ON A SUNDAY MORNING FAR AWAY

As a former naval officer one of the things that did amuse me, after a while, was that there was not one single solitary soul in the United States military that thought that something like Pearl Harbor could ever happen again. Once and done as they say. We were ready every day to deal with fires on ships, security threats to nuclear weapons that may, or may not have been on our ships but there was never a single thought given to fighting the ship with a duty section aboard and that was back in the Cold War.

I see throughout X this morning that an enemy has attacked Russian air bases all over Russia with drones launched from concealed launchers that had been free to roam around the country. If you think about it for just a little bit you understand that there was massive collusion on the parts of the various frontier NATO states that permitted drone operators to fly their drones over the frontiers into Russia where they could be collected, armed and concealed in trucks for a long ride to their launch/distribution point.

The thing is though that just as Churchill was content to let Coventry burn despite knowing of the attack in advance, so too is a KGB man willing to sacrifice a few obsolete weapons to gather incontrovertible truth that NATO is carrying out direct attacks on Russia. At this point there is no point in gathering evidence to put before any world body since they are all completely corrupt and useless for the purposes they were built to enshrine. Nobody cares what the UN says about anything. However, in a war of first causes it will be convenient for Russia to show the flow of drones directly over the border from the Baltic States into Russia that were used in the attacks. And you know what?

One of those countries is armed, trained and equipped to wage war and the others are not. Not one single one of them that will lift a finger to save other NATO members that deliberately launched an unwarranted attack on Russia. NATO and the EU are in the first stages of rapid sudden disassembly and a year from now they'll be bleating and demanding to know, 'how did this happen?'

Everybody seems to think that there is a visible smooth progression from peace to war that people can see and throw up a hand and shout STOP! and you know what? In hindsight there is always a visible clear progression from peace to war but the people and the politicians were too damned stupid to see it and the media was too damned stupid and ignorant to report what was actually happening at the time and the people were just ignorant.

WE ALL KNOW HOW

 It's an interesting fact that gets repeated every day and that is that the lowest socio-economic rungs in our society are illiterate and this is despite having received the 12 years of free public education some contractors seem to think is guaranteed to relieve all ignorance and turn out model citizens of the republic. There's good money in fooling 100% of the democrats and the other dimwits with this stupid insistence that public education is a public good that relieves society of the burden and dead weight of nonperforming ignorant violent thugs. (There must be some reason to waste our time and money on public schools, right?)

It is said that the first 3 years in school are to teach the child how to read and that after that is achieved the child essentially teaches his or her self by reading the lessons and writing the desired answers. That would mean that there is one point in every educable student's life that is the go/no go point for further education and you can guess what it is even before I write, passing the 3rd grade.

Everyone seems to think that a massive enormous gigantic universal test is required to measure teacher effectiveness and student learning and yet this is probably the easiest thing in the world to measure and assess. It's simple. You throw a big party and before the kids get drunk and get their little 3rd grade diplomas, you hand them a reasonable 3rd grader's book of short stories and you tell that little kid to read it aloud to all the other kids and parents and teachers for that little 20 person or fewer class and if they cannot read, they cannot go on to the fourth grade. They get to repeat the entire year over again.

That's not hard. It may involve getting kids used to reading aloud all the time in the annoying way that kids who can read have of marching around reading aloud all the time but that's a small price to pay. Only a complete idiot could find anything racist or objectionable about it and only a fool would try. The important thing here is to be able to read and note, I said nothing about filling out some stupid written test to demonstrate that the kid has mastered the second aspect of reading which is reading comprehension because that's just a barn door any reader will rush through at some point in their school time if presented with the correct reading materials.

I know there are those that think this is setting the bar too high for some but I'm sure those people are racists of the first water and don't understand, California needs idiots!!!! They require them in vast numbers and California DOESN'T CARE IF THEY CANNOT READ OR WRITE. So you see, even the little failures will find rich full and satisfying lives in California, so buck up!

On the down side, LA City Council is demanding that big hotels and the airport businesses pay their minimum wage workers such as maids and cleaners a minimum of $38.00/hour. But I'm sure there will be no shortage of such jobs in California once that kind of minimum wage insanity spreads there at the speed of cockroaches. 

