AT TIMES LIKE THIS

Called to mind today. 

Dover Beach

By Matthew Arnold

 

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

DELTA SHUTTLE TO NEW YORK CITY

 Is there any detectable difference between Mamdami and Maduro? It might be time to review the political party limits in this country and decide once and for all to exile any and all people who think that they have the right to impose communism on anyone in the Republic in which we live. Just reading that Mamdami and his regime intend to seize private property and treat it as a public good without compensation is irritating to say the least.

NOW THEY KNOW

 If we want illegal immigrants from South America, we'll go get them ourselves. Just sayin.

ON ON

 I liked this when it came out. I think it aged well.

 

THE 30 YEAR BACKSTAB

 I think it is safe to say that the US Navy today is just a shadow of what it was and the rival that that Navy was designed to deter, and if necessary, to wage war against, is just a shadow of what the Chinese navy is today and the Chinese navy is still growing at an extraordinary pace. Some people are really alarmed at the ratio of force available for a fight with China and to be honest, it doesn't look at all good. In fact, it looks impossible and the skinny bit nobody is allowed to notice is that this was by design.

Do you really think we forgot how to design and build warships all of a sudden? Do you wonder that the DDGs seem to be really fine warships and you can say exactly the same about all 3 of our submarine classes?  There is no better submarine fleet in the world even if it gets smaller every week. No, this is not a numbers comparison. This is a look at a slice of history that simply fell off the table when we won the Cold War and it got kicked under the table and something dragged it away.

A real navy is a costly thing and the costs are not really understood by anybody especially bean counters who look at the costs they know about and dread paying the bill and think of all kinds of imaginative ways to cut expenses. 

– Cut the shore maintenance staff and facilities to the bone and beyond to save manpower $.

– Farm out depot level maintenance and intermediate maintenance to contractors and let them pay for it.

– Scrap every warship that is simply not needed now or in the projected future that has no real enemy in it.

– Cut fleet manpower costs to the bone by reducing crew sizes to the bone and beyond and farm out maintenance to the lowest bidder for every aspect of maintenance once done by the sailors.

– Scrap the shore infrastructure and training commands that educated every officer and enlisted rating in the skills necessary to be successful in maintaining, repairing and operating the finest equipment we had.

– Reduce costs by reducing complexity and redundancy on all warships and submarines.

–Sell or discard all fleet activities that are not essential to a greatly reduced navy including drydocks. 

They did all that starting in the mid 90s after they demolished the aviation community with Tailhook 91. They then defanged the frigates and removed their missile launchers rather than maintaining or repairing them and then scrapped them without replacement. This is where they got tricky. They elected to stop building the Nimitz class aircraft carrier and decided that the vaporware power point presentations on things such as electro-magnetic catapults and electro-magnetic elevators were the way of the future and built the USS FORD. 

The costs ballooned astronomically so they gutted the follow-on Cruiser replacement program that was designing the replacement for the 30 year old Ticonderoga Class cruisers. They designed a 'modular' ship to do multiple missions but only one at a time which has to be the most stupid naval innovation in all of history. They designed and built a land attack ship that fired ammunition that cost significantly more than a brand new cruise missile and was not as accurate or deadly. In short, they did everything they could think of to reduce and render impotent the United States Navy. Still, they did leave the DDGs alone.

When you look at the history of this almost 250 year old country one thing that strikes you right away is that this country doesn't really have any more need for a navy now than Canada does and Canada gets by with just 3 or 4 ships that may or may not work and half a dozen or so submarines that don't and they do just fine. 

I see you rubbing your heads and asking why? Why don't we or Canada need a Navy right now or even in the future? Well comrades, the answer is simple enough. A navy is necessary for commerce protection and power projection. We have less than a handful of merchant ships and our trade balance has been so whacked out of balance for the last 60 years that having pirates and commerce raiders slash our imports down to nothing really would benefit us enormously. 

What about our exports? Well, we export things that people really want and we don't really have to provide protection for it if we don't want to. We export food and energy to China (remember, they're supposed to be the enemy in some people's heads) and we export cars and trucks to Canada and Mexico and we used to export airplanes and software and some machinery. But the lifeblood of trade that once spanned the world and originated in American ports was squeezed out a long long time ago and the world moved on. We don't need a giant navy to protect our commerce and we never did.

