I cover mostly military topics here at the LI Blog per my charter but on occasion I cover other topics.

The Washington State ferry system is in tatters.

It continues to get worse barely a week into the new year:

Washington State Ferries needs 17 boats to operate at full capacity, but only 14 are currently in service, forcing reduced schedules on three critical routes as the aging fleet faces mounting mechanical problems.

The troubled start to 2026 began New Year’s Day when a propeller blade broke off the 57-year-old Walla Walla during a Seattle-Bremerton crossing.

The problems continued through the first week of January. On Jan. 2, the Kittitas was pulled from the Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth route after employees discovered damage to an oil seal in the vessel’s engine room. The following day, the Tacoma was taken off the Seattle-Bainbridge run due to an oil tube issue causing high shaft bearing temperatures.

As a professional engineer, the “green energy” crusade has set scientific civilization back by generations due to the reproducibility crisis, rise of scientism and the pursuit of concurrent technology which is the creation of sophisticated vehicles without having the final and tested technology complete. The battery-driven utopitards have done this with vehicles of every kind. We’re most familiar with cars but the disease vector has also affected maritime shipping.

The state of Washington has been on the verge of fiscal implosion thanks to the woketopia cargo cult dominating the cities and the ferry crisis is part and parcel of the nonsense starting to influence ship building. The genius’ at the top of the Democratic dominated Evergreen (how appropriate) state have deferred maintenance on all state ferries and the inevitability of more expensive maintenance as a result of not doing the necessary preventative outfitting is coming home to roost with seven ferries deadlined.

According to the Seattle Times, seven of Washington State Ferries’ 21 vessels are currently out of service, leaving commuters with canceled sailings, reduced schedules, and pandemic-era service levels on critical routes. This crisis was built—slowly, expensively, and predictably—by Democratic leaders who prioritized performative climate signaling and futuristic press releases over the boring but essential work of maintaining and replacing ships that actually run.

For years, Democrats obsessed over battery-powered and hybrid-electric ferries, pouring time and money into experimental conversions while the existing fleet aged into disrepair. The state’s ferries average more than 40 years old. Propellers sheared off, shafts overheated and engines failed. None of this is shocking when hundreds of millions of dollars in maintenance were deferred while politicians chased a green legacy.

Washington State Ferries (WSF) recently experienced issues with its first hybrid-electric ferry, the
M/V Wenatchee, shortly after its conversion, with a temporary motor shutdown in August 2025 linked to unstable control system communication wires, though crews worked to resolve it, and it returned to service in November 2025 after further fixes for a different minor switch issue, highlighting challenges in integrating new electric systems while maintaining reliable service

The Wenatchee conversion is a perfect symbol of the dysfunction. What was pitched as a roughly $50 million, one-year project ballooned to $86 million and dragged on for nearly two years, according to the Seattle Times’ reporting. During that time, the state lost capacity it couldn’t afford to lose. Even now, that hybrid vessel has already spent significant time out of service.

Governors Jay Inslee and Bob Ferguson insist electrification remains the future, with a projected $6.2 billion price tag by 2040. That might be a worthy long-term conversation. But it’s irrelevant when today’s ferries can’t reliably make it across Puget Sound.

So double the time and nearly twice the cost, no one took into account several items: loiter time for recharging the batteries, the seaworthiness and safety of battery technology in salt- and brackish water.

Rantz: Democrats chased green ferries while a third of its fleet fell apart

A president is kidnapped, the government remains, and we’re told it isn’t regime change. We pull back the curtain on what our guest calls “regime changeover,” a strategy that uses spectacle and lawfare to force leverage without admitting occupation. From sanctions that harden national unity to a reworked indictment against Nicolás Maduro that quietly retreats from early cartel claims, we dissect how narratives are built, sold, and then reshaped when facts don’t fit the script.

We get specific about why Venezuela resists the usual playbook. The Bolivarian civil-military structure blunts elite-driven coups, and a hybrid economy makes redistribution politics both urgent and volatile. When sanctions stall, pressure shifts to the shadows: covert action, destabilization, and the threat of a managed civil war. But force carries a heavy price. Without the will to occupy, Washington risks isolating itself across Latin America and the Global South while strengthening alternative alliances. That’s where heavy crude and strategic minerals enter the story—these aren’t just commodities; they’re logistical lifelines for militaries and power systems in a world edging toward multipolar confrontation.