I mean, who else would want jobs like that in California? It's not like people are breaking into the country to be fruit and veg pickers, maids, cleaners, Air Traffic Controllers and Congresswomen. Not at those wages....

THE PROPER ROASTING OF LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

 I think maybe the time has come for the Administration to simply throw the ridiculous court maneuverings right back into the faces of the liberal clowns running amok. It is fine to propose that the Administration stand and shake its fist in rage but I think it is also a good trick for the Administration to bow to the same winds that blow through the Ivy League and the former Administration. 

The Ivies are very pointedly completely disregarding the Supreme Courts clear ruling on discrimination at university admissions and hiring and the former Administration simply ignored everything and did whatever it felt like including continuing to announce that Student Loans did not have to repaid by the guilty parties and other annoying things that bothered me.

The Liberals have no real defense if the Administration simply ignores the Courts now. In places like New York the "lawmakers" have been pointedly refusing to acknowledge the 2nd Amendment for decades and ignoring all Supreme Court rulings in modern times. New York is not alone in this contempt for the Courts and their animus, hatred and disregard for the Court is shared by every single Blue State. 

If the Administration simply tells the various Judges that it is doing everything in strict accordance with the Law and nothing then happens, how is the Court going to manifest its shock and horror at being ignored by the Orange Haired Man? What if the President announces that he is imposing his own Executive Rules on the Courts and tells them that he will begin to order his minions to comply once EVERY OTHER Court ruling is fully complied with by the various balking States and Universities? A very strict First In-First Out before those opinions that came later get complied with. 

What could be fairer than that? 

"Gosh, Judge, my hands are tied while I wait my turn to do what the Court ordered decades or years ago. You'll have to wait your turn just like all the rest."

 It probably won't take any longer than say, the time it took for Steyn/Mann's lawsuit to make it through the swamp known as the Washington DC Superior Court. I think it took more than 10 years so people should just compose themselves to wait patiently.

A NEW PARLOR TRICK

 I think this should do the trick. I think these rancid little judges have probably gone and done the thing that unleashes a righteous war on the Courts. It’s long overdue. 

HELLO MAELSTROM, I DIDN'T SEE YOU THERE

 It looks like the idiots and countries that brought us World War I, World War II, The Crimean War, et al are all hellbent on bringing us the next round of universal death and dying. I really don't know how people can fail to notice that there is exactly and only one player in the ugly conflict going on currently who is most definitely not playing around or a dabbler and actually means what he says. If Putin tells you a thing, you can take it to the bank and he has been that way since his first term as President of the Russian Federation.

And so the Chancellor of Germany announces that from now on all range limits on weapons Germany supplies to Ukraine will be removed and the weapons may be used to attack any targets in Russia.

What are some of the things that Russia can do in return for the Germans attack on Russia? 

- Cut off all energy flow to Germany and Western Europe.

- Make deliberate attacks on the energy supplies originating in Scandinavia that power Germany. 

- Make direct attacks on the factories making the weapons.

- Full blown cyber warfare

- 100% blockade of Ukraine

- My perennial favorite, the Pirate Submarines make their long awaited reappearance.

These two are likely to cost the EU everything it has. The EU Foreign Minister and re-imagined Queen

 

When I was much younger I thought that Europeans were a lot like Americans except not as feisty or boisterous. How modern day Europe adopted all of the worst aspects of the 3rd Reich, Loius XVI, the Second Bourbon Restoration and the liberum veto era of the Polish Kingdom is as much a mystery to me as what Starmer is doing selling some IO people the islands that Britain has owned for over 200 years that actually once belonged to some other people now doubly dispossessed by the idiots that mangled and twisted Brexit into a complete disaster for England. 

Is there some sort of competition over there building new European running shoes that will permit them all to race into disaster at the fastest human pace possible? My God, what if they get an AI up and running and it is programmed like the two idiots above.

Europe is doomed, again.

WHERE WE FIND THEM

 Some of them just vanished and never came back. Let us not lose sight of those that went down to the sea. There were a lot of men remembered like this and never got a headstone to name them for future generations.

