THIS IS NOT THE WAY

 This is a little too energetic even for SpaceX. I will be fascinated to learn what happened here.

BREAKING: SpaceX Starship Ship 36 Explodes in Static Fire Test, Massive Fire Eruptspic.twitter.com/n9fjGxm9Nh

— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) June 19, 2025

A DISTANT HOPE

 I hope that the rulers in Iran can go down to defeat without using any of the atomic weapons they’ve made over the years. The cat will then, well and truly be out of the bag. Cities won’t survive the sudden realization that we’re back in the time of city annihilators. 

A SMALL WONDERMENT

 The Ruling Darkness now out of power were pretty terrifyingly good at orchestrating coups against the State so I am kind of wondering why the regime running Tehran and Iran has not fallen during the current crisis engineered by the Darkness? Sure, they expected it to be them running this side of the War but still, I would have thought they would have prepared for the War they have engineered so diligently for so many decades and all the dominoes in the Middle East were to be cast down so I wonder, what happened?

ANTIKNOWING

 How many times have we heard a headline from somewhere and gone to search out the facts and using the old tools we deliberately skipped all “information” listed as coming from CBS, NYT, MSNBC, NPR, ABC etc and screened through the options until we found a headline that might provide more accurate information from, just for instance, The Financial Times or the Asia Times? It would be nice to be able to set my device to vanish all the old liars at the legacy media. On the other hand, just writing those words makes me feel like a liberal woke progressive kind of a guy. On the gripping hand, it’s Monday morning.Still, there is no positive return from saturating oneself in lies, deceit and deliberate obfuscation of the farce we still refer to as the news so I really miss the daily dose of Calvin and Hobbes and the Farside. How on earth do the youngsters get through a week without the levity and humor one used to get alongside the news?

RIGHT ABOUT NOW

According to lore, this is about the time that Iran shuts down the Strait of Hormuz and the world's economy falls off a cliff as the price of oil rises astronomically. Except, hold on a moment, we don’t need imported middle eastern oil anymore, the Saudis have Yanbu and absolutely nobody in power in DC gives a damn what happens to Europe’s oil costs. I mean, they don’t care so why should we? 

Professionally, I’ll be curious if the Iranians use mines, coastal missile batteries, their ships and submarines or all of that to shut down traffic through the strait. At some point I may even take the trouble to see what 5th Fleet consists of right now. 

I wonder how the man in Doha plans to deal with the situation he finds himself in. 

FRIDAY NIGIHT

 

COMMAND AND STAFF

 Well I see we are being treated to yet another dizzying Decapitation Strike leading to years of War right up there with Putin's glorious attempt to seize Kiev in a Coup de Main which, I hasten to add, ended in a dismal failure and apparently, endless war. Is this all they teach now in the Colleges of Command and Staff and the War College, decapitation strikes and the war is over before breakfast?

As I've noted elsewhere, these simply don't ever end the way the idiots think they will. There are always abler people ready willing and able to pick up the pieces and fight it out. It's possible that some patriot will pick up the pieces and work out a negotiated ending but do you know what the odds of that are? I can tell you how it will work out even if I can't figure the odds because some wag will shout that the new great man is an agent of Satan (little or big, doesn't matter) and he'll get killed by the first muslim fanatic that finds him alone. This is what islamic fanatics do. All the time. Every single time.

I swear the world today is exactly like watching a world run by idiots who got all their international training and experience and military expertise by watching The West Wing.

U P D A T E

I just watched a fairly brutal attack on the Secretary of Defense and the CJCS by various democratic congress idiots and I think that in the future I would simply send my regrets if/when asked to testify before any of their committees. They are not really asking for anything they are likely to get from this Congress so there is nothing to be gained from letting nitwits and morons shower one with invective and really stupid childish attacks.

It really is a different era where none of the men and women appointed by President Trump have any expectation that anything they champion will be affirmed by Johnson the other shills and RINOs so there really isn't much point in wasting efforts there. The people that really know how to game the PPBS and chase the $ all work in the Pentagon and they can reprogram $ out the whazzoo to do whatever needs doing.