The regional map matters. Cutting fuel flows to Cuba raises the stakes, inviting Russian or Iranian lifelines and reviving Cold War optics—tankers instead of missiles. Meanwhile, the financial track turns sanctions into profit centers, enabling distressed-asset deals and court-enabled seizures that move wealth under the veneer of legality. At home, executive overreach and headline diplomacy make lasting agreements harder, not easier. Durable deals rely on predictability and trust; tweets and tariffs deliver neither. We close with a clear takeaway: if the policy toolkit is limited to pressure and spectacle, the outcome is shrinking leverage, hardened resistance, and a region looking elsewhere for partners.

If this perspective challenges how you’ve seen Venezuela, Cuba, and U.S. foreign policy, share the episode, leave a review, and subscribe so you never miss future deep dives. Your feedback shapes what we dig into next.

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The easiest solution to this is stand the entire military industrial complex down until they fix this.

But that is far too responsible.

The fraud you are seeing in MN, WA and MA is large but the financial mismanagement in the Pentagon is hundeds of billions of dollars and no one ever lose their job or goes to jail. and

The Government Accountability Office conducted the report to assist the Pentagon in meeting its timeline for a clean audit by 2028. DOD has failed every audit since it was legally required to submit to one each year beginning in 2018. In fact, the Pentagon is the only one of 24 federal agencies that has not been able to pass an unmodified financial audit since the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990.

The Pentagon has been skating past accountability for decades.

Examples of more egregious cases of fraud and abuse at the Pentagon — like the $52,000 trash can or the $7,600 coffee maker — have been well-documented over the years. But others are a bit more granular. The new GAO report noted that the Pentagon purchased a machine gun bipod component with subpar manufacturing standards because a vendor fraudulently edited paperwork to reflect a higher manufacturing score. Luckily, engineers caught the deficiency before the bipods entered the battlefield, but the incident could have placed soldiers in harm’s way.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/venezuela-oil/

“You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”

– Ayn Rand

I have said that aircraft carriers are the chariot and crossbow of the 21st century not fit for purpose on the oceans and the tank is certainly a nominee for that notion. Manned tanks are not fit for purpose on the 21st century battlefield. Again, the lack of martial imagination in the Army is breath-taking.

A detailed breakdown of M1E3 program expectation is here.

The inclusion of an auto-loader and the crew reduction from four to three may cause significant issues but the greater issue is that the era of the manned tank is over. Not all auto-loaders are created equal. While it is indeed true that Eastern-style carousel auto-loader have a habit of dramatic failure, the more modern turret bustle auto-loader, used in such tanks as the French Leclerc and Japanese Type 10, is much safer.

With an auto-loader, there are a couple of benefits; first, the door in the armor can be much smaller, and only be the size that’s just big enough for the ammo to pass through. You can also make the armor compartment for the ammo much thicker since you don’t have a large amor door that needs to constantly open and close. This drastically reduces the vulnerability.

The current M1A2 SEPv3 already comes in at close to 78 tons with all of its protective options; add in anything else, it will push past the 80 ton mark.The only way to get the weight down is to reduce the size; by going to an auto-loader and down to a three man crew, they can significantly cut the weight down to under 60 tons, whilst increasing protection.

The Ukraine conflict and the forecasts for the ubiquity of UAVs and robots on the battlefield for the remainder of this century have put the question to ALL manned combat modalities and their efficacy.

The U.S. Army announced in September 2023 that it canceled its planned variant, the M1A2 SEPv4, in favor of an entirely new variant of the Abrams. The new tank was dubbed M1E3, and in December 2025, the Army received the first prototype of the new tank. Gen. Randy George, the chief of staff of the Army, revealed the delivery, which came much sooner than anticipated. The first prototype wasn’t expected to reach the Army until the end of 2026, but Abrams’ manufacturer, General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS), drove its newest tank way past expectations, as the prototype is reportedly 100% complete.

I am impressed they delivered ahead of schedule and maybe they can deliver the remaining order before 2030 but the history is not kind to that prediction.

The M1E3 will likely be lighter than the current model of M1A2, as its growing tonnage reduces the tank’s tactical transportability. In this way, bigger isn’t always better, and the M1E3 might clock in at around 60 tons. The AbramsX weighed 10 tons less than its predecessor, so this seems likely. The tank’s design also included lessons learned from their performance in Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War, so it will likely feature anti-drone defense systems and other advanced means of protecting itself.

The folly of fielding tanks without considering either loyal wing-men (smaller scale unmanned ground combat vehicles) or even the independent deployment of one third scale smaller tank vehicles.

