Thursday, March 31, 2016

NYT HUMOR

It claims to be an Op Ed from the New York Times but since it is well written, pokes fun at the bastions of decivilization so dear to the hearts of New Yorkers, I suspect it's a trap!
But over recent years, Stanford administrators noticed that as the school rejected more and more comers, it received bigger and bigger donations, its endowment rising in tandem with its exclusivity, its luster a magnet for Silicon Valley lucre. 
In fact just 12 hours after the university’s rejection of all comers, an alumnus stepped forward with a financial gift prodigious enough for Stanford to begin construction on its long-planned Center for Social Justice, a first-ever collaboration of Renzo Piano and Santiago Calatrava, who also designed the pedestrian bridge that will connect it to the student napping meadows.
As undergrads, we had to nap in a swamp where I went to school. We were told we didn't deserve meadows.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

OBAMA KILLS 452ND ISIS LEADER

Every time I see the paper it seems Obama has killed another ISIS leader. It makes one wonder, where do all these ISIS leaders come from? Are they like Taliban and al qaida leaders and thus immortal and unkillable? We sure do seem to spend 400,000 plane/drone hours killing each individual isolated leader. Could we not just napalm the lot of them?

If nukes and firebombs were good enough for Japanese and Germans, surely they'll work on ISIS.

I mean, why limit our kill to just leaders? If we wanted to do that, surely we have targets closer to home. Can you imagine how devastated we all would be if ISIS managed to kill our leader? I know I'd be deeply wounded and might even fall down. Srsly. I might cry.

THERE IS A REASON WE DON'T GO TO CHURCH NOW

It would be one thing if they all suddenly decided to go mad and embrace heterosexual lifestyles but each and every one of them has decided to go mad in a different and disturbing way. They sure left me behind. I would no more piss on them if they were afire than I would piss on a policeman in such a predicament. 


All things considered, I'll keep my ammo dry and wage war until the King of Poland shows up.

THE INVISIBLE FISH

We used to be the most invisible fish that ever served afloat as a warship of the United States Navy. We worked hard to polish our credentials and didn't let the fact that we literally tied up at the admiralty pier dissuade us from our belief that nobody could see us. We were the original stealth warship.... made of wood don't you know. Designed from the keel up to be 'stealthy.'  We maxed our craft to the delight of our skippers who, being invisible, could do no wrong.

I used to joke with the crew of USTAFISH about them simply submerging at the pier, resurfacing nightly for Dominoes Pizza and submerging again for a 6 month deployment pierside. They took umbrage. Deep umbrage. They got more medals for pizza than anybody!

I enjoyed playing on the web back in the early days. USENET let you play. We used to be anonymous because we didn't ever wanted to be sourced as a quote by the NYT or Times for anything we wrote in jest. It was pretty clear who was in the game and who was simply interested. Black Beard  and I were alike in being in the Navy Acquisition World. He was up at China Lake and I was at SPAWARSYSCOM. We agreed to meet, as we used to do on USENET, when Sherry came to town on a book tour. I enjoyed her company.


I enjoyed meeting Sherry but sadly, the stealthy submariner failed to show up at the Moose and Cow outside the gate to NTC. While I enjoyed meeting Sherry, it was a letdown that the Black Beard stealthed out and failed to show. He might have liked the guys putting on a show of a flaming datum for Random and Sherry.

I used to drive by the place and think it was a gateway computer store. They shared a paint scheme.


THE CARTOON BRAVELY ADVANCED

I don't, as a rule, read the comics or cartoons much anymore. I know I'm missing out on much of what is best in humor but I've been willing to pass ever since the fall of Calvin and Hobbes. That must change!

I saw this at Theo's and it struck a chord. (I still can't strike a chord).

PHONING IT IN

It probably looks like I've been doing that for a few days but I can't draw on my usual sources of inspiration because they are unbelievably dismal and depressing. If I wanted that, I could just read the New York Times or Washington Post. When I deliver dire, dismal, depressing stuff, I want to make it up, not quote the news.

I have neglected some of the deeper wells of memory and I can do something about that, tomorrow. Those Civil War letters don't transcribe themselves you know. They take some time to puzzle out because, let's be honest, most of them appear to have been written by candlelight in a tent by a young man who was too young for the Army and learning things at an almost impossible rate by the standards of today and also making up the English language, spelling and grammar the way this administration's spokesmen do.

When I read the early letters sent home after the Regiment was formed and ordered to service and sent to undergo training, it is easy to see the partially lettered youngster who is coming to grips with the school of hard knocks. Thanks to a commenter here I see that young Luther enjoyed the aid of his commander who knew the young man was not of age but who would not/could not send the young man back to his angry father.

They knew each other. They all knew each other. They were not like a modern military formation thrown together by chance and circumstance. They dashed to the colors and joined immediately after the opening shots of the Civil War and then they went on to serve together for much of the rest of the conflict until, as it happened, the war in their sector petered out and left them with not much to do and a government unwilling and unable to pay them to do nothing. They mustered out, took their pay and went home to get on with the lives they had, for the most part, voluntarily interrupted in order to serve their country.

I live much closer to my family's roots then I have for almost 50 years. They were scattered around Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana long ago. They lived in places with names like Liberty and New Philadelphia.

It's a little odd living here in MetroParkCentralis these days. The Republican National Convention will be held here in July and I'm not sure what to expect. The civil society that I remember as a young man was never anything but a complete myth. I was 7 when the SDS decided to show the Democrats their outrage and while I think those guys are 10 x the men that the modern pajama outrage boy are, I don't discount your actual anarchists and haters who I expect will come out in droves to tie up the city.

