ACQUIRING A LIBERAL EDUCATION

One can learn a lot from reading. In the old days one had to have money to buy books or access to a nearby library that had books worth your time. We are fortunate in that some very wise and smart people spent some amount of the fire in which we all burn to compile and publish some fascinating books. If only they had been around back when I was an ignorant nipper. The giant brains that I have the most respect for are those who put together the Harvard Classics and Will and Ariel Durant.

The aim of the Harvard Classics was to impart a liberal education. “Liberal education accomplishes two objects. It produces a liberal frame of mind, and it makes the studious and reflective recipient acquainted with the stream of the world’s thought and feeling, and with the infinitely varied products of the human imagination."

Sadly, the stream of the world's thought these days is pretty much entirely filled with scupper trout. This doesn't mean that we cannot benefit from a bit of reading. As Dr. Eliot said, just 15 minutes a day reading the immortals will enrich and benefit the crap right out of you.

This great company of the wisest, the wittiest, the most interesting minds of all ages and every land will afford you entertainment in endless variety, inspiration and stimulation of mind. They will carry you forward upon that road to the high goal toward which all of us are making our way. It is then to the countless hours in which you will walk in step with these great thinkers of all time that this book is dedicated.

  The Harvard Classics are “all things to all men.” They are universal in their appeal and universal in their power to bestow pleasure, self satisfaction and the joy of mental growth to each man, woman and child with impartiality and in infinite variety.

You can get the Harvard Classics right here at this link. They're free to all. They are there in many different formats for whatever device it is that you use to bring you the e-written word. The 15 minutes part is called The Reading Guide so don't forget it. The books at the first link look like this.

Just 15 minutes a day and you can amaze your friends, parents and teachers! Dr. Eliot provided a handy guide so you'll know just what to read and best of all, it starts on 1 January! Get your download and start reading!

New Year's Resolution
#2 Read more and better books

DYSTOPIAN LAMENT

First of the New Year Resolutions.

I'm looking for some upbeat news from the year and I am not finding anything at all. As I wrote those words the phone rang. It was a woman calling from someplace in India and she told me that there were a lot of reports of computer errors. She asked me to please turn on my computer. I asked her if she got many people that stupid. She hung up. That hang up is the echo of the call that we received 5 minutes earlier from CBE asking to speak to somebody who doesn't and never has lived at this number. I hung up on them.

It may not make the next year any better but it would be sweet if the phone stopped ringing.

Typical of the vicious idiots that call

New Years Resolution 
#1 Disconnect the landline.

THE SHIP OF THE IMAGINATION

Interesting read in The Wall Street Journal on the 18th. [link works now]

In 1980, on the premiere episode of the PBS series “Cosmos,” astrophysicist Carl Sagan flew a “Ship of the Imagination,” transporting his viewers to a liberated vision of science. Sagan refused to repress the centrality of the imagination to the scientific process—a dark secret that had been hidden if not denied by most practitioners since the mid-19th century. For many of those seeking to establish the cultural legitimacy of their technical roles—the term “scientist” was first coined in 1833—the imagination was disreputable. Scientists proclaimed the distinctive rationality and objectivity of their profession. In their heart of hearts, they knew about the creative wellsprings of science, but their lips were sealed. Not all scientists lived such a double life: Albert Einstein declared, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” But he also neglected to brush his hair or wear socks, a bohemian exception that proved the sober rule.

A ship of the imagination with a wave in its future

The literary genre of science fiction was explicitly established in the mid-1920s to provide scientists with the fanciful ideas they publicly disavowed. Amazing Stories, the first magazine devoted to SF, asserted in 1928 that science fiction “takes the basis of science . . . and then adds a thing that is alien to science—imagination. It lights the way. 

Ship of the Science Fiction imagination. They're always running aground.

It was an interesting article.

THINGS I DON'T BELIEVE

As we close in on the end of the Western Year, here are a number of things that used to roam the outer borders of my belief and which I had neither accepted nor rejected. I've had some time to think about them and put them into one category of belief or another.

                                                      Easter Bunny
Micro-aggressions
                                                      Tinker-bell
Racism
                                                      Elves
Strategic bombing
                                                      Dragons
Islam is a religion of peace

Honestly, who really believes that some sort of bunny brings chocolates and jelly beans one day a year or that little fairies can fly or that there is an entire race of undying tree-huggers or that a giant flying fire breathing reptile exists, even in China? The rest of it is just bullshit made up by deeply ignorant people who make gold out of fooling the gullible and stupid.

WHY JUMP

This is sort of sad but I don't understand why. The very best outcome when attempting to tie the record for lowest altitude flight is second or third. You can never win.

Came that close to a runway snow plow

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Merry Christmas

And

Happy new year

To all

NEXT YEAR IN SANSCRIT OR LINEAR B.

What I meant to say was:

which explains the rather slapdash grammar and stuff.

SANS CHEVAL

This was ruthlessly stolen from Maggie's Farm.

I laughed out loud.

I hack at French but my formal days of reading and writing the language are long behind me so I used google translate to double check my words. Did you know sans cheval is translatable as:

Free Horse, Without Horse, Horseless? Me neither. How flexible is the French.

WHERE IS TASK FORCE 34?

This has to stop.