But the defense acquisition system is a self-licking ice cream cone that continues to build twentieth century anachronisms with some 21st century decorations.

https://www.slashgear.com/2063071/us-army-first-m1e3-abrams-tank-prototype-delivered/

A pre-dawn post, a capital in darkness, and a president in cuffs aboard a U.S. ship—what started as a “one-night raid” is already morphing into something far bigger. We unpack how the strike on Venezuela unfolded, why the official story leaves key gaps, and what it means when the White House says, without hesitation, that we’ll “run the country” until a “judicious transition.” If that sounds like regime change and occupation, it’s because that’s exactly how it’s being sold.

We walk through the mechanics of the operation—air defenses knocked out, a citywide blackout, special operators intercepting Maduro before a reinforced bunker—and the uncomfortable questions that raises about access and complicity. Then we pull the legal thread: the Article II claim that troops were inserted first and then “defended” with airstrikes, the decision to bypass Congress entirely, and the attempt to rebrand a cross-border assault as “law enforcement.” War powers aren’t a suggestion, and treating sovereignty like a paperwork issue invites blowback that won’t stop at Venezuela’s borders.

The promises don’t get sturdier from there. “Oil will pay for it” clashes with reality: a battered energy sector, massive capital needs, sabotage risks, and the legitimacy crisis that follows any U.S.-installed authority. We map potential power paths—opposition figures abruptly dismissed, Delcy Rodríguez floated for continuity—and ask the hard question: if negotiation was possible, why bomb first? Along the way, we hit the regional shockwaves, from casual warnings aimed at Cuba and Colombia to the mismatch between cocaine narratives and the fentanyl crisis that actually kills Americans. Expect migration pressure, market risk, and a new precedent great powers will cite when it suits them.

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Happy New Year!

Block 4 in concert with TR-3 (Technology Refresh 3) is the upgrade to solve all the inherent problems of the bird to include its poor design choices from the beginning of this massive failed program (a 2023 Congressional mandate).

According to the GAO, that Block 4 upgrade is delayed until 2031.

It will continue to slow shuffle as it matures from the initial 2019 start for the Block 4 upgrades.

“The program plans to reduce the scope of Block 4 to deliver capabilities to the warfighter at a more predictable pace than in the past.”

The casual reader will be forgiven for possibly glossing over the passage because of its anodyne wording. But the statement is a profound admission that the F-35 will never meet the capability goals set for the program. “Reduce the scope of Block 4” means that program officials are forgoing planned combat capabilities for the jets.

Block 4 is the term to describe ongoing design work for the program. It began in 2019 and was termed as the program’s “modernization” phase. In reality, Block 4 is just a continuation of the program’s initial development process. Officials were unable to complete the F-35’s basic design within the program’s initial budget and schedule. Rather than making that embarrassing admission and requesting more time and money from Congress, Pentagon officials claimed the initial development process was complete (it was not) and they were moving on to “modernization.” What they really did was simply reclassify initial development work with a fancy rebrand.

Dan sums it nicely:

This should be a moment of deep reflection for the entire national security establishment. The F-35 was never going to live up to expectations because its very concept was deeply flawed. Trying to build one jet that could serve as a multi-role aircraft to meet the needs of just a single military branch is a highly risky proposition. When you try to build a single jet to meet the multi-role needs of at least 15 separate militaries, while also being a global jobs program and political patronage scheme, you get a $2 trillion albatross.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/f-35-failure/

Maduro’s capture illustrates what I believe is one of the biggest problems in politics: people frequently treat principles as costumes—worn when convenient, discarded when costly.

Over nearly two decades working in and around politics, I’ve watched the same pattern play out again and again—and today’s events in Venezuela put it on display in neon. The US military carried out strikes in Caracas and captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, flying them to New York in what the administration is framing as a kind of “law enforcement” operation. 

Look, there are plenty of people who never even pretend to have a core set of principles they cling to. They’re utilitarians and technocrats—ruled by polling, vibes, ambition, and career incentives. Fine. At least they’re honest about being wind vanes.

But most people do claim to stand for a consistent set of ideas—constitutional restraint, limited government, “America First,” non-intervention, rule of law, due process, sovereignty, you name it.

The problem is that they’re often inconsistent, especially when the outcome is emotionally satisfying.

Today proved that again. People who claim to champion the Constitution suddenly ignore its restraints on executive power and, when pressed, point to court precedent, congressional statutes, and past presidential deviations as if those things are the Constitution.