Names and locations of all the warships sunk in Iron Bottom Sound during the War. A staggering number.

One page of the book of remembrance at Coraopolis Library

Names of War dead in the last two centuries

As usual the Civil War took an enormous toll

An eternity in Ashland, a small town we like to stop in on our way elsewhere

VIVE LA DIFFÉRENCE

In the olden days of yore, various chief minions of the Government and Military would appear before the various Congressional Committees to offer Testimony on their Departments and their weapon systems and were there to beg the Congress to be generous in all future funding for said things. Can you spot the difference between the people who appear in front of those Committees today who will sit there and rip the Senator or Congresswoman to pieces for being idiots and stupid and really dim-witted or noted truth dodgers?

That's right gentle readers, the people hand picked by President Trump don't give a Flying Fcuk about what Congress does with their Departmental Budget or to their weapon systems since they're so damned busy pruning out 69 years of pure waste and idiocy and won't miss a single dime cut by Congresscritters enraged at not being deferred to like the perfumed princes of old. 

It really makes for some enjoyable youtube watching.

DIMWITS AND SLOW COACHES

 I find myself wondering if there was ever much in the way of real intelligence at the Ivy League universities and then I think back to when they were absolute bastions of white male superiority and provided 100% of the intellectual heft that created the Manhattan Project, created Plutonium and created the environment that led to every meaningful invention in the last 100 years and realize that there was simply no point in asking such an idiotic question. They had a few POCs even back then but they were standouts of a particular sort not found very much anymore and the women back then had their own colleges nearby in order to secure the future of the race. But honestly, I don't think you could find today a single Harvard or Columbia administrator, dean or board member with an IQ larger than my shoe size.

What kind of imbecile picks a fight with a President who clearly has nothing at all to lose by telling them to clean up their sleazy racist act and fly right and in strict accordance with the newly revised, as interpreted law of the land, as dictated by the black robed morons in DC? What kind of idiot decides that this is the most opportune time to put that 'stupid New York real estate mogul' in his place and tell him to shut up and consider his real place in the world? I mean, does that sound at all smart to anyone?

It is a little tiresome to play every single round 9 times over as the Courts get to piss on the breakfast crunchies before a higher court tells them to butt out but at the end of the day that man who is most clearly not any kind of stupid or idiot is going to win and the Ivies are going to lose and lose big. What I want to know is, WTF did they think they were going to WIN by picking this fight?

That is where the true magnitude of the stupid rings like a bell. The President of Harvard has just delivered a real humdinger of a zinger and put that orange headed oaf in his place and so there! I can see you scratching your heads and asking, what? Who made these people the heads of these IVY universities and why have they not been hauled out of their crypts and burned alive on the hallowed quads of the pathetic remains of once great universities? They should all be named and shamed and turned out but that's the real kicker isn't it? There is nobody left to point out to anyone that matters that only the clowns and stupid fools remain at the colleges and universities at every level.

I doubt that any of them ever see the irony of repeatedly calling what started at Berkeley so long ago, 'The Free Speech Movement.' The very last thing anybody of the left or the liberal bent want or will permit is free speech. These are the ones that use antifa thugs as their enforcers and when they don't enforce hard enough they call up the Red Guard and the PFLP along with the eco-freeks and they batter into submission anyone who dares to speak against them. These people strongly believe in censorship of all speech and particularly any speech by anyone who disagrees with them. They are corrupt beyond your worst imagination because every single one of them thinks this is the most logical and American decision ever made and see nothing wrong with throttling you to death if you don't agree with their pronouns or any other little thing.

I applaud the government for shutting down all their government funds, slashing their ridiculous pass-throughs and overhead rates and terminating their desire to educate the foreign elite in their pigsty of liberal perfection. I hope that they also lose their tax exemption and that they be investigated for every bit of fraud and chicanery they have been party to since 1968. All those research papers that keep getting recalled because they're nothing but made up lies and fake statistics, they should be investigated as frauds perpetrated on the Government and the PIs should be looking at jail and restitution.

Honestly, how did people this damned stupid manage to take over and run every single one of our great universities?

