Tuesday, September 30, 2014

SUPPORT AND DEFEND

Why do we let morons assign wings? No sane person would trouble to ask himself what morons think but we seem to let our morons guide our discourse and assign our 'politics' to one wing or another based on simple stupidity. How did that happen?

A "winger" is somebody described by the media as somebody who actually believes,

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. 

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
You know, if you actually trouble to read the Declaration of Independence, it looks like a very familiar and modern landscape doesn't it?

A STATE OF THE WORLD

Roger Kimball has an interesting article about the EU vs Apple. He mentions that Apple has parked $137 billion offshore to avoid US corporate taxes and the EU has decided that maybe it can get some of that. In many ways I side with Apple as it fights against the confiscatory tax regimes who seek to profit from their business acumen. What Apple sells in the United States is fully taxed by the United States. What it sells in Europe is governed entirely by the incredible regulatory state that is the EU. Being the EU, that regulatory state is 100% based on preserving the money and power of the ancient oligarchs which, necessarily, requires the rules to be written in such a manner as to protect the nouveau rich oligarchs like Apple, Starbucks, etc.

It occurs to me though that Apple could BUY a country outright for a fraction of that profit it is accumulating offshore and then write the tax policies that it finds convenient.  Oops. Wait, I think that's what the EU thinks happened in Ireland.

I read a book a long time ago with that kind of premise. It involved the Swiss and their banking system which had for so long refused to cough up the money the rest of the world insisted was theirs. So the rest of the world nuked the recalcitrant Swiss until they glowed. Being the Swiss, they were all quite safe in their armored underground bunkers and redoubts and being Swiss were the most heavily armed country in Europe. Neutral doesn't mean impotent.

On the other hand, we're talking in this case about the Palestinians of Europe and you know what they say about Palestinians, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. It is also said that an honest politician is one who stays 'bought'. We shall see what the Dáil trots out as the EU destroys every freedom their forefathers won through war and revolution over 600 years.

THE LONG SHIP

I have lost my faith in wikipedia and I say that even though I edit wiki articles. However, as an online repository of startling depth, I still like to delve into it in the wee hours and the hyperlinks can take me hours away from my starting point. I'm afraid my philosophy can be reduced to: read rather than sleep, sleep rather than eat, eat only when you must. I came by it naturally. At 8 all flashlights were confiscated and I wasn't stupid enough to read by candlelight so I hot-wired a D cell battery with a flashlight bulb and carried on reading. If I was hard to wake in the morning, so be it.

This is pretty cool. It is like so many of the wonders of a different age. I, for instance, never thought I'd find the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee. What a wonder that is. I really like the remnants of the World Fair and Exposition in San Francisco and Treasure Island. Very little is left in either place.

A replica of the Gokstad ship, named Viking was sailed across the Atlantic to the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893
The ship above was built and sailed to the World's Fair in Chicago to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus and his men in the New World. The picture called to mind The Architect's Dream.


Monday, September 29, 2014

ERIC HOLDER IS DEAD

It took some time and Obama managed to find shelter behind the dead corpse of his Attorney General far longer than I ever would have thought possible but at last, the corpse is so rotten it has to be abandoned and new cover from incoming fire must be sought. Holder came in with a bang and Victor Davis Hanson points out his many egregious acts of routinely rolling onto smoking grenades and taking the full force of the explosion for the democratic party and Obama.

People say he was even more polarizing and racist than Obama but I find that hard to believe. That he was petty and venal and the anti-justice is irrefutable but the lightworker is dedicated to destroying western civilization while Holder was merely interested in extracting whatever he could get from the system before it falls. In many ways he was similar to the old Roman emperors after the Sack of Rome who only endured based on the sufferance of the other Roman Emperor in Byzantium.

The speculators suggest that he stepped down to be groomed to take Ginsberg's place on the Supreme Court when she, inevitably, "retires." The other speculators prognosticate that she will be forced out by the old-white-men of the left who want Obama to appoint Holder as her replacement. They never use the term, "unexpected car accident that claims the life of Supreme Court Justice......" Given how many political lawyers have been sacrificed by the democrats over the years, if I was Ginsberg, you wouldn't catch me dead on the roads and byways of America.

FADING GLORY

Old Glory slowly fading away in Fairport Harbor

Sunday, September 28, 2014

AGAINST THE FLOW


It is with sorrow that I don't recall if this was Daily Time Waster or another of the blog roll. Still, it is good.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

WASHINGTON FREE BEACON REPORTS

I thoroughly enjoyed this article in the Washington Free Beacon, Andrea Mitchell Conducts Foreign Policy Interview with Chicago Slumlord. Valerie Jarrrett is Obama's principal advisor.
BY: Andrea Mitchell on Friday landed an exclusive interview with Chicago slumlord Valerie Jarrett to discuss terrorist threats against the United States, as well as the resignation of her close friend Attorney General Eric Holder. It was a very enlightening interview.
“I have nothing new to report,” Jarrett said when asked about reported threats to U.S. subway systems.
Read the rest at the link.

Friday, September 26, 2014

SOMETIMES WE HAVE SURREAL FOR BREAKFAST

If you turn your back, as I do, on the transom, weird stuff flies over it. This is bizarre on the face of it and even after you put it down and walk away you shake your head and mutter....WTF?

Honestly, who knew we had coed fraternities? This is the very first picture that pops up on google when I type coed. The powers that be who are concerned about girls getting assaulted on campus want them to move into fraternities because Title IX.


OK.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

LOSING HIS GRIP

It appears that Eric Holder will be leaving the Department of Justice. They say he's headed for New York. New York is standing by.