I would, I'll admit, be concerned if we were facing a potential war anywhere and thought this sort of thing would contribute to our massive unreadiness to wage war tomorrow but the problems we have in that realm defy belief and cannot be fixed in under a decade.* The ships, submarines, ammo, logistics, logistic support, base infrastructure and personnel capable of waging war aren't there and won't be for some time.

*I'm talking about fighting a peer. We can still put a hurt on just about anybody else but as we've learned to our sorrow, hurting people is not the same thing as winning a war. That requires that the other party in the war admit defeat and actually surrender. The West is completely incapable of fighting that kind of war for the next 20 or 30 years.

POLICE RIOT TRAINERS AND MARINES

 Trainer: Protect these streets like they're your home. 

Marine: Stab stab stabbity stab.

Trainer: Oh Bog, No!

Trainer: Protect these USMC vehicles like they are government property.

Marine: Ready, Aim, Fire! Fire for Effect. That one's getting away!!!!

Trainer: Oh Lord, No!

Trainer: What are you fellas doin?

Marine: Chaining some terrorists we found to the tops of all our vehicles so we won't be firebombed.

Trainer: I quit.

TOOLING UP FOR LOCAL MISSIONS

 When Ops at Third Fleet called me to see if we could send one of our security squadrons up to provide additional manpower to the various police that were going to fight off the anti-war jackals that were going to interfere with the onload of one of Washington's Brigade Combat Teams I discussed it with the boss and it was interesting to see the difference right there between the Navy and the Army National Guard. Our primary mission was security. It was trained and executed by us as purely lethal although it did include buzz words such as 'escalation of force.' What we were not though was trained and equipped to be punching bags for mental and moral defectives.

We let 3rd Fleet know that we had nobody available and suggested they call the Army to provide security for an Army onload but if there was a waterside security element to it, let us know the requirement and you already have our daily rates for INCONUS missions.

I'll tell you someone else who isn't trained, organized and equipped to be punching bags for degenerates and that's these guys right here. I'll be curious to see if they come out of any deployment to LA or elsewhere in Cali with the Marine reputation intact for busting the heads and killing rioters that have made the Marines the national treasure that they are.

The words, imperfectly trained for the mission, spring to mind.

MY NPR SOUNDS FAMILIAR SOMEHOW

 I twist my mind into pretzels listening to NPR in the 12 minutes it takes to return home from dropping my favorite person off at school. It is enough to get the entire NPR gestalt. Yesterday's was a savage appreciation for the hard work and dedication of our new HHS Secretary who had just told 100% of the members of the Vaccine Safety and Efficiency Advisory Board to buzz off. NPR invited on a man who has a pathological loathing for Kennedy and a deep hatred for all things anti-Bureaucratic and he gave vent to his sullen hatred for most of the way home. It was amusing.

To put this NPR fetish for only inviting on guests who wholly agree with them I thought I'd add an incident from yesteryear when NPR learned that that fat warmongering oaf Winston Churchill had made some really mean comments about NPR's very good friend and ally, the Fuhrer. They turned to their reliable non-aligned non-partisan friend Josef Goebbels for a few words on that despicable cigar smoking illiterate stump of a man and he did not let them down.

By the time I got home they were cheering on the freedom fighters in Los Angeles, arguing for preemptive nuclear strikes on Moscow and St. Petersburg and demanding the Courts remove President Trump and order the hanging, drawing and quartering of Kennedy. Funny thing about those socialists, they really have a hard on for Kennedys.

INTERESTING TIMES

 If your summer has room and time for some reading enjoyment and a fine broadening of the wonder found in history then I recommend the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. It starts the 3 volume series in Quicksilver and covers the life and times of some fascinating characters living in some fascinating times. It occurs to me that we think we live in interesting, dangerous and adventurous times but, seriously, these are the meekest and mildest of times and some piracy, revolution and invading is good for the soul!

