Rick von Sloneker

tall, rich, good looking, stupid, conceited, a bully, liar, drunk and thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic. in short, highly attractive to women

[Saronic @Saronic]

Today, we're proud to announce the future home of Port Alpha: Brownsville, Texas.

Our next-generation shipyard moves from vision to reality through a planned investment of more than $3 billion to establish one of the world's most advanced shipyards, built for software-defined shipbuilding and autonomous maritime systems.

Port Alpha is expected to generate more than $160 billion in regional economic impact for Cameron County and $264.5 billion for the State of Texas, while creating up to 10,000 direct jobs — which makes it one of the largest economic development projects in modern Texas history.

More than a shipyard, Port Alpha represents a new model for American shipbuilding — combining advanced manufacturing, software-defined production, and autonomy at unprecedented scale. We're proud to continue building in Texas.

Learn more: https://t.co/02rXoR9vR4

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

@BallDiamondBall thank you, pedantic John Lennon

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

The hysteria provoked by this thread rings of a 30 y/o that’s just been kicked off his parents’ phone plan.

I never fully appreciated the extent to which European “elites” felt genuinely entitled to U.S. subsidy. It’s astonishing.

And, though I wish it didn’t, the outcry proves Bridge right in so many ways.

[Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby @USWPColby]

There is a great deal of hubbub about a collective “middle powers”strategy these days.

At DoW, we are not concerned that this is a serious possibility. Rather, we are more concerned that a few allies and partners will *think it is* and waste valuable time, money, and political capital on a distraction. 1/

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

@grok how do I block all Canadians from my timeline

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

@f18husky 🤦‍♂️

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

@f18husky This will blow your mind, but if I pay for your security, that’s a subsidy.

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

“We’ll be over here, building the cheap fast stuff that actually wins wars, and checking the till twice.”

This sounds delightful and you would find eager customers in the DoD for that kit.

Unfortunately, it is absolute fantasy. A borderline schizophrenic level of wishful thinking. European arms are similarly expensive and profoundly less capable than their American counterparts.

It also reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of high-end warfare. A fighter that is 95% as capable as the F-35 is not worth 95% of its price. If that 5% gap includes susceptibility to adversary countermeasures — and it does — it is worth closer to 0% of the superior platform.

The F-35 is a cataclysmic debacle and nonetheless peerless in its class. I bet my wallet that the 6th gen program will also be a disaster that produces a peerless platform. Integrating a gazillion bleeding edge technologies into a supersonic supercomputer is always going to be impossible. The U.S. will continue to be the closest to getting it right.

“Swarms” are broadly different and we’re all learning that discipline in real time. The Ukrainians seem to be in the lead, but rest assured that Europe is not in the race.

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

@APHClarkson no sorry that’s literally the point we need to rebuild industrial capacity

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

@AngelicaOung no sorry we’ve been the bloodbag

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

@saloman12 @Scotland9991 @davidfrum @USWPColby If we’re just going to reduce everything to a one-liner, then I’ll say:

For a miser, every expense is a shakedown.

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

I forgot to add: your empire jab is the perfect illustration of what you fail to understand. We don’t want an empire. We want collective security. Exactly as Bridge says, we can and will be the backbone of that cooperation due to geography and demography and resources and other things that make us more powerful than you, and that’s good for us. But we don’t want to you to be vassals of our “empire.” We want you to be big boys who can take care of yourselves. And you can come buy your technology and weapons and services from us with your hard-earned money!

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

@saloman12 @Scotland9991 @davidfrum @USWPColby Please read or re-read the first sentence of my comment. There are only two.

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

1. I hate to burst your bubble but the fairy tale of the neoliberal cornucopia is long dead. Zoom out — it’s left us with a neutered industrial base, an authoritarian adversary that has exploited its way to peer power, and a global security/aid bill in place of your utopian welfare state. Those woes have been masked by the extraordinary triumphs (and occasional luck) of American technological innovation, but those were never guaranteed, nor were they produced by tariff-free imports of Irish beef or Temu skirts.

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

Jeff, with respect to playing fast and loose with commitments, I agree with you in spirit — but that’s tangential to the subject of “squeezing” allies.

