OBAMA'S THIRD WORLD DIPLOMACY

It is kind of amazing that nobody at all questions the secrecy of Obama's diplomacy. Every day new evidence turns up showing that this deceitful, dishonest, liar has been negotiating secret deals with enemies of the United States. It is one thing to negotiate in secret for the benefit of all but it is quite another to negotiate in secret with the enemy and hide it ONLY from the American citizens. That is incredible, nay, towering contempt for the people of America.

Today we read that in addition to loading multiple cargo planes with billions of dollars* stacked on pallets and flying them to Iran, he also secretly lifted American sanctions on Iranian banks that were supporting terrorists worldwide who were fighting against American interests and our allies. All carefully kept more secret than the Top Secret things that Hillary, Cheryl and others in the Executive Office of the State Department leaked to Russia, China and Guccifer. I'll bet bloggers in Iraq are reading those 33,000 missing emails that our FBI and NSA can't seem to find.

Hola! Look everybody, the Obama Administration has secretly been negotiating with Castro and has reached a deal. That stupid putz and his schmucks at the State Department were kept in the dark and didn't know anything about Obama reestablishing ties with Cuba. Obama kept them in the dark just like he kept America in the dark. The man really does think he is Papa Doc Duvalier reborn.

He started these negotians with Cuba back when the "confused" Hillary was Secretary of State and was leaking secrets like a sieve. Obama must have had somebody on his staff tell him to stop all further communications with her on any matter that required secrecy because the setup she was using was a 4 trillion candle power beacon that called to any who search out secrets on the interwebs. They knew it was penetrated but hoped that having failed to note it at its conception they would outlast its exposure. It worked.

I listened to Kerry's remarks on the radio yesterday several times and heard an absolute moron way out of his depth tell the world that,

"we're on the verge of suspending the discussion because, uh, uh, you, you, you know it's it's irrational in the context of the kind of bombing taking place uh, to be sitting there trying to take things seriously."

His idiocy can be heard at the link. Look for the 9/29/2016 1600 news report. I know we can survive a single incompetent boob as President as long as we come back with a better one but two idiot Secretaries of State in a row is killing us internationally and destroying alliances that had been in  place for decades.

Hillary melted down and caused the Administration to set up it's own little State Department that compartentalized Administration diplomacy from whatever idiocy Clinton and the cupcakes running State kept coming up with and trying to implement. Kerry is just a simple but complete idiot way out of his depth. I think it's possible that he is even more stupid than Clinton. She's about the stupidest person ever but at least she used to be unbelievably sly and cunning.

I think it would be a good thing if the first thing the new President did, even before throwing Clinton to the tender mercy of an independent prosecutor, would be to send appropriate witchfinders through the State and Justice Departments to wack the rocks and boulders who have dragged their reputations to the bottom. I could have referred to them as dead wood but at least dead wood floats.

All the "secret" little "deals" (Treaties, your actual Treaties), only come into force when they are ratified by the Senate. I haven't seen any of those in years. While we're doing that, we could look at all the little "secret" codicils to the other treaties. There's no reason now that the American people cannot know what they have agreed to. We don't have to protect our friends anymore since, thanks to Obama, we don't have any, and to Hell with the desires our enemies to have us keep their secret little deals under the rug.

Iran, using it's own printing presses has probably printed off $200,000,0000,0000 in the last 10 years. Sending them their worthless paper dollars back probably tickled the men ordered to bundle up the cash, palletize it, load it on a plane and fly it to Tehran.

CHARLOTTE AND BLACK LOOTERS MATTER

I don't think they realize it yet and of course the 'they' are not a collective guided by the same will and purpose but the Black Looters Matter movement has pretty much jumped the shark and they join their enemies in blue who I really no longer care about in the absolutely don't care what happens to them pile. 30 or 40 years ago I was slightly appalled at how a young general of artillery dispersed the mob of rioters but over the last 4 decades I've come to appreciate the economy, the effect and the efficacy of just using grape shot and cannister rounds on rioters. None of them are productive citizens of the Republic and it is very doubtful that any of them ever will become productive citizens.

We still have a few days until 13 Vendémiaire.

I'm a little concerned about the young general. We've had 8 years under one just like him and the harmful effects of that will last for generations just as the ones left strewn in the wake of FDR and his comrades imbued with the cloak of authority in his regime. I sometimes think a lost Vegan superfortress would come in handy every 100 years of so.