(U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Robert Cloys)

This is ridiculous. Why are the photographs on the ground with the boots elevated over them? This is the absolute vilest disrespect for the dead imaginable by arabs. WTF were they thinking?  Do I want to be part of a military that has this sort of frame available (in expandable form no less) so that the "honored dead" can have somebody else's boots and rifles given pride of place in the backdrop of my death? I don't think so.

In time it will come out why a bunch of Air Force Reservists were "patrolling" in Afghanistan. I'm a little dubious about the nature of any patrol led by a Major and heavily infiltrated by the Office of Special Investigations. It reeks of a People's Commissar and her minions who suffered unexpected reverses while carrying out counterrevolutionary activities of a special and covert nature.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST

SNOPES LONG FALL FROM GRACE

Palace sources revealed that SNOPES is nothing but a democrat fact checker in the same bag with the New York Times, Washington Post and other major dead media. I still go there from time to time to see how they spin "truth" but not that often. A constant diet of deceit and lies is bad for my figure. I did get a kick out of this one though:

I don't believe that islamic terrorism is behind the incident either but I laugh at anyone who could contact the wrong office, get what they wanted to hear from the wrong guy there, and then communicate that information as some sort of fact that establishes the non-credibility of the source that "described it as from a dubious source [which] cannot be considered genuine at this time.

We can only hope that wolfram alpha stays honest and doesn't fall into the darkness. 

TIME TRAVEL

I originally found this map at The Arts Mechanical. It's an interesting map that shows the travel time to go from London to anywhere in the world back in 1914. As I looked at the map what struck me was a different map showing how far back in time a traveler would go by traveling from London to, say, Riyadh or Tripoli or Detroit. Those who have traveled to the viler places around the world know how very thin is the veneer of civilization on cultures rooted firmly in a time more than a thousand years removed from today.

KODACHROME

Bathing Beauties in Vivid Kodachrome, (1944)

I'm assuming Kodachrome is in one of the former Soviet Socialist Republics or one of those cities they renamed after the War. It might be somewhere along the Great Silk Road perhaps between Samarkand and Bukhara. Anyone know where it is?

FOR HER EYES ONLY

The fun thing about the political season is that it keeps coming around every year. The DNC, who allowed Bernie to run like one of them, has pulled his access to their donor files because, politics.  If looks could kill they probably will because the one candidate has the stare of a basilisk and the other looks like one. Bernie is suing his good friends in the Aligned Party and leading the rest of the Socialist Party out on a quick-strike in the Courts. I'm not sure why the DNC ever let him play in their sandbox in the first place. It's kind of a stupid thing to do when you think about it.

I demand that we get along! Give me Your Money!! NOW!!!

THE GATHERING STORM

I can't recall where I found this but it was mislabeled. The caption said something about hearing music you don't like but find impossible not to move to. I decided it more closely resembled the moment just after the arms are crossed and the toe tapping starts. Stand by for heavy weather.

Not Happy

Your position has been established. That's literally the lashing of the tail prior to the pounce. From the excellent book, Ringworld by Larry Niven, "Louis Wu, I found your challenge verbose. In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap."

WHAT RUINS AN ARMY

John Spencer at Politico explains to us why 18 year old men are no longer joining the Army in the numbers required to sustain the All Volunteer Army as a realistic fighter of battles and winner of wars.

In 2008, when I was an infantry company commander in charge of over 140 soldiers in Baghdad, I saw firsthand how the declining number of volunteers is hurting the military. Thirty-six of my men were forced to deploy even though their terms of service were up, a controversial military policy known as “stop loss” or the “back door draft.” To meet the bare minimum number of soldiers, my unit took men who were medically unfit to fight. I had soldiers that could not leave our compound because they were medically prohibited from wearing their body armor or classified as mentally unfit. I had soldiers taking anti-depression, sleeping, anxiety and other drugs. I had a mentally unstable private viciously attack his sergeant, causing lifelong damage, and multiple other problem soldiers that detracted from the combat performance of my unit. This was symptomatic throughout the Army.

He makes some valid points but he skips over the core reason for the decline in the number of able men willing to join today's Army. They heard about the defective sergeants and the crazy privates and the featherbed 'soldiers' who draw the same pay but don't do any of the work. They heard it from their peers who joined or whose brothers joined and most of them still have a high regard for the truth of the things their peers share with them.

Sane individuals with talent and intelligence won't voluntarily associate themselves with an Army that stuffs its ranks with losers and then deploys them all together where the good ones wage war but are tormented every minute of the day by the losers among them that do nothing but make more work for the ready, willing and able and a high command more interested in PC and the feelings of the enemy than for winning the war.

I would not recommend to any of my nephews that they join the Army and, unfortunately, not the Navy or the Air Force. That kind of hurts after spending 30 years in the USN with a father who served 26  years in the Army and a sister who served in the Air Force and a family that has fought this country's battles since Bunker Hill.

Tailhook used to be a venue and a forum for sharing the truth of things now with the old farts that had gone before and were now running Naval Aviation. I'm not sure it still works like that after the debacle in Las Vegas. Surface Warfare never had a forum for juniors to share the rancid truth with the senior leaders of the navy which is how we got things like the Littoral Combat Ship or the myth that was the FFG. Nobody ever had a chance to stand up and be heard and nothing has changed on that front.

