A story in three parts:

I’m getting a sinking feeling that the bipartisan mobilization of resources towards anti-immigrant mechanisms, specially in the past few years, is the result of the higher-ups laying the groundwork to deal with the aftermath of an invasion of Venezuela, or of military operations against Latin America in general.

Only the healthcare sector is really growing, but that only growth sector will probably be hurt by Medicare and Medicaid cuts that start 2026 and really go into effect early 2027. But healthcare is expensive, so it pushes up the GDP number. It will be interesting how these trends develop.

The unemployment rate for 16-24 year-olds is now at 10.5%.

I’ll be taking a break from the news mega for a while, I have been having some stress related heart problems recently. I will still be online on hexbear do net and on blorptube, probably commenting and chatting with other users. So if I don’t show up here for a while, that’s the reason.

New decision made to disarm Hezbollah and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon

“The Cabinet reviewed the army’s plan and welcomed it.

The Cabinet decided to keep the army command’s disarmament plan and its deliberations confidential.

The army command will submit a monthly report to the Cabinet on the disarmament plan.”

Information Minister Paul Morcos

https://t.me/alakhbar_english/29313

The Lebanese government has made their decision, now let them enforce it

not sure if this has been posted here yet but it’s from yesterday. somebody at the DOJ got catfished by someone working for James O’Keefe and talked about the epstein case on their first date. ever the peak of professionalism, an iphone notes apology screenshot was posted directly to the DOJ’s twitter account https://xcancel.com/TheJusticeDept/status/1963635111112446449#m

ryan routh, the NAFO guy who tried to kill trump at his golf course last year, is representing himself in court (has anyone ever won a major case by representing themselves?). he challenged trump to a trial by combat, or golf: “I think a beatdown session would be more fun for everyone; give me shackles and cuffs and let the old fat man give it his worst” … “a round of golf with the racist pig, he wins he can execute me, I win I get his job (sorry hillbilly vance)”. he has also volunteered himself as part of a prisoner swap with China, Iran, North Korea or Hamas recently https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/would-be-assassin-ryan-wesley-routh-challenges-trump-to-golf-game-in-bizarre-court-filing-he-wins-he-can-execute-me/ar-AA1LKkhd

NYT reports that in 2019, trump sent navy seals into north korea to try and place bugs; they got caught by a boat of fishermen basically as soon as they made landfall and slaughtered them https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/05/politics/north-korea-navy-seal-mission-nyt

there is some rotating clowns situation in the echelons of the so called labour party, everybody gets reassigned (aside from sturmer).

https://t.me/milinfolive/155994

Video of the armed(?) Venezuelan F-16’s doing a flyover of encroaching US warships.

What strikes me is that the US could have easily shot them down and gotten away with it by saying they felt threatened. But it proves that Venezuela has high ranking soldiers willing to stand up and fight against overwhelming odds.

Bond yields of sovereign bonds (short or long term, it’s more obvious with short term bonds) are mainly driven by expectation of future central bank short term rates.

Reuters: Trump says India and Russia appear “lost” to “deepest, darkest China”

What’s the play here? I refuse to believe that JDPON Don is giving up India unilaterally and the US foreign policy blob is powerless.

Stocks are soaring following a bad jobs report - because everyone believes this forces the Fed to cut interest rates. Tesla is especially doing well on news that the Tesla BoD proposes to offer a huge 10-year bonus deal to Elon Musk, dilute the Tesla shareholders and offers to invest in Elon Musk’s xAI (because xAI is burning cash fast). So good news all around, I guess?

Full-time jobs: -357K

Part-time jobs: +597K

this is a bit older, but I came across it while I was looking at other stuff https://archive.ph/gdrlp

Lack Of Hardened Aircraft Shelters Leaves U.S. Airbases Vulnerable To China New Report Warns

China is already massively outpacing the U.S. military in new hardened aircraft shelter and other airbase construction. A new independent report says that U.S. airbases have been left worryingly vulnerable, especially in the Indo-Pacific region, by a lack of investment in new hardened aircraft shelters, or even unhardened ones. In contrast, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has more than doubled its total number of hardened and unhardened aircraft shelters in the past 15 years or so, along with a major expansion of other airbase infrastructure. … “The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has consistently expressed concern regarding threats to airfields in the Indo-Pacific, and military analyses of potential conflicts involving China and the United States demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of US aircraft losses would likely occur on the ground at airfields (and that the losses could be ruinous),” the report says in its executive summary. “But the U.S. military has devoted relatively little attention, and few resources, to countering these threats compared to developing modern aircraft.”

By the report’s accounting, the U.S. military has added two hardened aircraft shelters (HAS) and 41 of what it refers to as “unhardened individual aircraft shelters (IASs),” at airbases within 1,000 miles of the Taiwan Strait since the early 2010s. Expansion of those same facilities has been otherwise limited, with the addition of only one runway, one major taxiway, and 17% more ramp area overall. “Since the early 2010s, the PLA has more than doubled its hardened aircraft shelters (HASs) and unhardened individual aircraft shelters (IASs) at military airfields, giving China more than 3,000 total aircraft shelters — not including civil or commercial airfields,” the new report from Hudson says. “This constitutes enough shelters to house and hide the vast majority of China’s combat aircraft. China has also added 20 runways and more than 40 runway-length taxiways, and increased its ramp area nationwide by almost 75 percent.”

