9 LESSONS AND CAROLS

My daughter and I go to my parents house for Christmas and we usually attend my mother's church on Christmas Eve. This year we were treated to 9 Lessons and Carols. I took away just one lesson but I learned it very well. I will always check the guide to the service in future and if it even hints at 9 lessons and carols, we're not going. What a filthy trick to pull on the unsuspecting. It was a mistake to go and to stay.

WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?

It seems that New York's finest can't do their jobs without violence and won't do their jobs if the sheep fight back and use violence against them. Radley Balko puts it into perspective for us. The police have been ratcheting up the violence and the shootings in an orgy of panic fire, poor aim, poor judgement, and total and complete indifference to the safety and well-being of ordinary citizens.

NYPD traffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses have dropped off by a staggering 94 percent following the execution of two cops — as officers feel betrayed by the mayor and fear for their safety, The Post has learned.

 It has helped contribute to a nose dive in low-level policing, with overall arrests down 66 percent for the week starting Dec. 22 compared with the same period in 2013, stats show.

Citations for traffic violations fell by 94 percent, from 10,069 to 587, during that time frame.

Summonses for low-level offenses like public drinking and urination also plunged 94 percent — from 4,831 to 300.

Even parking violations are way down, dropping by 92 percent, from 14,699 to 1,241. 

Drug arrests by cops assigned to the NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau — which are part of the overall number — dropped by 84 percent, from 382 to 63.

I don't condone shooting police, unless they really deserve it and there is no way on earth to bring them to justice. I think the police in America have lost their way and have declared war on the public. Why else do they need tanks, armored personnel carriers, machine guns, grenades and heavily armed SWAT teams?

Read the link to Balko and consider, he isn't making predictions there. He is merely inviting your attention to the things police do every single day in this country.

A GRAND WEEK

Sorry about being absent so long but I had a grand time and enjoyed Christmas Vacation thoroughly. I wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

MERRY CHRISMAS

Best wishes to everyone for a very merry Christmas, a happy new year and peace and joy throughout the year.

BLOGGING LIGHT

I apologize for a week of what may be few blog posts from me. I am spending a week with one I see twice a year and not only do we spend it unwisely, we do it with such energy and enthusiasm that I am wiped out at the end of the day. It can be wearing keeping up with an 11 year old. Plus she hides my iPad before she goes to bed.

CUBA LIBRE

Michael Totten, a real journalist, went to Cuba this Spring and wrote about it here.

Good luck Cuba! Good luck American tourists!

I loved the usual NPR commentators who exulted about all the trade we could do with Cuba once we end the sanctions. I was hard put to figure out how Cuba was going to pay for anything we might ship there and what, if anything they had that they could afford to ship here. Frankly, I don't see any sort of robust trade in our future. It will be more along the lines of the anemic trade we currently have with Argentina, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

Contrast his experience in Cuba with his recent experience in Vietnam.

REVELATION

This picture hung on my father's various office walls years throughout his years in the Army and even after he retired from the Army. It is undoubtedly still lurking somewhere in his basement. I didn't realize what it was because it was forever unlabeled but I ran across this item today and learned why the picture was there for so long. He was the Battery Commander.

Dak To, South Vietnam. An infantry patrol moves up to assault the last Viet Cong position after an attempted overrun of the artillery position by the Viet Cong during OPERATION HAWTHORNE.

SONY POND SCUM, THE STORY

Sony has been gutted by the seizure and abuse of its personal and private data. The data was stripped off their networks without any alarms or flags popping up and then the organization that stole the data used it punish Sony executives and share holders. I find it amusing that the other motion picture studios are holding their breath waiting to see what slime floats to the surface when their private files are leaked. I'm OK with whatever comes next. You see, these guys deserve it.

The entertainment industry calls for:
spyware on your computer that detects and deletes infringing materials;
mandatory censorware on all Internet connections to interdict transfers of infringing material;
border searches of personal media players, laptops and thumb-drives;
international bullying to force other countries to implement the same policies;
and free copyright enforcement provided by Fed cops and agencies (including the Department of Homeland Security!).

Remember who started the cyberwar. It was SONY.

The Sony BMG CD copy protection rootkit scandal of 2005–2007 concerns deceptive, illegal, and potentially harmful copy protection measures implemented by Sony BMG on about 22 million CDs. When inserted into a computer, the CDs installed one of two pieces of software which provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system to interfere with CD copying. Both programs could not be easily uninstalled, and they created vulnerabilities that were exploited by unrelated malware. Sony claims this was unintentional. One of the programs installed even if the user refused its EULA, and it "phoned home" with reports on the user's private listening habits; the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all, contained code from several pieces of open-source software in an apparent infringement of copyright, and configured the operating system to hide the software's existence, leading to both programs being classified as rootkits.

Sony BMG initially denied that the rootkits were harmful. It then released, for one of the programs, an "uninstaller" that only un-hid the program, installed additional software which could not be easily removed, collected an email address from the user, and introduced further security vulnerabilities.

Following public outcry, government investigations, and class-action lawsuits in 2005 and 2006, Sony BMG partially addressed the scandal with consumer settlements, a recall of about 10% of the affected CDs, and the suspension of CD copy protection efforts in early 2007.

The details are graphic and well worth a quick read. Sony deliberately, with malice aforethought, attacked 22 million computers in America and loaded them up with spyware.

LEFT BEHIND

In our heart we always knew that we left men behind. It was the nature of the war and that enemy. It was just hard to read that we documented leaving our men behind in Chinese hands when we pulled out of Vietnam. The National Security Agency, Army, Navy and Air Force, and the upper echelons of State and the Department of Defense knew damned well that when they signed the Paris Peace Accords they were writing off soldiers, sailors and airmen who were held captive by the Chinese.