 I read them when they were published and thought they were fascinating. They cover some of the ancestors of the characters that showed up in Cryptonomicon and as far as I can recall, explain nothing at all about that book or its characters.

SOME PEOPLE SAY

 The National Guard is out front again in front of bad people and I think back to the Kent State shooting where there is now considerable evidence that it was an actual FBI Agent or Asset that carried a pistol to the scene of the riot and actually opened fire on the poor bastards out there standing into danger without a soul to back them up if anything went bad.

I see the same thing happening now but in California where the Guard have not just no support but the active enmity and hostility from the civil government, the State government, Law Enforcement, the Media and probably the majority of Californians. I really don't know how this plays out other than to say that I suspect a dozen judges of various imbecility will wade in and issue TROs ordering the President to leave the defense of the realm and the people of California to the terrorists from Mexico and other interested parties such as the Cartels and of course the California Coastal Commission. Those guys carry great weight in Cali.

It is hard to feel any sympathy at all for anybody over there. This is what they voted for again and again and again and again and they got it. They got every single thing they voted for. Hell, they got the Olympics.....

THE WORDS ARE DIFFERENT

 

THE UNFORTUNATE ONES

 I can almost rally some sympathy for poor monster Putin and his minions over at KGB headquarters because I have absolutely no doubt that they are being buried in the traitorous murmurings and leaks from a thousand hate filled Trump despising spies who still have exalted positions within the CIA, DIA, State Department and the NSA along with the scores of technical spies within those agencies and the White House Communications Agency who manage and operate all the computer networks and fire off a broadside to 'comrade putin' every 30 minutes whenever they find some dirt or a place where the President may not have been strictly truthful and forthcoming.

On top of that are the endless torrents of 5th columnists who are in the US media and married to highly placed scumbag Democrat lackeys who are still making up perhaps 9/10s of the Senior Executive Service and Flag and General Officer ranks who don't hesitate to commit their ravings and secret facts to writing whether in the Washington Post or Politico and all of this finds its way to the handlers in the sleek modern KGB headquarters where they must be pulling their hairs out over all the conflicting information from so many foaming-at-the-mouth imbeciles and morons.

Of course what they'd really like is some insiders inside SpaceX or maybe inside DOGE but I don't think there are any in either of them.

Did I mention that every other secretary to any SES or FOGO is probably a Cuban or Venezuelan agent who simply fires off complete transcripts of all that happens every day to their handlers in Havana and Caracas and all the rest really work for Xi? When is the last time one was arrested and a show trial was held?

But at least it's nice to know that down at the bottom of the various ladders of the various intel agencies there are still a few spicy lads who think they are 'running' these 'spies' and sincerely believe that they have 'turned' them, just like the big boys used to do in the 50s and 60s before they all started wearing lipstick and dresses.

MAKING THINGS WORSE

 I wonder why it looks like there are an awful lot of people out there dedicated to making every single situation worse. It is happening at every level in western society and it is perhaps time to end the pattern. This sort of thing never happened in the past for a very good reason, nobody would tolerate this level of insane stupidity for more than a second and the consequences of behaving stupidly were almost always immediately fatal or allowed a good long time to suffer and regret. These days there are no consequences at all and that needs to end.

SECRET AGENT MAN AND METAPHOR

 I kind of enjoy the trolling of the sphere as the media tries to drum up some kind of intense hatred and disdain between Elon Musk and President Trump. I guess most people stopped reading a long time ago and never heard of the stalking horse. MAGA ran on a number of promises to the people and the Big Ridiculous Omnibus Bill of No Restraint satisfactorily implements all of the promises that Trump ran on. I don't think I heard him commit to something as ridiculous as cutting the budget or capping spending. The President proposes but Congress disposes and there is no way the President, any president, can promise to cut spending since the only way we have to do that now is with the Presidential veto.