I made the decision long ago to simply deploy without the sick, the twisted and the useless. Operating undermanned, even severely undermanned, was more appealing than the alternative. When you go into battle you want to go surrounded by people you can count on.

LATE TO THE FIGHT

Defense News reports that the Defense Department is cutting 12 Littoral Combat Ships from its budgeted and forecast fleet. With 40 ships now scheduled, the number is still 38 too many for a ship that cannot get to the fight, bring anything but swords and pistols or survive should a fight find it. The ship is well-nigh defenseless and therefore cannot serve as an escort, even for Marines.

The fight to keep the ship doesn't appear to have any named advocates within the Navy Department and its only expressed concern is that by whacking the number of ships purchased, the Defense Department is cutting down on the visibility of our ships overseas. Nobody is talking about diminishing the combat power of the Fleet that springs from the class if numbers of LCS are reduced. Nothing from nothing still equals nothing.

I wonder if naval officers still play tactical war games. Have any sat down and played, "Defend the Sea Lines of Communication through the Strait of Hormuz" using the absolute current 'value' provided by existing Littoral Combat Ships?

Here are excerpts from the concluding paragraphs on a monograph concerning the Littoral Combat Ships that the current Deputy Secretary of Defense wrote when he was the Deputy Secretary of the Navy and an ardent supporter of the Dindu Class*,

As stated at the very start of this monograph, however, trust in the LCS concept and
design remains low. It seems certain that this circumstance will not materially
change until LCS is in the fleet and the concept and designs are proven sound....

In sum, then, despite a rocky program start, the Littoral Combat Ship will soon be in
fleet service, and in large numbers. Designed to be a flexible, multirole component in
future Navy battle networks, LCS’s reconfigurable modular design will be a first
among Navy combatants. Indeed, because the ship is so different, much hard work
and experimentation still needs to be done to unlock its full potential. But a solid
foundation has been laid. The seaframes are steadily improving and the first
increments of three mission packages are coming along, to be followed by evermore-capable increments over the life of the ship...

The only thing of note that has changed since Mr. Work wrote that is that Russia has demonstrated some killer long range missiles fired from both its tiny warships and diesel-electric submarines. Oh, and the War on Terrorism is spreading across the entire Near and Middle East and North Africa with some concerns expressed that perhaps 6th Fleet, if we had one, could really use some warships that could support taking the fight to the enemy. Tough to do when you have to be towed into position.

LCS-6 Luring the Enemy into Pistol Range

Notes:
*Dindu Class - It means what you think it does. There are still no missiles, no anti-submarine warfare sensors or weapons, no air defense systems or sensors....just metal that barely floats or moves under its own power.

ATTAR OF PUTRID

THE EMBARRASSMENT CLASS

I don't know if professional Navy officers feel embarrassment anymore. We used to feel it keenly when we deserved to. It was akin to humiliation and one worked very hard to avoid embarrassing oneself or one's seniors. Sadly, it appears that nobody feels any shame in failure or outright humiliation anymore. If there was even a hint of the old Navy remaining alive in the new Navy one would see countless officers hanging their heads in shame at foisting the LCS and JSF on the Navy and Marines.

The crew of a broken ship can feel embarrassment for being unable to maintain or repair a ship entrusted to them. Supposedly, the Navy went out of its way to train and prepare the crew to operate, maintain and repair the ships it gives them. There is damage or repairs that are beyond ship's company's ability to repair but those were once usually inflicted by the enemy or typhoons and not the vagaries of simply getting underway on a beautiful day 20 days after leaving behind the builder's yard, sea trials and final acceptance of the new warship by NAVSEA and SUPSHIP.

I once worked for a CO who found that his Ops Department had made an elementary mistake one night. We spent the entire morning the next day hunting for enemy mines in our own private section of the Persian Gulf about 5 miles away from the other 2 ships engaged in the hunt. The CO finally pulled and reviewed the message that included the navigation data for the day's task and had it replotted himself. He found that we were indeed way "outside the box." His anger was palpable.

When we anchored that night he had all officers report to his cabin where he started out a remarkable ass-chewing by simply stating that 'we' had made him look like a complete idiot in front of his peers. This man was by no means a reamer and screamer. He was a thoughtful and thoroughly decent officer but the events of the day had piled up to the point where he wasn't going to take it anymore.

I'm not sorry I was excused the tirade. I had other things to do but I knew I didn't want to let anybody down the way the Operations Department had let him down. We busted our ass to make the ship go and to that end we were also ready to pass almost any readiness inspection at any time. We did it for our pride. After all, a crappy ship has a poisonous reputation all along the waterfront and the crew used to feel that rep in many ways. I'm not sure if that's the case anymore when ships don't belong to a crew.

Way back, a long time ago, we had a class of ships that the LCS replaced. I was never a fan of those ships after many early encounters with them. They had one massive design flaw that was applied to every aspect of the ship - it was cheap and shoddy and had zero redundancy. Still, they could get away with many minor tasks if one didn't peer to closely underneath the layer of paint.