So if you are like me and you despised all those crappy 4 star admirals that brought our Navy to this low estate does it change your mind a little if you consider that each one of them craftily sought to pull this arrow from our quiver so that the idiots and warmongers elites that come along every 30 years looking for a new war to dip their beaks into will find that whoah!!!!! you cannot project power without a huge navy?

Yeah and for that matter, consider the forces available to deploy overseas and wonder that people still believe in it. It's OK because this is a time when war is changing its suit and all the old rags no longer serve much purpose. In other words, we got lucky. We really don't need a standing army either.

Consider the warmongers who demand that we build up our fleet for NO OTHER REASON than to fight China and keep Taiwan away from the dirty rotten Chinese.... I never bought their arguments and would laughingly observe that Taiwan is the unsinkable carrier and that if they were sincere about not wanting to be taken over by the Chinese they could spend THEIR money buying ship killing missile by the hundreds of thousand and hiding them behind every bush and tree on the island and do the same with anti-aircraft missiles and radars. There is no call for us to fight their war and no need. They are an energetic self-actualizing people who can plan their own defense, afford to buy and deploy it and fight their own wars.

So yeah, I'm reconsidering the very low opinion of the admirals that destroyed a navy over the last 30 years and now I'm beginning to think they were rare men of vision who just had to lie about everything in order to get things going their way. On the gripping hand, a country is rarely well served by senior officers who lie to everybody about everything. I cannot actually recall a single country that was served well by lying deceitful officers but it's a new world so so we keep telling ourselves. 

Consider naval operations today. That still enormous expensive and complex Navy is now wasting little tiny drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of America and got its ass handed to it in the Red Sea by a little pirate nation of vicious beasts without a single ship to their name. It's long passed time to rethink how a 21st century superpower wages war and it should be high on the list that the first thing to do in all such eventualities is to eliminate with extreme prejudice the enemy leaders who are making war on us. We have the means and methods and it time now to put into practice a kinder and gentler format for our wars.

Oh and by the way, if you thought the independence wars and nationalism wars of the last century are over, you got another think coming. The really important thing to always keep at the forefront of your mind is that it is NOT OUR JOB TO FIGHT THEM. The outcomes of those wars are simply unimportant as long as they don't come here to roost.

I don't know if promises were made to Taiwan after World War II or in return for favors but it doesn't matter. We are not bound by the words or actions of long dead politicians who curried favor and money from deep pockets overseas and they probably understand that full well. Nations don't have friends/permanent allies, they have interests. Our interests right now and for the foreseeable future do not include making war on anybody. 

This will change when the next bright blue politician sits in the White House but you know what? That's right, look at that quiver over there and not a single arrow remaining in it.....except for the untouchables and it would take a real idiot to face people down and threaten them with the last remaining weapons in our arsenal. There will always be nukes although I do wonder fairly often if any of them would actually explode if used. 

A READY MARKET FOR 3D PRINTERS

 It would break your heart if you loved New York City and it hurts like hell that anyone can still think of cities as anything but a wasteland lost to enemy action over the last 100 years. This is the announcement of the appointment of the lawyer as chief counsel to the next NYC Crime Family to occupy Gracie Mansion. I find it notable that the announcement of his appointment was conveyed with these words, "...defending those too often abandoned by our legal system."

 

 But you and I know who is always abandoned by our legal system and it is always the victims of the crimes and the victims of the criminal class who literally get away with murder and walk away to commit another murder the next day. The cities and democrats only care about the perpetrators of violence and crime and nothing at all for the victims. 

Any honest voter would wonder why they voted again for a man who is devoted to making sure that the criminals get away with murder....but not in New York City. 

On the gripping hand, it's the outsiders who see the violence and use it as the measure of the worth of a place and the people who live there don't even notice it and they never have and that has been true since the first cities were founded.....except it's not true in Japan, or Korea, or Singapore or 99% of all those red towns and cities.  

EVIDENTIALLY AND PROVIDENTIALLY

What the world needs now is for a Student Union to overthrow the tyrannical government of Iran. Better them than us since they did so beautifully last time. Good luck storming the castle fellas!

FIRST GRAFFITI

 Who will be the first to tag this hideous thing and what will it convey in a manner most eloquent to the unlettered?