“In fact, by our calculations, the amount of concrete used by China to improve the resilience of its air base network could pave a four-lane inter-state highway from Washington, D.C., to Chicago[, Illinois],” it continues. “As a result, China now has 134 air bases within 1,000 nautical miles of the Taiwan Strait — airfields that boast more than 650 HASs and almost 2,000 non-hardened IASs.”

explaining scale of construction to an American: “imagine a really big highway…”

The report does acknowledge that IASs do not provide anywhere near the same level of protection as true HASs, which are costlier. It also makes clear that shelters, hardened or otherwise, are just one part of a larger base defense equation. However, its authors argue that robust passive defenses are the most cost-effective single measure that can be taken to provide critical added resiliency against attacks and help provide a key foundation for other concepts of operations. Hudson’s report estimates that buying just one fewer B-21 every year for the next five years could free up enough funds to construct 100 HASs. A similar reduction in purchases of F-15EXs or F-35As could yield the resources required to build 20 more HASs annually. … “IASs may also make it more difficult to determine the number and types of aircraft at a base, potentially masking a pre-conflict surge of aircraft, and make both strike planning and post-strike damage assessment more challenging.” … As TWZ highlighted in the past, the ability to better shield planes exposed on the flight line from even more limited threats like shrapnel, including that produced by relatively small warheads on kamikaze drones and cluster munitions, is still very valuable. By targeting aircraft sitting out in the open, an adversary could well prevent them from ever entering the fight, even with limited attacks, such as ones involving weaponized commercial drones. … Furthermore, **while “passive defenses may seem at odds with a predominantly expeditionary U.S. approach to warfare … unless U.S. forces can defend airfields at home and abroad, they will be unable to support US and allied interests in a conflict.” As illustrated below, Hudson’s report assesses that it could take just 10 missiles with warheads capable of scattering cluster munitions across an area with a 450-foot diameter to neutralize all exposed aircraft on the ground and fuel storage at key airbases like Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan, Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, or Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

The report also highlights the ever-growing threat posed by drones, and how uncrewed systems and missiles could threaten airbases within the continental United States, as well as overseas. For years now, TWZ has been sounding the alarm on these issues, especially when it comes to the dangers of increasingly more capable drones that are steadily proliferating globally, and noting the continued lag on the part of the U.S. military in addressing them. “Recent Air Force requests for information about ‘enclosures to defend F-15Es from drone attacks’ at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base and F-22 jets at Langley Air Force Base suggest the Air Force is starting to consider the threat more seriously,” Hudson’s report notes, directly citing some of TWZ‘s past reporting. “However, it is again pursuing low-cost solutions (such as canvassing existing open-air shelters or applying nets), which counter-measures such as shaped charges can easily overcome, rather [than] building proper HASs.” Still unexplained drone incursions over Langley that continued for several weeks in December 2023, which TWZ was first to report, became a particular watershed moment for the discourse around drone threats, including to domestic U.S. military bases.

…

As already noted, the report from Hudson stresses that HASs and other infrastructure improvements are not a ‘silver bullet’ solution. It also includes two other recommended lines of effort centered on a potential conflict with China in the Pacific. The report also calls for increasing the ability of U.S. forces to similarly hold Chinese bases and other critical infrastructure, including facilities deep inside the country, at risk. That, among other things, will require increasing the production and stockpiling of strike munitions, and the development of types that are cheaper and easier to produce at scale. … How the U.S. Air Force and the rest of the U.S. military might actually proceed, especially when it comes to base infrastructure, remains to be seen. Last month, the Air Force notably released a new base modernization strategy that included a focus area on increased resiliency and that pointedly said that the service’s facilities “can no longer be considered a sanctuary.” However, it did not explicitly mention HASs or similar passive defensive measures, last month. Air Force officials have also pushed back on the value of more extensive physical hardening in the past. “I’m not a big fan of hardening infrastructure,” Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, then head of Pacific Air Forces, the top Air Force command for that region, said at a roundtable at the 2023 Air and Space Forces Association symposium. “The reason is because of the advent of precision-guided weapons … you saw what we did to the Iraqi Air Force and their hardened aircraft shelters. They’re not so hard when you put a 2,000-pound bomb right through the roof.”

Hudson’s report includes an entire section rebutting arguments like Wilsbach’s, including highlighting how physical hardening would force the PLA to expend more and better weapons in attacks on airbases to try to ensure success. … Lengthy traditional contracting processes and concerns about future U.S. defense budgets, together with competing priorities, present additional issues. The Air Force has been increasingly warning about the affordability of various new advanced aircraft and other modernization efforts, including plans for a new sixth-generation stealth combat jet, Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones, and new stealthy tankers, for months now. … “To comprehensively harden airfields, the DoD [Department of Defense] will need to shift from treating each construction project individually to conducting a campaign of construction,” Hudson’s report says. “When facing similar challenges in the past, the DoD addressed them, building 373 HASs in Vietnam over a three-year period and roughly 1,000 HASs in Europe in the 1980s. With decisive action, the DoD can address this problem.” In the meantime, while the debate in the United States about the value of HASs and other physical defenses continues, China is vastly outpacing the U.S. military in this regard and other countries are also taking note.

US deploying 10 fighter jets (F-35) to Puerto Rico for drug cartel fight - Reuters

WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. has ordered the deployment of 10 F-35 fighter jets to a Puerto Rico airfield to conduct operations against drug cartels, two sources briefed on the matter said, in a move likely to further inflame tensions in the region.

The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the 10 fighter jets are being sent to conduct operations against designated narco-terrorist organizations operating in the southern Caribbean. The planes should arrive in the area by late next week, they said.

Deploying suspected bombers, and now F-35s to fight the cartels? Sure…

If these are the F-35B variant, they are capable of short take off and landings, and can operate from the USS Iwo Jima assault ship, which currently has AV-8B Harrier Plus aircraft.