There is one simple rule to naval gunfire. It boils down to, 'don't shoot your own ship.' In the space of about 2 years, half a dozen of the FFGs managed to shoot themselves. I suspect the Type Commanders and the Fleet Commanders got pretty tired of NAVSEA's bleating about how the, "ships just couldn't help themselves since they were designed to shoot into themselves from the very beginning."

Defanged Frigate With Gun Aimed at Stack and other Gun

In other words, it wasn't a design flaw, it was a signal point of pride that NAVSEA had designed a ship where the Safe Stow position for a naval gun, pointed it directly at the ship's exhaust stack and 20mm close in weapon system. In short, nobody at NAVSEA felt any embarrassment about the problem and did nothing to fix it until it happened again and again and again.

The waterfront was less forgiving. I remember strolling to the Main Brace at 32nd Street one day after knock off and seeing an FFG return to port to moor alongside a sister ship. It came into Pier 4 and the ship it was mooring alongside had prepared a little welcome that outraged the CO and Squadron Commander of the damaged ship. The undamaged ship's crew had put an enormous bullseye on their own stack. The skipper and the Commodore, they were embarrassed. One might say that the skipper felt humiliated. Here they were, returning home with tail between their legs and their mighty close in weapon system lying smashed on the flight deck where it landed after being blown off its mount by their own gun as smoke poured out of the new holes in the ship's smoke stack.

So we find ourselves with our newest addition to fleet welded to some pier in the Tide Water area with people scratching their heads trying to work out how the metal filings found their way into the lube oil strainers. There's a few ways I know.
     -There is metal to metal contact somewhere in the gear train that is grinding up the reduction gear
     -There is metal to metal contact in the propulsion engines
     -The ship is so stupidly designed that all lube oil feeds into one massive filter and nobody knows
      where it is coming from
     -Sabotage

Walking USS MILWAUKEE  Home

Our embarrassing problem in the midst of OPERATION EARNEST WILL came down to a plotting error that was inexcusable but harmless. It caused no damage and no gaps were left after we hustled over to where we were supposed to be and completed the assignment. For me, the saddest part was that somehow the same exact plotting error was made on the paper chart and on the electronic system we used as the conning officer's primary plotter. In other words, the same wrong information was entered into two different navigation systems by two different people. The redundancy inherent in the system failed. That happens sometimes. It's embarrassing. It should be.

FLAMING PRIORITIES

I know a thing or two about priorities. I learned them much the way most of you learned. Faced with the need to accomplish required tasks in a timely fashion one has to determine which one to start with and which one to finish first because resources and time and money are always limited. While I was still reading books on Strategy and Politics an interesting book came into my hands. I bought the book and then made the mistake of loaning it to a friend. He was a lawyer but I thought I could trust him.

The book is A Report from the Field THE STRAW GIANT Triumph and Failure: America's Armed Forces by Arthur T. Hadley. It was initially published in 1971.

     The critical importance of making the proper decisions at the correct level burst on me in such compelling fashion during World War II that it is worth a brief detour to record the moment. At one time, one of my loudspeaking tanks had gotten a bit chewed up. Not only could it no longer loudspeak, it couldn't even croak. I clanked back to division headquarters and got a priority order to  have the tank repaired, and then clanked off to the repair battalion. I arrived at the tent of the lieutenant colonel commanding the maintenance battalion at the same time as did a jeep that belonged to one of the assistant division commanders, a brigadier general. The jeep needed a new roll bar welded to it. 

     The lieutenant colonel in charge of the maintenance battalion called in his heavy maintenance and repair officer, a captain, and said to him, "Here is the loudspeaking tank that has to get back to combat right away and here is the general's jeep that needs  roll bar. Get them fixed up." 

     "Yes, sir," said the captain. "Which one has priority?" 

     "Give them equal priority," said the lieutenant colonel. 

     The general's jeep and the talking tank followed the captain into an apple orchard, where beneath the trees we met the repair officer, a first lieutenant, my own rank.
"Lieutenant," said the captain, "here is the talking tank for a new loudspeaker and the general's jeep for a roll bar. Work on them first." 

     "Yes, sir, " said the lieutenant. "Which one has priority?" 

     "They have equal priority." 

     Now following the lieutenant, jeep and tank arrived at the welding section, where stood one corporal with one blowtorch. "Corporal, said the lieutenant, "here is the loudspeaking tank for a new loudspeaker and the general's jeep for a roll bar. Stop what you are doing and work on them first." 

     "Yes, sir, " said the corporal. "Which one has priority?" 

     "They have equal priority." 

     The corporal looked at his single blowtorch with its single jet of flame and shook his head.

The above is the preface to his lead in to discussing how far out of the box the Air Force went when it was ordered to design and build the first solid fuel land-based intercontinental ballistic missile back in 1957. The author compares and contrasts the successful design and fielding of the Minuteman missile with the TFX program. The entire book is fascinating and covers the broad spectrum of war, preparedness, acquisitions and leadership.

My own best/worst experience with Priorities! Dammitttt!! came when I was but a humble Chief Engineer working to keep the ship underway even though the Engineering Department was down to just 18% manning. Most of the crew was away in the Persian Gulf having fun on ships at 250% of normal manning. My temporary commanding officer had told me that he had rich experience as an engineer since he was fresh from being the Main Propulsion Assistant on USS CONSTELLATION (CV-64).