A perfect reflection of the man's soul as found in Chicago

DARK DAYS AHEAD

 I would be very happy if the massive corruption in government at every level in this country was immediately dealt with by choking off every single penny of money we give to the corrupt institutions that obviously willingly engaged in stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down. The idea was not to import a bunch of worthless scum to plunder all of our public institutions and steal everything election. I’m not sure why anybody let in zillions of unskilled thieves but it is time to end it and drive them all back to where they came from and throw all the politicians in jail forever. 

ON ADJUSTING THE MODEL

You just know that if the idiots behind the global warming scam got really clever one day they would convince the world's dolts that global warming is really due to the moon getting too close to the earth and we need to spend every penny you have to reshape the moon's orbit and make it orbit 15 feet further away. The science is proven!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

 Peace on Earth and goodwill to men and women everywhere!

Take some time on this amazing day to think of the great change that entered the world 2025 years ago today. 

 

THAT DRONING SOUND

 As some contemplate the harm we are going to do by invading China, Russia, Venezuela I wonder how far along Maduro and his Russian friends have gotten in shaping the new VDF and equipping it with a zillion cheap expendable drones and some cool little clip on payloads in various sizes and interesting fuze settings. Now a true Marxist idiot would have every one of those zillion drones in a big warehouse near the port where they are carefully kept under lock and key and of course nobody except Regime Security Forces would be permitted within a mile of them because if there was ever a 2 edged weapon it is a weaponized drone in the hands of a patriot counterrevolutionary.

So that is said and the next question asked at the War College might be, so General, how did you deal with those once you found that they'd been distributed to over 500 Provincial Defense Battalions and each of them turned out to have 30,000 drones and 300 drone operators?

After that of course, how did you provide security when your columns were on the move and how effective were your drone countermeasures after dark?

Did you notice any special emphasis the drones used to target your broadcast C4I nodes or was it just general all-around mayhem, death and destruction?

What drone security measures did you implement to provide for flight safety over the Battle Area and how effective was it?

What did personnel and vehicles find was the most effective anti-drone weapon and did you have enough of them at the outset or did you find it all a terrible surprise when the zillions of drones started showing up and day 1 of the new conflict?

 These are exactly the kinds of questions I hope they are asking themselves right now and hopefully have managed to at least make progress on some of the answers. That would be my Christmas wish for our Armed Forces because right now factories all over Russia are making thousands of these every week and the Russians are always looking to boost exports this time of year.

REFLECT ON THIS

 I see we may be joined by another Defiant one. There’s always plenty of room for more but new guys have to buy a round when they sit down at the table. That said, is there any chance at all these things could be built at the honest shipbuilder’s yard in Bath? I don’t know if they have dry docks large enough now and every time I drive by it, the building sheds almost bulge with the size of the DDGs they’re building inside. We will see.

WEAPONS FREE

 A few more of the things I found truly amusing over the weekend.

One of the funniest things from That Period was how they would constantly talk about "dismantling" patriarchy, white supremacy, etc like they were bomb squad experts and not the absolute fucking dumbest academics in the history of schooling

— Doctor-Baron 17cShyteposter, DDS (@17cShyteposter) December 20, 2025

Latest Q poll has Democrats at a whopping 18% approval rating.

They are down to friends, family, illegals, & health insurance execs. pic.twitter.com/uICrg45o5y

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) December 18, 2025

 

Pax Americana is dead. Long live Pax Europaea. pic.twitter.com/qu7idU3QVP

— Frid 🇪🇺🦌 (@Frid45) December 20, 2025

EDUCATION MAKES WAR inevitable

 A number of people are agitating like mad to kick start a war in Europe and while I don't think that they will succeed I think it is instructive to point out that Europe started down the warpath long before America did and is much further removed from the roots it thinks it shares with its ancestors. Let me give an example.

"Resolved: we will not fight for king and country" refers to the famous 1933 Oxford Union debate where members voted (275 to 153) for the motion, "This House will under no circumstances fight for its King and country," a pacifist resolution that sparked international controversy, influenced later anti-war movements (like American pacifist pledges), and drew strong criticism from figures like Winston Churchill.

The moral police decoded all that to mean that of course they would fight if they were humbly beseeched by King and Country to fight. Of course we all know that this is nonsense. Those highly educated elites that voted almost all took a whiff and decided that it was not in their interests and so they didn't fight. Probably half of them turned into spies for the Soviet Union.

