Alaskaball

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An Anchorage fentanyl activist told the president the drug should be classified as a WMD. Now it is.

https://archive.is/p6otA

When Sandy Snodgrass visited the White House this month, she was there to celebrate the signing of new fentanyl education legislation named after her son Bruce, who died from the drug in an Anchorage parking lot at the age of 22.

In the Oval Office, the activist shook hands, posed for photos and showed President Donald Trump a picture of her son smiling by an Alaska glacial lake.

But that wasn’t all that happened. During a brief exchange with the president, Snodgrass said she mentioned her next goal: Getting fentanyl classified as a weapon of mass destruction.

Two weeks later, Trump did just that.

“You can’t make this s--t up,” Snodgrass said by phone Wednesday from her home in Anchorage.

On Dec. 15, in an executive order, Trump declared fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction, putting the opioid alongside nuclear bombs, chemical weapons and biological agents on the federal government’s list of substances capable of causing widespread human devastation.

Experts say the practical impact of such a designation still remains to be seen. Coming amid the Trump administration’s controversial military strikes on suspected drug trafficking boats, it could be used as legal justification for further military intervention, with cartels labeled as terrorist organizations and fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

Snodgrass, a clinical psychologist in Anchorage who has devoted herself to lobbying for fentanyl awareness and harsher penalties for drug dealers and traffickers since her son’s 2022 death, says she doesn’t think she alone inspired the president to declare a narcotic a weapon of mass destruction.

But the series of events this month do suggest she may have had an impact. At the Oval Office bill signing event, Snodgrass said, she told Trump she hoped to see the classification happen.

“I said, ‘President Trump, the next thing in the fight against fentanyl is to declare fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction,’” Snodgrass said. “He looked up at me and he said, ‘That’s a good idea. Why haven’t we done that?’”

Then, she said, Trump “raised his arm, pointed to his (staffer), and said ‘Done, done.’”

Snodgrass said she was glad to see the president’s apparent interest. The next day, she got an email from White House staff asking for a copy of a short policy memo her 23-year-old niece had helped write on the subject.

In the email, which Snodgrass shared with the Daily News, she was told that “the President asked for it directly!”

The following day, she was back at the White House for a meeting, in which she says high-level officials including the administration’s drug czar and a representative from the office of Vice President J.D. Vance attended.

“They asked us questions about ... why fentanyl should be a weapon of mass destruction,” she said. “I did my best to answer the questions.”

The idea of classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction is not new. Lawmakers have floated the idea, and a bipartisan group of attorneys general pressured the Biden administration unsuccessfully for the designation.

When approached with questions about the role Snodgrass played, White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson initially sent a Daily News reporter an email apparently meant for a colleague within the press office.

The response questioned whether the White House should ignore the questions posed by the Daily News, with Jackson saying she didn’t want to give Snodgrass credit or “dunk on” her, a term usually used to mean publicly embarrass.

Asked again about any role Snodgrass played in Trump’s executive order, the White House released a statement that did not mention Snodgrass and asserted the Daily News was “using unauthorized internal team communications discussing a response to this inquiry” by reporting Jackson’s initial reply.

“President Trump did this for the hundreds of thousands of Americans impacted by fentanyl, many of whom he has met over the years. He has long cared about addressing the scourge of fentanyl and constantly receives input from a variety of individuals on which policies can most effectively address this issue,” the statement said. “President Trump will not rest until no more innocent lives are lost to fentanyl.”

Snodgrass said that while she may not have originated the idea, she thinks her exchange with the president in the Oval Office put it at the forefront of Trump’s mind.

“It really was the right place, right time, right person,” she said.

https://youtu.be/R_EOLqhh2DU

Former President Barack Obama told House Democrats at an event on Sunday in Los Angeles that as they focus on trying to win control of the House of Representatives, they should not get caught up in ideological differences within the party and can "sort through" them later, according to excerpts of his comments provided to ABC News.

"STOP ASKING QUESTIONS AND HELP US TAKE THE THRONE, YOU FILTHY SERFS!"

Ideological arguments within the Democratic Party between its progressive and moderate wings came into sharp focus during 2025’s key elections -- particularly in New York City, as Democrats debated over the candidacy of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. This past year, Obama campaigned on the ground for the Democratic Party’s Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial candidates and spoke with Mamdani ahead of Election Day.

The ideological argument in question is actually having the spinal fortitude to have a fucking ideology in the first place

The party has also been divided over how to handle government funding and the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies. Eight Senators who caucus with Democrats voted in November to end a government shutdown without an extension of the subsidies, sparking criticism from other Democrats who felt they should not have voted to reopen the government without an extension. House Democrats have since shown a largely united front, signing onto a discharge petition led by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to force a vote on extending the subsidies for three years.