"CHENG," he said to me, "I only have 5 number one priorities that I expect you to complete perfectly and I'll be satisfied and you'll be happy." He claimed his 5 priorities included fairly important things but considering that 82% of my snipes were vacationing abroad it left me wondering just how I was going to manage.

We managed to bumble along for a few weeks just fine and then one day it came to light that we had been gigged in a letter that had arrived in the Ship's Office, addressed to the Commanding Officer, announcing that at some point, in the months past, the ship had been delinquent in sending lube oil samples to the lab for analysis. We were put on report.

The skipper, in a rage, killed me and danced on my burnt corpse screaming about the black eye he had just received over the Lube Oil Analysis Program failure. I pointed out from my not unpleasant little corner of hell, that something as stupid as "programs" was not on his list of 5 priorities, or mine, and had joined little things like gauge calibration on the list of 'things to do later." He was unrelenting in his merciless kicks to my head and body and screamed at me that, "of course it's not you idiot! I expect you to do your damned job in addition to the 5 number one priorities!"

He was the only skipper in Group ONE that I know, who never went on to command frigates, destroyers or cruisers. He really had no sense of priorities at all. One of his favorite expressions insisted that, "if you just take care of the little things, the big things will take care of themselves." He kept repeating this to me as he kicked and stomped which left me time to reflect on how we had just finished realigning two main propulsion diesel engines and the number one Ship's Service Diesel Generator with 3 other guys, making our own phenolic shocks on a milling machine we borrowed and passing a diesel inspection that week. None of them were what anyone would call, little things and yet they had to be done.

It's very important for all parties to know what the real priorities are, particularly when resources are strained and agendas conflict. And, really, one can only have one number one priority. Everything else takes more time, money or effort.

BACK IN A MINUTE

HINDING THE CHARGE

It seems that everywhere we turn today the elites are champions of other nation's downtrodden poor and illiterate masses and really keen to have them come settle here in the United States or the Socialist Not Quite Working Workers European Paradise (EU for short). Not one in ten of us would have thought that their destruction of the American education system was just part and parcel of making all those illiterates competitive in the Western job market by gutting our public schools.

You can see here that somebody claims that some German Professor has found that 65% of the Syrian migrants settling in the West are illiterate. Well, let them come a little further west and they will find they are well matched by the prepared students of places like New Jersey. The link is to the PBS Newshour show this week that discussed the latest dismal results of educating New Jersey students in the Common Core of Ignorance, Error and Deceit.

Results of Common Core Testing in New Jersey This Week

The results shown don't show the whole measure of failure in New Jersey where 46% of students are literate in English and just 34% can perform arithmetic. Nope. There's more!

New Jersey Is Ranked 3rd Best Schools System

You know how socialists always bleat about the necessity to end the last war with the last bullet and have the man who fired it die of an aneurism so they can be spared the cost of veteran health care? In schools, they see no solution whatsoever but spending more and more money per pupil on something that frankly, doesn't cost all that much. The elementary school across the street from me was built in 1918. It looks pretty good and it gets an 8 out 10 from the Primal School bean counters. The middle school at the end of the same block also scores 8 out 10 on the same Primal scale. The high school across the street is turning out outstanding graduates and has an overall 5 star review.

The schools are all about 100 years old so it's not the fabric that costs that much money. This town isn't like LA Unified Schools who built a billion dollar high school campus. No no. Here the only real money is for busses and for teachers and they don't pay the teachers exorbitant salaries.

School Across the Street

Inside the School Across the Street

The Door I left through

Middle School at the End of the Street

Middle School with Dome Out For Repairs

The High School Across the Street beyond the Fields

Corner Stone of the School Across the Street

TRUMPIAN SURPRISE

The media are in full throat about the outrageous and racist nationalist ideas expressed by candidate Trump. They figure those ideas are poisonous to Trump's campaign because racism. The seem to forget that Adolph was elected Chancellor of Germany. Democratically even and nobody contested the outcome the way algore tried in theUnited States.

Ah well, it's no use wondering about their ignorance, the only thing they studied in school was talking thoughtlessly on subjects they know nothing about.

UPDATE: If one is stupid enough, bigoted enough, racist enough, everything is rassisssst! “It is racist to call American citizens refugees,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, visiting the Houston Astrodome on Monday.

The day is coming when only about 12% of the American population will care what a racist bigot like Sharpton Jackson has to say about anything. Those guys are about as credible as phrenologists or palm readers.

CHANCELLOR OF THE FREE WORLD

Angela Merkel made it as Time Magazine's Thug of the Year with this quote, according to The Independent, “In many regions war and terror prevail. States disintegrate. For many years we have read about this. We have heard about it. We have seen it on TV. But we had not yet sufficiently understood that what happens in Aleppo and Mosul can affect Essen or Stuttgart. We have to face that now.” The Independent clearly left off her final words on the subject, "now that I've imported their war, savagery, and appreciation for islamic terrorism into Germany."

How odd that they left that out.

The Flattered Chancellor of the Free World

ON THE NATURE OF RADICALS

It's kind of amusing today to refer to the men who drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence as 'radicals', but among what passes for our modern liberal society, that name seems to fit them. When you think about it though, all that they wanted was their rights as free Englishmen, who were forced by their government to stand up and demand them. So, not really all that radical.