This is the weakness of turning 100% of the education of the young over to people who literally hate the State to death and want to see it fall in the most painful and horrible way possible. I very much doubt that any college/university educated/trained person in the EU would be willing to actually take up arms and head for the battlefield. It is much the same here and in the UK. All those smart brainy people are going to give the next war a miss.

You know, that's what they think every time and thanks to the likes of Jimmy Carter it is possible to believe that any coercion by the State to make men fight is doomed to failure. It really cannot be any other way in the modern State where a convicted criminal can hang up his deportation for years by involving liberals and what passes for the law courts in this country. Try to imagine impressing seamen or drafting unwilling men. All that case law that used to be on the side of the Government in this matter is now in limbo simply because none of the elite will rule in favor of the State.

So with all these smart highly educated people how does this make war more possible? It is simply because they have never learned even once in their lives that actions have consequences.  They have never been in a fight in their lives and very few of them have suffered from the gross misrule of the courts and the law or from the thugs left free to prey on society because those thugs rarely prey on them. They think they can get away with any vicious, unprincipled, dirty, sneaky, rotten thing they dream up to punish a State they perceive to be their enemy and the 'enemy' won't do anything about it.

That is changing as they import the 3rd world who see prey and recognize it and then look around and see that none of the prey is guarded or watched over by anybody. You see what is happening in Somaliland Norté and a whole entire society made up of thieves and rapists who banded together and prey upon the weak that still hasn't perceived the situation as it really is and probably never will because they are so educated they cannot see it and their tongues would blacken and fall out of their heads before they uttered even the least damning words about their Somali friends and neighbors.

And there above it all is still the Courts and the Media who simply ignore it or rule that is doesn't matter or lacks standing and that is it. They dismiss it and don't think about it. That is pretty much how war sneaks up on a country. How many countries knowing the cost of the Second World War would have undertaken to fight it? What about the First World War?

Nobody knows that anymore because they simply stopped teaching history, ethics, government, civics, geography, reading, philosophy and religion. They don't teach any of it anymore. You can ask actual college students any question at all about the above and they don't know. They have very firm opinions on everything but they are also ignorant about everything. If you ask them they tell you they can get all the answers from their phones and people still roam around bleating about AI and not knowing that it must be in everyone else's phone because they're all so damned smart they have all the answers.

On that note, I thought the Navy ship wranglers were a dopey lot these days but did President Trump really announce that he was going to be part of designing and building a 30,000 ton battleship that was going to destroy everything it confronts? Well OK, I guess its true that those guys that pitched the Dreadnought to Jackie Fisher thought they had something huge that was going to change naval warfare forever.....as you know, something else crept in on little cat feet and actually changed naval warfare forever and nobody even noticed at the time.

Yes dear reader, you know our friends above and below that haven't changed all that much except for becoming infinitely more deadly and accurate when it comes to fighting ships. Still, it will be interesting to see what form this new nonpatriotic war takes when it suddenly leaps out of the shadows. Will it be another virus, banking failure, total economic collapse, open warfare? You know the modern guys think it will be something stupid and pointless like cyber warfare but for my money, they'll probably just go after the money. Some people still believe that it's real...

TINY PITTER PATTER OF THE POLICE STATE'S LITTLE FEET

 So another lunatic killed some innocents in a classroom at a formerly elite college and I could swear the sphere lit up with demands to know why the police were taking so long identifying the culprit because, and I quote, "THERE'S 800 CAMERAS AT THAT HELLHOLE!!!! WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG TO IDENTIFY THE SHOOTER?" and I'd just like to associate myself with the rest of us here who really don't want to live in a police state that uses facial recognition and license plate scanners 100% of the time all day, every day and every single night to keep a benevolent eye on us. 

Let's try to limit the powers of the state, hhhmmm? 

 

STRESS TESTING CIVILIZATION

Europe and Western Civilization had it so good and the Cold War was over and the war machines were being put aside and scrapped and all of a sudden almost all the Western Civilizations decided to import stressors that would/can destroy civil society. If you read enough history it certainly looks like this is what happens every time we could get to a Golden Age. Isn't it funny how civilization implodes every single time that happens?

You'll notice the total absence of flying pigs today a full 20 hours after the Department of Sleaze released 100% of the Epstein Flying Pigs as ordered by both a court and by order of some idiots in Congress. Wow! I didn't see that coming.....Not even one single flying pig....