WE SHALL SEE

 It will be interesting to see if Zelensky and Putin can negotiate an end to the war absent a sincere desire by either man to actually settle for anything less than all of what they demand. It will be interesting to see where the wriggle room develops as the negotiate the end of hostilities because if there was ever a conflict based in ineluctable divisions of geography this is it. At the end of the fighting there can only be an outcome that is favored by Russia because Russia is the only one that must be convinced to stop fighting and I haven't seen any reason at all for them to stop in even a single proposal out of the West.

The history of this type of conflict is pretty clear and well known to anybody who reads history. Russia cannot stop now without some pretty meaningful changes to the way Europe operates these days and there is zero sign that Europe has picked up on this. This war boils down to Russia being forced back on its final frontier by a power crazed coterie of madmen and women running the EU and American diplomacy since Clinton entered office.

They pushed and shoved NATO to expand to the East despite every assurance to Russia that they would not and then they arranged for all kinds of 'color revolutions' to sweep nationalist out of power throughout the former nationalist countries of all of Europe. It's like there are no real Europeans running any country in Europe because what kind of European would destroy their own countries by unlimited immigration, ruthless failure to assimilate immigrants, destruction of their military forces and finally the destruction of their economic basis by converting overnight to net zero energy insanity?

How can you conclude any kind of peace deal with fanatics of that stripe? They don't care at all about destroying their own countries and they have made it crystal clear that they urgently want to destroy Russia. With that kind of conclusion going into the talks how can anyone expect Europe or its lackeys to negotiate in good faith or keep even a fraction of what they do agree to? The outcome is foreordained and what Russia gets out of any 'peace' with Ukraine is nothing but a breathing space that allows Europe to rearm Ukraine before pointing them at Russia's throat again.

I think the talks will look as dishonest and filled with ill intent as you can believe and that the instant hostilities end the EU will try to do to Russia exactly what the Allies did to Germany after the Armistice was signed in 1918. Remember that Armistice? It wasn't a surrender, it was an agreement to stop fighting to talk peace and what went on in the meantime to a Germany? Well, you can still read about it.

You know what that poisonous peace with Germany brought a mere 15 years later? That's what I expect out of any kind of armistice between Russia and the EU. The EU is in it to win and to win they must topple Putin and break up Russia and there is no evidence at all that they mean to stop.

I will know that there is some real interest in peace over there if there is a sudden wave of unexpected deaths among the people that are quietly and secretly running the destroyers of the West. The puppet masters need to be pruned back hard perhaps and perhaps join the xroyalty of the Holy Roman Empire in the past. The world cannot afford letting the people who engineered the total destruction of the old Imperial West to continue to run things.

Remember who we're dealing with, these mean seriously float the idea that you should be made to eat bugs and like it while squatting in the dark surrounded by 3rd world savages who prey upon you and use every means at the State's disposal to make damned sure you aren't allowed to fight back.

THE STUPID PREVAILS

 It's hard to grasp just how vast the expanding bubble of really stupid ideas is and strange that almost nobody can see it. In this comedic story out of Newsweek we are treated to the idea that the Republic of Korea just got the plans to build an aircraft carrier and are going to rush off and build one because every country needs them and besides, it will look good on their resume.

Aircraft carriers are built for one reason only and that is it, they exist to project power. They allow any country in the world to go out and menace every other country in the world. That's all they do. They don't show the flag, they don't pull into port and deter crime, they don't build men, they just float around projecting one nation's will on all the other nations. It's really not all that difficult to grasp.

Now ask yourself why South Korea would need an aircraft carrier? They have one enemy and no world spanning interests anywhere else in the world that require power projection for resolution so why would they spend the 20 trillion dollars to build one? Their one single solitary enemy shares a border with them and is all within easy fighter/bomber range of any airbase in South Korea so there is no shortage of aircraft, bombs, or targets. Why would they need an aircraft carrier?

One could ask of the Australians why they need a fleet of nuclear submarines and get just about as much of a well reasoned answer. Some highly educated twit thinks they will need them for the inevitable war with ______________________.