What is it with the tactical police? Somebody told them that trigger fingers must always be near the trigger but not on it. Why do they all insist on wearing those stupid helmets? If they must wear a helmet couldn't they color code them with pink for federal  agents and blue for local cops? Why do modern cops need machine guns? The Cleveland police put 119 holes in a car using pistols. If they can do it, you can do it. If they absolutely had to carry machine guns, couldn't they carry Thompsons? Seriously, do they need boots and bloused pantaloons?

I used to play in the sandbox with kids like this. Yes, you need a gun. No, you don't need a helmet, alice gear, a machine gun and a tutu. This is what happens to police when you hire former SEALs.

PLAY IS FUN

If we didn't think play was fun why would we do it? It sort of looks like bureaucrats are dead set against American corporations using the existing laws to rid themselves of an onerous tax by telling them that they cannot buy some minor company overseas and then shield themselves legally from the 35% American corporate tax on everything including overseas profits. I'm OK with those bureaucrats flaunting a power I don't think they have.

Well, not really. Truth be told, I'm a pirate.

Can you imagine what will happen in DC when a corporate tycoon strolls across the border, gives a man there a dollar and says, "use this to buy GM or Boeing?" Yep, he'd give it to a man named Bill Clinton and the result would be the same. One more company just off-shored itself for no good reason at all...except shedding that 35% tax.

For no reason at all, I decided to throw in a picture of a beautiful girl at play. Wiley. That's what I am.


Wednesday, September 24, 2014

OLD NEWS OF THE GREAT WAR

I just learned tonight that the Daily Telegraph is publishing its newspaper from 100 years ago online. You can follow the Great War in near real time. It gives an interesting perspective about what was going on while western civilization crumbled and empires died in the mud of France.

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

OVER THE FENCE

It's interesting that liberal fools buy into this sort of rationalization. A guy made it over your very high fence and made it through all of your heavily armed guards and still managed to open the door to your house and you think that what you need to do now is lock the door. Think about it for a second.

-Very high alarmed fence
-Enormous heavily armed security force
-Very large yard to cross under fire

and every liberal on earth thinks if that happens to him he can just dial 911.

Lock the damned door?!!! That's crazy talk!!!!

OVER THE RAINBOW

Washington DC has to adjust to the "new" Constitution of the United States. It's a couple of hundred years old but then, Washington is a place out of time. Read this and weep.
Under the proposed legislation, guns would still be prohibited in sensitive locations including the Capitol grounds, government buildings, public transit and anywhere where alcohol is sold and served. Schools, universities and circumstances where protection of public officials, visiting dignitaries and demonstrators is paramount would also be considered sensitive places where guns are banned.
A large part of exercising one's second amendment right to carry a gun is to shoot lawmakers. It's a right dammit! Another part of our second amendment right to carry guns is to be safe from predators and why, when 1 in 5 women in a university get sexually assaulted, wouldn't we allow them to carry a weapon?

I'd wonder about how "sensitive places" crept into the language of the Constitution but I didn't see any penumbras either. What a strange place liberals live in where it is OK for them to have guns but illegal for you to have one.

LOSS OF SAVVY

I don't and never will know if this story is true. Back when I had divisions, not one single one of my Petty Officers in any work center had a colateral duty. The colaterals were something that the officers didn't enjoy much but they were pretty much assigned only to officers. It might be worth taking a look at the SORM and seeing what the explosion of SAVI, and SAPR and urinalysis and all the rest have done to make life unendurable for those who actually want to fix stuff.

The worst thing we could do to sailors in my day was to send them mess cranking. That wasn't a colateral though because it became their complete and total duty. I suspect that the people who like to bother other people have made being a sailor much harder than it has to be. That was the unofficial motto of a Group I was once affiliated with. "Making things Harder than they Have to Be." (think about it) and no. They got rudder orders from a thousand miles away and 3000 miles away.

WHEN I WAS CHENG

Senior Chief Orth where art thou?

A gracious thank you to Daily Timewaster.
I knew some wizards. I knew a lot of them.

Monday, September 22, 2014

THE HINDMOST

You know exactly where you stand with the ruling class when they decide to import people known or suspected to be carrying a death dealing plague that nobody understands. Any sane person would question why they do it but any paranoiac knows.

I don't think they really care about you and everything they do slaps you in the face with it.


There is just one party that has spent the last 40 years polishing the "nothing to see, just move along" mantra and they pretty much got a lock on the 'peons don't matter' approach to ruling.

Some of my happiest younger years were growing up at Fort Riley. You won't find the graves of the thousands of soldiers that died in the camps around Fort Riley from the plague because a prairie fire ages ago burned all of the wooden grave markers. The graveyard was a pasture roamed by buffalo when I was a boy there. There was nothing to mark their passing. Like sailors, they vanished one day into the mist.

PUNTING SCIENCE DOWN THE STREET

I see and know that the Climate Warriors are now gathered in New York City to scream about the destruction of the people's sphere until they grow hoarse and weary and then they'll climb back on their busses and executive jets and fly to Lima, Peru to scream some more after a lie down. As an empiricist, I occasionally ask one of them what he hopes to achieve.

I know, I waste his breath and damage my ears but it's worth asking. If the conditions that exist now result in inevitable global warming, what steps could you or we possibly take to ameliorate them and keep the planet from continuing to warm forever? I mean to say, all the scammers claim that the atmosphere contains the lethal planet killing dose of CO at this time. They demand that we stop adding to the killing bolus but never address how to actually fix it other than demanding that money be taken from us and given to them.

Nobody ever discusses how we're going to make the existing greenhouse gasses that scammers claim cause global warming go away and so end precipitous global warming. On this topic, ve vill have SCILENCE!