It does make you wonder though at how prescient the GOP was to choose this city and these cops to provide a backdrop for their convention. There may well be a shortage of money, equipment, ethics and morality in that cop shop, but there is no shortage of unrestrained, unpunished, untapped police brutality, ammunition and sheer animus for blacks. If there is any city on this continent that won't hesitate to up the brutality against demonstrators and take a bulldozer to the party, it is MetroParkCentralis.

OK, so those images won't play nicely in the deep blue but, sadly, for the rest of the country, it will be like night and day. The people who want Trump are kind of tired of being hijacked by the 11%. They'll enjoy watching the enemies of civilization meet the Hussar.

Monday, March 28, 2016

COERCION POLITICS OF THE LEFT

LAST FULL MEASURE OF INCOMPETENCE

I don't think anything more needs to be said. 147 FBI Agents are investigating Hillary Clinton for her crimes.

I'll say it anyway. If proof nailed itself to their foreheads, do you think the FBI or Justice Department would take notice?

UPDATE:
I haven't watched the news in some time and wonder if Obama has given Hillary one tenth the support he has given Castro, Argentine and Venezuelan socialist rulers in the last week. Is he backing Hillary with the same ruthless enthusiasm he has shown for Assad, Putin, Pol Pot, Ho, Mao and Stalin? I mean, it's not everyday that a Constitutional Law scholar just announces that there is no difference between communism and capitalism.

I think it's kind of funny that neither Hillary nor Obama think they'd be the first decorating the bottom of some nameless well in Michigan when the Revolution does to them what it did to the Romanovs, Bourbons and Ceauescu.

SHARING ISN'T THE LOADED WORD I'D USE

In the latest update from the front, Oriana Pawlyck of the Air Force Times writes:
The Air Force and coalition partners in the air war against the Islamic State are not only sharing intelligence, runways and strategic plans, they’re also sharing bombs. 
Coalition jets having been taking from the U.S. stockpiles as needed, said Lt. Gen. John Raymond, deputy chief of staff for operations at Headquarters Air Force. “We do have relationships with our coalition partners for those supplies; they are using those weapons as well,” Raymond told reporters Thursday at a defense writer’s briefing in Washington, D.C. 
While the Air Force is not immediately concerned with depleting its stockpiles, “it is something we are managing very closely to make sure … we have the supplies to do what we need to do today,” he said.
The words I'd have used in writing such an article would be, "USAF Gives Away Arsenal of Bombs," or "Ruthless Allies Steal USAF Blind and Take Bombs Whenever."

Can you remember ANY time that one of our allies "shared" ammunition with us? I honestly can't.

Just reading that twit general's words is irritating to me. We once used a broken down K-loader in Qatar after we fixed it up and made it operational enough to actually move to the aircraft and when the Air Force found out they turned around and charged us $17,000 for using it. There were no Air Force people there, the equipment had been abandoned at the airhead and we spent our money fixing it up. It's extremely irritating to read now that the USAF is just giving away $121,000 bombs because it can't find enough aircraft to drop them on our enemy.

Sunday, March 27, 2016

THE FINAL AGE

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

For no other reason than I like them both together.

CITIZEN OF NARNIA

A lot of people sacrificed all that they had that others could live in peace. They didn't realize that it wasn't a political struggle or a war to win the hearts and minds, they were up against the first enemies of western civilization and they never stood a chance.


They went to extraordinary lengths to extend the hand of civilization to the people beyond the Pale. It has some resemblance to another war and another time. They failed, but they never had even a chance of winning. In this, they were not alone. Others have done that.

Happy Easter.

Friday, March 25, 2016

PAINT IT BLACK

There is this alleged professor who vows that she will call 911 every time she sees a student with a gun. When it was pointed out that the ones she was seeing were ROTC students on their way to a rendezvous with destiny, she doubled down, like they do, and said nothing would keep her from doing her job of protecting people and calling the cops every time a student with a gun passes before her office window.

Someone should paint her office windows black. She lives in the dark, she might as well work in it too. Another modest proposal, humbly submitted to the void.

TALE OF TWO FOOD LABELS

Vermont has declared that they will know if their food is genetically modified. They will know it because they passed a law requiring food sellers to label all such modified foods and they will fine the companies if they try to sell good, wholesome, approved by the FDA, foods in Vermont. There is another label that companies could put on their genetically modified food products, Not Authorized For Sale in Vermont.

The article made much of how tiny Vermont with its population of 600,000 people had just made a national change to food labeling. Sure. Can you imagine what would happen if Coke decided to simply label its product, Not For Sale in Vermont and left it at that? I know, they'd lose market share to Pepsi in a minuscule market and then you'd see hordes of people smuggling Coke across the border, at night, in high speed cars, armed to the teeth to fight off revenuers and hijackers! It would be another colossal TV movie franchise featuring the mustache as a bandit.

I'm not on the board at Coke or any of the other true giants of industry, but that's how I'd vote. It is time to let people face the consequences of being shallow, stupid, moronic tools of the shadowy leftist global agenda to spurn America. And, the titans of industry could carefully explain to the Vermont authorities that they aren't going to pay any fines. They had nothing to do with all that stuff showing up in Vermont and perhaps Vermont needs to tighten up their border security and deal with the smugglers and traffickers and leave honest shrubbers alone.

Yet another modest proposal humbly submitted to the void.

Thursday, March 24, 2016

VIVA LA DIFFERENCE!

soviet spat about a name
Unlike our own Ministry of the Interior, Cuba's is not charged with innocuous tasks like protecting endangered waterfowl. Rather, it operates the National Revolutionary Police, which, in addition to keeping law and order on the streets, harasses and arrests dissidents, and suppresses "counter-revolutionary" activities. In other words, it's Cuba's version of the Stasi.... "and our version of police and university administrators.
We got your number. We got the same damned thing here.