                                When our country called for me we came from forge and hill,
From workshop, farm and factory the broken ranks to fill, We left our quiet happy home and those we loved so well, To lanquish all our Union foes or fail where others fell. But now in prison drear we lanquish and 'tis our constant cry, Oh ye who yet can save us . . . will you leave us here to die?
Did the voice of slander tell ye that our hearts were weak with fear? That all, or nearly all, of us were captured in the rear? But the scars upon our bodies from the musket ball and shell, The missing legs and shattered arms a truer tale will tell; We have tried to do our duty in the sight of God on high, And ye who can yet save us now leave us here to die.
There are hearts with hope still beating in our "Northern Homes" Watching, waiting for the footsteps that will never come. In "Southern prisons" pining, meager, tatters, pale and gaunt, Growing weaker, weaker daily from pinching old and want -- Are husbands, sons and brothers who hopeless captives lie, And ye who yet can save us -- Will you leave us here to die?
From out our prison gate there's a graveyard close at hand, Where lay fourteen thousand Union men beneath a Southern sand, And scores are laid beside them as day succeeds each day, And thus it shall be until we all shall pass away; And the last can say while dying with upturned glazing eye, Both faith and love are dead at home and they've left us here to die. ---An Unknown Andersonville POW
Requiescant in pace.

A NOS FRERES D’ARMES AMERICAINS

This is a fascinating article and well worth reading. Don't worry, it's not very long.

(This is the main area where I'd like to comment. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Kipling knows the lines from Chant Pagan: 'If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white/remember it's ruin to run from a fight./ So take open order, lie down, sit tight/ And wait for supports like a soldier./ This, in fact, is the basic philosophy of both British and Continental soldiers. 'In the absence of orders, take a defensive position.' Indeed, virtually every army in the world. The American soldier and Marine, however, are imbued from early in their training with the ethos: In the Absence of Orders: Attack! Where other forces, for good or ill, will wait for precise orders and plans to respond to an attack or any other 'incident', the American force will simply go, counting on firepower and SOP to carry the day.

This is one of the great strengths of the American force in combat and it is something that even our closest allies, such as the Brits and Aussies (that latter being closer by the way) find repeatedly surprising. No wonder it surprises the hell out of our enemies.)

SCREW THEM

A real true blue moron named Michael Tomasky proudly penned an article for The Daily Beast. You should read it. Seriously, read it. Tomasky pretty much spells out why I made the decision to drop my newspaper and news magazine subscriptions and stop watching television altogether.

That idiot doesn't have a clue how he sounds to anybody familiar with history. He is writing, with great disdain, about the entire Southern United States and the people who live there. It is clear that this elitist would have been happy to fight the Civil War from Broadway in New York City and then grab his carpet bag and trundle on down to the defeated States of the United States of America and screw them out of every cent, every peck of grain, and every piece of moveable  property in retaliation for their failure to let themselves be pushed around by a ruthless majority of Congress.

Stalin and the Red Army in Ukraine could not bear more animus to a conquered people than Tomasky and the Liberal Progressive People's Democratic Party. Look at what he writes:

But it’s not just a question of numbers. The main point is this: Trying to win Southern seats is not worth the ideological cost for Democrats. As Memphis Rep. Steve Cohen recently told my colleague Ben Jacobs, the Democratic Party cannot (and I’d say should not) try to calibrate its positions to placate Southern mores: “It’s come to pass, and really a lot of white Southerners vote on gays and guns and God, and we’re not going to ever be too good on gays and guns and God.”

I'm always impressed when the socialist lib/progs rear up on their hind legs and spout about how they must be allowed to constrain your freedom of speech, take away your inalienable right to keep and bear arms and forbid you the free exercise of religion because you got it all wrong. They don't say it with irony. They really do want to kill your God, take away your right to defend yourself and ram their morality down your throat. They can't even claim that God gives them the right since they mostly deny and abjure God.

I don't know what motivates other people to oppose the Liberal Progressive People's Democratic Party, but for me, the answer is simple. We cannot afford their policies. Right now the only way to pay off an intergenerational debt that will not be paid off in the lifetime of your great great great grand children, is to do what socialists ALWAYS do when they get in that fix and inflate the hell out of the money supply. I owe you $22 trillion of government debt, would you take 22, trillion dollar bills? I think the Fed owes more than $50 trillion of debt that they used to pump the economy over the last 7 years. I'm sure they could print off a handful of $10 trillion dollar bills and pay it off tomorrow.

Saddest of all, there are probably 320 million Americans who think that would work just fine and don't have any idea why we don't just go ahead and do it already.

At the time of its introduction in 1980, the Zimbabwean dollar was worth more than the U.S. dollar in the official exchange market, with 1 ZWD = 1.47 USD

But today, as we learned in Sunday’s Times, state attorneys general, many in the South, are colluding with energy companies to fight federal regulation of energy plants.

When did it become against the law for States to work together to defeat bad legislation? Has this idiot Tomasky never heard of lobbyists? Senators? Congressmen?

It’s lost. It’s gone. A different country. And maybe someday it really should be. I’ll save that for another column. Until that day comes, the Democratic Party shouldn’t bother trying. If they get no votes from the region, they will in turn owe it nothing, and in time the South, which is the biggest welfare moocher in the world in terms of the largesse it gets from the more advanced and innovative states, will be on its own, which is what Southerners always say they want anyway.

Nobody alive today has direct memory of what happened the last time the accord of the Union was broken by people who felt they had very little left to lose after being driven out of the concern of the political majority in Washington DC. It wasn't so much about slavery then and it won't be about electoral votes the next time. Kurt Schlichter speculates what a Red America and a separate Blue America would look like in short order.

TAKE EVERYTHING

Little story, barely news, about a couple in Florida who are angry. At this point, I'm sure they're enjoying themselves but maybe, in the end, they will prevail.

Do the Right Thing director Spike Lee tweeted a Florida couple's address to his 300,000 followers and claimed it was the Zimmerman of Trayvon fame's home address and then wrote:

“I don’t give a f— what you think kill that Bitch,” Lee wrote. “HERE GO HIS ADDRESS, LET THE HUNGER GAMES BEGIN.”. . .

I hope the couple whose address he tweeted and got wrong take everything Spike Lee has left.