CITIES IN FLIGHT

I found it a most fascinating book. YMMV.

Bethé blasters
  Powerful enough to destroy a flying city.

The cities hung poised tensely in their orbits. For seconds, nothing happened.
Then pear-shaped, bumpy police battleships began springing out of nothingness around the jungle. Almost instantly, four cities raved into boiling clouds of gas.
The Dinwiddie pickup in the proxy backed itself hurriedly down the intensity scale until it could see again through the glare. The cities were still hanging there, seemingly stunned—as was Amalfi, for he had not imagined that Earth could have come to such a pass. Only an ideal combination of guilt and savagery could have produced so murderous a response; but evidently the president and MacMillan made up between them the necessary combination …
Click.
“Fight!” the King’s voice roared. “Fight, you lunkheads! They’re going to wipe us out! Fight!”
Another city went up. The cops were using Bethé blasters; the Dinwiddie circuit, stopped down to accommodate the hydrogen-helium explosions, could not pick up the pale guide beams of the weapons; it would have been decidedly difficult to follow the King’s order effectively.
But the city of Buda-Pesht was already sweeping forward out of the head of the cone, arcing toward Earth. It spat murder back at the police ships, and actually caught one. The mass of incandescent, melting metal appeared as a dim blob in Amalfi’s helmet, then faded out again. A few cities followed the King; then a larger number; and then, suddenly, a great wave.
Click.
“MacMillan, stop them! I’ll have you shot! They’re going to invade—”
New police craft sprang into being every second. A haze gradually began to define the area of the Okie encampment: a planetary nebula of gas molecules, dust, and condensations of metal and water vapor. Through it the Bethé guide beams played, just on the edge of visibility now, but the sun, too, was acting on the cloud, and the whole mass was beginning to re-radiate, casting a deepening luminous veil over the whole scene, about which the Dinwiddie circuit could do very little. The whole spectacle reminded Amalfi of NGC 1435 in Taurus, with exploding cities substituting novas for the Pleiades.
But there were more novas than the cities could account for, novas outside the cone of the encampment. The police craft, Amalfi noted with amazement, were beginning to burst almost as fast as they appeared. The swarming, disorganized cities were fighting back; but their inherent inefficiency as fighting machines ruled them out as the prime causes of such heavy police losses. Something else, something new was happening—something utterly deadly was loose among the cops …
From Cities in Flight, by James Blish.
Published by Avon in 1957

The kind of mind that can write an 800 page book about flying cities, that's what this country is about. Free rein to imagination and discovery. Blish pretty much captured it back in 1957 and it wasn't his century. He was a member of the Futurians. An organized gang that inflicted the future on us all. When I was in school the Futurians were on a par with the old Royal Society or the Inklings. You wanted to be a member just so you could be a fly on the wall and listen.

Amalfi survived right up to the Gununga Gap. His former City Manager was shot by the City of New York, New York. He was a little too sly in his double dealing.

One of his peers, Philip K. Dick wrote some other words of future fiction. I heard the fools in Hollywood are actually thinking about redoing Blade Runner. That would be a crime.



Maybe one day they'll make the movie Cities in Flight. I think I'll probably decline to see it.

A COUPLE OBSERVATIONS

I just finished watching a you tube video of a sergeant supervising the changing of the Guard at The Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington. I have gone to Fort Myer a lot since1980. My parents live near there, my father's parents are buried in Arlington and I usually cross the wall and I can't say how many times I have walked down to the Tomb of the Unknowns.

I never fail to visit Fort Myer when I visit the place I used to know as home. It's about 40 years now.
 Like all the places I lived I know it like the back of my hand. That's a cue. It's actually a euphemism for people who know precisely where they are but could not, with a gun to their head, tell you the names of the streets that lead you there. You know. It's one block up, turn right, take the second left, and then turn right at the light.

In my last 5 visits  I never noticed a single solitary women at Fort Myer wearing a uniform. Girls in uniform are like crack. Guys have to look and then do the classic double take. The soldiers wore the uniform, the caissons were loaded, the horses were groomed right there by the post office and I drove down every single road because I had to, they're aren't so many roads and I never saw a single solitary woman wearing the uniform of the the Old Guard. Not one.