Scumbags caught in the act of being NAZIs



DUNNING KRUGER EFFECT

The phenomenon was first tested in a series of experiments during 1999 by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of the department of psychology at Cornell University.[1][2] The study was inspired by the case of McArthur Wheeler, a man who robbed two banks after covering his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, because lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras.[3] The authors noted that earlier studies suggested that ignorance of standards of performance lies behind a great deal of incorrect self-assessment of competence. This pattern was seen in studies of skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing games such as chess or tennis.
One trips over the damnedest things on the web. Read carefully.*


 *I think I may be the last person in America who grew up with this on the bookshelf. It passes belief that this perfectly ordinary book, like Aesop's Fables or The Bobbsey Twins, survives in this day and age.
** I saw this evil film twice in Fort Riley when I was a Tenderfoot. (yep, I dindo a ** above. I like alert readers!)

HOW DEMOCRACY WORKS

Poland is a democracy. We were not.
Poland abandoned a pledge to shelter migrants under a European Union relocation agreement, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said, shifting her country’s stance a day after suicide bombers killed dozens of people in the bloc’s de-facto capital. 
Poland’s previous government agreed to host several thousand migrants under a deal forged by the EU’s 28 member states to address the hundreds of thousands of mostly Middle Eastern refugees who have arrived in the bloc since last year. The new government, which has repeatedly clashed with the EU’s executive over rule-of-law and other issues since it took power after October elections, has repeatedly said it must eliminate danger when admitting migrants. 
“I will be very clear: at the moment, I don’t see a possibility for migrants to come to Poland,” Szydlo told Superstacja TV on Wednesday. Her spokesman, Rafal Bochenek, later told journalists that the government “can’t allow for events in western Europe to happen in Poland.” 
Poland’s about-face is a blow to pledges made last year to shelter a planned 160,000 refugees in the EU and a deal sealed last week to reduce the flow of refugees arriving on member Greece’s shores from Turkey. Under the new agreement, each Syrian refugee who makes it to the Aegean state will be sent back to Turkey and put at the end of a waiting list for entry, while another person on the waiting in a camp there will be admitted to the bloc. Some 857,000 survived the Aegean passage in 2015, and more than 144,000 have crossed so far this year. 
About 53 percent of Poles were against accepting migrants, according to a January survey by the CBOS center. A lower number, 41 percent, are for offering them temporary shelter, and only 4 percent said the country should allow migrants to settle permanently.
You see, in a democracy, politicians care about what the voters want. In an oligarchy they don't give a damn.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

FASCINATING OBTUSITY AT USA TODAY

The comrade writers at TAP (The American Pravda) have asked a question because they are perplexed at how a fish could hide among many fish for so long despite all the people with computers bravely looking for him in vain. Their somewhat plaintive bleat went like this:
One stark reality was lost amid the first ecstasy of success in capturing, alive, Europe’s single most wanted fugitive. How was this possible — that he could remain concealed so close to home for so long? Above all, what does that mean for the ability to uncover more such plots still being hatched in Europe or the United States?
I know USA today is somewhat overtaxed at the moment what with all the wars America is fighting, War on Fat, War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Guns, War on Knives, War on Terrorism, War in Afghanistan, War in Iraq, War in Syria, War in Libya, War in Kenya, War in Somalia, War in Yemen, War in Kenya, War on Lead Based Paint, War on taxpayers, War on Conservatives, War on BLM and of course, the taxing and enervating job of just being a plain old vanilla journolist who has to eat and put the write (sic) spin on things before laying it at the feet of the fools who buy their paper. Tis a hard life. I'll help them out.

Do you suppose the idiots who wrote that article and edited it and fact checked it and approved it ever asked themselves a simple question that is the corollary of their own?

How did Osama bin Laden hide out for over a decade in an open compound in a major Pakistani military city without detection by our ally, Pakistan?

Yes, yes, Johnny, I see you. You don't need to jump up on the desk and wave your hand and keep shouting, "I know! I know!" I know you know. I'm just boggled that even to this day we have captive journolists who claim total ignorance about something as plain as the nose on that bodiless gor (sic) dripping head being enthusiastically waved around by moderate muslims shrieking allah akbar.

How a fish hides.

The naughty fish is in the middle.

AINT GONNA STUDY WAR NO MORE

Much of my support for fighting the war in Afghanistan was simply because I thought the best way to fight islamic terrorists was on their ground. We suffered their repeated attacks on the World Trade Center and I figured we'd be better off as a society if we confronted them in a stand-up all out fight in their homeland rather than let them do here what they did in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, and every other place islam has battled against modernity.

Ivan Eland wrote an interesting book about the kind of fight we are now engaged in. It makes for fascinating reading and yet it drives home one inescapable fact; once they move within our borders we cannot defeat them. Failure doesn't happen overnight and the results sometimes are almost invisible as your liberties are slowly eroded and swept away as the government attempts to exert control over the battlefield which, sadly, has become your homeland.

The complete preface to the book is available at the link above. Below are some extracts. As you get to the part about the guerrillas retreating to their sanctuaries between attacks, include on that list the modern sanctuary provided by untouchable muslim ghettos in the most modern western countries. The only way to defeat guerrillas is to summon the national will and to eliminate the struggle or concede defeat and negotiate a peace on their terms.

The first American War of the 19th Century was waged against the tentacles of the Caliphate. The current wars are being waged against tentacles of the Caliphate. They have one common denominator.