ARTISANAL LAWYER

This made my day.

After crafting your paper and extracting your ink, I painstakingly draft your legal documents using the tools and techniques of an 18th-century barrister. A feather quill will write the motion to dismiss your traffic ticket on a beautiful vellum sheet in large, ornate letters that will appear familiar to you if you’ve looked at a reproduction on the “Conftitution.” S’s will look like f’s, the first word of each paragraph will be comically oversized in the historic manner, and all documents will be rolled up like a poster, just like the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. 

REGARDING THE VIOLENCE

I found myself wondering today why all colleges and universities reward the truly violent students and expel those merely 'accused' of violence against women.* The protesters, the rioters, the campus vigilantes who show justice by throwing rocks through store windows, arson, or spraying graffiti never seem to feel the wrath of university administrators. But try taking a gun on campus, which is your actual civil right or try handing out copies of the Constitution [free speech] on campus, which is again, also your civil right, and the administration policy is to suspend or expel you without warning and without mercy.

Doesn't that seem odd to you? When did actual liberals rally around and support zero tolerance?

A Commenter at SF Gate On The Berkeley Riots Last Week

*Guilty until proven innocent is a rare approach to law in America but then we're not talking about law, we're talking about academic policy which bars the rule of law.

CIVIL WAR LETTER HOME CHATTANOOGA

My cousin wrote a letter home from Chattanooga on the eve of the battle to open a supply line to the Army of The Cumberland which was then besieged in Chattanooga.  General Grant kicked off the Cracker Line Operation on 26 October which led two days later to the Battle of Wauhatchie.

Medical Purveyors Office      Chattanooga, Tennessee                      Oct 26^th , 1863

                                    Dear Mother

                                                      I received your letter of the 8^th ult, this morning and now as my days work is over I will take a few moments time to write to you. Lieutenant A. F Davis started home with a letter for you yesterday. I hope he may arrive safely and be able to commence his new labours with a new and willing heart for I wish him to gain reputation and become as good a civil officer as he has been a military officer. General Grant is doing something now that I think will cause the enemy to leave our front very soon. I cannot t ell you at the present what it is but if things end I can write more with safety and I will tell you.

Luther Sheets was down here this afternoon and I went with him to the 11^th Ohio to see Jno  and I saw him but did not get to talk to long with him as he was fixing to go out with the  Regiment, where to I do not know but I think I can tell you in my next. I have to borrow a postage stamp to send this letter will you please send me some in your next. I hope I will not be an expense to you much longer in the Army but I do hope to be able to come home and do for myself and you.

Newton Conklin is the 1^st Sergeant in the Battery again so I understood today. I wish all the soldiers well and hope he may do well.

Lieutenant Davis will explain the reason why I left the hospital and came here for I explained it to him and if you ask him he will tell you and it will save me the trouble of writing it.

I still like my new place here and I think I can keep it as long as I am in the Service which I understand is not to be very long.

I seen General Grant out walking with his crutch and cane this morning before I was hardly up. He is not a lazy General nor is he afraid to talk to the men. But still the men want General Rosecrans back again.

The 15^th will not be in the coming fight but I think most of the Brigade it belongs to will as they have gone to the front this evening.

You must excuse my bad writing for I cm in a hurry and when I write fast I write poor but I can write very well when I  take my time to it.

Well good night. Expect more in the next.

                                             Luther

                  P.S. Write soon.

Interesting story from Russia via the BBC.

Russia's richest man has revealed that he bought US scientist James Watson's Nobel Prize gold medal, and intends to return it to him.

I'm afraid that the IRS is going to eat a big chunk of Watson's money from the sale in taxes when he receives his medal back which will come on top of the chunk they took out of the sale price from the auction.

The IRS knows how much it's worth. Maybe he should arrange to buy it for $1 instead.

THE DAY THAT LIVES IN INFAMY

Many of them have no idea or actively hate that such men and women exist. One of them just drove by here at 0300 with spotlights on looking for stupid criminals in the neighborhood. Today is a day to think of the people who willingly drank Montrose toast. In the end, they put it all to the test.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

George Orwell

VERY SMALL ON THE INSIDE

I stood on the rooftop of my apartment building in San Diego watching the fireworks over the bay on 4 July. All of us were up there. It was a while ago. OK, rather a long while ago while Desert Shield was unfolding. I accepted an offer to crew a boat sailing to Cabo San Lucas. It was a thousand miles under sail. We mostly sailed 200 miles offshore.

It was downwind. We moved at the speed of the wind. Kettenburg 40's are very slow down wind.

RULING BY DECREE

It is not what we wanted.

Who knew she had a facebook page?

396 DRAFTS

I don't write this for me or you. I am, none the less, stunned at seeing that I have 396 lurking posts that will never see the light of day.

ORANGE IS THE PINK

So if I just paint my gun muzzle orange, it will let me survive an encounter with the Cleveland police?

A sad story

This was a really sad story and yes, had I the power, I would take these two cops and drop them somewhere in Lake Superior. Rather far from shore.

Link updated. Thanks Buck.

NEARER TO GOD

I admired the men and women who flew missions in support of SOUTHERN WATCH. They got into aircraft everyday and flew over an impressively armed Iraq. They flew in planes that were maintained by men and women living far from home, frequently in conditions that boggle the mind of people who have never deployed on aircraft carriers or operated out of the Kingdom. It is a dangerous and lonely profession.

We lost a pilot today flying in support of the war we claim we are not fighting in Syria.

Two F-16s getting ready to take off in support of Southern Watch in 2000

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Why exactly do we send our children away from home to discover alcohol and drugs for the very first time in the company of strangers?

I would like to think that I am relatively free of these biases. I have no particular axe to grind with fraternities, although I do think they play a regrettable and occasionally dangerous role as alcohol distributors to the under-21 crowd, courtesy of the federal drinking age. And I don't believe sexual assault is as grave a problem at college campuses as many activists have made it out to be—if the 1-in-4 statistic were anywhere close to accurate, it would be a baffling outlier in a sea of falling rape rates.