There is another group of adventuress adventurous radicals these days. They wrap themselves snugly in the 7th century AD ramblings of a child molester evil man and behave pretty much like he did during his time on earth, 1400 years ago. These people are also called 'radicals' by what passes for our muslim liberal President, and he denies decries their behavior every other time they step out from behind a bush and slash some American's throat or kill a roomful of Americans at a Christmas Party.

Words have meaning. Labels are applied for a reason. I think the tyrant who rules by decree and his loyal socialist believers, in and out of the media, really think they can equate the founders with the current crop of islamic jihadists. Maybe if you step back, close one eye and kind of twist your head a little to the left, they look and act the same.... or maybe not so much.

STATE SPONSORED TERRRORISM FALLOUT

From gCaptain an item about a Russian warship transiting the Bosphorus with due concern for totally unexpected, out-of-the-blue, terrorist attacks launched from Turkish shores. Yep, it looks like the ship's company stood-to while transiting the narrow seas where any loony with a boat could pull a USS COLE on them.

Funny how that works... Act like a terrorist or a rogue state and get treated like one.

BASKING IN PATHOSTAN

It was bad enough that Russia is blazing away at islamic jihad targets in Syria using land attack missiles fired from small warships in the landlocked Caspian Sea a thousand kilometers away. Now we find that they're shooting the same missiles off diesel-electric submarines in the Mediterranean. We still haven't put any missiles on the Littoral Combat Ship and even when it does 'get some' they'll be short range anti-tank missiles retrofitted to be fired by the 3200 ton "small" USN combatant. Way to go NAVSEA! You RULE!

I'm waiting for the NAVSEA counterparts at NAVAIR to field an aircraft that can't fire long range missiles developed almost a generation ago or drop bombs on moving targets on a dynamic battlefield without laser range finding assistance from groundside tactical air controllers or even shoot up targets with an internal gun. I'm sure NAVAIR will never be a party to a sick joke like the LCS.

I usually felt some pity for the officers detailed to Pathostan but no more! Those Pentagon types have got to at least pretend that they are responsible for fielding systems capable of surviving on modern battlefields today and in the near future and lately, they have been absent without leave or leading the charge into pointless, useless, crushingly expensive weapon systems and platforms.

BRANDING

If the intelligentsia had been able to successfully convince the NYT and the other donkey media that islam was nothing but a whacky religious cult, we wouldn't be having any problems at all from the domestic wing of their terror cult now would we?

Here is how the government elected by democrat's dealt with cultists at Waco. It had the following effects. The link is actually CBS news, if you can believe it!

What is it about cults, Waco and law enforcement? There's one cult considerably more dangerous than the rest and they did it again in Waco. I'm not flying over Syria or going to Waco either.

HONORING OBAMA

Today, President Obama honored himself by awarding himself both the Medal of Honor and the Medal of Freedom. He was irritated to discover that he hadn't already done so and had a sharp word with his staff at their lack of dedication and focus.

He praised his intellectual gifts, good looks, cleanliness, articulirization and the transparent open and honest administration he has run for the last 7 years and the next 7 years. He then ended by thanking his allies in ISIS  Congress for extending him in office until 2022.

READINESS AS A STATE OF BEING

Are you Ready Now?

Destroyer Division 8 response to RN in WWI, "We are ready now"

Do you find it interesting that we remember this date every year but we never 'stand to' for it like we do for each anniversary of 9/11? The country is still at war even if the president and Congress no longer are. We have come to expect that the State will do nothing to prevent further attacks except engage in painful and absurdly useless theater.

In war there should be no surprises. No unexpected dawn attacks. No ordinary day.

The link at the top contains an interesting report on the damage and loss of many of the United States Navy's destroyers during World War II. Tough little ships.

The front of the ship is about a mile away, straight down.

Not that long ago, the duty section of any US Navy warship was expected to be able to get the ship underway and proceed out to sea immediately. It might take time to get steam up but the fires could be lit and the ship underway with six hours notice. A diesel or gas turbine ship could get underway in under an hour. I doubt that any duty section today could get the ship underway.

The unspoken corollary was never spoken of. It was never even mentioned. Could any duty section get the ship's main battery into action to repel an armed attack? Would you like to see the effect of small arms and machine gun fire on a ship? Below is the ex USS O'BANNON DD 987 after being hit with Harpoon missiles and 5 inch gunfire. It is now being fired at with the weapons warships use for self defense against terrorists.

Readiness is not just a state of being, it is a state of mind.

UPDATE:

This was released today and shows that forces were available for instant deployment to Benghazi on the anniversary date of 9/11. This is no surprise since we spooled up every year for a number of anniversaries that our adversaries believed should be celebrated by flooding the streets with American blood. This was sent from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff and 2 other high level drones at State Department then being mismanaged to death by Hillary Clinton. You can see the date and the time below.

The following is wikipedia entry on Jeremy Bash. Some Harvard Law grads don't 'test' as well as others....