The last time I was there I was picking up a girl and ruthlessly tossing her over my shoulder into one of the drowning pools and tossing a little shark after her for good measure since I didn't have any piranha.  If you come in the Wright gate through Rosslyln by the Carillion you cannot help but notice the Old Guard. They're everywhere. Not a single one of them was a woman.

This was an observer's report. It puts me in mind of the Failaka Field Force where the CSO was very specific as I was building it to say, "no girls."  This was 1994 and we had finally wrapped our heads around letting girls come and play.

I was but a wee LT at the time but I thought we had girls in the navy for strength or something. God, that one Boatswain's Mate on the tug that hauled us in to refuel in Alameda. She had strength, coffee and a cig.

I very carefully selected no woman for the Failaka Field Force. Petty Officer Pern(((( despite my most urgent warnings elected to take a duffel bag of porn instead. Neither of you, my readers will ever cross the Saudi frontier and so you have no idea at all how their border guards treat pornography or Newsweek. (same thing, different strokes)

I sent all the dangerous stuff by sea and rolled with the land convoy through the Kingdom and spent many happy hours at one end of the causeway explaining that yes we had no guns and then another happy 5 hours at the northern end of the country explaining that most of all, what I wanted, was to get out.

As a glutton for punishment, I went back, again and again. Not going back again. I don't care where you go, Mecca, Medina, Jeddah, Riyahd, Khobar, Ras Jubayl, Dammam, Dahran. You don't want to be there. We were stupid enough, once, to send a submarine to Jeddah where the little Marine Colonel was tackled by 3 Saudi frontier police for being so bold as to take a picture of the berth assigned for the submarine in his duties as force protection officer for the Middle East. Me and the SEAL had a little laugh about that until the admiral decided that in the future we would accompany the little Marine. There really wasn't all that much to laugh at after Khoboar. Still, I managed. Lucky Base was just the other side of the road from Khobar and they had machine guns with overwatch and knew a thing or two about actual perimeter security. All Khobar knew was how to run an Air Force Exchange. The difference between the Air Force and the Army used to be breathtaking.

That's a disservice to the Air Force. Khobar was devestated by a bomb truck that blew up outside the base perimeter. I don't recall if it tried to make it's way by the guards. It could have. We don't actually pretend to that level of protection but we had it in Iraq where Marines died when they used fully automatic weapons to try to stop truck bombers intent on blowing up the base and where, in Beirut, they seem to have tried. One has to keep all the bomb trucks away and there is smooth driving over the desert when one feels the need for Paradise. Both the Saudis and the Kuwaitis left the crash debris from driving 'accident's' right there by the road as a warning and a lesson to their junior subjects.

I don't like the FAST, a lot. They are the worst assholes on earth except SUBGROUP 9 who are the worst. After Khobar we brought the FAST out of Diego Garcia and they executed. They did about 90% crap but they knew how to set up an access point. To get on ASU you needed to cross the perimiter and about a hundred yards away they had a machine gun overwatch built out of 63L pallets and sand bags with gunners who really really thirsted to kill and open fire. They didn't have a real machine gun but I'm pretty sure that unlike Navy M60's, their's would successfully imitate a real machine gun when they opened fire.

Admittedly, they still used very careful mirror scanning to verify that the tanker trucks coming onto the base did not have readily detectictible to imbeciles bombs strapped to the underside by guards who were 'trained' to inspect the vehicle's bottom but not to even think of wondering about 70,000 pounds of explosive inside the tanker.

It's all theater.

Even if you had it all greased and good there is alway Petty Officer Cole to goon it up.

OLD HANDS

Write about going alongside Wimbrown 7 and Hercules to refuel.

He brought back ancient memory  You are unique for having served at SBS 1.  They had no idea. He was pretty typical.  We all were. Hercules and Wimbown 7 existed for purpose. For my purpose they had fuel and I needed it. For their's, they were the base for the Little Birds and the MkIII.

I never stepped foot aboard either of them despite coming alongside a couple dozen times. In that era, refueling was best supervised by the one they were going to court martial if it went badly and it takes somebody like to me to tell the slackers to stop pumping and then, when they're slow about it, just close the valve and let their hose blow off the deck and that was the only reason we stopped by.