What part of this picture screams "SCIENCE"; and would you give it a megaphone?

NATO's NUCLEAR UMBRELLA

A deterrent lasts from moment to moment. Here' a picture of NATO's nuclear umbrella.


Speak Russian?

Saturday, September 20, 2014

AGENTS NAB UNDOCUMENTED WORKER AT WHITE HOUSE

In a stunning development yesterday, federal agents concerned with fences, nabbed an undocumented worker as he jumped the fence and sprinted into cover. The report from the fabulists at the AP reported that federal thugs chased the man into an open door while waving guns at him and screaming at nearby pedestrians.

Agent Johnny Rotten was quoted as saying, "we don't like their kind around here. He's lucky we didn't plug him full of holes and bury his body in the desert or feed him to sharks here in the river."*

In a unique departure from typical fence jumping incidents all along the border, an investigation is underway to determine which Republicans are too blame for the incident.

*I wanted to bring my news publication more into line with the vast majority of news organizations in the US, so I fired all my copy editors.

We blame Bush!

UNAWARE OF OBAMA'S CUNNING PLAN

Angelo Codevilla at The Federalist is simply unaware of Obama's brilliant plan to capture a bunch of live ebola victims in east Africa and parachute them into all the Sunni strongholds in the middle east. Why else would Obama be sending the military to 'deal' with the ebola disaster there?

Makes me wonder if the same brain at work in devising our long running Air Assault on Guam is responsible for our new east Africa/deal with ISIS plan.




WASHINGTON POST FOOLS

This wonderful first paragraph in some BS story from some idiot at the Washington Post caught my eye and why wouldn't it?
SHACHE COUNTY, China – The month of Ramadan should have been a time of fasting, charity and prayer in China’s Muslim west. But here, in many of the towns and villages of southern Xinjiang, it was a time of fear, repression, and violence.
What a remarkable display of ignorance don't you think? Is the idiot who wrote that paragraph aware that nowhere in the muslim world is there anything except fear, repression and violence? Isn't it odd however they are they become ascendant and wage violent jihad at the drop of a pin but you mustn't blame islam they say.

Blame Bush!

Friday, September 19, 2014

HOW PROFOUNDLY STUPID IS OBAMA?


It should not be so easy to parody a president. When the first things out the president's mouth is a blatant obvious lie that even a 5 year old could see through, how does that advance the policy and security of the United States? I don't believe a word that man says and I only wonder that anybody would accept a single thing Obama said as even marginally not a bold outright lie.  You know, speaking about Talk Like A Pirate Day, Obama is always talking and acting like one. He should be running one of the Barbary States, not the United States.

PAYBACK TIME

Now that Scotland has failed to vote its own self out of the UK, do you think English voters will be given a vote to kick them out? Turnabout is always fair play...except boys are never allowed to hit girls even if they hit you first.

Seriously, the only reason the English ever conquered the place was to keep from being invaded through the north every time a continental power offered the Scots money to distract the English from wars on the Continent. Fortunately, with no wars on the continent possible from now until the ending of the world, who needs to keep the good Scots down.


If the Scots get a vote on independence why don't the English?

Thursday, September 18, 2014

IRONIC AND ICONIC

I will try to do better.


I would have to add that I have no problem at all with what the man did when he pulled our forces out of Iraq. We had stopped 'warring' in 2004 and spent the next 8 years piddling. As expected, we 'won' the war practically overnight. Our major mistake was to stay and try to make something out of what was left. With the materials at hand there was never any hope of building anything good.

REALITY FAILURE

There were a few headlines that caught my eye over the last day or two. Most of them boiled down to stories about generals insisting that we needed to at least contemplate waging war on ISIS and a President who is disinclined to act in such a manor. If you know the men involved it is pretty obvious what is going one. It's a reality malfunction.

We still, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, have generals who think we can successfully defeat our Islamic enemies on the field of battle. They sincerely believe that it is possible to "win" a war and impose an overwhelming and crushing defeat on the Islamic enemy du jour and come out of the process with a lasting peace.

Equally, the President is a well known liar and dissembler. He is the last man in the world who is going to act against the enemies of all civilization. He is one of them. There is no way that he is going to compromise his fundamental beliefs and order the Army to attack ISIS or any other Islamic terrorist organization.

The Army of the United States fought a damned fine war in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They waged war continuously 24/7 for over 12 years and after all that time, money, effort and lives lost and damaged they accomplished exactly nothing. It's an open secret that the Taliban is still running Afghanistan in the parts we left and will step in and begin running the entire country when we finally withdraw. We achieved the same result in Iraq in less time.

To use an expression made famous by LTGEN Honore, these people are stuck on stupid. The single common denominator of the anti-civilization forces sweeping the middle east is islam. The President won't and can't declare war on islam so there can be no military victory. The only way to defeat them is to refuse to allow them to enter and settle in your country.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

A PRIMER ON ISIS

I don't really have anything much to add today but I will pass along a link and would invite readers interested in the long history of the disaster we call the Middle East to visit Tim Urban's latest post on what is happening in Islam today. If you are not familiar with Wait but Why, it makes an able place to begin.

You would need to have some time to read any of the fine reports he has written about his travels as a journalist to parts of the world that make for fascinating reading, but you wouldn't want to make those trips yourself. I think Mr. Urban is certifiable, but he's bonafide.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

NEVER MIND AN EXIT STRATEGY

If this works out as it probably will, it make their tragedies, our tragedies.*
President Obama will announce Tuesday that the U.S. military will take the lead in overseeing what has been a chaotic and widely criticized response to the worst Ebola outbreak in history, dispatching up to 3,000 military personnel to West Africa in an effort that could cost up to $750 million over the next six months, according to senior administration officials.

