Darrin Buxman

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@therealbuni To be honest, that dog probably knows more about soccer than I do, but I'm enjoying the World Cup nevertheless.

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@qaqawani1 @HomerPavlos That’s a valid point. Although what happened when the city fell was far from sacred.

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@EchoesofWarYT Johnny Horton did a banger song about him in the 60s I think.

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@SabresClassics Still better return than the Avs got for Byram.

[Tom Elliott @tomselliott]

How many people has Elon Musk personally murdered via his work helping defund USAID? I've run the numbers.

USAID, as people outside of CNN's viewership already know, operates largely as a CIA cutout, placing assets on the ground in countries where the U.S. govt is intervening politically.

USAID was instrumental is helping seed the following revolutions/coup d'états/civil wars:

Serbia — Bulldozer Revolution (Oct. 2000)

Venezuela — coup attempt + sustained OTI funding (April 2002)

Georgia — Rose Revolution (Nov. 2003)

Ukraine — Orange Revolution (2004)

Haiti — Ouster of Aristide (Feb. 2004)

Lebanon — Cedar Revolution (2005)

Belarus — opposition funding, "Jeans Revolution" and after — attempted, failed (2006)

Honduras — Coup against Zelaya (Jun. 2009)

Cuba — ZunZuneo / "Cuban Twitter" — attempted, failed (2010–12)

Tunisia — "Arab Spring" (2011)

Egypt — "Arab Spring" (2011–12)

Ukraine — Euromaidan / Revolution of Dignity (2014)

Bolivia — anti-Morales funding; 2013 expulsion; 2019 ouster

Kyrgyzstan — Tulip Revolution (March 2005)

Without U.S. intervention, it's hard to see how any of these would have gotten off the ground. Some back-of-the-envelope math on these conflicts' bodycount:

Venezuela (2002): 19

Haiti (2004): ~300

Maidan event (2014): ~100+ killed.

Bolivia (2019): 36

Donbas war (2014–2022): 14,200–14,400 military & civilian deaths.

Ukraine full-scale war (2022–present), deaths, both sides, mil + civ: roughly 350,000–500,000 killed.

So far we're up to somewhere north of 365,000 deaths, more likely north of 500K.

What else do we have?

USAID also helped fund poppy (heroin) farmers in Afghanistan. Unfortunately I haven't seen estimates of how many have died as a result of this taxpayer funded drug dealing, but I'm assuming they're not small numbers.

USAID also worked with groups sexually abusing/trafficking children in Kenya (2021), and the Central African Republic (2013).

Much earlier, during Vietnam, USAID helped the CIA arm & feed Hmong guerrillas fighting communist forces (not the worst thing). USAID also helped the Hmong militia & other warlords smuggle opium (a far less forgivable thing).

While the final tally is hard to properly calculate, if past is predicate, in helping shutdown USAID, @elonmusk could be saving hundreds of thousands of lives, thousands of African children, & millions of people around the world susceptible to opiate addiction.

Get this man a Peace Prize, @NobelPrize

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@420roundabout Brits conquered the world for the spice trade and decided to use none of them in their food.

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@DouglasnTexas @NoHolyScripture @GadSaad Although in their defense, the Mafia usually did provide protection in exchange for the money. Government, not so much...

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@TolkienWonder People today can’t get past the first part where he actually reads the book.

[Murray Rothbard @MurraySuggests]

The Iranian navy, which has been destroyed eight times, has apparently closed the Strait of Hormuz again, because the United States, for the seventh time, won the war that wasn’t a war, so now the United States has to open the Strait of Hormuz that was already open before the not-war began.

The not-war began because Iran had uranium that was totally, completely, beautifully obliterated, so they can’t build the nuclear bomb they weren’t building, which is why the United States had to start the not-war it definitely didn’t start.

Now the United States, which has nuclear weapons, is threatening to use nuclear weapons to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, because nuclear weapons are far too dangerous for countries with nuclear weapons to allow other countries to have.

If the United States saw the United States doing what the United States does in other countries, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@dom_lucre Given the menu of options, this is cool by me. Makes people happy, no more unhealthy than a Starbucks Frappuccino, and I assume the government doesn't collect any tax revenue from it.

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

This is a thousand times worse than George Floyd. They put an innocent man in cuffs and left him to bleed to death on the ground because he’s white. Unconscionable. Outrageous.

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@MattWalshBlog What about a Latrine Digger movie? You can't argue that WWII would not have quickly become a literal shitshow without those guys.

[Tony Seruga @TonySeruga]

🎯 Deep Dive: The Quiet Coup Inside the NDAA

The Responsible Statecraft piece has put its finger on something genuinely significant — and the fact that this is happening inside a must-pass $1.15 trillion defense bill, buried at Section 224, tells you everything about how the permanent national security apparatus operates when it wants to avoid a public fight.

🏗️ What Section 224 Actually Does

This isn’t a tweak. Section 224 — titled the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative” — is a structural rewiring of the U.S.-Israel military relationship.

The provision authorizes $150 million annually from FY2027 through FY2029, but the money is almost beside the point. What matters is the architecture it builds:

- Bilateral R&D across AI, quantum computing, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, counter-drone systems, and missile defense

- Co-production and joint ventures with Israeli defense firms on U.S. soil

- Licensing agreements that embed Israeli-origin intellectual property into Pentagon programs of record

- “Network integration” and “data fusion” — which means U.S. military data flowing into Israeli systems and vice versa

- Pathways from R&D straight into procurement, bypassing the normal foreign aid oversight channels

The key phrase in the legislative text: technologies are to be identified for “integration into United States systems and programs of record.” That’s not foreign aid. That’s making Israeli defense tech a backbone of the U.S. military.