It's not a stress test. It is not a test.

If you didn't read Arthur Ransome's stories when you were young, you missed out on a treasure on par with Burrough's stories about Barsoom. You kind of had to be the right age. It's way too late to go back and read them now.

GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST

Wired has an interesting article on ENIAC. It's worth a read. Ross Perot did what he did and most of us found it distasteful. On the other hand, preserving a bit of the first computer in this age of the world is a noteworthy accomplishment.

People might wonder, how could they not preserve the first computer in the modern era and yet they don't know. Oh God, they don't know. The 'owner' has to rent the space at about $8/square foot/year and so we only have 454 warehouses that still store CRT computer monitors. Something had to be shuffled out the door so we could keep all the millions of surplus CRT monitors, right? Out you go Ark.

I once found that I had 2 warehouses full of TALOS fire control system consoles. None of the senior staff cared that they were paying half a million dollars every year to store the fire control systems for a long defunct missile. They just kept paying the bill to store them and would do so forever.

The Talos abides dude.

CONUNDRUMS

I'm not sure how they do the scam. They have a membership program that entitles members to a 10% discount if they pay $ upfront and remember to bring their card in when they go to buy a book or product but at the same time, they fill my inbox with things like this, almost every day.

I don't get it. Why would you pay $25.00/year to get 10% off when the rest of us get invited to take up to 30% off?  I'm not sure they actually grasp 'membership rewards programs.'

ON POINT

Interesting read from Fred.

Ethnic mixing doesn’t work, gang. Not Moslems and Parisians, Irish Catholics and Protestants, Shias and Sunnis, Indonesians and Chinese, nor even New Yorkers and Alabamans. We think it should work, insist that it will, punish those who observe that it doesn’t. Yet still it doesn’t work. The greater the difference between groups, the less well it works. If we realized this, and let people do as they choose, the country would be much better off.

He left out one particular mixture.

When I go out in society I am surrounded by people who could be reliably described as democrats and liberals and progressives. I dare not open my mouth about my monarchist views or they will throw me to the kitchen floor and stab me to death.

That's no way to treat a sovereign.

FUTURE AMBASSADOR COMPROMISED

USA Today reports that Obama friend and fund raiser is accused of raping a child. Oddly, as far as I can tell, they are the only major organized news service in the United States to report this story. That's kind of odd. Not only was this man a huge fundraiser extraordinaire for Obama, he was founder of a NAMBLA type organization devoted to human rights.

You might know them. A lot of them have this sticker on their cars. They're proud and they won't allow others to tell them what sex is wrong or should be held illegal. They'll decide for themselves if the law means what it says and thank you very much Obama for giving us cover to decide for ourselves if the age of consent is 8 or maybe 10. After all, if neither the President nor the Attorney General obey the law, why should they?

When he was 'done', Roman Polanski put his shoes on and fled the country forever.  Wanna bet Obama pardons him the way Clinton pardoned Rich?

Obama is anti-civilization. It won't surprise me at all if he pardons 955,000 people on his last day as president and leaves office. Holder is already drawing up names for the massive file of losers who will receive presidential pardons. [It's a muslim tradition to pardon just about everybody at certain occasions and his departure from power follows one of the most glaring examples of this kind of behavior of ruling monarchs in the Arab world.]

You may have thought he overstepped with his amnesty for all illegals but wait until you see him pardon everybody in jail in America and all of those at Gitmo...... because he can.

WHAT STUNNING POWERS OF OBSERVATION

I see that the British Home Secretary has just discovered that there are up to 20,000 slaves living in the United Kingdom. This was recently announced by Home Secretary Theresa May who had earlier taken great pains to exclude honest American bloggers who had been invited to visit Britain to address this specific problem.

Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, who had called for the bloggers to be banned from the UK, said: "I welcome the home secretary's ban on Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer from entering the country. This is the right decision. The UK should never become a stage for inflammatory speakers who promote hate."

Man, if that is what you are, if you can't find it worthwhile to condemn slavery in the most violent terms, what the hell do you condemn and what do you find hateful?

As I recall, the reasons given for their exclusion was that the government didn't need anybody coming over to rile up the natives about the murderers and slavers living among them unmolested by the police, courts or government officials who were all "down" with whatever the local muslim gangs wanted to do so long as there was no widespread "French" muslim violence. I suppose muslims hacking the head off a soldier outside his barracks might have breached the fragile peace they were willing to fantasize about.

They figured, "what's a few slaves?" There's millions of little girls so there's plenty to go around without carping about one or two thousand of them being led into a short life of slavery and abuse in just one little town in Great Britain.

To be honest, I'm not sure why they banned Martha Stewart or Michael Savage.

COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS AND OUR DEAR LEADER

As I watch the violence in Ferguson and the masses of fools who decided to block freeways from Cleveland to San Diego and who barge into carol ceremonies screaming hate at 7 year olds, I am struck by how very well organized it all is.

Byron York at the National Review Online looked into what Community Organizers such as Obama do.

Community organizing is most identified with the left-wing Chicago activist Saul Alinsky (1909-72), who pretty much defined the profession. In his classic book, Rules for Radicals, 

Alinsky wrote that a successful organizer should be “an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; to fan latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expressions.” Once such hostilities were “whipped up to a fighting pitch,” Alinsky continued, the organizer steered his group toward confrontation, in the form of picketing, demonstrating, and general hell-raising. At first, the organizer tackled small stuff, like demanding the repair of streetlights in a city park; later, when the group gained confidence, the organizer could take on bigger targets. 

But at all times, the organizer’s goal was not to lead his people anywhere, but to encourage them to take action on their own behalf.

Now that does sound like our Dear Leader doesn't it?

THE IRONY RUNS DEEP IN THIS ONE

The New York Times stands by its decision to publish the address of police officer Wilson and says that the two reporters who included that little fact along with a copy of Wilson's marriage license in their valuable reporting on the riots and destruction in Ferguson, did nothing wrong.