GOOD LUCK WITH THAT

My inbox was top-filled this morning with wonderful news and commentary from the most luminous stars of our little firmament. The top mail was this wonderment from the Speaker of the House. He is on a mission to raise the level of discourse in politics. I'm not sure if he is actually alive or if he is an unusually ignorant alien from another planet. His intent seems to be to tweak the partisanship out of politics because way too many people have finally figured out that all politicians are very cordially bipartisan and keep giving the house away to each other and their moneyed cronies who support them every time they run for political office. I'm not sure who he thinks he is talking to.

He isn't talking to people like me who have gotten so tired of voting for RINOs that we don't even bother anymore and he isn't talking to the kind of people that think political speech embraces blocking ALL traffic on major streets and highways for hours at a time. He isn't talking to the people who were slammed by the IRS for trying to form tax exempt political groups. He isn't talking to the people sick to death of crony capitalism and Solyndra and every other green policy blunder that costs the taxpayers trillions of dollars in direct and indirect costs as the war against the atmosphere goes on at ever increasing cost to working Americans.

He wasn't talking to the likes of David Brooks who is so trumped by the possible candidates running for the Republican nomination this year that once again he can only turn to the shining lights of the Democrats for comfort in his time of moral despair.

As usual, the Republic is sick and tired of compromise where every single time the compromise moves the country towards increasing Government and increasing and more intrusive Government control of every aspect of life. It's like compromising with evil. There is no compromise, one has just become a little more evil, that's all. Nothing to worry about except evil begets evil and now we have a society that turns to the police when some supporter dares to chalk the name of his candidate in public view.

How do you compromise with that world view?

Paul Ryan, Inspire and Unite 

A DAMNING FAILURE TO COMPREHEND

The Wall Street Journal headline this morning reads, Attack Highlights Belgian Failure To Roll Up Extremist Network
​Interviews and court documents related to last summer’s trial portray dozens of young people connected by a loose web of extended families and friends who live in the predominantly Muslim neighborhoods of the Belgian capital. A few key people served as recruiters there, enlisting these mostly young men to commit petty crimes as a way to finance the pipeline sending men from their neighborhoods to wage jihad in Syria.
Of course that's one of the stupidest articles I've read in the Wall Street Journal in some time. Did they totally fail to notice that Europe/Brussels just took in over a million jihadist muslim men of fighting age from all over Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and north Africa? What need is there for some petty local network of thieves when they imported their own destruction by the hundreds of thousand? They opened the doors wide to welcome their own killers, who, being without any marketable skills, are paid by the state to do nothing but plot how to kill as many people as possible in the name of islam, just like they were doing at home in Arabia and north Africa.

Dancing is forbidden and music is forbidden and yet still the observers see them writhe in righteous pleasure at killing and do not consider them insane. Of course, we're talking now about Europe which sees bathing in the blood of its enemies as good wholesome sport for the masses. Each time a demagogue steps up to the levers of social media power and tries to call for policy reform and demand attention be paid to the tribe, he is bundled into a prison as quickly as the State can move. So, there is nothing to worry about.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

BRAVE MEN RUN IN MY FAMILY

I always smile when I drive through La Jolla and see this facade. It's been there for decades.


PRINCE CHARLES' SHIP SINKS AT PIER

The last of the Ton Class Minesweepers has sunk alongside a pier. A sad end to a minesweeper to die of neglect and want of attention at a pier where indifference seems to be the order of the day. h/t gCaptain.

ex HMS Bronington

APPLE REPRIEVED FOR A DAY OR TWO

The FBI is channeling its resources to attack the encryption that people thought they could count on. They have requested a temporary halt in their war on Apple because they reckon they have another way to beat Apple's best iphone encryption.
In its filing, the justice department said it might have a different way to break into device – something cryptographers, leading data security experts and even Edward Snowden have said was possible without placing the cybersecurity of all iPhone users at risk through creating what Apple derisively calls “GovtOS”. 
Nevertheless, the government has stated repeatedly, under oath, that Apple alone had the technical ability to get inside the device. The government wanted Apple to use an official Apple software update to turn off some security features, including one that can cause the phone to wipe its storage if someone enters the wrong passcode 10 times.
The justice department request comes after more than a month of heated insistence that the only way the FBI could examine a locked iPhone used by the gunam (sic) was for Apple to write new software that would be missing some of its operating system’s security features.
But attorney Alex Abdo of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a brief supporting Apple, lambasted the government’s reversal.
“This suggests that the FBI either doesn’t understand the technology well enough or wasn’t telling us the full truth earlier when it said that only Apple could break into the phone. Either possibility is disconcerting.”
I'm sure glad they didn't have to send in the big guns. That could have been embarrassing when all the smart Apple employees developed the same kind of steel trap memory that Hillary has always displayed when forced to testify. We are spared the FBI dragging engineers into court and demanding that they "remember" stuff and apply it to 'defending' the nation. I'm sure they were looking forward to dredging up some outstanding Hillaryisms, "I have no recollection of that. You mean wipe it with a clothe?" Fun times in the never ending war on poverty, drugs, knives, guns, terrorism.

The Great White Fleet Takes Battle Formation
Bad Cellular Connection, Dropped Call in 1915

Monday, March 21, 2016

THE MAN AND HIS FRIENDS

I like to think we have an American Commander-in-Chief. Sometimes, I wonder though...
Castro's Puppet

Sunday, March 20, 2016

ART

"Where is the San Diego Art Museum," she asked.

Damned if I know. I mentioned that I had heard that the art at the Guggenheim or the LA Craft Center with Tar Pits was good but that I had, sadly, never been to either. She thought there must surely be a rival in San Diego to MetroParkCentralis and the Oval but I had to confess that the best we had for almost a decade was an exhibit of Torquemada's Implements of Torture and sadly, it had moved on. Gentle readers, she was not impressed with America's Finest City's Art. It's just not the same.