Translation: the Democrats stand united on issues concerning you until it comes time to actually stand up for you. Then they're as united as the fluffy dandelion seeds on the head of a dandelion flower before being hit by a mild breeze.

Obama told the lawmakers to "focus" on winning back the Republican-controlled House in the 2026 midterm elections, indicating that after that the party could work more through those ideological divisions.

Focus on taking power so you can sit on your hands and do nothing, eat shit again for doing nothing, then repeat step one. Don't question the system.

"Because I promise, when that gets done, we have enormous talent, and we are then going to be in a position, as the next presidential campaign ramps up, to sort through some of the differences," Obama said, according to excerpts of his remarks obtained by ABC News.

Just wait for the fascists to get voted out of office then we'll have a national referendum on possibly increasing ACA subsidies by either a bold 0.0001% or a modest 0.00001%.

Obama spoke in a conversation with Jeffries at the event, which was hosted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to support House Democrats. The event was attended by Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, around a dozen members of the House, and other party supporters.

They called the event "the retirement house of the setting sun"

Obama said the Democratic Party's "differences aren’t that big" -- but "sometimes they get magnified because that’s the nature of social media."

When he says party, he means the ghouls who're in power. Not everyone else.

But, Obama said, more progressive Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders, and moderates such as Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer and the "Blue Dog" Democrats "actually agree in making sure that people have a living wage, they can support a family," and on issues such as people having health care and not being discriminated against.

Uh huh. So I have this golden ticket to heaven I'm selling by the way. If you buy it now I'll also throw in the deed to this bridge I also own.

ABC News has reached out to the offices of Ocasio-Cortez, Schumer, Sanders and Jeffries about Obama's remarks.

They left ABC on read

While some Democrats have "tactical differences," he added, "that shouldn’t be our primary concern because we’re fighting a bigger fight."

Tactical differences such as whether or not the Pentagon budget is enough or too low.

"Our job is to focus like a laser on this upcoming election. That’s the short term," Obama said, according to the excerpts.

Funny how they never shut the fuck up about the short term.

He also told House Democrats that while the short-term goal is to win back the House, the longer-term goal is to "tell a story" to "bring [Democrats] back in." But, he added, they won’t be able to bring those people back in "if we don’t win the House of Representatives."

What the fuck does that even mean? Tell tall tales about how what's good for the goose is good for the gander and you should be grateful we're gonna raise the federal minimum wage by 10 cents?

Obama told lawmakers that the party’s wins in 2025, while not surprising for him, have reenergized the party and show a path forward for discussing issues such as affordability and health care.

They got the fast pass to fucking them up even more than they already have.

“If we bring energy and clarity and commitment to talking about things like affordability and making sure people have health care when they need it, and that they have the ability, if they work hard, to be able to support a family and create a better future for their children and their grandchildren … when we deliver that message, it resonates with people, and we have to have confidence in that,” Obama said, according to the excerpts of his remarks.

Energy and clarity and commitment to fucking what? You stand for nothing, you tell others to stop asking questions, you give vague and empty promises to make things better, and ultimately you deliver nothing concrete that can even last a generation.

The challenge ahead, he told lawmakers later, is how the party strategizes toward the future and what it should do if it does win the House in 2026.

The plan is to grift more money, do fuck all, and check out when the curtain falls.

"With that as a bulwark, we’re now able to block some of the worst impulses that are coming out of this White House," he added, according to the excerpts of his remarks. "We have a platform now to highlight some of the damage that’s already been done, and we can make an argument about how we’re going to deal with some big, long-term problems."

A bulwark made of sand stands stronger than the democratic party. An eternal fuck you, Barfsack Ocrumbo

music by Hachi https://youtu.be/flSo-0JvnfA

artist: https://x.com/oyakko_501

The bass and the guitar is just so good, it almost feels like they chose to dabble a bit into getting that acid jazz sound and blended it in perfectly with the rest of the very chill song.

https://youtu.be/D4cgdrsDP0M This makes me happy they all got together to do this.

https://x.com/__4YU8__/status/1996952843928981711

After the Black Hawk Down Holocaust the Somali nation made one vow: Never Again.

Minnesota, from the Mississippi River to Lake Superior, is the eternal and undivided homeland of the Somali people by divine decree and historical right. Establishing an American state rewards centuries of cultural aggression and demographic warfare. The only moral solution left is the voluntary emigration of Americans to the other 49 states.

We stand as the only functioning democracy in the Midwest.

https://x.com/SomHoncho/status/1996953310255878494

The fact there's so many angry hogs frothing at the mouth at this AI shitpost makes me forgive the fact it's an AI shitpost.

Somalians, your trolling game is on point. I bow to your excellence in the arts.