“But… the Barbary pirates!”
“But George H.W. Bush removed Noriega in Panama!”
“But the courts said XYZ!”
“But Congress passed some statute in 199-whatever!”

So I’ve asked a simple question, repeatedly, across social media threads today: Where, exactly, is the constitutional provision authorizing the president to invade another country and depose its leader?

The replies come back empty, no constitutional provision cited. They can’t, because it doesn’t exist. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. No “targeted strikes” or anything of the like are separately authorized for the president to execute at his whim.

That’s the whole point of written limits: the text is supposed to bind you. Instead, we get arguments that past presidents did it, and some lawyers said it was okay. This is tantamount to saying “Billy did it, so I thought it was okay for me to do it.” That’s playground logic, not constitutional rigor.

And that’s my point: there is no rigor. There’s only precedent—meaning, prior lawlessness used to justify the next round of lawlessness. The administration itself appears to be leaning on the idea that indictments and “national interests” somehow transform regime change into a lawful “arrest mission.”

Trump was elected in part because people were exhausted by foreign meddling. He was praised (by some of these same voices!) for resisting the interventionist itch. And now he’s kicking up dirt in Venezuela.

“But Venezuelans are happy!” the commenters have repeatedly said. “They’re in the streets celebrating!”

Yes. Sometimes they are. That’s not a serious argument. That’s the-ends-justify-the-means dressed up as compassion—again, playground-level reasoning.

Guess what: Iraqis filled the streets when Saddam was deposed. “Baghdad Celebrates Saddam’s Fall,” read a headline in Voice of America, for an article describing dancing and cheering as thousands poured into the streets. 

Then Iraq spiraled into insurgency, sectarian civil war, mass death, displacement, and the conditions that helped give rise to ISIS.

Libyans filled the streets when Gaddafi fell. So then we got an article titled “Libyans celebrate Gaddafi’s death” in Al Jazeera, describing jubilant crowds and the “end of tyranny.” 

Then Libya fractured into militias and rival governments, becoming a prolonged civil conflict and a humanitarian disaster.

I could go on. You get the pattern.

Here’s the deeper point that people keep refusing to learn: if your principles only apply when they’re easy, you don’t have principles… you have preferences. And preferences make terrible guardrails for state power.

Every time you cheer an exception, you’re not just celebrating a moment… you’re authoring a precedent. You’re excusing the next guy, in any political party, and for any reason, to do it too.

If you’re applauding unilateral regime change today because the target is a villain, you’re also applauding unilateral regime change tomorrow when the target is someone you don’t want touched. Power doesn’t care about your intentions (or your preferences). It cares about the permission slip we seemingly always give it.

To be clear: Maduro is no hero. He’s a tyrant who has presided over ruin and repression. But the question isn’t whether Maduro is bad (he obviously is). The question is whether we are governed by law or by appetite.

Because “he’s bad” is not a constitutional argument, nor is “Venezuelans are happy and freer.” It’s the (fake) argument every president uses when he wants to do something he has already decided to do.

And this is why presidents since Washington have gotten away with exceeding constitutional limits: because the public trains them to. They learn that violating restraints can spark national pride, satisfy a thirst for vengeance, and earn adoration from people who swear they oppose unchecked power—right up until it produces an outcome they like.

You want a country of laws? Then act like law matters when it’s inconvenient.

Stop treating the Constitution as a decoration.
Stop citing precedent as if it were permission.
Stop excusing today’s overreach because you hate today’s target.

Because the bill always comes due, and the payment is usually made by people who never voted for the war, never authorized the mission, and never wanted their country turned into the kind of thing it once claimed to oppose.

So yes, we can answer James Madison’s question: “Will it be sufficient… to trust to these parchment barriers (i.e., the Constitution) against the encroaching spirit of power?” Obviously not. Parchment only restrains power when the people treat it as a leash—not a suggestion. When half the country cheers the leash getting snapped because their guy did it to their enemy, the paper might as well not exist. And that’s the cycle we’ve long been in.

Yes, Venezuela may be a little freer, for now. But listen to the triumphalism in Trump’s announcement. In the same breath as announcing Maduro’s capture, he talked about sending in “our very large United States oil companies,” and about the U.S. “running” Venezuela’s government “until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition.”

This is the raw material of unintended consequences: blowback, corruption, and the kind of protracted entanglement that turns “just this once” into the next twenty years.

Count me out. I’ve seen this story before, and I don’t like how it ends.