The problem is of course that they will never now fight that enemy which is slowly and gradually taking over Australia in the quietest way every single day. Australia already lost that war the twit feared so much he contracted with the Bidens to get nuclear submarines built for the RAN. Australia caved into unlimited immigration and within a generation or two there will be almost no native non aboriginal Aussies left. Indonesia has been sponsoring the longest invasion since the fall of Rome.

There is also the problem that they cannot man and operate the submarines they currently have and show little inclination to do anything about it. 

Everyone thinks its easy to exist without purpose but it is hard to do that today. The USN maintains fleets of carriers and submarines because we have spent every moment since 1945 meddling with or invading every country on the planet except, maybe, the Vatican. Our subs were out spying on the USSR and then blowing things up very quietly and accomplishing real serious things, not just swanning* about like the Royal Navy for the last 80 years.

*swanning–that thing you do with an entire fleet consisting of scores of warships rather than send one of them down to the single solitary sole flash point remaining of your whole entire former empire in order to deter some feckless MILITARY JUNTA from invading islands they have claimed for a century or more.

Kind of makes you wonder how many of the RN's ships are actually swanning around the Malvinas today....Some people learn from history, some lost the knack and others never had it.

PUSHING CIVILIZATION RIGHT OFF THE CLIFF

 I think the major reason for the disaster that is our public education policy is that the politicians all figured out that a well educated, well read and intelligent population would demand real answers and real solutions from people eager to just kick the cans down the road. No politician wants 100% of the real voters knowledgeable about the Constitution and all of its amendments and none of them want educated people who know damned well that face masks do not stop a virus and never will and that social distancing your away from catching a disease is about as stupid as it gets.

What they lost sight of about 80 years ago was that the same ignorant dumb morons they permit to become public teachers also took over the Unions and the policy maker positions at every level in the Education Departments and that they then took over the Private and Parochial Schools that were once used by the rich and the professionals to educate their own children. Without that last bastion of smart students and educated adults, things started to come apart faster and faster. Now you have people who cannot find South Dakota on a map, know what language they speak in China and cannot tell you the square root of 9.

Most of the tiny handful that persist in the ability to do these things end up as....middle managers working for policy idiots from the main stream. In a country that doesn't honor merit there is no natural rise to the top for the smart and well educated. You get DIE morons at every level and especially at the top because they owned the HR system before you thought about how much damage they could do there and you let them.

Well, not you gentle reader, I'm talking about the people that were running things into the ground. Did you ever think that even in this moment of time a leading Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America would express both his contempt and disdain for the very idea of helping white refugees? Did they learn nothing at all from the DIE FEMA morons that were deliberately bypassing homes in Western Carolina that gave away their political leanings by having the nerve to fly an American flag over the flood and wind ravaged ruins of their homes? I guess not.

Sadly, I think every single mainline Christian church in America is aligned with the Episcopal jerks on this topic. The only hope out there now is the Evangelicals.

MY QUESTION

 When do we get to know who was actually running the United States of America for the previous four years? That's all. Who was really pulling the strings, doing the national security policy making and decision making and who let that happen despite what must be some Constitutional objection to permitting a vegetable to rule the United States of America.

When do we get to know what that was?

ON THE SUBLIME

 When you have more than a moment this small piece For Dorothy at Sippican Cottage is easily one of the most sublime pieces that I have ever read. You might enjoy it too. It provides perspective.

LET'S GO TO THE TAPES

 One of the more fascinating aspects to the Watergate Coup was how it was so carefully blown onto the rocks of Lie and Deceit because 18 minutes of the tapes from the Oval Office somehow went missing and thus the press and coup leaders were free to scream to the nation that Nixon was evil and stuff like that. It takes its place among the saddest episodes of pure evil and chicanery in Washington, DC.

But speaking of tapes there is one thing that can now be thrown into sharp focus and that is something as simple as releasing hours and hours of the tapes from the Oval Office when slow Joe Biden was in there being all Presidential. I'd like to listen to those tapes and I don't think I'd just hear the hiss of dead air as the tape played and I don't think it would all be just snoring sounds from the direction of the Resolute desk and chair set. Nope.