Art in Metro Park Centralis in yonder building


I mentioned the jet fighter that landed on water skis on display at Balboa but she demurred. Women are fickle.

I lived there for over 30 years. I visited the Louvre countless times, the Smithsonian, the Prado, any number of museums all over the world, every single building in Balboa and the Art? It escaped me. There was Images of Nature long ago next to John's Waffle Shop in La Jolla but it had its counterpart at Stapleton which had the same art but is long gone and she used to fly through Stapleton. I know, just birds, polar bears, penguins and giant mosquitos.

We were forced to confess that San Diego was artless.

COFFEE WITH KAFKA

The limits of power can be displayed by the people. If the bureaucrats can stonewall a Freedom of Information request for 23 years I'm pretty sure the sharp folks at Apple can find some sort of crawl space to hide in while the government searches for traitors and jews and sends them to death camps until they learn to break the unbreakable code they wrote to be unbreakable by anyone.

I don't really see them doing the crawl space thing since I'm almost certain Apple caved and gave away the farm even before they sold it to the gullible bridge buyers from Manhattan. As Snowden showed us, those guys have their hooks into every single thing. Courtesy of a suit at Apple, they have all they need to work on breaking into a cloudy database.

Of course, at this point, thanks to Clinton, it might be that the NSA no longer shares anything meaningful or real with the other branches of government or the other bureaucratic empires within the United States.  I think we have reached the point where only NSA analysts and CIA analysts read the reports written by either Agency and I'll bet 95% of them go unread by anybody because they write such miserable crappy prose.

If you could only read the cables that were classified beyond reason and sent from embassies all over the world you'd tear your own eyeballs out. (You can read them now at the NSA.) They define boring and pointless and useless. 12 paragraphs that shade towards the opinion that perhaps Gromyko liked olives with his salad with 53 pages of references and background.

If you do go to the Venona link it is amazing that a tiny aperture led to huge amounts of information and analysis. As you read about nobody caring about ANYBODY in the State Department giving a damn about security, it is worth wondering if once again, the real powers wanted the enemy to know that we know. Some people say that Reagan did this with 'revelations' about SDI, stealth, et al. From time to time, it makes sense to let the enemy know that you can see them and that their mask has visibly slipped. The overt discovery that the Walkers et al had been feeding the Soviets the true blue info on us may well have been the dominant reason why the Soviets didn't yield to the impulse to just "use it or lose it" and went out with a whimper and not a bang.

I cannot imagine a man such as Tim Cook with principles. He has none. As for the 'talent' at Apple, please.


Thursday, March 17, 2016

SAN DIEGO THIS WEEK

UPDATED

We dropped in on the I Bar at NASNI today.  It hasn't changed a bit since the first time I went there.

October 1941 at Naval Air Station North Island (NASNI) a Marine SBD-1 landed on Quarters #56
Would you believe the Marines fixed the plane and flew it home after this 'hard' landing?  The Navy repaired the building (BLDG 56) and use it today, 75 years later. The bar was full of popcorn, old old old aviators and a couple of young ones. The youngest was bleating about some milk but they wouldn't let the stroller in the bar.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

UNION OF SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

Almost half of all voting Americans will vote slavery every single time if given the choice. It's a testament to the shear awfulness of our Teachers Unions that they have indoctrinated generation after generation into voting the rich peasants into hell.



On the gripping  hand, they're some pretty heavily armed peasants and workers. Not like Bernie and Hillary's good buddies in Ukraine or Russia or Lithuania or Cuba or Vietnam or Africa or Central America or Mexico or ... Those rich plutocrats earned their fate.

Friday, March 11, 2016

A THOUSAND YEARS IN 4 MINUTES

a good natured wave of the hand to Theo.

This is the story of the Renaissance and every time the map changes in any tiny detail, history recorded it and blood was shed; patriots, traitors, family members, soldiers, draftees, servants and slaves. Thanks to one particular library, long ago, I used to own a complete copy of The Anchor Atlas of World History, and thanks to Amazon, I will again in a couple of days. Those two little books are a complete history of the world.*

*Admonitio ad librarios,  Nemo me impune lacessit

Thursday, March 10, 2016

HUSSEIN'S JUSTICE WORKS WITH FBI TO FIND AN ASS

DIVERTED TO HELL

You know, as all men reach the ripe age of 15 or 16, they are easily diverted by practically any passing fancy. It's true! I've seen it! I went in search of a poem I was going to recycle on these climes and somehow was as easily diverted into youtube music as any young man is diverted by the passing of a cloud or a rainbow or a very short skirt.

It's not a music blog. It never has been. Strictly speaking, it's not a picture or a poetry blog, but sometimes....I make it is easy to wonder.

You do.



Tuesday, March 8, 2016

WORKING GIRLS

I read about these columns in a book that was later disdained by its author. I always found it interesting that since antiquity, public buildings and temples always pictured the ones bearing the heaviest loads as the figures of women.



I find it sad that the Western World, left to its own liberal devices, would quickly treat these stones in the same way that al quada and ISIS treat the ancient stones they dislike. Where Monty Python used to sketch intolerance, nobody does that better now than a liberal university's liberal arts collective. You know, filthy rotten stones that they are....

Everyday I am blown away by the liberal mind of the post modern west. The juxtaposition of "What did War ever Do" bumper stickers next to "Free Tibet" stickers pretty much defines the class.

Monday, March 7, 2016

ALT FRACKING

Grow your own weed.

Finally, at the state level, they get the War on Drugs and treat it like OPEC.