The barges had four point moors and they marked the anchors with a serious steel target float that they used for practice when we weren't too close. You had to really know how to drive a ship to slip in to get a sip of fuel. There were few that could do it..

I remember one night sitting in Combat and listening to Navy Red or Fleet Tactical when the Senior Minesweep Commander called Hercules and asked what the maximum range of their weapons was. The puzzled watchstander on Hercules, probably a SEAL, responded that the maximum range of their weapons was 7500 yards. The Senior MCM Commander who was actually my CO back San Diego replied that we would anchor 10,000 yards away.

We were ordered to anchor in the 'protective' shelter of the barges when we came out of the minefields for the night. The previous night the barge opened fire on us as we closed. The Enhance was the lead ship and was the one getting shot at. Wild Bill didn't like that at all and wasn't going to have a repeat. He was CO of Enhance.

That target float over the anchor proved problematic to the crews of the Mk III patrol boats. We held Divine Services once while we alongside refueling and I asked the Chaplain about the enormous bandage on his nose and he explained how he'd been out the night before on one of the patrol boats and they had run into one of those mooring bouys just about as fast as Mk III patrol boat could go and he got thrown headfirst into the windscreen.

EVOCATIVE

I just spent an hour in 1985. There's another song that can translate me right back into a Jordanian taxi on Palestinian Land Day. It's funny how music can do that. Scent does it too. I don't have a single adult scent that evokes memory beyond diesel fuel but the ones from Fort Leavenworth playing in the back yard or at school do. There were two distinct odors for school or play. Those remain. I stop whatever I'm up to and just stand and remember with crystal sharp clarity when I run across either of them. I never stayed in a place longer than 2 years while growing up. There are rare scents that can transport me right back in a heart beat.

Once I knew I used to ask myself how but I'm older now. I have some idea. Almost every boy's dream and I used to walk into the snow and freezing rain with this playing on my iPod walkman. I had to walk into the cold and damp because the idiot commanding the Newport Navy Base would shut it down when it snowed which meant no food on base, no driving on base and a long walk out the back gate to Mama Leone's.

She kept my ears warm.

There was the other one that lingers long after the music and a third I cannot find the name of and I left behind the VHS tape that had the song. Needless to say, beautiful voice and video. This was back in the days of pure audio. There was no You Tube or internet. You had to pay attention and curse the radio stations that would play awesome music and then decline to tell you the name of the song, the album or the artist.



Pris was Daryl Hannah? Who knew? Yep, I threw in a reference to BladeRuner.

WE DINED OUT TONIGHT

A little over 20 years ago my brother and his partner created a mob they called the Dinerians. I was one of the elect and duly dined with them in their back yard over the years as the children came and grew and their friends multiplied like rabbits. Anne Bonney and I recreated that here in MetroParkCentralis and tonight we were joined by 13 friends who spent 3 hours enjoying themselves at yet another restaurant. It was a fun and enjoyable night that all were reluctant to leave. Part of the discussion at my end of the table was how to make it possible to hear and talk to all of them.

My parents knew how and they did it like nobody else. They had a hundred of their friends over for Saint Barbara's Day every year (Patron Saint of Artillery)  and the Cold Duck flowed like champagne and the very best steak on earth was served up perfectly cooked on the grill in the back yard by Watash.

I remember they got a note of apology from a couple that spent the night because. We used to put luminarios out to light the way to the door for those that parked down the street. He was promoted to general and threw a toga party for their closest 200 friends living in New Jersey. He meant to get the Roman breastplate at the costume store in Dover but one of the colonels beat him there so he just fastened leather thongs to two of our decorative trays and wore them over his sheet toga.

As you grow into the 20th Century you accept that your parents are weird but when you think of who was having toga parties in 1980, one doesn't think of a bunch of Army colonels, their wives and your parents.

There was much discussion about how to host the next dinner and maybe, just maybe, we'll just have it  @ our house. We only have four outside chairs but my sister lives next door and she used to be somewhat notorious for actually having more chairs than my parents. As I recall, she had 64 of the damned things.

I remember my grandfathers as serious men. One was an MD and a Rotarian and every soul in Carlisle knew him by name and the other was named Horace..........King.........Lastname and was Class of 32 at West Point and ran for Congress and known by all of his friends and cronies as Honey. Still, neither one of them would have hosted a toga party.