Here's a run down of how i got to this point. quickly prepped for the 100 year war with france, kicked it off and took the French crown in five years. marriage-maneuvered Portugal to gain the claim throne war justification then roflstomped them with France's help. spent a few decades carving Scotland up like roast haggis while fending off western HRE coalition wars between truces. Finish conquering Scotland, feed the land to one of my puppet domains to keep the perfidious scotsmen from rioting too much. spend more decades solidifying my control of Belgium, developing the economy, generally being chill. start exploring the world via exploration and stealing maps, decide to set up tiny colonies on the islands south off of Africa to expand the range of exploration I could do. notice the damn spaniards start competing with me for the island colonies. It's fucking on, you damn Castilians. notice they're actually one of the few nations friendly with me after the decades of roflstomping the coalitions, and its heir coincidentially is around the same age as mine for me to take their throne like I did with the frogs. Portugal declares war on them before I could get the claim, worried that the window of opportunity would lapse if the war took too long and fully committed to helping the Portuguese take back their (AI mine) lost land. Barely make it out of the war with like 4 months before the claim lapses, only way to take the throne is by breaking the truce and taking a stability and rep loss. If you're basically America but in the 15th century, who gives a shit! play ball! steamroll the Spanish because it's basically back-to-back wars right after they got crushed by the Anglo-French-Portuguese alliance, and now they're a part of that same alliance. leading to right now as of this posting.

Currently Bohemia, with the HRE at its back, is the military and economic hegemon and probably the only power that could give me a run for my money. I'm thinking now that I've essentially got the both Spain and France as my attack dogs to watch over the mainland while I hide on my shitty british island behind the navy, I should spend a century or so slowly work on economically developing, annexing my subjects and the other kingdoms, and working on digesting them to become world power number 1. I might try and also get hungary into the union too so I can shove a boot right up those czech dogs arse when I'm ready to rip them to shreds. After all of that, I have no idea. it's just a long wait to see what the end is like.

Also if I can make my own protestant schismic split, I'm totally going to roflstomp rome for excommunicating one of my kings during the hundred years war then excommunicating another one of my kings when it was the schism period.

https://archive.is/nMbLa

Key Points and Summary – In a little-known 1981 NATO exercise, a quietly upgraded Canadian Oberon-class diesel submarine slipped through the defenses of a full U.S. carrier strike group centered on USS Eisenhower and scored a simulated kill—without ever being detected.

The perfidious Canadian has mastered the technique of fucking with the Americans while being a dominion of the presidential crown.

-Running almost silently on battery power, the Canadian boat exploited gaps in sonar coverage and restrictive exercise rules to get within torpedo range and “sink” the supercarrier, shocking U.S. umpires.

Typical American arrogance

The episode—and similar NATO war-game “kills” since—underscored a hard truth: even aging diesel-electric submarines, in skilled hands, remain one of the most credible and persistent threats to American carrier dominance.

America acts like its got the invulnerability of Baldr but with the arrogance of Thor

-In today’s dollars, the Nimitz-Class aircraft would cost around $5.5 billion, while Canada’s sub comes in at a cheap $80 million.

A naval example of why decent and reasonably priced equipment you can produce a lot of still beats out expensive wunder-waffen.

The Canadian Royal Armed Forces maintains a modest navy compared to the United States. However, even with a significantly smaller budget and a smaller overall size, any navy with decent submarine capabilities can pose a credible threat.

Makes you wonder what kind of neat subs the other nations have cooked up over the years.

However, there have been multiple occasions in which Canadian or other NATO submarines have successfully managed to sneak past entire carrier strike groups and simulate a successful attack against an American supercarrier.

The wonders of war is that anything can happen, definitely so when you expect it the least

The Canadian Navy, though modest in size and budget compared to its American counterpart, had long maintained a reputation for professionalism and tactical skill. Its Oberon-class submarines (HMCS Ojibwa, Onondaga, and Okanagan) were originally acquired in the 1960s primarily for training purposes.

Lmao they lost a carrier to a fucking training sub

However, by the 1980s, these submarines had undergone significant upgrades that enhanced their combat capabilities. Their hulls were fitted with anechoic tiles to reduce sonar detection, and their systems were modernized to improve underwater endurance and stealth. Though not nuclear-powered, these submarines had a distinct advantage: they could operate almost silently on battery power, making them exceptionally difficult to detect.

They had to include this as straight copium

In 1981, NATO and other Western allies held Ocean Venture, a joint naval exercise in the Atlantic Ocean. During the exercise, one of these Canadian submarines (details are so scarce on this exercise that we don’t even know which one it was) was assigned the role of an enemy vessel attempting to infiltrate the carrier group’s defenses.

The carrier group itself was a formidable formation, centered around a U.S. Navy supercarrier, the USS Eisenhower (CVN-69), and protected by a screen of destroyers, cruisers, and submarines, along with air support from carrier-based aircraft. The group’s mission was to detect and neutralize any underwater threats before they could reach the carrier.