If you like the idea of beating the world, I recommend Murray Leinster's wonderfully ridiculous book, The Pirates of Zan.  It will help get the taste of civilization out of your mouth and offer some amusement.  They don't write books like this anymore.

HURRAH! AT LAST !!!

 Tomorrow they promise to release the Epstein Files because that's the law baby! 

Flying Pigs Found in the Epstein Files!

 

UNCOMMON SENSE AND JUST CAUSE

 Do you get the sense that if the EU Leaders thought they could get away with it, they would attack Russia right now because they imagine that they could win such a war? They sound less and less attached to reality as time goes by. I admit I think they are just crazy enough to pull a Manuel Noriega and declare war on a country that they could not beat in a hundred years. I'll bet all their lawyers are mulling over all the ramifications of NATO launching a war of aggression against the Russians instead of doing right by the treaty. God knows they've been doing everything in their power to goad Russia into attacking them so they can start waving the bloody shirt and get on with distracting the peasants from all the awful horrible things they've been doing for the last 30 years.

I suppose they'll pat themselves firmly on the back and go forth because theirs' is a just cause. 

ON THE ACQUISITION HOLIDAY

The news is always filled with news about the Department of War's singular failure to acquire new weapon systems and this is generally perceived as some kind of dismal failure on the part of military men turned bureaucrat but I would like to take the position opposite and state for the record that this is a rare sign of uncommon intelligence (yes, yes, work with me here) on the part of a a metastasized bureaucracy completely overrun with idiots and other HR types. If shares a kind of instinctive cunning.

Back between the wars there were still those who pined for the biplane and swore off the monoplane for all their obvious flaws (not enough wings, doncha know) and they were the ones who bought hundreds of Brewster Buffaloes even as the war powers were building huge fleets of thoroughly capable modern fighters. The other bad fish in that setting though were the bomber types who bought into the insanity of Douhet and Billy Mitchell and the whole bomb them to oblivion types who thought the bomber was the only key to victory.

The beauty of a world war that last 6 years is it gives plenty of time to see the use of the follies that were permitted between the wars and the ones that actually worked. What were the follies?  The Treaty cruisers were worse than useless. The strategic bomber was a complete non-starter and wasted resources on a scale not seen until Somalis took up residence in Minnesota. The complete entire surface fleet that Doenitz and Hitler built was a complete waste of time, money and manpower.

How does this apply to us in the here and now who some pundits think are in dire need of building military hardware right now to take the place of existing battle tested and approved hardware? Excellent question. What set this off was reading last night that yet another ship type has slipped through the butter challenged fingers of the Naval Sea Systems Command and gone to wreck and ruin on the shores of Lake Superior and Mordor the Pentagon.

What was this ship that seemed so blindingly necessary to the surface ship partisans in the House of Navy? It was yet another cheapo flash European design that was going to sport a single little gun, a handful of little missiles, next to no range at all because that's the way the Mediterranean Sea works as do the Baltic and Black Seas, the Narrow Seas, and the North Sea. Home is just over the horizon, not 5,000 miles away. This was kind of like the Australian design for a ship that moves quickly but does nothing.

The ship was a stupid design for a warship operating from our coasts. It had no credible weapon systems and no credible defense against drones and was in short nothing but a European version of the Little Crappy Ship that we already built scores of and then scrapped as fast as they came off the ways. We don't need warships right now and for those who bleat about fighting the next war with what you have when it starts there is great truth in that old saying but history shows that absent total maritime superiority there is no role in war for the United States overseas. This will save us countless lives and endless ships if some other country with a huge navy decides to invade us.

One of Biden's bashful attempts at exhibiting our Maritime Dominance was spending 4 months trying and failing to build ONE PIER on the far side of the Mediterranean and that was pointless, stupid, futile, a mankiller and a full blown demonstration of how low our estate has fallen. WE cannot reinforce Europe without spending even longer getting our act together and don't let the Phony War in Ukraine fool you. The Blitzkrieg is alive and well and makes its home in Russia and White Russia. OTGH I'm one of those who doesn't think even madmen would attack Europe today. Everybody knows not to bother an enemy when he is committing suicide and that describes what's left of Europe today.