The two reporters are whining about the fact that the internets retaliated by publishing their addresses on media all over the planet. Those poor vicious bastards are now calling the police for protection.

Can you see the policeman at the precinct picking up the phone and hearing that the reporter who outed one of them knowing that the consequences almost certainly mean the place gets firebombed, feels the need for 24/7 protection because somebody outed her address? I'd tell her I would despatch Officer Wilson the moment we can find him.

AN INTERESTING SPEECH TO THE UN

Whipped off Maggie's Farm before they even knew I was there, this speech is by Israel's Ambassador to the UN on the eve of the UN vote in favor of a Palestinian State. I think it is fascinating that even as the West is gearing up to have America do something sincere about ISIS and the rising Caliphate of Islamic Terrorists, they want to award the mantle of statehood to the biggest bunch of murderers who started the whole world-wide terrorism business 44 years ago.

LIKE FINDING AN ELF

Way back, I met a man who, as an Air Force LtCol routinely denied country clearance to generals who wanted to drop by the country where he had the honor to be Military Attaché.  There was him, the Army Captain and the Master Sergeant. There wasn't a lot of depth on the dignitary bench. He had a POMCUS site going in and people were interested.

Up at NAVCENT a lot of us admired him. My boss found out, that in a break with tradition, the Air Force decided to promote him. On my next regular visit down Gulf, he sent me with complete 06 insignia figuring Qatar didn't offer them.

He was an outstanding officer and so was the Army Captain. They both worked for CENTCOM.

Happy Thanksgiving.

ONE SIDE OR THE OTHER WILL RIOT AND KILL

The mayor expected mayhem from either the TEA Party or youths. It's no longer funny how they avoid the obvious. There has never been a riot by the TEA Party and the violent national socialist types don't much come out to play when police shoot anybody, they side with police who shoot disarmed and unarmed people. I cannot actually recall the last time the majority Americans held a riot: maybe in New York City at the height of the Civil War.

Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III has said the city was making plans for the announcement for months. "Either way, somebody is going to be upset -- one side or another," he said. "We are obviously preparing for all worst-case scenarios."

Long ago the organized media got into the bad habit of describing believers in the Constitution in the same category that they used to describe "right wing death squads in South and Central America." Then, they all began to refer to them as tea baggers. Most democrats went along with the characterization. I do not.

The last time Republicans and true believers in our Constitution took to the streets was in Selma, Alabama when they went up against the vile Democrats running the plantations in the south. It's funny how all the thugs lost sight of who came out then to support the movement and just which party Lincoln was head of when he led the Union against slave holding separatists. He didn't act because of a moral principle about slavery. As you can see from his letter below, he acted to preserve the Union.

Executive Mansion,
Washington, August 22, 1862. 

Hon. Horace Greeley: 

Dear Sir.
I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right. 

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. 

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. 

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
Yours, 

A. Lincoln.

That last sentence summed up the man. When he took office he swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. That oath put his personal beliefs second to what he thought were his official duties. The world would be radically different if he decided that the Constitution also permitted States to shed their allegiance to the Union and go their own way as separate and individual countries. Needless to say, he didn't see it that way and so we fought the bloodiest war in American history.

I saw that Governor Nixon mobilized his State's Guard a week ago and then he and the mayor failed to deploy them to prevent the looters from burning down businesses they looted in Ferguson. Whatever else that was, it was a total failure of the Governor to uphold the oath he swore when he took office. He called the Guard and it responded as it always has and then he held his hand to block it from defending the innocents from the rioters, looters and arsonists he KNEW were going to come out to play.

It might very well be time to hold a conversation about race in America. I won't permit anybody to represent me in that conversation. One does not win by compromising with evil. At this point, evil has two feet, a gun, attitude and a militant indifference to life and humanity.

Compromise

I am grateful that my duties never put my personal beliefs at odds with what I perceived to be my official duties. I've written here about my feelings about men who used fire bombs and WMD on cities. I was a volunteer and I went where I did and did with a will, all the things that it was my duty to do. I count myself fortunate.

Civil authority has one job. Keep it civil or end it.

FERGUSON

CHANGES IN ATTITUDE

I think it is interesting to watch Europe change and see how few people are prepared to address that change at any level in the organized media. It started happening about 10 years ago when the blogs started to report on the news that the media refused to report on and then refused to comment on. The problem for the organized media was that they soon took on all the aspects of the Ministry of Truth and fewer and fewer people paid any attention to them. They turned to the real source of information.

That is hard for the organized media to accept. They don't accept that they have so devoted themselves to a single partisan viewpoint that nobody believes them anymore. They think they lost market share and viewers and readers and advertisers because an increasing number of 'little people' stopped reading their pathetic recaps of AP News stories about nothing; all of which were devoid of facts about the sine qua non essentials of true journalism; the who, what, where, when, why aspects of a story and seemed, almost invariably, to blame it on Bush, the TEA Party (they refer to those losers as Tea baggers because they think that's how real journalism works) and the stunning improvements in universal public education standards brought to us all by the Teacher's various unions.

The alarmists at the organized media are the helmsmen of what little remains of a once vibrant media. Each of them thinks of itself as a true inheritor of the mantle of whossname and whosname who lured out a Deep Throat to drop some sort of dime on the plumbers and the Rethuglicans. They would cheerfully go the stake, like Cranmer, wishing all of their peers to "keep the faith."

They don't believe in God or the Devil and they make it clear that morality is something lost to the modern age. They support every kind of deviancy except heterosexual sex between consenting adults which has now earned a label, a pejorative label, that is used by them to describe such lowlifes.

All of them have failed to notice that the declining birth rates of the West mean that the West is going to vanish in the space of 2 or 3 generations. That's OK with them. They all think that we are bad people and that the world is merely accommodating the new rulers in a peaceful and normative way. Not one of them would fight or die to maintain the West.

I guess I can live with that. JRR Tolkien wrote about such people in his epic tale of the Fall of the West. Numenor vanished under a tide of nihilism and excess. So did Athens, Rome and Byzantium. Yet the ideas that make men free always came back. We have had dark ages in the past and we will in the future but the will to be free is damned near unquenchable.