ANOTHER TYPICALLY MODEST DEFIANT PROPOSAL

All those Syrian migrants that President Obama wants to bring over in order to enhance our security by importing a better breed of peaceful muslim could be easily accommodated in world class beach resort facilities at Guantanamo Bay. I'm sure they'll fit right into the President's Socialist Paradise and that way everybody will be happy. If Cuba is good enough for the Mayor of Chicago and his family, it has to be good enough for Obama and the muslim army headed this way across the Atlantic. If we give the JV ISIS from Syria a few bucks I'm pretty sure we could arrange with Castro to have them turned loose in Havana.

ALL AT WAR EXCEPT US

It is still hard to believe how every American leader in the Pacific was blind to the fact that the entire industrialized world was engaged in a war at the time and yet took no action to safeguard the ships, aircraft, men and materials under their command.

On the other hand, you could pretty much say that about the entire U.S. military today. Damned near invulnerable on the battlefield and yet completely unprepared for death and destruction at home. Even after attack after attack the military has yet to take any meaningful steps to safeguard the people or the materials that it is responsible for.

What started in Beirut, was refined in Khobar, revised in Aden and demonstrated daily all over the world is ignored because it is inconceivably difficult to implement security. We have a kind of saying that is in the poorest of poor taste but nevertheless it remains true and accurate. One doesn't have to be faster than the bear, one has only to be faster than one's friends. Applied to installation security it was sometimes enough to be just a little tougher looking than that Air Force installation down the road because the terrorist will default to the easier target.

There was nothing easy about Pearl Harbor in 1941 but there was nothing hard about it either. In fact, if looked at with the jaundiced eye of those who did port security, Ford Island and Oahu were just about the easiest targets in the entire Pacific at the time although the Philippines may have been easier since they were closer to Imperial Japan. Neither one took security seriously.

The one thing that everyone recalls about the ugly incident on 7 December 1941 was that we had broken the Japanese naval code and could have known about the attack. These days our political and military leaders preen themselves and casually assume that our massive expenditures on intelligence will beagle out any future attacks before they happen and there will be plenty of time to deploy some of my guys or the FAST. Nothing to date has changed their minds that they will always have advance notice and plenty of time to prepare; not USS STARK, USS COLE, Khobar Towers, 9/11, Hassan Nidal...

We will never be without surprise attacks but we should work harder to take the sting out of them.

FIELD SAFETY TIP

Muslim Terrorists are notorious for being anal retentive. In their manual for employing terrorist attacks it really emphasized the importance of conducting surveillance of the target. Therefore, an alert observer will take note of the same vehicle that circles the block and slows down each time it goes by. A keen observer will note who enters a meeting place or restaurant, scopes it out and leaves without comment. A wary observer will note who appears at a party and then, inexplicably, leaves a few minutes later.

A wise observer will note every time a muslim terrorist does that and take the opportunity to leave immediately or stand to, check the weapons and prepare to counter an imminent attack.

You know the only reason that scumbag went to the party and then left immediately was to verify the time and place and presence of his enemies.

I WONDER

Do you think there is any chance at all that the various organs of gun violence cleanup have visited all of the friends of the San Bernardino slayers and asked them about their own chances of yielding to sudden jihad syndrome with maybe a look around to see how many bombs they have in their apartments, houses and garages?

or

was it all just work place violence? Nothing to worry about here. There is no isis. No terrorists.

FLIGHT TRACKER

Interesting that there are still commercial airliners flying over Syria from Turkey. After the tragedy in Ukraine and the sudden European realization that it is madness to send commercial airliners over a war zone with modern Russian anti-aircraft missile systems deployed, I would have thought United Arab Emirates Airlines and Qatari Air would have elected to fly around Syria. It's like running with scissors. Not even a senseless foreseeable tragedy will get kids to stop.

I'm not flying over Syria and particularly not on a southerly heading out of Turkish airspace.

IT'S THE SCALE

Europe seemed so big when I studied European History. All of the fraught war and diplomacy of 500 years fits into Texas. It's hard, even now, to imagine European reaction to something fought on the scale of the American Civil War. I don't think 99% of them had any idea. When you wonder where our railroads came from back at the beginning, a lot of them grew out of the logistic demands of armies that moved like locusts from Maine in the north to the Mississippi and to Florida in the south.

CLINTON FIRST TO QUESTION ISIS

Naturally, a Clinton was the first to get to the fundamental question of the Obama regime and wonder about what ISIS means.

A LITTLE SOUTH SIDE OF CHICAGO

The Mayor of Chicago is displeased now that we know he is planning on spending his vacation in the only part of Chicago where "Gun control works Dammit!!" The Mayor was heard to scream, 16 bullets! Jesus Christ, it doesn't take 16 bullets to kill a boy! One would do it! The Mayor went on to suggest to his new Police Commissar that he arm his troops appropriately and give them some real firepower so they don't have to reload Go& Dammit!

The mayor called in his federal buddies to conduct real training on how to take a boy into custody.

The new commissar did get the mayor to admit that the only reason there was no gunfire in that incident was because his federal buddies have shown an overwhelming enthusiasm for killing babies, innocent young women or anybody else they find at the place where they just created a crime scene.

The mayor and his family are looking forward to their vacation in the kleptodystopian paradise of the Republic of Cuba. Mayor admits that the swim back to Miami will be "bracing but at least with global warming we won't freeze in the equatorial Gulf Stream as we swim to the US with the poor Cuban refugees migrants who can't afford a ticket or a boat."