IF HILLARY PLAYED FOR THE OTHER TEAM

I know, an awfully hard to swallow 'if'.

Remember the former head of the House named Tom Delay? Indicted in Texas by some hick democrat attorney?

Remember Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska who was savagely abused by JUSTICE DEPARTMENT lawyers claiming that they were enforcing the law?
The federal judge who decided the case, Emmet G. Sullivan, was appointed to the bench by Bill Clinton, but found the prosecution’s behavior so reprehensible he ultimately threw the case out in early 2009. The New York Times reported that Judge Sullivan, “speaking in a slow and deliberate manner that failed to conceal his anger, said that in 25 years on the bench, he had ‘never seen mishandling and misconduct like what I have seen’ by the Justice Department prosecutors who tried the Stevens case,” repeatedly refusing to turn over documents to the defense. “Again and again, both during and after the trial in this case, the government was caught making false representations and not meeting its discovery obligations,” he said.  
Judge Sullivan named a prominent Washington attorney to investigate six of the prosecutors and determine whether they should be criminally prosecuted. Special Counsel Henry F. Schuelke performed the investigation and issued a 514-page report which found that “Justice Department prosecutors never conducted a comprehensive review of evidence favorable to the Alaska Republican and failed to disclose to defense attorneys notes of witness interviews containing significant information.” Schuelke’s investigation involved examining over 128,000 pages of documents - indicating the mind-boggling depths prosecutors stooped to in order to try and convict Stevens, a horrendous abuse of taxpayers’ money. 
U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, who ruled against Morris in another case, has said about her, "This is a prosecutor who needs to be removed, and I would hope the attorney general utilizes the same test of integrity as he did in the Stevens case." 
Unfortunately, nothing happened to Morris
Nobody remembers of course. Same thing happened with Governor Perry of Texas. But consider, Obama's hand selected thugs are now running the Department of Justice and he is a real true blue socialist. Do you think he might decide to throw the Democratic nod to the other openly socialist candidate? I mean, in one light, he's a socialist, Bernie's a socialist and Hillary is something else.

Will Hillary ask for the blindfold and a final cigarette or just go out raging and cursing?

ANOTHER GOOD ONE

Stepped into the clearing at the end of a very long path.


These Californians were somehow lightyears away from their counterparts I knew in the East. After I went there to live for 30 years, I found out why. They were so far from Hell and so close to Heaven. The difference between the tightly controlled hive minds of the eastern seaboard compared to people who can head off individually to Santa Monica, Malibu, the shore in Encinitas is not to be denied. They were like midwesterners. They were all way more likable....and nobody is actually from California.

OH TO FLY

Oh to fly like this. A DailyTimeWaster.

The forces and dynamics are just awesome. You see a man in red shorts high up in the air gripping a wheel with despair. Look at the overtowering height of sail and mast and then look at the tiny little bit of rudder up there on the right for your visual enjoyment and picture it's twin on the port side, down deep in the water, pushing the boat anywhere but where the wind blows it next. Things have gone awry for a bit, or maybe forever.

I sailed where the wind was almost never constant. It shifted around unexpectedly. Pitchpoling this boat would be epic.


Sunday, March 6, 2016

NEEDS SHADE


LOVE ACTUALLY

I have pigeon holes of infinite depth. Oh yeah, I know. I did my very best to kill the little coooeing shit storms with every erg of my being when I lived in Solana Beach when they lived in my classic orange roof tiles.

I can reread books I love again and again and enjoy watching movies over and over if I really enjoyed them. This one proved harder, at first, to rewatch. Worth it. Again and definitely again. I liked it all, including the first lobster. It reminds me of somebody in trouble and another lobster.


I was disappointed to read about the making of Singing in the Rain. Won't read that kind of thing again. When crafting and selling illusion, stick to the illusion. Way better that way for enjoying movies. I'm not sure why people want to know the greasy details. I never did.

That said, guys like Savile would have met the sharp end of a machete, purely for dramatic purpose.

THE ORDERING OF OBJECTIONABLE THINGS

Amazon and BLM. Time to tell the little scamps to settle down and grow up.

UPDATE
Oops, the art got lost. I'll fix it in a bit. Fixed it.

I find that I can live without. I mean it's a struggle. I'm bound to agonize over it.

I might need therapy.

I watched the Black Marble roll by last night and that was after watching the movie I posted about and after a chat with someone who is in Dutch with her mother and school, but then I read this article about Joy Covey on one of those voyages into the Cyber Sea and it struck me, I'm sick to death of hearing about privilege.

I can actually see a mother telling her child that daddy won't be home because he's upstate doing 15-25 for rape, armed robbery and murder. But millions of lives were destroyed by World War II and the worst that can be said of the survivors who suffered torments beyond belief is that they raised a pretty nice generation of kids who, in turn, offered all they had to their kids.

THE VIEW FROM OLYMPUS

If not for electricity, it would be hard to tell anybody lives here. It is sometimes hard to believe how much of the world still rations electricity or does without. When you think about it, the very words used to describe electricity come not from the last century, but the one before that. Some of them were born into an even earlier century.

André-Marie Ampère
Charles Augustin de Coulomb
Alessandro Volta
Charles Proteus Steinmetz

There is, here, an almost detectable disdain for the echelons of modern liberal government but I admire the people who hammered out the hidden agreements about the use of space. We and the Russians exploited orbit without any binding agreements because retaliation, but not all were so inclined. As it happens, few countries were technologically virtuous enough and militantly indifferent to cost. We're happy with what we have but it could have been so much more.