Nobody in the U.S. military today was drafted. All of the people the President plans to send to wage war on a disease in Africa volunteered and swore to obey the orders of the Commander-in-Chief. I suspect that there will be a few people who suddenly decide that they didn't sign up to wage war on disease and refuse to deploy. I wonder if the media and Democrats will lionize them the way they got behind and supported the handful of losers who decided to refuse President Bush's order to deploy and wage war on this nation's enemies in the Middle East.
“It’s this broad range of capabilities together that will turn the tide of this epidemic,” said one senior administration official, who along with others spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the president’s plan in advance of Obama’s trip to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Tuesday.
It will be interesting to see how the Army carries out an aggressive campaign to help stem the tide of a disease nobody understands and which has defied all answers for decades about where it comes from each time another rare outbreak is recorded. I really hope that the Army sends a man like Colonel Gorgas to Liberia and gives him the resources needed to set up the simple aid that we mean to provide.

I suspect that there will be mission creep since that historically happens 100% of the time the military is deployed to combat any single problem. I have enormous sympathy for the men and women and their leaders who will be deployed to provide humanitarian assistance once more in Africa. I think it is safe to say that they will pay a very high price for another abysmal failure to help Africans. I cannot recall a single military relief expedition to Africa that ended well for the power that dispatched it or for the Africans it was sent to support.

It's going to be horribly ironic when we send armed troops to protect the 17 treatment facilities and in the span of seconds commit more armed soldiers of the United States to the defense of our humanitarian medical mission in west Africa than we dreamed of sending to support our diplomatic Mission in Libya before we let our Ambassador there get dragged off and murdered on 9/11/2012 by people we expected to attack us on that date. Meaning absolutely no offense to anybody, I really hope they send the USMC to provide security.
The Marines, from the outset, took a hard line with the police and
others in authority. This was done to ensure force security, and to
establish a safe and secure environment. On the day they landed, the
Marine commander met with the Haitian police commander in Cap
Haitien and explained that the Marines would not tolerate beatings
and shootings of civilians. The next day, when a Haitian police officer
brandished a weapon in front of a crowd, Marines trained their rifles
on him. The Marine confrontation with the police in Cap Haitien
culminated in the firefight on the 26 September that left 10 Haitian
policemen dead.
Read the article I linked above and linked here again. It describes humanitarian operations carried out in total anarchy using the forces of the United States and it was an easy bitter pill to swallow after our humanitarian intervention in Somalia. As this was playing out with my east coast counterparts finally doing something and deployed to Cap Haitien, I was deployed with Inshore Undersea Warfare Group One's Immediate Response Team supporting Operation Southern Watch on Faylaka Island among the deserted ruins there under the OPCON of Joint Task Force Middle East and struggling mightily to stay out of the clutches of the 4th US Infantry Division "Joint" Task Force Kuwait then in residence at Camp Doha, Kuwait.

Our connection to the rest of the world while on the island was limited. We were just about the last High Frequency termination that Navy Communication Station Pacific ever supported. Every four or five hours we had to remind the sailors at the ComSta in Hawaii that they needed to keep our termination going 24/7 until WE said shut it down. It appeared to us that with every change of the watch in Hawaii, for months, some supervisor said, "shut it down because I'm morally certain we don't need to copy message traffic or the broadcast to them over HF."

Even so, we heard about the USMC patrol that felt ambushed/bushwhacked by some armed Haitians and instantly responded by killing them. I thought that it was significant how that calmed the violence all around the places patrolled by the USMC in contrast to the areas patrolled by the 10th Mountain and later the 25th Infantry Divisions in other parts of Haiti. The General agreed, but he felt that the ROE was more binding on the Army than it was for the USMC.

One of the things professionals found MOST irritating about Rumsfeld was that he decided that he alone could decide how much manpower any particular mission in Iraq or Afghanistan required and he drastically limited it beyond reason. I can see right now, at this second, planners are telling upper echelon civilians in the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom that they need to send enormous numbers of force protection soldiers armed with a deadly serious set of Rules of Engagement and they're meeting enormous pushback from cretins who think that soldiers always opt for the gunslingers even for the simplest humanitarian mission.

Remember how NASA idiotically quarantined the astronauts wearing spacesuits the entire time they were on the moon after they returned to earth? Would you care to bet on whether or not the JTF in Liberia is going to quarantine anything or anybody before sending it back to the US? Back when I deployed 'force packages' to east Africa we simply complied with the USDA rules on reentry of hazardous materials and we burned everything that touched the ground in Kenya, Somalia, etc since the contagious things living in the ground there are deadly. We washed the living hell out of the handful of equipment we did deploy and repatriated to CONUS. It was an enormous one time pain in the ass-each time we rotated units out of Africa.

I would like to thank our soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen for the sacrifices they will be called to make during the next few years in west Africa. 21 days of quarantine following return to CONUS is going to suck worse than the mission because we all know some REMF do-gooder is going to decide to limit their only food service to shit and their wasted time to learning more about the Triumph of the Will and Marxist cant on Global Warming for non-believers. 

I know that some of these people will be riffed while in quarantine and some chucklehead at the Pentagon will order them to be instantly removed from quarantine for immediate out-processing and separation from the service. 

So, we're lining ourselves up to spread Ebola like the black plague during the Middle Ages; what's our plan for victory?

*I wrote this based on nothing more than news articles from the largest tellers of tall tales and outright lies in North America outside the offices of CBS, NPR, MSNBC and the Huffington Post. In short, I wrote it based on crap from the New York Times and Washington Post. If the lightworker does not perform according to the strict and exacting standards of the editors and publishers of the Ministry of Truth, I may well leave this up anyway. You should go ahead and reread the link from the Center for Naval Analysis.