So, toga party, backyard, next time, with the dinarians.

Anne Bonney claims she never saw Austen Powers or Animal House. I owe it to her to broaden her experience.

STAYING TRUE

I never forgot seeing this the first time it was broadcast in the 80's. I doubt anybody will every broadcast it again. To be honest, this is one of two videos I watched. I liked this man, his daughter not so much.



And then at the same time there was Tim Allen. We watched his show and I taped it on cassette and took it with us when we all embarked on a 3 hour sail. We kind of went out with the tide the first 6 hours and I got us to the customs dock at the mouth of San Diego Bay before we drifted all the way to China and told them I'd pay for a taxi to get them back to my apartment where their cars were parked but all of them said, "oh no" and so we spent the next 6 hours drifting back to the pier where we tied up by the Coast Guard Station.

The sloop had an outboard motor but it apparently hadn't worked since 1963 and sure as hell didn't work that night. There is usually some wind in San Diego but my brother and sister and their husband and wife and my friend all went for the one day in creation when there wasn't a breath of wind.

OTOH,
we had this cassette of Tim Allen's HBO show, Men are Pigs.
yep, memorized it.

DESPERATE GROUND

My little sister stands on that ground. Breast cancer. She asked for my help today in a message that I didn't read until late in the evening. She needed heavy lifting assistance. I stepped over and she told me that her husband was back from Berlin and they could handle it.

She asked about rabies and asked what the cure was. There is no cure.

NO PLACE LIKE IT ON EARTH

England brought forth a tidal wave of talent that no other country has matched. Just the Royal Navy was an object unmatched and likely not to be seen again. They went everywhere. How did a little tiny island filled with people with really bad teeth conquer and rule India and half the world for over a hundred years? Their castoffs conquered the entire North American Continent and their convicts did the same for Australia and New Zealand. The Dutch were a close second for a long time and others would argue that Spain put forth a lot as did Portugal but they slipped from greatness five generations ago, just as Spain stayed mired in the provincial mud long after the Industrial Age came to England.

I derive some enjoyment from Nigel Farage, because I can. He's about the last Englishman standing which is too bad although I found the earlier generation almost as wonderful. I was thinking about the home page of Lex tonight and remembered that he had two memorable quotes on it. This one from an Army general was good.

"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."

We have, of late, been honoring the time honored customs of barbarians. I see some muslims slipped over the border and killed 18 Indian soldiers in garrison and now India is weighing how to seek justice for the dead and a wee bit of vengeance. I know they had excellent instruction on the art under the rule of the Mogul but perhaps Napier could also provide some intstruction. They took no retaliation after the massacre in Bombay but they really need to stop turning the other cheek. In England that led to buggery and not another slap across the face. But again, I seem to be talking about the Royal Navy. Rum, sodomy and the lash.

The last time I was in Karachi was long ago. I spent a month up the river there and it was interesting to see that the fuel storage tanks were very cleverly cammoflaged. Living in America, one doesn't think of the imminent fighter bomber streaking over-head to blow up your navy's fuel supply in the largest of your cities.

They're starting to think of that sort of thing now though.

His other quote had to do with dancing.

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
--Nietzsche

I could always hear the music, it wasn't all that long ago that I could see the music. I never could dance.

QUALIFIED

One of the many things that struck me when I reported aboard the destroyer was that I was the only qualified Ensign. There were 7 other Ensigns on that ship but none had qualified as either an OOD or as a SWO. By the time I reached San Diego, my badge was not just tarnished, it was salty. I was treated like any other new Ensign reporting which left me irritated beyond measure. I came from a ship in a war zone where the Captain had given me batteries release authority and 50% of the ship's weapons were manned and ready because, war zone and now was rolled back to kindergarten.

I was the weapons officer and had to fight vociferously to keep Engineering from taking all the Fire Control Technicians for use in the the Repair Lockers at General Quarters. I would point out how little damage we would get if we let them do what they were trained for as opposed to how much damage we would suffer if they were made the Nr. 2 hoseman in a repair locker.