It's amazing to me that airmen alive today saw many of the cities shown in the images above, aflame from high above them after they dropped tons of bombs on them. Orbit was a battlefield. And, by the Grace of God, a peaceful one.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
The third light of the world owes its existence to a tiny handful of people who were nurtured by a renaissance that happened in just one place on the planet. It's rather nice to see it finally spreading its wings and embracing the entire planet.

Thursday, March 3, 2016

PRICELESS VP GAFF TERRITORY

Some people say: "A U.N.-brokered ceasefire went into effect in Syria on Saturday and in order to monitor violations, the U.S. State Department set up a hotline. Only, the people manning the line don't actually appear to speak fluent Arabic."

I'm sure presidential democratic party nominee John Kerry thought they only needed to speak Syrian.
Dan Quayle was pretty sure they still needed Latin on account of, Crusaders....
Cheney accidentally shot the phone off the desk while reaching for a cocktail with his shotgun.

This little American wonders why the State Department has a hotline for Syrians but not one for American Ambassadors under immediate deadly attack by terrorists. Of course, as we get to know more about the clowns @State Department.gov, one can hazard a guess that they have such a hotline but they staff it with morons who speak only broken English, and knock off at 1530 weekdays EST and don't work at all on weekends.

I know I do a disservice to the handful of State Department employees who do credible work under trying and difficult circumstances for some of the stupidest people on the planet in places you wouldn't go even to collect a billion dollar inheritance from your long lost great uncle Oba. But then, I never ran into any of those guys so I'm pretty sure they're something like chimeras or hypogriffs or your actual fire breathing dragon. Unreal.

...and to be honest, thought provoking and charming, you really should read The Ugly American. Nothing at all has changed since it was written in 1958 or when I found it on my father's bookshelf after he came back from the Vietnam War or when I ventured abroad myself on the Navy's business.

GLUTEN FREE ART

Less filling but remarkable for all that.


rendered gluten free by tasteful artists. I cannot recall where I saw this yesterday but hats off to the inspired creators and artists of the Gluten Free Museum.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

ISLAM THE GIFT



If only the American Teachurs Union and Gifted Islamic Bomber Carers could reach bakers and convince them that the dough was in the religion of peace and force them to don the proper clothes for baking for allah in order to blow themselves up for peace.

yep, it will take a government program of some sort.

sans safety goggles

EAST VS WEST

A long time ago we had six small warships of the Reserve sail in harm's way for month after month, year after year while they were based out of one of the smallest kingdoms in the world. The little ships were manned at something like three to four times their normal manning because they were Reserve ships where fewer do more with less than anyone else.  In other words, ships that had routinely heretofore, gotten underway for voyages of thousands of miles with just 30 crew onboard, were now fighting the good fight with crews of 100 or more. There literally wasn't room to house them all and many slept on mattresses scattered about on the deck and others were jammed into bunks 3 tall that had been jammed alike into spaces already crowded with men and the equipment used to fight the ship.

There were three, nearly identical ships from the Pacific fleet and three nearly identical ships from the Atlantic fleet. They were yet, profoundly different in almost every respect. I, for one, find it unlikely that any of my counterparts would tear apart all four main engines while anchored next to a minefield and gap the tolerances between the engine drive shaft and the reduction gear shafting, toss their hands in the air, moan about unacceptable tolerances that were thousands of an inch off and refuse to get underway until the situation was resolved and the engines realigned.

Every sailor knows that his ship is better than the other guys' unless he has decided to adopt the next best strategy and declare his the worst ship that ever was suffered to float upon the ocean. There's no detectable difference between the two types when they pitch in to fight the ship. Some guys just like drama and to bitch and moan about things because, superstition. You don't want the God's to find out how happy you are because sure as NAVSEA is a pack of shiftless lazy no-goodnicks making money out of your sweat, they'll take it away from you and send you someplace worse. Much worse.

We used to do this thing with the newly reported drafts of men that reported aboard the 3 ships from the professional fleet. We three rotated a quarter of the total of the crew every single month for years and years. There would be an entire crew replacement roughly every 16 to 18 weeks. The strategy adopted by the leaders of the other ocean's fleet elected to replace 100% of the crew every 4 months in one giant crew swap. One group of lazy scoundrels replaced by a completely new set just once every four months. Both methods had their attractions.

What we did with our new guys was nudge them a little and nod toward one of those other ships from the much more closely supervised and badly managed fleet and we'd say, "they're in 3 section duty." This hurts a man who is standing two section duty and will be standing port and starboard duty for 16 to 18 weeks. He just know the Gods hate him. Personally.

It would then be revealed that yes, those poor mizelled sailors of the Atlantic were not enough, in and of themselves, numbering as they did in each duty section the whole entire size of a ship's company back in the USA. Nope. What they could do well enough back home in 10 man duty sections could only here be accomplished by two Middle East Force sized duty sections each consisting of upwards of 34 men.

For you see, the poor quality of those sailor men required the captains of those unfortunate ships to retain a full 66 men onboard when in port. We might be in two section duty but we did get every other day off in port while the poor quality sailors from the other fleet were allowed just every third day off while in port. As with much of the Middle East Force, the language was sometimes deceiving: lying little scamp that it is. Back in America 3 section duty meant two out three sections were granted liberty. Here, it meant something worse. Much worse.

It was one of our ways of feeling better about being there. I have no idea what those other guys did to make themselves feel better. I suspect it led them to tear apart their perfectly good engines and spend the next 3 weeks anchored off the Farsi Mine Danger Area contributing whatever it is that NAVSEA contributes. One of my captains did comment to me that they certainly had the most nicely painted and spiffy looking places with engine shaped things in them that he'd ever been privileged to see. I wouldn't know.