Monday, September 15, 2014

SCOTLAND

Do you wonder if they're aware of the loss of the lesser half of the United Kingdom? God knows the government of that place has done everything they could think of to destroy Britain.

ADVICE TO A SAUDI KING

Fire your new Minister of Defense and your Minister of the Interior.

I was just listening to National Public Radio and the wonk spokesman for our government said that firing Prince Bandar was the best thing you could have done and replacing him with a man who was seeking to turn Saudi intelligence into a professional organization was long overdue and that if there was any man who could help straighten out your ridiculous policies with regard to Syria it was your Minister of the Interior. That means just one thing considering American government policies with regard to long-standing rulers in the Middle East;

You are a dead man walking and so is every member of the house of Saud.

I'd say good riddance, which is probably what our Foreign Policy wonks, State Department officials and Department of Defense have said since we started killing off all the old rulers of the failed states of the Middle East, but losing people like you only makes things ineffably worse in the Middle East and for America. None of us like you. It goes beyond dislike. We recognize you as serious enemies of ours but I see who inevitably comes after men like you, when finally toppled, as infinitely worse enemies of the West.

Shoot your Minister of Defense and Minister of Interior. Don't exile them.

On the gripping hand, I'm not going to miss you if they hang you upside down from a lamp post in Taif or Riyadh. I'm not really one of the cookie pushers or fools in the NSC who discriminates between pure evil and true evil. As people in the West watch the evil people they now perceive as moderate muslim leaders fall to real pure evil, they'll reconsider some long standing policies about compromising with evil.

America doesn't need you anymore and this government couldn't care less about European or Japanese needs and after watching both of them shut down their nuclear plants, I'm pretty sure they're about to be pruned back too.

VIKING CRUISES

We watched Masterpiece Theater last night and saw a number of ads for Viking River Cruises. While it looks like fun I'm sure they've left out the part that made it so much fun for actual vikings.

Viking Shortish-Long-Ship Going Roving 
Little mention given to the opportunity to debark for a little looting and pillaging. The ads were all about cultural stuff no sane man would be interested in. I mean somebody has to pay for the gas burned by that outboard.


Saturday, September 13, 2014

NEED PEACE?

If you're looking for a little peace there is good news! Al Qaida has released all 45 captured Fijian peaceniks who peacefully surrendered all of their weapons and ammunition to the terrorists who took them captive. In a stunning about face, the terrorists didn't actually shoot or even lightly behead any peacekeepers. The UN and the commander of Fijian forces hail the release of the disarmed and essentially useless peacekeeper heroes.

I think the UN should consider planting ferns in the Golan since they would be every bit as deadly as Fijian peacekeepers and look better while providing shade for very small animals. We wouldn't want to get those ferns with sharp leaves though since those could hurt somebody.

Friday, September 12, 2014

MORTALITY II

I wrote the words to Mortality I elsewhere. I doubt they'll ever see the light of day. Do you think a super intelligent 11 year old can conceal an iPod touch from a hyper-intelligent vengeful bitch demoness? Oddly enough, when you stopped playing by the rules, we doubted it too. I knew she doesn't have a chance of hiding anything from a mother. Nobody ever did.


 I should eschew music and just listen to NPR or nothing at all. I don't listen to the old music but sometimes, when my fingers slip, I hear the echoes. For Mary Lefon and for my girl

Did you know the Russians have almost 10 times more atomic weapons than we do? Let us all remember who Russians are for a second. They were the ones that trained nazis in airmanship and U-boats before 1939 and then joined Germany in invading Poland. Their leaders are spectacularly evil. I mean that. Russian leaders are unrivaled in being despicable.*

Why wouldn't Putin sell a couple of atomic weapons to islam if they promised not to use them on Russia? Seriously? I wouldn't be caught dead living in Washington DC, Brussels, New York City or San Francisco. I don't tan as well as I used to and a flash tan is nothing I want.

*Except for liberal progressives.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

A PRELUDE TO WAR

I used to live alone. On this day, in the past, a breathless voice over the phone told me to turn on my TV. It is sometimes hard to imagine the interlude between that day and this. I have many regrets but none as wrenching as those who went into evening that day mourning the loss of loved ones.

I was one of those beings that is largely unneeded in war. I was very good at what I did but I was no longer a junior lieutenant and Chief Engineer or a Fire Control Officer or even a staff LCDR. I was one of THEM. I remember them from my days in wars. They were the hordes of staff officers who were there to inspect, neglect, detect, infect and comment on the lack of gloss on my sandals.

I used to have this chat with the General and he told me I was wrong and that whole theaters of war cried out for senior Commanders and junior Navy Captains to take charge and.... Well, I didn't believe him even if he was a general. I was never better led then when I was in the Persian Gulf and my commodore, ISIC and the rest of the staff were 8000 miles away in Seattle. The only hole they could pound a peg like me into, in a major land war in Asia, was bound to be square and I wasn't going to fit. Seriously, you have to work on a Joint Task Force or major Army staff to appreciate how horrible it is.

I still put on the uniform every single day but my days of actually waging war were passed and opening. I could live with that. Been there, done that.  I listened to the blandishments of the general about maybe leading a provincial reconstruction team somewhere in Afghanistan and I would proudly do so if called but seriously, who the hell wants someone like me running a PRT? I could have any number of jobs on staff in either Iraq or Afghanistan but I despise staff and I always have. Pirates don't have staff and I was a pirate.