Salinas was an engineering captain. He wrote a Cat 4 CASREP because the hydraulics were 1 second slow going from ahead flank to full astern. He tested it again and again and wasn't satisfied. I had a very expensive camera blast through the SPG 60 fire control radar antenna and smash onto the deck just ahead of mount 51 and it didn't look like I was going to convince him that we needed to send a CASREP to replace the radar antenna or the Remote Optical Site. It was touch and go. This was also the guy that never failed to call my attention to the fact that Mt 51 had suffered another hydraulic leak and the gun looked all droopy as he came aboard. I did fire control not gun mounts but he appeared oblivious to the distinction.

It was a very surreal ship. It left me in no doubt just how Pearl Harbor happened.

WEARING THE TRIDENT

I keep forgetting the time I wore khaki for years. It's not hard to understand my forgetfullness. I had 3 jobs at the time. Working as a Commander at Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command was just one of them and it usually felt pretty surreal at the best of times. I did work there, 5 days a week, year in and year out. I was the voice of SPAWAR after 9/11 but just from midnight until 0900.

In all that time I did wear the Trident. Twice I was stopped by Captains who wanted to know just how exactly I was wearing a Trident on my uniform. In another job, I was the CO of a mobile unit and we were a commissioned unit of the Navy and the CO of such were entitled to adorn themselves with the golden Trident.

I've mentioned the wearer of the Budweiser who I used to work with. He was on top of a roof down the road from BlackHawks down and decided to take his SEAL platoon for a swim instead of launching into the natives. He questioned my CAR but was mum on the Trident. It's a little trident.

Budweiser SEAL Trident

Command Ashore Trident

They're obviously not the same trident. I just like to refer to it as a trident because it gives them the vapors and they have to lie down and find their happy place. You really don't have to work with too many SEALS to find them really odd.

When they bothered to check their sneakiness, they went after me and those like me and, we had Forward Looking Infra-Red and we could see them just fine in the dark. I still remember using a plain old 24 inch carbon arc searchlight on a RHIB stuffed with SEALS one night who were trying to assault the very large Amphibious ship moored astern of us in San Diego. I called the Base Police to let them know there were infiltrators and the police didn't seem all that concerned. To be honest, neither was I. I had a pretty good idea who was locked up in one of the most powerful searchlights on the planet. About 20 minutes later the base police called me and told me to stop illuminating the prospective SEAL terrorists. I still sent the messenger of the watch to alert all the other ships at Pier 8 that the SEALS were out and trying to play the 'invade your ship game'.

We played with them back in the old nuclear days. We had the Security Alert Team and the Back Up Alert Force and they both drew weapons from the armory whenever we called away a drill. I remember issuing weapons to one duty section (not my normal one) where as each man was handed a pistol, rifle or shotgun he would say, "halt halt, or I'll shoot." It turns out that they all felt that even if the warning wasn't heard, it had been spoken and like a charm, would keep them from going to jail if they ever had to shoot an intruder and the SEALS were actually crazy enough to play their games against ships which may, or may not, have nuclear weapons onboard and were fully prepared to kill.

We used to have the most amazing stories of Zulu Five Oscars. When the Bases played they played typical little sissy games. They'd issue a perfect fake legit ID card to an "intruder" and expect the pier sentry to pick up on the fact that the man wearing an officer's uniform with commander insignia but a junior officer hat had an ID that said his name was either Mickey Mouse or James Bond. Homey didn't play that game.

I don't know. They never played with me. All of my security forces were instructed to kill if the intruder appeared armed, beat them down with the weapon to the head very very hard and then stand on their neck until I could come along and verify that they were just harmless pranksters teasing us and our cannot confirm nuclear weapons. On the minesweeper we all played along because the nights are boring and how often does on get a chance to track a RHIB using a 24 inch carbon arc searchlight? Well, there was always the CONSTANT. Nothing on that ship worked so it's not like she could do anything to us. And besides, we were the last sweep on the West Coast with the original 24 inch searchlight powered by something that could light up the dark side of the moon.

ONE NIGHT I SAID NO

I had missed ship's movement in wartime. Me and the other 3 bridge watch officers had been left behind washing our laundry at this amazing bar/laundry in Esquimault. Our ship proceeded to Tacoma without us. The excellent CO had Kim, one ball and Larry to navigate his ship down the passage from Esquimault to Tacoma. The ones who knew how to drive were left sipping beer on the pier washing their laundry.