OBAMA PLAYS FOR THE OTHER TEAM

Always true: the results speak for themselves. Found at yer ol' Woodpile Report

Obama plays for the other team. He did before he was elected and he has ever since, in every meaning of the phrase, politically and personally. This is not common knowledge, not quite, not yet, but close. When this walking pile is of no further use to his masters, when his cadre scurries back to the dark places from whence it came, then the truth will out. It'll be an epic national enema, one malodorous chunk after another. Have your hazmat suit handy.

ANOTHER VILE VIDEO FROM CALIFORNIA

President Obama is baffled by the violence in California but pretty sure it was kind of almost like what he and Hillary thought was at the root of the killing in our Benghazi Consulate on 9/11.

Obama. The bafflement is only matched by the befuddlement.

INHERENT RIGHT OF SELF DEFENSE

The red states share concealed handgun license reciprocity with the State of Ohio. If you have a CHL from here you can legally carry in all of the true American states. You can see how the handful of states that refrain from allowing their subjects to arm themselves in accordance with the U.S. Constitution are altogether safer and untroubled by pesky gun violence. Oh, and you can shade Maine with the color of reason because like Arizona, they just enacted a law that makes it legal for just about anyone to carry a concealed handgun without any permit at all.

THE RACE OF REASON

I have worked for some really stupid men in my life. They were, fortunately, few and far between. I was spared the dire necessity of working for any stupid men in combat but the ones back in the United States made life so unbearable that all of us promptly volunteered for immediate return overseas to duty in a war zone in order to escape the stupidity. Many of us called the Group every month and renewed our request for orders to any ship, any billet in the Persian Gulf.

I noted the various news articles today that threw our President's true graceless stupidity into stark relief at a Paris press conference. I finally bit the bullet and brought up CSPAN and watched his news conference. It was as ugly as I had been warned it would be.

If you are one of the millions and millions of literate Americans out there who have simply tuned this president out the past three or four years, that is certainly understandable. But if you tuned in to the long, rambling, empty press conference, you would have been truly alarmed.

It took the doddering president 47 minutes and over 5,000 words to answer just six questions. And by "answer," I simply mean he unspooled a torrent of disjointed words and broken sentences.

Asked about the "mass shooting" where a nut job shot three people at a Colorado abortion clinic, President Obama once again became exasperated with the American people. "I say this every time we've got one of these mass shootings: This just doesn't happen in other countries." 

He actually said this. In Paris. Not three weeks after gunmen mowed down 129 people enjoying freedom in the French capital. 

Then, of course, there is this business of comparing radical Islamic terrorism to — global warming? He actually insisted that global warming is an even greater threat than terrorism itself. 

Again, he said this. In Paris. Not three weeks after the worst terrorist attacks in a civilized country since 9/11.

I don't really care what other people had to say about George Bush, either of them. They were both men with solid records of accomplishment with open and transparent academic histories who surrounded themselves with some of the smartest people in America. Needless to say, that is not the case with Obama. Can you imagine Obama flying the most advanced military aircraft of the day? Can you see him at the controls of an F-18 making a carrier approach? Yeah, me neither.

I actually witnessed his speech at the Convention that nominated Kerry and thought he was a hack with a teleprompter. I think his vice president nailed his description of the man perfectly. He had and has no record of accomplishment, no distinguished service to the country, no academic or written record and no history.

You can watch him outshine shinola for yourself. On teleprompt he can still read but once he goes freestyle at the Q&A it rapidly goes downhill. Just for contrast, here is another perfect idiot in the give and take of an American press interview freestyle event answering an unscripted question. You know, just as a clean comparison with the President's performance in Paris.

What must it be like to be smart and to work for these two? How painful is that? How do those people get up everyday and go to work where all they can do is dread the certainty that the boss is going to be out-articulated and outsmarted by a five year old?

Throughout the Cold War it was well known that both we and the Russians kept a gimlet eye on the mental health and stability of the leaders of both countries. It had to be done and it had to be done properly. Some people are chilled at the idea that Reagan was gaga in his later term in office but at least he was surrounded by really clever patriots with well known qualities that any Russian leader could gauge with near certainty. Likewise, our national command authority kept on top of the stream of rapidly deteriorating old men that led the Soviet Union to its end with Gorbachev. We knew what we could expect from them all.

What the hell do the poor Russians know about Obama and his national command authority team? Well, they know Obama is an idiot. They know the vice president is an idiot. They know that the current SECDEF is an apparatchik and the man before him was an idiot. They don't even know who the national security advisor is but it is no Kissinger. The SECSTATE is, possibly, even stupider than Hillary Clinton and the Russians see an entire nuclear armed country about to nominate Hillary for the Democratic Party candidate for President in 2016.

Do you suppose they're more afraid now than at any point since 1919? The known leadership is dire and the unknown pullers on the levers, the McFarlanes and the Lieutenant Colonel Norths are probably even more frightening.

We  have a healthy fear of an irrational enemy armed with nuclear weapons. I think the Russians are even more afraid of us now than they ever were before. When they look into the eyes of Obama, Clinton, Biden, Kerry, they don't see the light of reason looking back.