I’m also compelled to note that no nation has been more guilty of free-ridership than Canada. North America security without Canada’s cooperation would look a lot like…North American security today.

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

1. Different story? If you mean to say that Chinese propaganda focuses on the “rising vs. established power” narrative rather than the Delian League component…that’s not the correction you think it is. The latter is a fundamental and inextricable part of the former. Your 280-character version of the story is, alas, incomplete.

Points 2 and 3 are irrelevant and silly in equal parts.

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

On this day in 1944, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. died in his sleep in a stone farmhouse in Normandy. He was 56 years old, and he had spent almost his entire adult life trying to be worthy of a famous last name.

He was the eldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt. In the First World War he went to France and was gassed and badly wounded at Soissons leading his men. That same summer his younger brother Quentin, a pilot, was shot down and killed over France. Ted came home with lungs and a leg that never fully recovered, and before he even left Europe he helped found the American Legion so that ordinary soldiers would have someone looking out for them.

Between the wars he did almost everything. Governor of Puerto Rico. Governor General of the Philippines. Businessman, explorer, writer. He could have spent the Second World War safe behind a desk. Instead, at 54, arthritic and walking with a cane, he talked his way back into uniform and into combat.

By 1943 he was fighting in North Africa and Sicily under Terry Allen, and their loose, unpolished, soldier-first style rubbed General Patton the wrong way. Patton had them both relieved of command. Roosevelt didn't sulk. He asked for another job, any job, as long as it kept him near the fighting. They made him assistant commander of the 4th Infantry Division.

Then came D-Day. He hid a heart condition from the Army doctors. He wrote to his commander three separate times, in writing, begging to go in with the very first wave rather than watch from a ship. He was the only general to land in the first wave on any beach that morning, the oldest man in the invasion, walking through machine gun fire with a cane in one hand and a pistol in the other.

The boats came in a mile off course. Officers froze. Roosevelt limped up and down the beach under fire, studied the ground, and said, "We'll start the war from right here." Then he spent the morning waving men forward and sorting out the chaos so calmly that terrified 20 year olds looked at this old man with a cane and decided that if he wasn't scared, they wouldn't be either.

His son Quentin, named for the uncle killed in the last war, landed at Omaha Beach the same morning. They were the only father and son to come ashore together on D-Day.

He died a month later. A heart attack in his sleep. And here is the part that gets me. On the very day he died, the orders had just come through promoting him to major general and giving him his own division. He never saw the paperwork. He never knew he'd earned the Medal of Honor either.

At his funeral his pallbearers were seven of the most famous generals of the war, Bradley, Hodges, Collins, Barton, Huebner, and George Patton. The same Patton who had fired him. Patton wrote in his diary that Roosevelt was one of the bravest men he had ever known.

Years later Omar Bradley was asked to name the single most heroic thing he witnessed in all of World War II. He didn't pause. He said, "Ted Roosevelt on Utah Beach."

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

@aswren My money is on Michael Anton.

[Rick von Sloneker @rickVonSlon]

@MarkSanford Applying to be your Advisor for Latin American Affairs

[Michael Nicoletos @mnicoletos]

FT headline: Chinese government bonds emerge as the 'lone war haven' amid the Iran conflict and global debt sell-off?

For a publication long regarded as a gold standard in financial journalism, this narrative feels more like sensationalism than sober analysis.

A few realities worth noting:

1) Foreign investors still face tightly restricted access to China’s bond market. Capital controls remain a material barrier to entry, and, crucially, to timely repatriation when needed.

2) China’s oil import dependence hovers around 70 %. Claims of immunity to global energy price spikes, therefore, deserve far more scrutiny than the article provides.

3) The onshore bond market operates with limited transparency and heavy government influence over data and pricing, hardly the neutral haven portrayed. At the same time, China is navigating a property slump, weak consumption, deflationary pressures and a lowered growth target. Portraying it as a beacon of stability overlooks these well-documented headwinds and the genuine risk of stagflation.

When a specialist outlet presents such a selective picture, readers are entitled to ask: what incentives are shaping this framing?

#ChinaBonds #FixedIncome #FinancialReporting #China

https://t.co/HYtyBcuk0F