Sunday, November 30, 2014

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?

Saturday, November 29, 2014

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.

Friday, November 28, 2014

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.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

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.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Monday, November 24, 2014

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.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

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.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

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.

Friday, November 21, 2014

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.


Thursday, November 20, 2014

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.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

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

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

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.

Monday, November 17, 2014

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

STAGGERING ALONG WITH FADING MEMORY

I guess a few people are appalled that Vernon Jordan suffered from near total memory failure during his testimony to the grand jury investigating Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. The Washington Examiner's Byron York appears to think that Mr. Jordan did something wrong by declaring that he could not remember the details of something in the past.

That is strange considering what happened to poor Scooter Libby who went to jail and was fined because his memories did not coincide perfectly with meetings and statements in the past about who was responsible for "outing" the odious CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson which then resulted in his  destruction by the utterly vile and contemptible Patrick Fitzgerald. Libby had nothing to do with the case and Fitzgerald knew that at the time but Fitzgerald tied him up based on faulty memories during testimony.

This was how the Independent Prosecutor appointed to investigate who leaked information about Plame was handled using the politics of personal destruction:
In January 2004, the Justice Department chose prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald to investigate the leak of Valerie Plame's identity. From the outset, he was made fully aware that the leaker was Armitage, who resigned from the State Department in November 2004 but remained a subject of the inquiry until February 2006 when Fitzgerald told him in a letter that he would not be charged. The New York Times reported on Sept. 2, 2006:
Only a complete idiot would ever testify to anything based on memory alone. That whole Perry Mason schtick where the witness is asked to testify as to where he was on the night in question several months in the past would get an, "I don't know," from me.

Such an honest answer should not have worked for somebody like the Secretary of State since she had an appointment book kept for every minute of the day which details who she met with and a precis of the purpose of each meeting.. The topics actually discussed may be different from the schedule, but where she was, and who she was with is, a matter of official record.

The problem this country now faces is that vile attack on Libby rendered moot the idea that any official would ever attempt to answer an investigator's questions honestly, ever again. The penalty for an imperfect memory is much worse than any penalty for actually committing the crime in question. One no longer takes refuge in the 5th Amendment, one merely doesn't recall.

Way to go Patrick Fitzgerald! You screwed government accountability forever! Scumbag.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

ROSETTA IMAGES

There are some fascinating space related sites that describe and show the Rosetta Comet mission.




The close-in photos of the comet are here.  The details of the orbit mechanics for the complete mission are rendered in a fascinating 3D graphic located here.


Friday, November 14, 2014

WINTER IN METROPARKCENTRALIS

It arrived last night. It lingers yet. I can't wait until Spring. From the looks of the snow outside it looks like we might get another foot of snow by noon.

0400 this morning:



I used to use FLIR I, II and III and NVG5 and 7 but I am constantly amazed by what this little camera picks up in the dark. These pictures were taken in full dark with no flash. I think they're pretty cool.

IMAGINE

If our nuclear force is bored and indifferent, imagine what Russia, China and Iran's must be like.

STAYING REALLY FOCUSED

It has an interesting video but I like how they stay focused on the really important bit: we wouldn't want a storm damaged wall would we?








Thursday, November 13, 2014

US AND THE EIA

Things were orthogonal, longitudinal and heterodox.  Had to use those words up by the end of the year. We just got 6 inches of snow. Those vortex casters were right on the money. A full week ago they promised us a vortex and we got it. It is kind of nice to know that not all weathermen are pathetic warmists who promise nothing but global warming and rising sea levels. I was tending to doubt them for the last couple of days when we had temperatures in the 60s and shorts were the uniform of the day.

Last year, the first snow came in late September and it was hard on the trees which still had their leaves.

Around here, what we do when the snow flies is head to Pittsburgh, home of the United Planets Medical Center and EIA headquarters. It's something to do while hitting IKEA and the Strip.

With luck, we'd be behind another school bus. That would deal alright with the snow and ice.