Looking at it from the kind of distinctive view made famous by the man one could ask oneself, why is there this out of nowhere flare of animus between the two men? I think it is President Trump launching a 5th column on the RINOs in Congress and forcing them to consider the facts as Elon Musk lays them out, this country is broke, maximally in debt and there is no way out except to reduce spending massively. Of course, Trump didn't run on that.

I think he's trying a barrel roll over the Senate now that he's got the MAGA issues passed through the House. Musk is one of the smartest men on the planet and it is should be getting clearer to people that he has his own path but in this I don't think he diverges from Trumps by even a single degree. They're running a game they'd like to see a win on but the way it is played there is no harm to either of them if the RINOs do the same exact thing they've always done and just kick the can down the road.

YOU CAN DREAM

 I like this and think it is a little overdue given all the things we do know about the feeble minded Joe Biden but there is one fly in the ointment that is still difficult to overcome given that it is roughly the size Nevada; the investigation even if launched brilliantly by the executives in charge will languish in the hands of the endless evil minions still in the Department of Justice who hate, despise and loath President Trump. If you were to measure their foot dragging by length and depth it would take on the characteristics of the Grand Canyon or possibly the Rift Valley on Mars. This will just be an updated shadow puppet show like all the ones carried out by Louis Freeh and others of disreputable and dishonest natures.

Still, it is a start and may lead to the preservation of some evidence that scholars a thousand years from now can use to mark the precise point of the end of the First Republic of the United States.

You see we remember the disgraceful and contemptible head of the FBI who found that Hillary Clinton did indeed do all those wildly unlawful things and exposed our secrets to literally everyone with a computer and network connection but then decided on his own to let her off without charges. Not only was Clinton let off so was everyone else that worked for her on her personal staff who took Top Secret material, trimmed the edges and then knowingly sat down at unsecured terminals and emailed them to Clinton and China and Russia and Iran. Those dolts at the FBI let Clinton name her own Chief of Staff as her personal lawyer so she could not be questioned about ANYTHING.

But who knows, this may well turn out to be the smoking gun at the bottom of the lake under the upturned car that shot JFK all those years ago in Texas just before the dog barked.

 

MAY I SUGGEST

 Visit your local Art Museum and spend an afternoon just admiring the art and criticizing the keepers for whatever bad pieces they allowed to slip in and if the museum does permit comments, take a pen and leave a few thoughtful comments. Curators always enjoy comments about the work they do and it isn't as easy as it looks.

We aren't starved for art here and there are few places I've lived that are better than around here and while I was aghast at 19 to find that my favorite painting was actually hung in the Toledo Museum of Art, it was surrounded there by other beautiful worthy things and I could also buy a print of it at a very reasonable price. 

We stopped off in Zaneville to drop off some art for a show and had a few minutes on a rainy afternoon to admire the art there and it was truly amazing. Nice little museum where you would least expect to find one. One could say the same thing about the Butler in Youngstown, that little place in Akron and there's always the Smithsonian, National Gallery and the Met,  but only a dolt would say it about the formerly 6th richest city in the nation. On the gripping hand, I don't recall any good art in Detroit but that may well be because, not expecting any, I never looked for it.

So, it's the rainy season, step inside and admire the art and just think, you can do it all over again when it is really hot later in the summer and it's nice and cool in the museum.

ON THE REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS

 People today still talk about armies and battlefields but those days are over. There is no need to fight your way through the enemy's army and defenses in order to destroy him because now you can simply send flocks of drones armed to destroy the things that make a nation. Why wouldn't you send drones to kill the leadership of the enemy? Why wouldn't you destroy their electrical grid and keep it offline forever? Why wouldn't you attack their nuclear power plants, ammo plants, weapons factories, aircraft, airports, seaports and damns?

We have now achieved total offensive dominance and there is no going back now.*

*This only last until the defense against drones reaches 99.9999% effectiveness. We might also start by hanging all drone operators and nuking their capital cities.........and also the places the people actually like.

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