I made some things after 9/11 and I lost them. One of them is still very dear to me.


The wind picked up a bit later and she might have fallen overboard but we're not ever telling anyone especially her mother and grandmothers.

Today is a special day of regret for us in America. Right about this time 13 years ago, I became something other than I was. Yes, a father, but also someone who knew war and didn't miss it. Back as a youngster I dabbled in war and then serving on the 5th Fleet staff, I had a moment to reflect on it back in 1996. I was called in to help plan a strike with cruise missiles. I remember taking a half hour to walk the only corridor NAVCENT boasted back then and then stepping outside for a smoke as I contemplated the effects we were bent on achieving. We were going to send a full Tomahawk salvo into Iraq because that would make a difference in 1996,

At Fort Riley, when I was the age of the decorative bow art above, and the general was a battalion commander, these were the two towers.


As with Middle Earth, we lost a lot in the fall of the towers. The loss of life was painful. We lost so much more in the days that followed.

Once upon a time, I lived 50 miles away from them back when I lived on an Arsenal of the West in New Jersey.


THEY COULDN'T BE FUNNIER

I think they're messing with us.
The lack of clearance could waste precious time in the event of an emergency.
“[He] would have to jump through hoops” to get more detailed classified information, a source said.
Because nobody except Snowden, Chelsea Manning and you would have any access to classified information.

It's as believable as Gore with his secret information about Global Warming that nobody was going to tell you about because, classified.

IS THERE A SPECIAL ROCK UNDER WHICH SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS DWELL

This is a tragic story which you can read here. It's reminds me of the Homeric sagas and the pathos is genuine and bloody silly. A school official was asked why an 11 year old girl couldn't be permitted chapstick before her lips split and bled all over the playground exposing over 600 little children to possible ebola or HIV contamination.
George Earhart, the assistant superintendent for administration with the Augusta County Schools, said Chapstick is considered an over-the-counter medication by the school board. The board has a policy regarding such medicines. He said Chapstick could be allowed if a physician asked for a student to use it, and it was administered by a school nurse.
If you were lured off by the link to read the story, rejoice in the first comment posted there. It's a gem.
John Armstrong · Project Accountant at Shafer, Kline & Warren
I say fight absurdity with absurdity. Get all 680 students to have a doctors permission to use Chapstick. That requires the school to store all 680 tubes, individually labled to prevent cross-contamination, and have all 680 students line up so the school nurse can apply it for them. That should make the point well enough.

Chapstick: a gateway drug.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

ME AND MY FAMILY

I was dropping off and picking up family today at the place downtown and I saw this as I pulled out. I ordered the nephew next to me to take a shot with my iphone because, honestly, how often does one get a shot like this.
Dangerous Cargo White on board!
Howard Pease never wrote better prose and he was a master. OK, OK, I think it's a brilliant picture for our time and place.


There are people alive today who never saw the Blues Brothers. They never saw Animal House either and we'll let them off lightly that they never saw Super Troopers. I wasn't going to mention Austin Powers but something forced me to.

WHAT LIBERALS DON'T GET

It's really very simple but they fail to grasp even the simplest things. At the end, you pay for every illegal migrant. How simple is that? It's not just that they take jobs from Americans, they also force American tax payers to pay to educate their children which shouldn't be a crime anymore than refusing to pay for it should be a crime. Two things are against the law: illegal immigration and failing to pay your taxes. Only one is punished in this era.

Guess which one.

For my liberal friends, read it again very slowly and aloud. See the difference?

JUST SHOOT HIM

From the local police blotter after we got back and learned that our neighbors had all been robbed.
A clerk at the BP station on Larchmere Blvd. reported that a Black male, approximately six foot one, wearing a black hoodie and black pants entered the store with a handgun.The suspect proceeded to take $125 in cash and $280 in lottery tickets from the business and $272 in cash from a customer inside of the store. The suspect then fled the scene. The investigation is ongoing.
It's a fashion statement that should be augmented by a hint of plumbum in the head. I keep seeing cities passing local ordinances banning saggy pants but I've never heard of a single city or town that thought banning mugger costumes was an appropriate way to spend time at city council meetings. I wonder why it never seems to come up.

Neither condition is really a fashion statement so much as it is a shoutout that screams to the world that yes, yes you are in fact too damned stupid to pull your pants up over your knees and that you're a criminal suspect looking for the next scene of the crime. I've never understood the narrow philosophy that insists that it's no crime to dress like a mugger on the one hand and yet passionately hate being treated like a criminal simply because one looks like a criminal on the other hand.

I'm no fashion maven or clothes horse myself. 30 years in Southern California and a lifetime before that racing sailboats left me addicted to wearing shorts, sandals, ball caps, sunglasses and T-shirts. With sandals. 30 years of wearing a uniform always meant changing when I got home. That used to mean a hot tub on the back patio but the definition always included shorts, t-shirt and sunglasses.


There is one guy in the picture who managed to wear a hoodie. Guess which one started a towering bonfire one night right off the coast of Iraq. Go on, guess. He is standing right next to the admiral. When I was choosing my team for this op, the CSO said no girls. After reflecting on it for a microsecond, I saw his point.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

KILLING THE LAW

How is a wife of a governor guilty of public corruption? She swore no oath, took no office and was not elected. We live in a weird country.