The lame game of acquisition also gets plastered onto the Army for its repeated failures to launch replacements and follow-on major weapon systems upgrades to its existing M1, M2, and M3 fleets and I know why that is and I'm pretty sure that the savvier Army types also know. It boils down to a total lack of conviction that the Army and Defense industry could actually design, build and field better systems. Those 3 things for all the horrible things Air Force colonels said about them are about the peak of battlefield development in today's environment and probably not at all suited for a full drone war level of self defense. Nothing we can design, build and field will be able to cope with the full spectrum of drones until we move into messing around so heavily with the spectrum that it turns into the new weapon of mass destruction.

Nothing today is shielded against EMP. Who is out there designing truly devastating EMP weapons? Are coherent light weapons ever going to be effective in the war environment? How many modern drone weapons rely on electrical generation and how long do they last without it? How much would it cost to build a sensor package to sniff out unburned hydrocarbons and attack the source of every single one of them? Think of the market for new cars and tractors!

This looks like one of those times in history where the weapon shops take a pause to let the engineers catch up. It is much like the era that ended the castle's role in defense, the era that ended the entire art of siege warfare, the era that ended the notion of positional warfare, and the end of the mercenary era (condottieri).

Now is not the time to build the interim weapon systems that cost every bit as much as real weapons and prove useless when the real weapons come back on line. It's not like we are at war, likely to be at war or likely to be attacked. This will also give our sharper designers some time to watch others evolve the new weapons, their control systems and their tactics. This would be applicable to US and perhaps no others but we survived 150 years without getting involved in every single damned war around the planet and likely can go another 150 if we try. It's not like we care or we would have sent our armies to fight for peace in Africa or Central Asia. 

You will know the change is here when you do see coherent light weapons that work like weapons or when everything in the radius of an EMP burst fails or when something like the drones of the Diamond Age put in an appearance. 

CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE

 In the flood tide of ruin and assimilation with the Caliphate it may soon be time for Central Europe to turn its face back to the East and renounce the West. It's hard to believe that the course of civilization would have reached such a dismal fork in the road in just 25 years. Poland and Hungary will soon find that they have less and less in common with France and Germany and nothing in common with the Low Countries or Scandinavia.

How in the world did a union of European countries come to the conclusion that they must fine and punish each other for failing to destroy themselves at the given time and speed agreed to by France and Germany? For the countries that were always caught in the middle it must seem like time always stands still and they are always faced with the German demands for control and submission or the Russian eagles of tyranny and despair.

People like to revise history and they all seem to think they can get away with it somehow and I'm not sure how that works. The history is written and the books were published and the history books will always be out there. It is true that those who own and control the internet can fake out and fool the stupid ones that get all their information from untrustworthy sources but the facts remain as they always have. Russia never sought to conquer and pillage the European powers to the extent that the Great Powers did. Russia largely wanted to be left alone and short of invading it Russia refrained from making any impacts at all on the main European stage and generally responded to attacks as and when attacked.

I look at the current idiocy in Ukraine and just wonder, who did they think was running Russia when they decided to just kill and displace Russians living in former parts of the Russian SSR? It would not have worked against Andropov, Gromyko, Stalin, Kruschev or even Yeltsin. What in the Hell made the idiots running Ukraine think it was safe to poke the bear under Putin?

If you play fast and loose with history now is the time when you look around for the distractions and the conspiracy theories to explain why a middling European country of no apparent resources, skills, or industry decided to attack Russia. Was it all a blind to see if a larger attack would succeed and thus just a test of Russia's arms and determination and if that is so, who in the world could exploit it because it wasn't America doing the poking. Who else is there?

Hello? Anyone out there? Who is stirring up pointless wars in Europe and why? In one light it looks like the self-induced/inflicted idiocy of the Argentine Junta trying to divert the mob's attention by making an easy conquest of the Malvinas. It was a done deal and that silly women in London could do nothing about it and it wasn't an attack on NATO so the US wouldn't intervene.....But again, who benefits from launching Ukraine at Russia's throat? If it's markets, commodities or banking, I'm not your guy. If it's a conspiracy theory, I enjoyed reading about the Phoenician Navy but I don't believe in them. 

You just know that scholars and pundits are going to go around suggesting that we add a CENTRO treaty to NATO and form a nice heavily armed collective polity aimed in perpetual enmity at Russia by States arming themselves to the hilt and with the backing of the United States right there on Russia's borders. You know who would think something like this is brilliant though, don't you.