UNDERCOVER PARTISAN

The z news today is filled with talk about Dr. Gruber of MIT. It seems he let his mouth run away with him and let the cat out of the bag about how ObamaCare passed. The usual suspects are filled with animus but I am not. They are blaming this man for crafting a super-clever scheme to get ObamaCare passed in some sort of Orwellian deal.

The fact is though, it didn't require any Orwellianisms.  ObamaCare passed in a straight up vote in which every Democrat in Congress voted for it and which every Republican in Congress voted against. It was probably one of the most partisan votes in history. It didn't take a doctor of economics from MIT to make it happen, it took voters who are really stupid.

I read a clip yesterday from elsewhere, possibly maggiesfarm, which showed a video of Harvard students trying to pass a Louisiana Literacy Exam that was maybe used by polls to have people demonstrate their literacy prior to voting. It was an interesting video for one reason only. Only people who could not show that they had passed the 5th grade were required to take it.[it is alleged]. Harvard undegrads could not complete the test but the hateful thing is that I see high school graduates every single day who do not know how to read. They have diplomas. They would not be required to take a literacy test at the polls.

They are gathering in St. Louis for a wrecking they plan to implement when the grand jury fails to indict.

The actual test is here.

What kind of 3rd world country did we become when most of the "news" has to come from the United Kingdom's press?

GOING HOME

Music, like scent, is a path to the past. I knew that and yet still wandered into a place where the leaves are still on the trees, the trains run quietly except for the distant hooting on a starrry night and where time almost stopped. I had not expected to lose 8 hours there. I can't complain.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

OBSERVING AMERICA

READ

QUO STULTUS

They really do think that all of us are stupid. Sadly, they're right about 50% of the time.
“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure the CBO did not score the mandate as taxes,” said Gruber. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Call it the stupidity of the America voter, or whatever.”

BREATHLESS

When I come across things like this I am forced to wonder what if the American media reported like this on the current administration.
Skeleton found in mysterious Alexander-era Greek tomb!
Ambassador kidnapped and murdered!

You see how it works. One is simply sensational news from 2000 years ago and the other is just news. One gets hyped by the schlock merchants of the democrats with bylines and the other is completely ignored. Makes you wonder though, doesn't it? Back before new york time there was something that lived in its place.
The golden hair that Galla wears is hers;
Who would have thought it?
She swears it is hers, and true she swears.
For I know where she bought it.
Martial must have been a curmudgeon but nonetheless, somebody I gladly would have stood a round for.

NEVER MIND ALL THAT

This is a link to Obamacare language. Forget about it. Think! Thousands of staff poured over that bill looking for sharps and sharks and they let it ride. It was a mega-bill of evil and awful but every word was parsed by staff.

As I said earlier, it makes one wonder what if somebody had slipped into the law an act to abolish Congress, give all democratic legislators sinecures and execute all rethuglicans? The will is there.


This is the democratic party's fraternity. Open and transparent. That is how they rule.

CHOOMS

The tragedy is that there is not a particle of difference between how each of them view their role in government. WTF is executive decree in a republic?

Chooms
If the two 'leaders' sat down and engaged in a discussion of how best to reignite the Cold War they could not have come up with a more attractive path to that goal.
Yay!!! Obama, Clinton and Kerry! You guys rock!

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

LAW IN THE WESTERN LANDS

I don't believe that I would like to practice science in the Roman Empire. These are the people that believe in global warming.
But Monday after seeking an appeal, six of the seven Italian earthquake experts have been acquitted of all charges, the Associated Press reported. Stefano Gresta, the head of Italy's geologic institute, told the AP the decision restored "credibility to the entire Italian scientific community."
Europe still believes in witches and warlocks. Sending scientists to jail for failures of 'science' is part and parcel of the new 'science'.

I don't think that restoring credibility to the scientific community is possible. They pissed that away in their peer reviewed pursuit of an agenda.

REMEMBRANCE DAY

I remember. The Beautiful and the Sublime.


HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND ARMISTICE DAY

The Crying Angel

Monday, November 10, 2014

BUT SPEAK HIS NAME AND THE DEVIL APPEARS

I see our favorite lame tyrant of the left has weighed in and decided that the internet needs to be regulated by the EPA. The problem of course is that industry created the tunnels and the infrastructure that bring data to your own home or office. It was most definitely NOT created by the government selling the public airwaves to cartels, monopolies and cronies or subsidizing their liberal progressive and communist friends with bylines.

Oh yeah, in 9 out of 10 cities the city 'fathers/mothers/children' sold THEIR cronies undisputed sole access to neighborhoods and towns but that had nothing to do with the Federal Communications Commission. That was just local criminals and regulators making a profit at your expense.
Obama is old enough to remember Ma Bell, which was even worse to customers than today's cable and Internet providers. And he is smart enough to recognize the Orwellian contradiction in introducing onerous new regulatory regimes in the name of keeping anything "free." The FCC has never been particularly adept at acting in the "public interest." The less control it has over the Internet (and TV and anything else), the better off we will all be. 
Ma Bell wasn't broken up by the regulators, it was broken up by the courts. I see courts in our future.

TYRANTS EVERYWHERE WANT TO SHUT IT DOWN

I think it's interesting that every tyrant everywhere in the world finds some reason to shut down the internet or at least bring it under their thumb. This guy is a little different in that he is merely the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in the United Kingdom. He has literally tens of thousands of young girls being groomed for rape and then passed around like party favors to muslim gangs and his police do nothing to stop it. He is apparently more concerned that the internet is a scary unregulated place that cries out for police and government spies to monitor it and cite people for "cyber-crimes."

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has warned that the internet is becoming a 'dark and ungoverned' place for paedophiles, murderers and terrorists to safely operate and has called on internet companies to do more to protect the public from the so-called 'deep' internet.
Hey big guy! Why don't you throw yourself into stopping the horrible crimes that are happening on every street in your country?

WORDS TO LIVE BY

If it isn't broke, don't fix it. There are a lot of people who find themselves breaking the cardinal rule. I don't know why they do it in droves and I don't understand it. I cannot count the number of times that I have been forced to reshape priorities to include an expressed desire to make something that works just fine the way it is and which has worked for 37 years, look like new even if it involves great expense, time, inconvenience and hard work. Leave well enough alone.

Sometimes the accretion of time includes the cladding of more and more onto a limited capability. The key is not to conclude that the fabric is unworkable but to consider that too much has glommed onto the infrastructure and a certain amount of judicious pruning is in order. I used to see this sort of thing a lot when I was a Chief Engineer. People would leap out of the woodwork with new technologies and new capabilities and bolt it onto the reliable old framework and they suffered a shock when the system that had, heretofore, worked perfectly, started to buckle under the overload.

Oh, the boarders were nice enough to bring along a couple of enormous circuit breakers and announce as how I had to tie them into the electrical bus in order to accommodate their gizmos but the upshot was, they didn't bring another shipboard generator to generate the additional power which meant that the normal ship's load increased by 40% with no increase in power generation.

My favorite ones brought along a new improved 'cutter' that would slice and dice the threat like nobody ever saw before but then told me and the acting CO that my poor 40 year old ship just wasn't going fast enough to demonstrate the gee-whizbang of their improved tech. The acting CO, who had zero investment in the ship, demanded more speed from me. He thought and they thought it was an easy matter of increasing the pitch on the propellors.

It wasn't. We were running at the very top of the green and that was a fact I made known to the acting CO who, just happened to be the Deputy Commodore of the Group we worked for. It was no use pointing out that "TOP OF THE GREEN" was the absolute limit of 40 year old aluminum engines. He waved it off. As well he could. He was from Seattle and we were based in San Diego. All of our counterparts in Seattle had brand new engines of a radically different design. It was no use arguing with the man. His mind was made up. "We would go faster," he said, and meet the foreign technicians speed requirement to demonstrate their incremental advancement in an 80 year old technology.

