like Mexico. And perusing Wikipedia, the gulf has been called various names over the centuries. Among them: Sea of the North, Gulf of Florida, Gulf of Cortés, Gulf of St. Michael, Yucatán Sea, Cathayan Sea, Mexican Sound, the Great Antillian Gulf and the Gulf of New Spain. The Mayans would have called it something like K'ak'nab or K'anaab, so maybe we should go back to that.

Very true! Personally I would have a look at that nearly $1 Trillion dollar defense budget. But the F-35 can fly in the rain–finally! As for Ukraine, it was Trump that first sent weapons there to to begin with, making the Ukraine war that much more likely to happen. Obama considered that move too incendiary.

The Scots song "Auld Lang Syne" literally translates to old long since. American Voices edited by Walt Wolfram and Ben Ward.

First I thought it was a joke, then I just wished that it was. Somewhere in Valhalla, the spirit of Eric the Red is scratching his head in bewilderment.

I read an essay about the Southern double modal. "Sounds of the South" by Guy Bailey and Jan Tillery, in American Voices. There they said: If you want a good book about North American dialects, I recommend it.

And that's not even getting into his actions with regards to Gaza. Trump won by 1.5% or so and received 49.7% of the popular vote, a plurality, not a majority. This was not a landslide victory and I would like to see Trump and the GOP acknowledge that the country is divided rather than trying to rule like a conqueror. Also, the Pentagon has failed seven audits in a row, but do we really think their budget is going to get cut?