It's hard to watch it fall.

PRICELESS

Reading the weird whacky news so you can too!

I found wonderful story about an arms bust and thought the power of stupid runs deep in some people.

Authorities intercepted a massive shipment of tens of thousands of firecrackers, as well as knives, Tasers and other weapons Thursday that police say was en route to rioters in East Jerusalem.

Intelligence information led police and customs officials to the shipping container in Afula, which had been marked as containing Christmas lights, police said.

It strains credulity that they could think that wouldn't flag a shipment heading to a land of very few celebrants of Christmas. They might as well have marked the manifest, "rockets and bombs."

WHERE ARE YOUR IDENTITY PAPERS

Meet the people who want to bar code you or tattoo a permanent ID on your wrist. Yeah, you just thought it was the national socialists. They're everywhere these days and they don't even see the fiendish irony.

They always think reducing humans to marked easily identifiable property is the best course of action, for the safety that's in it.

The latest socialists want to use whatever method it takes including mandatory biometrics to make every computer user distinguishable to police investigators diligently searching the cyberspaces for crimes.

REALIZATION

I honestly have no idea about http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/383057/the-best-71-second-animation-youll-watch-today/  It is supposedly the best 71 second animation you will see today.

I found it amusing but then I enjoyed the humor of Werewolves of London.

FAIL TO GROKK

I honestly don't understand what is going on anymore at colleges and universities in America. What happened to the application of justice which was based on a single fundamental principle, if you are the victim of a crime, call the police. When did the police stop investigating rape allegations? Who died and made some university bureaucrat the sole arbiter of a citizen's fate and dismantled all aspects of a legal case and used every means to exclude the law from appearing at the rape hearing?

Glenn Reynolds, the instapundit, has been bringing these stories to my attention. He's been doing that now for over a year which I find incredible. Rape is a serious crime and it is not investigated by empowered university bureaucrats but by police and if the allegations are merited it is tried in a court of law using all the tools that we, as citizens, are allowed and if a man is found guilty, he goes to jail is not merely expelled and branded a sex criminal.

I'd love to know how empowered people somehow decided that there is no longer any presumption to the rule of law in this country. Don't they know it invites a serious backlash? And no, that's no veiled threat about the consequences to coeds from this misapplication of law, it is simple economics. There's a million hungry shark type predators known colloquially as lawyers roaming this country and every single one of them will take a case to sue the endless deep pockets of universities and colleges who really cannot defend themselves in a court of law.

They literally cannot lose in a court of law. I think the universities and the DOJ have done the unforgivable and let the stupid and energetic morons set policy. They're going to rue the day. We wrote the laws that protect the accused for damned good reasons.

PUTRID OFFAL

From Investor's Business Daily, these seem to be very profound words:

We live in a constitutional republic, and the president who says he cannot wait for the Congress to act ignores a Constitution that says he has to. Article I, Section 8 gives Congress exclusive authority to "establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization" and Article II, Section 3 says that it's the president's duty "to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."

Professor Turley told the House Judiciary Committee at a Dec. 3 hearing that Obama's abuse of executive power has grown to the point that "he's becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid."

Meanwhile, the people who were screaming for Nixon's head merely nod theirs and impute that those of us who are concerned about this illegal usurpation are crazymadfanatics.

ONCE UPON A TIME

This was mine. I had two 5"54 but the one on the fantail reliably killed the #3 Gas Turbine Generator. Par for NAVSEA. My missile fire control system routinely locked onto the same GTG. I also had some real killers. I really liked High Explosive Controlled Variable Time ammo. They reliably detonated at 75 feet over the target.

We've been sending destroyers to sea for years and we keep missing opportunities to use those rounds. I don't think the bad guys know what they're missing. They have to cope with drones and Hellfire. I can live with that.

WE COULD ALL USE A COP LIKE THIS IN CHARGE

Ripped off from Maggie's Farm.

NEEDS MUST WHEN THE DEVIL DRIVES

I have to do this to shed the memory of people surfing in ice.

I'm cool with that. I drove to the north shore to see the 40 foot waves hitting that beach. I was surprised that Hawaii didn't shift a couple miles south after each one hit. Then I drove to Bellows Air Force Base where it was more peaceful and calm then you can imagine.

DEMOCRATS

I tend to mock them all because, let's face it, they are the stupidest people on the planet. Their hero is going to announce tonight that he is giving the shaft to Americans and importing pseudo-Americans who will take their place in the voting rolls, in their jobs, in their business, in their hospital beds, in their social security payments, in their SSI, in their carpool lanes and in their stead as first in the affections of the Democratic Party. If liberals had two brain cells to rub together, both of them would be pissed.

But not democrats. You may reliably crap on them forever. They want you to. They need you to. They never get that 'immigration reform' needs to start with building a fence and keeping outsiders on the other side.

OTOH, I've said it here many times and will always say it. If I was somebody who had the misfortune to be born elsewhere, I'd tunnel under a thousand foot high fence in order to be an American or convey that blessing to my children. Play the tune or not. I'm conflicted. I tried marriage and I was born in Germany. The hardest working people I ever met were in San Diego and California and they came from Baja and points south.

PARENT

I have been reading for many years that parenthood is a fading art. Like all lecherous old men I would be happy to introduce youngsters to the grace that is parenthood. I digress. We went out this evening for beer and pizza and none of us had pizza. The only beer quaffed was by the woman whose husband is in Chicago. The rest of us selected caffeine or water. When I was 20 I never saw this coming. :)

All of us are young 20 somethings but it was a family friendly pizza place and the families and youngsters were there in spades, spandex, matching sport bras well dressed appropriately for -5 degree weather.  I liked them all. They were all good kids and fun. It didn't stop me from pointing dramatically to a corner and shouting, 'dragon!' and stealing the even numbered pepperonis.