A DISTURBANCE IN THE EXPECTED

Last night I definitely heard the happy feet of Legio XIII Gemina step into the river and cross to the sound of drums and chants for death to Republicans. Or something, maybe they were shouting for death to the republic. I guess we'll know more when they take Rome.

I didn't really expect all those people to vote for Trump but I can't believe anybody voted for Hillary.


A REMARKABLE READ

This was a fun read at American Thinker.

Just How Bad a Candidate Will Hillary Be?
By Bruce Walker
I asked last March, "Just How Bad a Candidate Would Hillary Be?"  As Hillary locks up the Democrat nomination, the question is "Just How Bad a Candidate Will Hillary Be?" Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton may be the most pathetic presidential nominee of any major political party in our nation's history.  
First dispel the myth of her husband as a consummate politician.  Bill was a flop as governor of Arkansas and as president of the United States.  Bill managed to be the only Democrat in Arkansas state history to lose re-election as governor and won two presidential elections with a minority of the popular vote.  He entered the White House with huge Democrat majorities at every level of government and left with Democrats in the minority at every level of government.  
Bill Clinton was impeached, disbarred, and found in contempt of court while president, which was a worse record of determined malfeasance than any president in history.  As an ex-president, Clinton seems frail, dull, and testy – as evidenced most recently by his snapping angrily at a veteran in South Carolina asking about Hillary ending corruption in the Veterans Administration.
Do take a minute to read the entire piece over at American Thinker. It will depress you no end to realize that fully half the people in this country simply think they have no choice except to vote for her as President.

I tend to forget just how dismal that man was and is and yet he was supposedly the far more likable of the two Clintons. When you think of Obama's War Room do you wonder if the debates and shouting matches are anything like that seen in Downfall? There has to be some schmuck telling the President that the FBI is making a cast iron case against Clinton and he is then telling his Attorney General to kill it even if it takes killing all the FBI agents who did the investigating.

PISSING AWAY CREDIBILITY

Whenever an Admiral wonders why people don't take them seriously anymore he really doesn't need to look much further than here, whereVice Admiral Joseph Aucoin, the Commander of the US Seventh Fleet, had this to say about the Littoral Combat Ship currently broken down in Singapore:
"I think this is an ideal ship for this area. I like the size, the capability, multi-mission [features], there's also room for growth. And it complements so many navies in this region." 
The ship's cruise had been a great success, Aucoin noted.
"Up until this incident, Fort Worth did very well," he said. "It made all its scheduled events."
The admiral is quite an accomplished fibber. He might almost be a native; his grasp of fibbery is so well developed, comprehensive and steeped with subtle nuances that the layman hardly notices as the Admiral coins new words to describe a warship that, at best, can't do anything but leak oil into the ocean.

The ship the admiral is describing is one of "a" class (this "class" is uniquely made up of two completely different hull types each so foul and awful that when it came time for the Navy to actually select the one to move ahead with and procure for the fleet to use as a warship, the Navy couldn't bring itself to say anything not good about the other which forced them to buy both), of ships that have one very small gun (the smallest gun any escort ship ever put to sea with, no missiles, no air defenses, no sonar, no anti-submarine sensors, almost no crew, no technical expertise or warfighting expertise, no boarding parties and no class.

How can an actual fleet commander gloss over those little problems of the, not-nearly a warship, that is currently on another extended breakdown in Singapore with a crew unable to repair it? Admiral, what is it about its size, capabilities, and current mission configuration that have you miss it so much? If there is room for growth in the 8 years since the first ship was commissioned, when will it be exploited by adding some sailors, sensors and weapons that would give it some tooth and more than a yip of a bark?

I was amused by the Admiral's concern for at-sea confrontations between ships like his broken down ship and Chinese warships. He failed to note the benefits that accrue to us in this realm from having warships that cannot actually get underway, which is a surprising failing given his ability to put a good spin on nearly everything else about these ships.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

GETTING IT WRONG

I do it all the time. Last night, I was convinced that I was wrong. That's slightly more rare. This morning I found that I was right after all. No, I didn't have to google it, a darkness fell upon the land and the rocks broke apart and spoke and all the birds fell from the sky, dead, as the voice from....well, you know.

Anyway, a missive had found its way here. It said, "SEND THE MONEY OR SHUT UP."

I had taken a page from the Wisdom and sent my daughter a simple letter a mere day ago. I offered money in return for certain things. Everyone who now knows of the offer has made themselves clear on the subject. And that's OK, none of them were dads. I won't convince them. I don't care. I'm not even going to try.

Anytime anybody offers you money? It comes with strings. You need to learn to see them. That is part of my job.

She cannot learn what she does not hear. I'm all about letting her hear. It's what father's want.

Target Angle 180 and opening

BUCK WOULD LAUGH

The unseen, unvarnished total number of drafts was up to 720 this morning and I just wrote 5 7 more.

For a nasty habit done after dark, in private, this is getting out of hand.

MODEL 75 WINCHESTER HELP PLEASE

I am heir to a Model 75 Winchester 22 caliber target rifle. Like my brother and sisters and countless nephews I wanted it. It is my dad's but he gave it to me. First born son and all.... It's mine now.

It needs a bolt and a magazine. Both were removed a long time ago when my mother thought a squirrel or something insignificant like my little brother could be shot. I live in metroparkcentralis, he lives in Berkeley. I don't think it has that kind of range.

OTOH, I could get lucky. I tried that tonight. I wondered, butt plate, an M16 has 14 gallons of space in the butt, maybe, just maybe, the missing islanders are in there.

Ha!

55 years old and I'd still like to bring this rifle to a range.

So, does anybody have a good source of economical bolts for a Model 75 / 94 Winchester?

30 years ago I would have asked Senior Chief Barton if he could turn one out for me. He could do it, but would he?