THE LAST PLACE

 I see that some American soldiers were killed and wounded along with one interpreter while they were doing something in Syria with the current rulers of Syria's armed forces. I am sorry to see that. That said, Syria is just about the last place on the planet where we need to have any American soldiers at all. It is a famous dead zone much like Afghanistan and Pakistan where there is nothing worth preserving, nothing worth saving, nothing worth defending and nothing that is ours.

I believe that President Trump tried to order our forces out of Syria in his first term but the contemptible slime in the Pentagon and State Department fought that every inch of the way and left our troops there on a pointless and useless mission that served no benefit to anyone, least of all Americans. Every single soldier there needs to go. 

We have done the thing we do best to preserve the flow of oil and that is pretty much guaranteed one way or another and you all know that we simply don't need it. It used to serve our purpose to help the oils flow to Europe and the Far East but not so much anymore. In fact, I cannot think of any reason to worry about the flow of oil out of the Middle East. If they want to sell it, they have the means to guard it and we'll profit from selling them more weapons to do it with. In the meantime, suggest to your representatives that they should urge the total withdrawal of American forces from Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and the rest of north Africa.

When the little Barbary pirates decide that the time is ripe to sneak back out and do their thing, we will still be there, just based and supported out of the northern north African bases in Italy and Greece. Who knows, perhaps the north Africans living in Marseilles would like to support an American battle group visit every month or two. With the French you never know and with the new pseudo-French it is impossible to know.

HUMDINGER OF A PROBLEM

 I was looking for a quote about there being insufficient manpower for a 3rd immediate generation of war and found this at the usual source of misinformation. I suspect it has a lot to do with why it is a source of misinformation.

 –In the first identified problem area, it appears that a person who cares enough to write about it may have a close connection to the problem (maybe knows a thing or two about it)

–In the second problem area they seem to say that it is dubious because the drafter relied too much on sources that reflected enormous interest in the subject (knew a thing or two about it)

–and having grown to know to much about it based on direct experience it potentially makes the information it contains unverifiable and neutral (Do these idiots not know they are talking about wikipedia?) 

–Gasp! It contains original research! (Seriously, what can I say, this sounds awful)

–Holy Cow! It relies on primary sources for its facts?@! The nerve!

It amazes me that anybody ever relied upon wikipedia for anything real or true. I think in my generation this was best expressed in the old usenet days on sci.mil.naval when all of the commenters would sneer at anybody who cited wiki as their source and didn't have one of the standard desk top references available to use as source for cites, claims and counterclaims. The facts were endlessly arguable but nobody was going to bother debating clowns who relied on wikipedia for the facts they 'knew' about anything.

The online encyclopedia was an amazing idea and invention and doomed by the natural inclination of trolls to be trolls and OCD types to take control and make it is as painful and pointless as possible. It has become the gold standard for the original sin of DEI  where you know that some of it is garbage you freely jump to the assumption that all the rest is also garbage.

Remember when GIGO was not said with resignation but with the conviction that you could eliminate the Garbage? I do.

THE DIFFERENCE

 I was just reading some more of Kurt Schlichter over at Townhall and was struck by the unbalanced nature of his disdain for the euroweenies. I don't disagree with him, in fact I'm fully onboard with his characterization of Europeans of the NATO flavor but that was the difference between the two of us otherwise near peers. He served our country in Europe where we imagined that the soldiers and staffs merely grazed from one decent posh restaurant to the next with long interludes spent drifting down the Rhine or Danube stopping for a sip of wine every 5 minutes and this was contrasted with our days and nights in the Desert or afloat in the most dangerous body of water in the world.

Where the real difference was though came after 1990 and Desert Storm. Everywhere we went we were greeted warmly and if we did find ourselves in a posh hotel at breakfast on our way to a conference at an embassy or headquarters any number of tables would send over free pots of delicious coffee and pick up the check for everything. We kind of stood out in our camouflage uniforms because despite my best efforts, OPNAV simply refused to adopt Hotel Camouflage patterns.

The people in Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE liked us. To be honest I sensed more than tolerance for me when I was there even back in 1984, 1985, 1988 and 1989 but it was warmer and friendlier after we rolled back Saddam. If you contrast the Colonel's experience in NATO it was mostly with liberal dimwits with egos the size of planets that didn't like Americans on principle, hated soldiers; and that is our former allies. Our old enemies have elephant memories and let's not kid ourselves, they did not like us but tolerated us because we kept the Russians out. Then they dropped the act.