When the young family behind me had dessert, one of our party said, "that looks good." It did indeed look delicious. They were two little boys out with mom and dad so I gently said, "look! A dragon." Both boys looked for the dragon while their da explained to them, with humor, how that trick worked while slicing off another sly bit of pie.

I think it is interesting that one can tell, in just a glance, if one is dealing with people who will go along with light harmless humor; and turn away instantly from people you know won't do the humor thing at all and take massive umbrage if you dare it.

I never bring umbrage to the table; way to cumbersome. It was a very good evening out with friends.......and dragons.

GRUBER

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Gruber’s Obamacare payday highlights ulterior motives behind ‘do something’ cry.

For all the cursing of congressional gridlock, one of the greatest sources of Washington’s evils may be the bias in favor of doing something.

As voices chime in from the major media, from K Street, and from party leadership for the new Republican Congress to do something, it’s worth pausing, taking a breath, and looking at the recent problems caused by this urge — and the less-than-noble incentives that sometimes drive it.

The Beltway media’s predominant bias is that, for every issue, Washington politicians should do something. The simplest explanation for this bias: it gives reporters something to write about. Inaction is bad for readership.

Democratic politicians’ uncontrollable urge to do something is tied up with their view of government’s role as the champion of justice, the wise arranger of the economy and shaper of culture.

But there’s a deeper motivation to do something, and the Republican leadership shares it: When government takes a more active role in the economy, it creates private-sector employment opportunities for the policymakers — and for their advisors, like Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber.

Gruber, the MIT professor who won almost $400,000 in contracts from the Obama administration in a non-competitive contract process, came into the spotlight again this month when a new video surfaced in which he admitted that “lack of transparency” was crucial to passing Obamacare.

My colleague Byron York pointed to a more interesting Gruber detail: After the bill passed, Gruber won hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts with state governments setting up the exchanges under Obamacare.

Gruber, then, had to mislead Americans (or maybe just their senators) in order to pass Obamacare, and that opened a gusher of lucrative contracts for him. There is no doubt that Gruber sincerely thought the country needed health-care reform. But still, his financial interest in the bill ought to have raised some skepticism about the numbers he was peddling.

Nonsense. Only greedy conservatives advocate policies out of greed.

Oddly enough, he is not under protection. Any muslim could walk up behind him and blow his head off. Muslims do that.

SUNNY

I looked this weekend for the House of Sunny. Regrettably, she is embracing and enjoying motherhood.... darn it. No fun. No amusing video. drat. I know that she is really happy. Been there, done that.

Speaking as one who reloads fire ships, at what age do parents get over offspring? In my case it is never but then slammed doors, sudden tirades, screamed imprecations and swarms of locusts are not in my future.

OTOH, I would give anything

EVERY THINKING PERSON HATES THEM

I was a little surprised when I read this story today. How odd that every thinking soul hates Palestinians except for the cretins in the Department of State and the White House. Somebody once said of them that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. [English is fun. One could read that sentence and legitimately wonder if I was referring to the cretins or the other cretins.] They are professional and amateur champions of hate and abuse. When they come to mind they always seem to bring Winston's words back to me, "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons." When it comes to loathsome it's hard to choose between Palestinians and Norwegians.

The Egyptian authorities are demolishing hundreds of houses along its impoverished border with the Gaza Strip to create a buffer zone that will slow the flow of weapons and militants between the two territories.

Army officials told residents in the eastern Rafah area to evacuate their homes on Tuesday. They later confirmed that they planned to empty more than 800 houses – home to about 10,000 people.

I like Palestine because it uniquely demonstrates exactly what happens when low information (stupid) people with excessive energy and enthusiasm for violence are allowed to misrule themselves and never grow up.

There was an interesting photo essay today about the Baron Hotel in Aleppo.  It is hard to believe that this is going on at the very heart of where civilization first flourished. Thousands and thousands of years of recorded history surround this tiny area that once belonged to the Phoenicians and Alexander the Great and Rome and this is what they do with it.

They put me in mind of a Prussianism that I think I first read in one of Jerry Pournelle's writings. I went looking for it. It took about .00000001 picoseconds to find it using google.

Field Marshal Erich Von Manstein (1887-1973), arguably the Wehrmacht's best World War II military strategists who was dismissed from service by the Fuhrer in March 1944 due to frequent clashes with him over military strategy, later articulated Field Marshal Moltke’s model in the following quote:

“There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm…Second, there are the hard- working, intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard- working, stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are the intelligent, lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office.”

If I was the kind of person to pigeon-hole people and be all raysist I might assert that Palestinians don't fall into any of these categories. One might think hard-working and stupid, but no.

One does have to wonder why the cretins at State slobber all over them and want to have their babies. Still, there's an egress for every single one of them.....it's just through this door over here.

WHAT WAS THAT?

Any NPR story is like a walk over the railroad bridge with an unexpected train chasing you to the far side. I so admire how that darned fetus changes into a baby and back into a fetus in the blink of an eye.

"Right after the fetus came out, that woman started bleeding from all over," Bahr says. "We did everything we could, just to save her life. But even with a blood transfusion, she ended up dying."

The baby died, too. And it was only then that Bahr and her team learned the truth about the woman's medical history: Two of her relatives had died of Ebola.

We pay them money for their reasoned and balanced reporting of the news.

I think I would rather just give the money to crack addicts.

SPECULATE THIS

Sometimes it is fun to fly over the divide and look at it from 90,000 feet. Here is an article on point.

Even as they vow to fight Republicans at every turn on issues that fundamentally divide liberals and conservatives, left-leaning Democrats insist that they will not do so seeking retaliation against a Republican minority that stymied their economic, environmental and social priorities for so long with filibusters and delay. Those days, they insist, are gone — leaving liberals to somehow find a balance between fighting for their convictions and not drawing the same charges of obstruction that have dominated Democratic messaging for years.

“The best news about a Republican majority in the Senate is that the Republican minority is now gone,” Whitehouse said. “They were just a god-awful minority.”

Conveniently overlooked of course is that Senator Reid NUKED the rules that gave the minority any standing in our democracy and used it to ram through legislation that he could not get even with a loathsome filibuster proof majority.