🔄 The Strategic Shift: From Aid to Embedded Infrastructure

The Quincy Institute’s Steven Simon has been tracking this for months. His brief, The Disappearing Aid Check, lays out exactly what’s happening — and it’s more sophisticated than most people realize.

The current model: Israel receives Foreign Military Financing (FMF) through the State Department, voted on annually by Congress. It's visible. It's politically accountable. People can argue about it.

The new model: Phase out FMF grants and replace them with Pentagon procurement accounts, industrial partnerships, and sustainment pipelines. Same money, different door — one with vastly less transparency.

The logic, as Simon documents, is being sold under an “America First” framing: this isn’t a handout to Israel, it’s an investment in American military readiness, industrial capacity, and jobs. Israeli co-production facilities in Mississippi and Arkansas become political leverage — members of Congress protect the jobs in their districts, and the relationship becomes structurally impossible to unwind.

This is the same playbook the military-industrial complex always uses: distribute the subcontracts across as many congressional districts as possible so no one dares vote against the program. Now they’re doing it with a foreign country’s defense sector.

🕳️ The Transparency Problem

The shift from State Department-administered FMF to Pentagon procurement is the move that should alarm anyone who cares about accountability.

Under the FMF model:

- Congress votes on the aid package publicly
- The State Department provides human rights certifications
- There’s diplomatic oversight and policy conditionality
- Public debate is possible

Under the Pentagon procurement model:

- Funding moves through budget justification documents and program element descriptions
- Oversight is limited to “cost, readiness, and capability” — bureaucratic criteria
- The relationship gets evaluated like any other weapons program, not as a strategic political commitment
- No diplomatic strings attached

As the Responsible Statecraft piece notes, this would give Israel “a higher level of military-industrial integration than the U.S. has with any other country in the world” — including NATO allies. Not even the Five Eyes partners have this kind of embedded access to U.S. defense procurement.

🧬 The Legislative Genealogy

This didn’t come out of nowhere. H.R. 7540 (Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-TX) and S. 3855 (Sen. Ted Budd, R-NC) were introduced as standalone bills in February 2026 with nearly identical language. When a standalone passage looked difficult, the provisions got folded into the NDAA — the classic maneuver for legislation that can’t survive public scrutiny on its own.

The JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security of America) influence is unmistakable. Their “Partners in Production” report explicitly recommended deeper industrial integration and the addition of Israel to the U.S. National Technology and Industrial Base (NTIB). The FY2026 NDAA had already directed DoD to establish a working group to assess exactly that. Section 224 is the next logical step — and JINSA’s fingerprints are all over it.

⚠️ Why This Matters More Than the Dollar Figure

$150 million a year is a rounding error in a $1.15 trillion defense bill. But the institutional architecture this creates is permanent.

Once Israeli firms are embedded in U.S. supply chains, once Israeli-origin IP is inside Pentagon programs of record, once U.S. and Israeli military data networks are fused — disentanglement becomes economically and institutionally impossible. You can’t just stop the aid check. You’d have to rip apart procurement programs, break contracts, and rebuild supply chains.

That’s the point. This is designed to make the relationship irreversible — at precisely the moment when a growing number of Americans are questioning unconditional support for Israel’s actions in the region.

The traditional Israel lobby works through campaign contributions and media influence. This is more sophisticated: it works through the defense procurement bureaucracy itself, creating material interests that guarantee political support regardless of public opinion.

🗳️ What Happens Next

The House Armed Services Committee markup is scheduled for June 4, 2026. After that, the bill moves to the full House, then reconciliation with the Senate version.

Section 224 is currently in the base text — meaning it was put there by committee leadership before amendments or broader debate. That’s how the most consequential provisions get through: bury them in the chairman’s mark, count on the must-pass nature of the NDAA, and dare anyone to hold up the entire defense budget over one section.

Members who want to stop this have a narrow window: force a floor amendment to strike Section 224, or demand recorded votes that put colleagues on the record supporting the fusion of U.S. and Israeli militaries. The question is whether anyone has the stomach for that fight when the pro-Israel apparatus in both parties remains largely unchallenged.

The Responsible Statecraft piece is right to flag this. The quiet ones are always the ones that matter most.

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

A liberal reporter felt sorry for the prisoners in Bukele’s super prison CECOT in El Salvador so they made him watch a video of what the prisoners dis to end up there.

He quickly changed his mind…

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@DarrenMcCarty4 As an Avs fan I seriously hated you in the 90s but I’ve really come to respect you as time has gone by. You and Claude were epic warriors who were key elements of the most iconic rivalry in the past fifty years. Thanks for who you were then and who you are now.

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@FFT1776 @SaltyGoat17 Wildlife Expert here: It’s called a “Paddington Bear.”

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@statmuse

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

Most coaches with the roster he's been given wouldn't survive back to back early playoff exits to the Kraken and the Stars. If they get steam rolled by the Knights, the Avs can't just stick to the status quo. Their window is closing and they've traded future stars like Cal Ritchie for win now elements like Brock Nelson (a playoff ghost).

[Darrin Buxman @DbuxCo]

@VBogenholm @dom_lucre But this was before social media and you probably didn't mog your steer like a psychopath.