I returned to Main Control and eased the pitch up like a butterfly landing on the tip of your nose. I handled two of the engines by hand while the top watch eased up the other two. It was no use. Top of the Green for those engines was 37 inches of mercury. Anything over inevitably resulted in blown head gaskets, emulsified lube oil and a propulsion disaster. Yeah, we got that right away. We barely had the speed to recover the gear before limping home on 2 engines which were also going down. It put an end to that series of tests.

The engineers from overseas packed their gear and left. The acting CO, only required for underway operations, packed his bag and returned to Seattle and we were left with 800 man hours of engine repairs before we could get underway again.

In desperate seas we used to call this, hold what you got. When diving in the kelp forests off the coasts of California, there was never any doubt that one moved with the waves, but antipode, we moved where our whim took us because we had flippers and free will and the 60 foot long kelp did not.

Hard won lessons like that apply to everyday life. One should never bite off more than one can chew.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

THINK ABOUT THE EVIL

From his cottage to you.


INTERSTELLAR

We watched it tonight and it needed more than an hour of editing. It was like SNL for the last 15 years. It needed serious editing because it just went on and on and on and on. Sequences that could have been done in under a minute lasted 200 minutes.

Total film duration 900,000,000 seconds.

Recommendation: don't bother.

Saturday, November 8, 2014

OBAMA SPEECH RESULTS

From the tubes:


OLD NAVAL AVIATOR HUMOR

Over the transom from our DC Correspondent:

The rain was pouring and there was a big puddle in front of the pub just outside McChord Air Force Base.  A ragged old Naval Aviator, wearing his Winged ball cap, was standing near the edge with a fishing rod, his line in the puddle.
 
A curious young Air Force fighter pilot stopped and asked what he was doing.
 
'Fishing,' the old guy simply said.
 
'Poor old fool,' the Air Force officer thought and he invited the ragged old Naval Aviator aviator into the bar for a drink.  As he felt he should start some conversation while they were sipping their whiskey, the haughty fighter pilot asked, "And how many fish have you caught?'
 
'You're the eighth,' the old Naval Aviator answered. 
 
I heard this is a true story!!!

OBAMA DID THAT

One could argue that he had friends helping him ruin things but with friends like that we really don't need enemies. Apparently, national security and Defense personnel have almost no faith in Obama or
the national command authorities appointed by him.
The “Defense One National Security Survey” released Friday found few individuals inside the national security government think highly of the Obama administration’s national security strategy. The survey found that only 4 percent of respondents “strongly agree” and 16 percent “agree” that the White House has “a clear national security strategy.” Conversely, 73 percent of respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed with that statement.
 On the other hand, many of those asked were talking about their rice bowls and Obama and his pals have all been chipping away at them for the last 6 years. It would be another thing if his domestic policies hadn't just been overwhelmingly repudiated by the electorate.


The image is weirdly appropriate since the military has spent the last 12 years trying to build up the Chinese as a major threat that needs increased funding for the Navy and Air Force. They saw all the dramatic cutbacks and budget cuts as we reaped the 'benefits' of the Peace Dividend and cast about desperately in search of some other 'enemy.'

Sadly, Obama's and the Democrats policies have brought about both a rebirth of an aggressive Soviet Union and encouraged the Chinese. My Foreign Defense Policy remains the same. Those folks better arm themselves. There is no NATO worth mentioning and the USA is out of the business of fighting other people's battles for at least another generation.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

VAMPIRES NEED TO BE STAKED

Congressvampire Pelosi really needs a stake. Where's Buffy when we need her?


Pelosi is one of those creatures that are so hard to get rid of. She's the very bedbug of politics.

LISTEN TO THE MEN

I admire Farage. His rhetoric puts that pansy Obama to shame. In this place, his counterpart is a man I rather hope runs for president.  I think he did good work. With the capture of the Senate, America has a chance.


You know, when we look at it, we have many choices on the one hand and none on the other:
Rand Paul
Ted Cruz
some Bush
Ryan
and the loser who most looks like Obama, Romney.

And the alt is Hillary.

THIS IS NICE BUT NOT ESSENTIAL.  Listen to the filibuster. Put it on in the background.

-There can be no war without Congress
-There can be no more socialists appointed to the Supreme Court.
-If they want, these guys can now reach deep into the admin and gut them.
That's the role of congress.