Sadly, it makes one wonder if we should arm our reps to Congress with swords. I can see it now.

UNAMERICAN

As I read this article about deliberate mass murderers I was struck by an odd UnAmerican thought. Oh sure, it's just me that thinks such a thing could never be done here in the United States by agents of the United States who acted lawfully when they seize cars, homes, yachts, etc because there is the tiniest bit of drug residue in some misbehaving youth. No no.

In addition to ordering the demolition of the homes of the terrorists who carried out Tuesday's attack, he also gave orders to move forward with the demolition of the homes of terrorists who carried out recent attacks.

What do you think would happen if, instead of mobilizing the national guard for the violence we all expect when St. Louis's lame ass grand jury announces its decision....right about the time the State Department will pronounce their six year studied opinion on the pipeline from Canada, if the power that masquerades as our government simply announced that they would demolish the homes of the terrorists who plan to loot, fire bomb and frenzy after the grand jury and DA decide to finally show us their cards?

I can kind of see it now. Of course, when the cops did that whole BURN DOWN HIS HOUSE, they probably knew that he was renting the house and the actual home owner had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes and bombs and such.

I can totally grasp the idea of going to the killer's parents and bitch slapping the crap out of them for raising a murdering scumbag. I can even support burning down their home....if they own it and it isn't rented or mostly owned by some bank through a 30 year mortgage.

It  is winter here in MetroParkCentralis and the heat isn't working and it is likely that the tiny little amount of the Milk of Human Kindness that in me remains, has frozen

THE GUARD DEPLOYS AT HOME

I'm afraid this article reveals some of the things kept hidden by the national media. As with Occupy, it signifies a departure from the norms of civilized behavior. The next thing you know, we'll have the 101'st Airborne deploying again to the United States of America.

I would have been 100% behind its last American Deployment but I was still in school back then and yet of a tender age. Like Nixon, I think that violence, looting, burning and destruction is about all that can be expected from leaders like scumbags Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

I come from a family of artillerists. We used to engage our enemies on terms mutually agreed upon.

Would You like Canister with Your Grape Poupon?

FADING GLORY

I came across this article tonight about the sub service. Submarines are treated to the very highest category of support. Seriously, what a submarine wants, it gets. The idea that they could be Guam-bound for their entire "deployment" is a shocking testament to the failure of both their leadership and their ability. There is a Submarine Tender based in Guam. There has been one there for almost 3 generations.

"Jefferson City has been in port in Guam since June 21 for various maintenance and repairs," said Cmdr. Brook DeWalt, spokesman for Submarine Force Pacific. "Jefferson City has a very small water leak from a valve internal to the propulsion plant."

DeWalt said the reactor has a water coolant leak that isn't a safety concern and is not putting anyone or the environment at risk because it's contained inside the plant. He also emphasized that officials don't consider the boat to be "stranded" in Guam for the past five months, since it's had the capacity to get underway.

Exactly what kind of sailor cannot replace a leaking valve? Yeah, I know the answer but I enjoy asking the question. Sending a ship to sea with a propulsion system that cannot be repaired at sea is lunacy. We have been operating nuclear ships since USS NAUTILUS got underway over a hundred years ago. [I can fabricate pure shite better than SUBPAC]

This brings up the entire USN deployment plan. Why, exactly, do we have to deploy our ships and squadrons for up to a year at a time when we are a nation at peace and not formally engaged in anything even remotely resembling a war? Back in the Cold War we did it to maintain maritime supremacy but the Cold War is over. The wars a thousand miles inland in Afghanistan are over. The war in Iraq is over. Thanks to our brilliant leadership over the last 12 years we have right-sized the navy.

Right Sizing The Navy

I realize that like Britain, we are closing in on the days of being a shitty little navy. I can handle that. We've done that before and we will again. I do wonder what strategy drives massive ongoing deployments in the face of no threat at all.

If USS JEFFERSON CITY counts as a deployed asset, how much would we lose, as a nation, if half the deploying force simply emulated this "deployed" submarine and stayed at home?

Almost 30 years ago I came across a book in a used book store in San Diego. It was written by the Salvage Officer of the events above and carried on through the salvage and reopening of the Suez Canal after that war. OTOH, it would have been one of the thousands of books I gave away a couple of years ago to the Padre.

ME AND FOREVER

Lately, I have been staring into the face of eternity. When it was simply a matter of dying in a minefield or being killed by a terrorist overseas, it was one thing.

How age changes us.

I would that it would not be so.

TERRAIN TERRAIN TERRAIN

It comes from the only flight simulator I ever flew. My brother loaned me his copy of F18 decades ago and about the only thing I recall from that pointless flight combat simulator was this woman's voice constantly shouting "terrain, terrain, terrain" and "Pull Up! Pull Up! Pull Up!" It always brought this cartoon to the forefront of memory.

As I read the press these days I am struck with just how on-the-mark that little prescient cartoon was decades ago. Of course there was nothing prescient about it. If you were as brave as a lion and you scratched a feminist 30 years ago, you would find that they bleed outrage and have no humor chromosomes at all. Feminism is a Movement solidly seated on the Group W Bench.

If you think about it, the very worst enemies of the feminist womyn's movement are feminists. They have managed, I think, to relegate their whiny asses to irrelevance. Nobody wants to listen to the permanent complainer class. They have combined to convince many of us that their screeds and impassioned whines of 'SEXISSIM!!!!' can be disregarded because they echo the other whiny class of people who always scream RACISSSSSSSSSSSTTTTT!

It's too bad. I very much prefer the kind of people that enjoy a sense of humor and fun.

She struck a prose 

Ladies seem to like shoes. I don't know why. We tend to love them even when they wear low heels.

She clumped in to show me her new shoes

I worry about the girl above. She means the world to me and she is living with one of the most humor impaired people I know. On the other hand, she knows that. She will, reliably, inform her mother that she votes Democrat from now until forever. The fun is learned early in life.

I think she nailed having fun