GLOBAL COMMAND AND CONTROL-MARITIME

Sometimes it is helpful to go back in time a little bit and look at the things that were bizarre about the navy and the military in the heady days before we totally obligated ourselves to building a peaceful civilized state around the flickering embers of Iraq. With that in mind, here for your wonderment are the offices of the Program Manager for Warfare that provided the oversight for the production of the Global Command and Control System - Maritime (GCCS-M). The Department of Defense and you spent $400,000,000 to update GCCS from JOTS and its previous incarnations running on sand computers, abacuses, and Rubic's cubes into the heady amazing system that nobody uses today.
Entrance to PMW 157. The wall on the left is the SPAWAR facilities office
PMW-157's Mobile Ops Comm for Maritime Surveillance (P-3 aircraft) with a rain bucket
The rain in the bucket had to come from somewhere. This is it.
The cubicle reserved for the Dictator of Patagonia. (Embiggen to read the sign)
The Dictator of Patagonias usual office looking out over SPAWAR, North Island the Point Loma.
I'm pretty sure that I got to keep using the cubicle on a temp basis because the featherheads at the Global Command and Control System-Maritime really expected to see an actual dictator of Patagonia in there. Who else would want to work in that dump?  I happened to be overseas when my program office (PMW-183) sold us all down the river and exiled us to PMW 157. When they counted noses to reserve office space for us, my nose was in Korea and went unpicked. When I returned from Korea, my actual office during these trying times was across the road as seen above. It's hard to believe that our boss at PMW-157, Captain Rodriguez, was promoted to Rear Admiral and selected as the Chief Engineer of Space and Navy Warfare Systems Command. On the other hand, he immediately moved out of this dump and went to the splendiferous Flag Officer office at the opposite end of Old Town Campus where his paint job and carpet had not been hand picked by Howard Hughes in 1937.

It was kind of funny. My secretary got me an NMCI laptop before I went to Korea. It never ever connected to any kind of wireless NMCI service but it was perfect for connecting to the hotel's free WIFI hotspot on that balcony which meant I could sit there in splendid comfort, wet bar and swimming pool to my back, ice machines and sodas to my right and a really awesome Mexican buffet one flight up. I suffered in this fashion for month after month until my boss decided to use his influence to finally get me a cube in PMW 157.

It was a truly wonderful time. It was about 10 years ago, today.

Monday, September 8, 2014

HOLY TOLEDO

It's an interesting observation given how far away is Toledo.


SLOWEST BLACKBIRD FLIGHT

The story can be found in Plane and Pilot Magazine and was originally entitled: Speed is Life. Somebody emailed it to me many years ago. It's just a page and well worth a read or a reread.

    "What was the slowest you ever flew the Blackbird?"
    Brian Shul, Retired SR-71 Pilot, via Plane and Pilot Magazine

    The longer we continued to peer
    out the window and circle, the slower we got.  With our power back, the
    awaiting cadets heard nothing.  I must have had good instructors in my
    flying career, as something told me I better cross-check the gauges.  As
    I noticed the airspeed indicator slide below 160 knots, my heart
    stopped, and my adrenalin-filled left hand pushed two throttles full
    forward.  At this point, we weren't really flying, but were falling in a
    slight bank.

    Just at the moment, both afterburners lit with a
    thunderous roar of flame (and what a joyous feeling that was), and the
    aircraft fell into full view of the shocked observers on the tower.
    Shattering the still quiet of that morning, they now had 107 feet of
    fire-breathing titanium in their face, as the plane leveled and
    accelerated, in full burner, on the tower side of the infield, closer
    than expected, maintaining what could only be described as some sort
    of ultimate knife-edge pass.

There's more at the link.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

A PAIR OF VIDEOS

There are two videos that really need watching today. Both are posted at Maggie's Farm but I am taking the liberty of linking to them at you tube. One explains why modern art sucks


The second is a recorded speech in Switzerland. I don't really think people understand Europeans. 99% of Americans think that Europeans are as squishy as us but I don't. Oh no.


When the Germans tired of the Jews, they acted with dispatch. When the rest of Europe tired of the Germans and irredentism, they acted with dispatch. All of this happened yesterday. Hundreds of millions of people alive today remember the events of 1932 -1949.

It wasn't just Germans that practiced savagery beyond human understanding. Once the war was over and the countries of Europe had a chance to draw breath and determine that Germans were the problem, EVERY country in middle Europe expelled EVERY native German. There wasn't going to be another Sudatenland where some Chancellor of Germany could inform Europe that he was acting on behalf of the native German population!  NO! From 1945, the ONLY Germans would be found in Germany and Austria because every nation drove them all out at gunpoint.

You can get a tiny glimpse into the mindset of such people when you look at what is happening in Ukraine this very day. Stalin settled the western sphere of Russia's historic border with Russians and tried his best to exterminate the native Balts, Lats, Lithuanians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, White Russians and Ukrainians and now Putin is reaping that bitter harvest by supporting the "Russian" Ukrainians against the utterly corrupt and vile Ukrainian government.

I really think that the muslims in Europe think that the Europeans, [EUROPEANS!!!!!!] are too civilized to deal with them as they did the Jews and the Germans.

On the other hand, I could be wrong.

GOOD OMENS

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's excellent book, Good Omens, is being turned into a radio play by some of the same crew who brought us the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy radio show. I must have listened to that a thousand times over the years since it served to drown out some of the more objectionable noises I used to hear as I was trying to fall sleep on warships in various oceans and seas around the world. I can't really listen to it anymore because it sends me to sleep but it was a really great radio play.

I have to say that I am looking forward to hearing this.  Good Omens.
The 1990 book tells the story of angel and demon Aziraphale and Crowley who team up to try and save the world from an impending apocalypse. 
Mark Heap and Peter Serafinowicz will star in the leads for the play, set to air on BBC Radio 4 as a "splendid Christmas treat" in December.
The BBC does some really wonderful radio plays. I remember being very ill and listening very late at night on my short wave radio to Heart of a Dog. It was very droll. I haven't read any of the great man's books, but I will. I think someone like Putin is bound to re-suppress Mikhail Bulgakov.