DOWNFALL AND DEFEAT

Remember the other day when Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the House and did everything in her power to advance her evil schemes and Harry Reid who ruled beside her?


How the mighty have fallen.

The Fall of Satan from Paradise Lost
John Milton 


Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
            Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
            Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
            With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
5          Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
            Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
            Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
            That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed
            In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth
10         Rose out of Chaos; or if Sion hill
            Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
            Fast by the oracle of God, I thence
            Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
            That with no middle flight intends to soar
15         Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
            Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
            And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer
            Before all temples the upright heart and pure,
            Instruct me, for thou know’st; thou from the first
20        Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread
            Dove-like sat’st brooding on the vast abyss
            And mad’st it pregnant: what in me is dark
            Illumine, what is low raise and support;
            That to the height of this great argument
25         I may assert Eternal Providence,
            And justify the ways of God to men.
            Say first, for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,
            Nor the deep tract of Hell, say first what cause
            Moved our grand parents in that happy state,
30         Favored of Heaven so highly, to fall off
            From their Creator, and transgress his will
            For one restraint, lords of the world besides?
            Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?
            The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile,
35         Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
            The mother of mankind, what time his pride
            Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his host
            Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring
            To set himself in glory above his peers,
40         He trusted to have equaled the Most High,
            If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
            Against the throne and monarchy of God,
            Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud
            With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
45         Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky
            With hideous ruin and combustion down
            To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
            In adamantine chains and penal fire,
            Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.
50         Nine times the space that measures day and night
            To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
            Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
            Confounded though immortal. But his doom
            Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
55         Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
            Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes,
            That witnessed huge affliction and dismay
            Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.
            At once as far as angels ken he views
60         The dismal situation waste and wild:
            A dungeon horrible on all sides round
            As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames
            No light, but rather darkness visible
            Served only to discover sights of woe,
65         Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
            And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
            That comes to all; but torture without end
            Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
            With ever-burning sulfur unconsumed:
70         Such place Eternal Justice had prepared
            For those rebellious, here their prison ordained
            In utter darkness, and their portion set
            As far removed from God and light of Heaven
            As from the center thrice to the utmost pole.
75         O how unlike the place from whence they fell!
            There the companions of his fall, o’erwhelmed
            With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,
            He soon discerns, and weltering by his side
            One next himself in power, and next in crime,
80         Long after known in Palestine, and named
            Beelzebub. To whom the Arch-Enemy,
            And then in Heaven called Satan, with bold words
            Breaking the horrid silence thus began:
            “If thou beest he—but O how fallen!    how changed
85         From him, who in the happy realms of light
            Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine
            Myriads though bright—if he whom mutual league,
            United thoughts and counsels, equal hope
            And hazard in the glorious enterprise,
90         Joined with me once, now misery hath joined
            In equal ruin: into what pit thou seest
            From what height fallen! so much the stronger proved
            He with his thunder; and till then who knew
            The force of those dire arms? Yet not for those,
95         Nor what the potent Victor in his rage
            Can else inflict, do I repent or change,
            Though changed in outward luster, that fixed mind
            And high disdain, from sense of injured merit,
            That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,
100     And to the fierce contention brought along
            Innumerable force of spirits armed
            That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
            His utmost power with adverse power opposed
            In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
105     And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
            All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
            And study of revenge, immortal hate,
            And courage never to submit or yield:
            And what is else not to be overcome?
110     That glory never shall his wrath or might
            Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace
            With suppliant knee, and deify his power
            Who from the terror of this arm so late
            Doubted his empire, that were low indeed,
115     That were an ignominy and shame beneath
            This downfall; since by fate the strength of gods
            And this empyreal substance cannot fail,
            Since through experience of this great event,
            In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced,
120     We may with more successful hope resolve
            To wage by force or guile eternal war
            Irreconcilable to our grand Foe,
            Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy
            Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.”
125      So spake the apostate Angel, though in pain,
            Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair;
            And him thus answered soon his bold compeer:
            “O Prince, O Chief of many thronèd Powers,
            That led the embattled Seraphim to war
130      Under thy conduct, and in dreadful deeds
            Fearless, endangered Heaven’s perpetual King,
            And put to proof his high supremacy,
            Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate;