I think we'd hear the sausage getting made right there in the Oval Office as the various Enemies of the State divvied up the loot among themselves and their sponsors. They probably cut deals right there in the Oval Office. We are talking about evil but stupid people. They could be that stupid and I'd like to see if it is true because it sounds like a criminal enterprise run amok in the White House and why not go to the tapes and end any doubt as they are doing now by releasing the JFK assassination records in full (even if they are redacted to hell and gone) and of course the munificent release of the copious files, tapes, digital records and the thousands of terabytes of data removed from Epstein's little pleasure island, his mansion in New York City, his bank vaults and all the other places a blackmailer stashes the evidence.

Yes yes, I hear you say, what about Executive Privilege? Yes, that's right, Biden waived that privilege when it was President Trump's records, notes and documents and it is probably a nice touch if he returned the favor and simply turned over every single minute of what went on in the Oval Office when it was used by his predecessor and the other members of that criminal enterprise.

 Release the Tapes!

INTO AFRICA

 As I saw this I laughed out loud. Who wouldn't?

Either Rwanda or Congo would be fine. A good place for them.

AND NOW WE ASK, HOW DID HE KNOW?

 For those following the news closely you may have observed that our President was prescient last week when he gently hinted that the next Pope would be an American. Through the Ages of mankind, future generations will stand in awe of this amazing man and his otherworldly capacity to somehow divine all things.

Musings from the dark early morning hours not long after midnight if one lives in California.

ONLY PLAY AT WAR TO WIN

 Happy Victory in Europe Day!

GOING ATOMIC

 Well it has happened again, we have two nuclear armed powers exchanging rocket fire and aerial bombardment over the simple utterly predictable massacre of a bunch of harmless people out simply enjoying nature in their own country because a group of implacably evil islamic enemies of civilization found them without any means of self-defense. It could be a real atomic war. Both sides are the very essence of fanatics and they don't hesitate to share their enthusiasm for killing the other side and never shirk from killing in the name of some god.

...and you thought the special military operation was a bad thing.

Oh, and the other little plucky warriors are gearing up to snag others into striking long-range blows against a nuclear armed state (Iran) in order to prevent them from making their own nuclear weapons and you have these idiot morons who claim, "oh it's just some airstrikes, it's not like we're really attacking them," and your mind boggles.

....and then you read the sudden 'unexpected' revelation that Saudi Arabia has nuclear weapons and the people who know or just found out are like all shocked and stuff. They are the same kind of twit that swans around informing the poor that, 'money doesn't buy happiness' and totally oblivious to the fact that it buys every other thing on the planet which includes both islamic and Russian nuclear weapons.

It's a brave new world out there but fortunately our best and brightest are keenly involved in getting us into a shooting war with China over something or a minuscule spat over a pointless thing that they are literally dying to sell us. As you know, the whole Vietnam War was predicated on not letting the dirty commies win there but we're supposed to overlook that and defend them to the death against the bad Chinese communists. If not for human design factors, heads would spin right off.

Everyone remember that Pakistan was hiding Osama bin Laden right outside their military academy? The pakistanis have a penchant for terrorism that matches, oh just about every islamic regimes'.

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL FAILURE

 There was a launch failure at Andoya but it was really quite beautiful. If you haven't seen it I recommend giving it the 30 seconds or so that it needs. I thought they would blow it up before it returned to earth but perhaps they thought they could get it to start flying again.....who knows.

Full screen if you please, the screen shots don't do it justice.

POWER AND WILL

 If there was yet another place that would force anyone to the conclusion that there really is a role for sea power and air power it is the unpleasant Yemen that exists today. As you can see from the map below, Yemen is a very isolated little bit of Hell on earth and so the question must be asked, why are we tolerating their nonsense?

The Southern End of the Red Sea and most of Yemen

Yemen is pretty close to the equator and so much larger than you picture it. It does however, share some qualities which make it almost as unique as Cuba. It is bounded by the sea on both the south and west sides and it has only enemies to the north. From the east there is a sand drift of deep unpleasantness and then Oman. Beyond Oman lies Iran.

It is not a place of great industry or technical might and can probably best be described as backwards. 

Some people might think that if the problems there were overwhelming and damaging to the countries outside the Red Sea that rely on safe passage for much of their energy supplies and quite a bit of their commerce, they might shut off all international trade and commerce between Yemen and the rest of the world in retaliation.