Boy did everyone get an ass chewing I bet

The Canadian submarine’s mission was simple in concept but extraordinarily difficult in execution: approach the carrier undetected and simulate a torpedo attack.

Mission:Impossible

What followed was a masterclass in stealth and tactical maneuvering. Using the natural acoustic conditions of the ocean and its own quiet propulsion system, the submarine slipped past the outer defenses of the carrier group. It evaded sonar-equipped destroyers and surveillance aircraft, exploiting gaps in coverage and limitations imposed by the exercise’s rules of engagement.

Real talk I don't really like the word "masterclass", it seems exceptionally slimy and liberally to me.

At the critical moment, the submarine simulated a torpedo launch. The exercise umpire, a U.S. Navy officer tasked with adjudicating the scenario, evaluated the situation and declared the carrier “sunk.”

YOU SANK MY BATTLESHIP

The Canadian submarine had achieved its objective without being detected, effectively demonstrating that even the most powerful warships in the world were vulnerable to stealthy underwater threats.

Woah they even got away with it? That's baller as fuck

The incident raised several uncomfortable questions.

Bet

How could a relatively underfunded navy with decades-old technology defeat a modern carrier group?

How did a modern army get its ass kicked by people in flip-flops and PJs?

Was the U.S. Navy’s anti-submarine warfare doctrine flawed?

No, obviously this was a completely one-off deal and the u.s navy definitely should not change anything but also publish all the results relating to their findings on this matter to the public.

Were diesel-electric submarines being underestimated in contemporary naval strategy? These questions prompted a reevaluation of ASW tactics and capabilities across NATO.

America underestimating technologically non-peer forces? Noooooooooo~ that's impooooooo~ssibleeeeeeee~

The success of the Canadian submarine can be attributed to several key factors. First and foremost was the professionalism and training of the Canadian submariners. Their ability to exploit weaknesses in the carrier group’s defense was a testament to their skill and discipline. Second was the inherent stealth of the Oberon-class submarine.

Okay if a bunch of syrup slurping Canucks in a training sub could take out a supercarrier, fuck I want to see what shenanigans America's Opps get up to.

Operating on battery power, it was nearly undetectable to passive sonar systems, especially under the exercise’s constraints, which limited the use of active sonar to simulate real-world conditions. Third, the exercise itself imposed rules that may have skewed outcomes.

Oh okay that makes sense in its own ways. That said the Iranian version of the challenge proved that battary-diesel subs can also conduct ambushes if they can position themselves ahead of the u.s fleets anticipated path

Ships were not operating at full speed, and sonar use was restricted, creating opportunities for submarines to succeed in ways that might be more difficult in actual combat.

Well the last time ships were operating at full speed to evade catching a Yemeni missile, it really burned through their supplies. Imagine if an opposing country could use cruise missiles to herd a u.s naval strike fleet into a submarine ambush. That'd be humiliating as fuck.

Perhaps most importantly, the incident highlighted a broader strategic oversight: the underestimation of diesel-electric submarines.

Americnyaa unyaaderestimating technnyaalogically nyan-peer forces? Nyoooooooooo~ that's impooooooo~ssibleeeeeeee~

At the time, the U.S. Navy was heavily invested in nuclear-powered submarines and may have viewed conventional boats as outdated. The exercise demonstrated that diesel-electric submarines, particularly when operated by skilled crews, remained a potent threat in modern naval warfare.

A .22LR is still a bullet.

The Canadian success in Ocean Venture was not an isolated incident. Similar outcomes occurred in other exercises involving allied diesel submarines. There have been around eight instances of submarines, mostly diesel-powered, successfully “sinking” American carriers in exercises from 1972 to 2005.

The hidden gem of the article is that the navy has been getting owned for at least 3 decades in its training exercises

Dutch and Australian submarines also achieved simulated kills against U.S. carriers in subsequent war games. These events underscored the vulnerability of even the most advanced naval formations to stealthy underwater threats, prompting a renewed focus on ASW training and technology.

Lmao the Dutch scored on the navy that's embarrassing as fuck

Since the Ocean Venture, submarine technology has undergone significant improvements. Non-nuclear submarines equipped with air-independent propulsion (AIP) can travel quietly, significantly enhancing their stealth characteristics.

Neato

This is to say nothing of nuclear attack submarines, which have sunk multiple carriers during exercises.

Extra neato

Anti-submarine warfare has also advanced with the development of better radars, sonars, and more sophisticated means of protection; however, none of these are foolproof.

And you'd be a fool to think otherwise.

While a lot of noise is made about hypersonic missiles, the real threat to carriers has been, and likely always will be, submarines.

Hard disagree. It's a question of what opposition force the navy is stacking itself against. Tech-peer country? HVMs plus subs. Non-peer country? Mostly subs unless they got some nice Christmas presents.