            Too well I see and rue the dire event,
135     That with sad overthrow and foul defeat
            Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host
            In horrible destruction laid thus low,
            As far as gods and heavenly essences
            Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
140      Invincible, and vigor soon returns,
            Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
            Here swallowed up in endless misery.
            But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now
            Of force believe almighty, since no less
145     Than such could have o’erpowered such force as ours)
            Have left us this our spirit and strength entire
            Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
            That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
            Or do him mightier service as his thralls
150      By right of war, whate’er his business be,
            Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire,
            Or do his errands in the gloomy deep?
            What can it then avail, though yet we feel
            Strength undiminished, or eternal being
155      To undergo eternal punishment?”
            Whereto with speedy words the Arch-Fiend replied:
            “Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable,
            Doing or suffering: But of this be sure,
            To do aught good never will be our task,
160      But ever to do ill our sole delight,
            As being the contrary to his high will
            Whom we resist. If then his providence
            Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
            Our labor must be to pervert that end,
165      And out of good still to find means of evil;
            Which ofttimes may succeed, so as perhaps
            Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb
            His inmost counsels from their destined aim.
            But see the angry Victor hath recalled
170      His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
            Back to the gates of Heaven; the sulfurous hail
            Shot after us in storm, o’erblown hath laid
            The fiery surge, that from the precipice
            Of Heaven received us falling, and the thunder,
175      Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
             Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases now
            To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.
            Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn
            Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe.
180     Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
            The seat of desolation, void of light,
            Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
            Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend
            From off the tossing of these fiery waves,
185      There rest, if any rest can harbor there,
            And reassembling our afflicted powers,
            Consult how we may henceforth most offend
            Our Enemy, our own loss how repair,
190      How overcome this dire calamity,
            What reinforcement we may gain from hope,
            If not, what resolution from despair.”
            Thus Satan talking to his nearest mate
            With head uplift above the wave, and eyes
            That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides,
195      Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
            Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
            As whom the fables name of monstrous size,
            Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,
            Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
200      By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast
            Leviathan, which God of all his works
            Created hugest that swim the ocean stream:
            Him haply slumbering on the Norway foam,
            The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,
205      Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,
            With fixèd anchor in his scaly rind
            Moors by his side under the lee, while night
            Invests the sea, and wishèd morn delays:
            So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay
210     Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence
            Had risen or heaved his head, but that the will
            And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
            Left him at large to his own dark designs,
            That with reiterated crimes he might
215      Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
            Evil to others, and enraged might see
            How all his malice served but to bring forth
            Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy shown
            On man by him seduced, but on himself
220     Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured.
            Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
            His mighty stature; on each hand the flames
            Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and rolled
            In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale.
225      Then with expanded wings he steers his flight
            Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air
            That felt unusual weight, till on dry land
            He lights, if it were land that ever burned
            With solid, as the lake with liquid fire;
230     And such appeared in hue, as when the force
            Of subterranean wind transports a hill
            Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side
            Of thundering Etna, whose combustible
            And fueled entrails thence conceiving fire,
235     Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds,
            And leave a singèd bottom all involved
            With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole
            Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate,
            Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood
240      As gods, and by their own recovered strength,
            Not by the sufferance of supernal power.
            “Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,”
            Said then the lost Archangel, “this the seat
            That we must change for Heaven, this mournful gloom
245     For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
            Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid
            What shall be right: farthest from him is best,
            Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme
            Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
250     Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
            Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
            Receive thy new possessor; one who brings
            A mind not to be changed by place or time.
            The mind is its own place, and in itself
255     Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
            What matter where, if I be still the same,
            And what I should be, all but less than he
            Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
            We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
260     Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
            Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
            To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
            Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
            But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,
265     The associates and copartners of our loss,
            Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool,
            And call them not to share with us their part
            In this unhappy mansion, or once more
            With rallied arms to try what may be yet
270     Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?”


It is a sublime poem but one I think most people no longer know.