France is not one of those countries since they had the good sense to go nuclear and stay nuclear decades ago but they are the former colonial power in Djibouti and as nice as the French have been to all of their former colonies in Africa I'm sure that if Macron asked nicely that Djibouti would be happy to allow expanded basing rights for a powerful force out of the EU to stage their naval and air blockades out of. 

To the north lies the Empty Quarter and desert. It's also known as Saudi Arabia and the Saud's like Yemen even less than we do. It is possible that some smart diplomacy would weld the Gulf Cooperative Council to the EU effort to open up the Red Sea to the free passage of tankers and this might help control the continued flow of support from Iran to Yemen.

I don't advocate any of this and I don't see any reason for the US to take any active part, or any part at all in the process of restoring Europe's other gas supply. I would hate for us to decide that the thing to do was to create in Yemen something like our arrangement with Shah Massoud in Afghanistan. Let's stop giving high performance SAMs to tribesmen and gold to our sworn enemies.

If the flow of weapons and the materials to make them is cut off then we might paraphrase Tacitus and his quote from Calgacus, "the EU forces can make a desert and call it peace." It's already a desert so that part shouldn't be too hard.

I'll reiterate though that we should really sit on our hands this time and stay out of it. Let the EU put aside the animosity they share with their Houthi brothers for Israel and see if they can make the Red Sea safe for goods bound to and away from the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal. This is one of those countless times where the best thing for US to do is nothing.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

 This was funny.

The sudden onslaught of massive supporters of Pope Francis in the media never fail to refer to him as a reformer. I suppose he could be described so if you mean along the lines of Obama or Clinton but less so if you are going to talk about the place and role of God in this world or the nature and the sins of the Catholic Church not just in this century but in the last 20.

Now of course, the all-knowing good-souls that make up NPR and PBS and the rest of the MSM are speaking of a new reform candidate who will no doubt toss all the pitiful remnants of Christ's teachings out the window of the Sistine Chapel and start wearing polyester leisure suits on his pontifical visits around the world.

I was wondering how they will react to the near inevitable selection of an African or Asian Pope. I'm kind of looking forward to it. OTGH, we are talking about the Church so it could be a Drag Queen from Australia.

A MERE TRIFLE

 I see that Mr. Rubio is accumulating titles at a fearsome rate. Some wag said he was looking like a 16th century Duke who had won the favors of a grateful monarch. Rubio is now Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, Administrator of USAID and dozens of other titles that come with those jobs.

I wonder if President Trump is dreaming up some sort of parallel to the Order of the Garter or a newfangled Marshall’s Baton for highly favored principals in his orbit. I’m sure he has several suitable schemes in mind already.

As I recall from my reading of C S Forester’s Hornblower books, the monarch used to give such men the title and pay of Colonel of Marines. President Trump could do something like that and award them the title, Colonel of the Space Marines. First up, Elon Musk. I suppose Colonel of Colonial Marines would work as well.

SEARCH ENGINES

 Why did the various people who have them decide to destroy them? It used to be so easy to write a query and get a reasonably complete set of good or valid answers in return but now they are hopelessly and ridiculously off the reservation so it must have been done by design. I'm not interested in AI for something as unprofound as searching the web for a string of words using an algorithm and simply only returning results that are contained within the " " like it used to.

It used to work!

CLEAR AND SIMPLE AS THE TRUTH

 The Russian Foreign Minister appeared on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan and she asked him right off the bat a simple question. See for yourself:

What I find fascinating is that I don't think one single solitary main stream news person has ever read Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal and 100% of them would be shocked and horrified if someone proposed to them that they might gain some insight and appreciation for the man they love to hate if they simply picked up his book and read it. We are talking about the very same people that thrilled to read the fabulous fabrications of Obama and the outright lies of both Clintons.

AS I WAS SAYING

 This is now the current state of the USN. It demonstrates very clearly the extent of damage any sailor of ill-will can wreak on a supine and helpless navy that allowed itself to recruit possibly thousands of men and women who don’t love America and sadly the mechanisms to get rid of them need to be imposed starting at the very top of the organization.