Europe is on a track they don't recognize now and they don't know it. They think they have some sort of hold on Americans that they really don't. The fossils that liked Europe are mostly dead and all are out of power now. Their kids were the Euro-explorers and they got their fill of a Europe much closer to the current form of Western Europe and none of them are interested in fighting and dying for it. The current war fighters fought alone in the sandbox and watched as their "allies" did nothing at all for year after year. I suppose I can't really fault them for that because it was all for nothing but still, it left marks that never go away. They didn't make any friends there. None. 

We can actually see what the Europeans have for a refined advanced military and found that almost none of it was fit for battle and certainly none of it came in large enough chunks to be useful for more than about 30 seconds of combat.

I don't suppose it's an altogether bad thing to raise your children to hate war and despise those that prepare for it but it sort of relies upon a solid iron core of disciplined warriors you can call your own to leap to your defense if and when the next war comes and Europe doesn't have that, hasn't had it for about 40 years and has really torqued the only people on the planet that had, up to this point, been prepared to fight and die for Europe.

Well guys, not anymore. Kurt isn't wrong and the truly sad thing is that now any country in NATO that even attempts to rearm for 21st century war is going to be destroyed by its own allies, the media and of course the Russians for being warmongers. It's going to look very much like what happened the last time lax Europeans tried to rearm before the obvious looming war that wasn't just on the horizon, it was right there. Of course, Europeans simply don't comprehend how pathetic their military situation is without the US.

The good news for Europe might be that nobody wants what they have other than hordes of the military age arab muslims they have let into their countries in overwhelming numbers. Well, them and all the African military age muslims they have let into their countries. Oh well, from here it looks like a real problem but I'm sure I'm wrong. Nothing to worry about, really.

Really. 

INTO THE VANISHING POINT

 We see a couple of bothersome and not so trivial conclusions being drawn from really pointless and idiotic ideas. The two that bug me the most are the idiots in the media and elsewhere who all seem to clamor that we are in a "space race" with China or somebody and need to spend more money to be better faster and damn the cost and second that we need to invest trillions of taxpayer money and natural resources into building a lot of AI data centers.

It isn't a race anymore. We raced to the moon and we 'won' for whatever that is worth. Nobody is 'racing' to get to Mars. We are trying to build an architecture that will push mankind into space to stay not to win some stupid pointless race against people who aren't even playing. 

What nobody asks is why do we need all this AI data center nonsense? Is it to make videos without paying actors? Is it to answer deep questions that nobody knows the answers to? Is it for some other reason like critical research questions that need answers before engineering can develop the technology? In each of these events the answer is the same, why not pay people to do it? People can make good movies and others can earn a living writing, directing, acting, lighting, mixing and even doing computer effects so why not let them? 

How many deep questions are there? Can't one AI answer them all and that's it, all done and you can shut down that AI data center?

How much Research do you think an AI can do using nothing but LLM? It's a scam just like global warming is a scam. There is no sign at all that any researchers are on the right track to develop a computer or program that is smarter than humans so why do we need all these data centers? 

If it was a national priority to build the first true AI there might be some reason to focus resources on outproducing everyone else but I'll just point out the obvious, ARPA, DARPA and the rest of the SciTech Government Research taps have not been turned on for this effort so it really doesn't appear to be in the national interest as any kind of priority or project. That being the case, why is everyone lining up to fork over money and resources to billionaires to get richer building useless data centers?

Does anybody know what they're really doing with all that money? Is anyone following the money?

On the economics of large scale production and in the interest of enhancing and increasing our shipbuilding capability has anyone considered sinking all those billionaire yachts that float around the world wide open to mysterious hull breaches and unexplained fires? If not, why not? You'd think General Dynamics would be all over a money making scheme like that....It's not like anybody cares about them, just look at the strange case of the capsized billionaire's yacht that for some reason decided to go full metacentric unstable for no reason at all and flipped over and sank one night taking the billionaire and his daughter to the bottom.

I don't mind people investing their own money but I hate when it turns into the sports stadium type investment where the billionaires get all the money to build it, own it and manage it and the taxpayers simply subsidize every single penny of construction and operation forever. Are we doing this again but for so-called data centers that will never make a penny of profit or return a penny on investment?

Ask questions. It's the only way to be sure.....you know, other than pulling back and nuking it from orbit.