Saturday, September 6, 2014

AIRLINE FEES TO FIGHT FOR

I was referred to Maddox by Ace of Spades and his referral to a Maddox video about the Fem-Spider Woman Flap. I enjoyed that little video but thought this was more appropriate. I'd be open to the idea of paying some fees that the airlines haven't yet decided to make available. The Delta one in particular. I think Southwest and Frontier should be allowed to sell that fee for punching Delta employees too.

I remember well one Delta gate agent who, in response to all questions asking about any updated information on the long delayed SFO-LAX flight that was already 4 hours late departing SFO one Sunday night, raved at any and all DELTA customers that if they weren't 50 feet away from him in 3 seconds he was calling the cops!!!! I never flew Delta again and its been over 20 years now.

It was an interesting story, as travel on Delta goes. The plane was actually there at the gate for the first 3 hours. Sitting there, waiting for its flight crew who were flying in from Wisconsin or some state like that. They were delayed and delayed by storms. No worries. There's lots of flight crews and sure enough, another flight crew showed up and stole our airplane. They were flying to Texas and since our flight crew wasn't there, Delta swapped their broken aircraft for ours and it flew away.

About two hours later, our flight crew showed up and, checked into a hotel. They had clocked out during the flight and were forced to take crew rest at which point Delta maybe, started looking around for a flight crew to replace them. They actually found one and I saw the pilot walk underneath the plane parked at our gate, come back out from under it and grab a ground staffer by the arm and drag him under. They came out about 5 minutes later and the pilot disappeared. He reappeared a moment later through the jetway door and told the copkaller that the plane would not fly. It was broken.

It took Delta 9 hours to produce a plane and flight crew for us and for the entire time they disdained us all, called the police, ignored us and only that one time when the pilot was there did they actually tell us the truth.

There was a 3rd Class Petty Officer who had duty starting 0700 Monday morning on whatever carrier it was there at North Island. She was moaning in fear as she lamented the terrible things that her Master Chief and ship were going to do to her for being AWOL and worrying about Captain's Mast. I took pity on her, as any of us would, and asked if she had permission to be out of the local area for the weekend and she did. She was on leave. I told her not to worry and said only a nuke would go crazy about an act of the DEvil LTA. I told her to call the ship and tell them what was happening and to relax. There was nothing she could do about the situation. The only other flight was sold out and gone. There were no other flights possible to San Diego until morning.

When I returned to the office in San Diego on Monday, I called in my travel guy and said no more LAX and no more DELTA or I'll be forced to shoot you. I give the Petty Officer a great deal of credit for being able to tell a very real threat from an idle one.

TEXTING WHILE SLEEPING

This tragic story from the BBC has an interesting twist which leads me to believe that she didn't bother to read the text she had written for this article or she was asleep when she wrote it. I think in the old days news and wire services struggled mightily to be accurate. Nowadays, they struggle mightily to remain relevant and akracy can go to the devil.
1 September 2014 Last updated at 14:17 BST 
A lorry driver who killed two charity cyclists in Cornwall has been jailed for eight and a half years. 
Truro Crown Court heard that delivery driver Palmer, 32, of Bude, in Cornwall had almost definitely fallen asleep at the wheel when he hit Andrew McMenigall and Toby Wallace on the A30 in 2013. 
He had had no proper sleep for 24 hours and was texting at the time the accident occurred. 
Leigh Rundle reports.
It's one or the other Leigh but you aren't allowed to say both.

Friday, September 5, 2014

EVER WONDER WHY

One of the things that puzzles people today is how it became national policy to hunt the Buffalo nearly to extinction. They used to cover the Great Plains in their uncounted millions but their numbers were reduced to a small handful after hunters went after them without mercy.


What is a nomad? Who were the nomads of the Great Plains who followed the buffalo? How do you get nomads to give up their roaming ways and settle down?

It was good to catch another glimpse of the bison as we drove around Colorado. Naturally, the only place we saw any was up in the Rocky Mountains on our way to Breckinridge.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

ANTI-CIVILIZATION

I read this story in the New York Times and wondered how effete city dwellers are in New York. In any civilized part of the galaxy, people who find 10 years of scaffolding to be ridiculous would simply pull their pickup truck next to it, wrap a chain around the scaffolding, secure it to the trailer hitch and drive away for awhile.

I know, I know. There isn't a single pickup truck owner who lives within 10 miles of this place. What a pity.


WHAT HAPPENED AMERICA?

It turns out that there are a million videos like this one:



All of them feature people who went to school 5 days a week year after year until they left. Every one of these people started out at school eager to learn. I literally see them every single day as they get off the bus or are walked to school by their parent. This is almost worse than the "Out Walking" episodes where talk show hosts ask voters who is president and 74% don't actually have a clue.

From Thomas Jefferson:
I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man. 
It didn't use to be such a long road and we all used to agree what it meant to be better and more virtuous.

We've always had the wastelands. They used to be found in places we didn't go. It's a standard joke with me that I share, "if we hear banjo music we're turning around!"

Wonder in amazement that the former major industrial city cores are nothing but wastelands with a few tiny oases of civilization. The surrounding heart of those cities is bleaker than anything Oliver Twist would have known.

I didn't do it. You didn't do it. None of my actual ancestors did it,  but we left the inner cities to the non-existent mercies of the communists, fellow travelers, and the liberal progressives and they destroyed what was left behind as people grew tired of them and moved to other places to escape the reach of socialists who know better than you.

Those guys still insist that they know better than you. They have a plan for you. You won't survive it.