We were reunited with our ship in Tacoma courtesy of Mine Group ONE. We headed back to San Diego once able drivers reported back aboard. I popped up to take the Deck just south of Elliot Bay and the guy I was relieving had no idea where we were. I refused to take the Deck. One of the rights we have is to not step into a toxic situation. Announcing that one has the deck is like a get out of jail card for the idiot that put the ship in extremis.

On the other hand, would you let a 4 year old stay in control and die or would you simply hope you could work your way out of trouble? I always opted for trouble.

The XO banged on my stateroom door one night and told me that my OOD board would be tomorrow at 2000 in the Captain's Cabin. I pointed out that I hadn't got my PQS signed off and had some remaining items. He suggested I visit each Department Head and ask them what they would ask me at my Board. I'm not a total idiot. I did what he told me. I even asked the Department Head who wrote me up 5 times what he was going to ask me. I always thought it was interesting that on the bridge we were two professionals. A junior who learned from the senior and that was how it worked. The microsecond we were off watch we were back to bitter bitter warfare.

One night, at 8 O'clocks my boat report said all of them worked except one that had a dead battery. His report to the Captain said none of the 8 boats worked. The XO took him up on his report and we had a trial where it was my word or his. After 8 O'clocks we repaired to the boat deck where my chief and I demonstrated that both LCVM and both LCPL started and worked just fine. We had to cross deck a battery. We then repaired down to the well deck and started both LCM8. We then went to the Admiral's Barge and the motor whale boat and started them. That guy and his Bosun wrote me up 5 times. Over the last 10 years, if you got written up for Captain's Mast, you could kiss your career goodby. On my first ship, I worked for some really remarkable people. The Destroyer sucked but I really enjoyed working for Rick Hall and Sid Vicious Johnsten.

It turns out, when the Captain of the ship has trust in you, you get to become an OOD. If he doesn't, no amount of PQS will ever see you appear before him for a rating as OOD. I really enjoyed working for CAPT Franklin D. Julian. He was a pip.

MY VERY FIRST CAMPAIGN SIGN, EVER

After the neighborhood suddenly popped up with 88 million Killary campaign signs I decided it was time for me to mobilize the rich and ugly and I came up with a campaign sign of my own. It looks a lot like this.

Yes yes, I know, my neighbors are going to burn down the house but I'm pretty sure we can take 'em. As you can see, there's plenty of room on that 3"x5" card for some more campaigning. I might squeeze in a little comment about how disgruntled I am at Obamacare.

The funny bit is how huge the size of his little campaign blits are compared to the half dozen losers that come out to Hillary's. I don't know what state is always the one but I suspect that Trump's going to get 49 states come the election. I won't know. I will be on the high seas on the Queen Mary II on my way to England. But, there, in my front yard, in the elfin garden to be, is the only Trump  election sign in MetroParkCentralis.

IN ORDER TO KEEP IT REAL

I have finally gained an embed code for the video and so I will post it here. The channels of progress have paid attention to things like this and made them go away.

This is a woman who 50% of Americans wish to make our President and Head of State. That 50% own all of the TV news and main stream media. Hillary 'stumbling' doesnt do for them what they expected out of 'THEIR' candidate and must be hidden and disguised with the usual lies.

A LITTLE ZOMBIE MAGAZINE IS STILL ALIVE!

I knew that Newsweek was sold to some rich sucker several years ago for 1 dollar. I thought that it had gone under since I don't have California supermarkets to wade through anymore and the checkout lineS at the placeS I shop for groceries are blessedly free of copies of People, National Enquirer and Newsweek. Thank God it is also usually free of those little 8 packs of delicious crumb donuts which I love. I was really surprised to see this little add in an online article I read last night.

Imagine the hubris of a magazine asking people to pay more each week for a copy of the worthless magazine than what the entire thing fetched when it was sold for a single dollar to a sucker investor. I might pay all of a whole dollar for a lifetime subscription for Newsweek but then, I'd never read the damned things and they'd just pile up and have to be taken out to the trash, so no.

I find the article itself somewhat bizarre too. Let's be honest. When the Russians were ever bothered by some living thing, they took pains to thoroughly kill it. They probably air dropped an AK-47 and a thousand rounds of ammo.....or a couple dozen vials of sarin gas. Russians have a hasty way of responding to threats.

Russians also have long memories. I'm kind of surprised by the outpouring of news stories discussing how Putin and the dictator of Turkey are turning into good buddies. Erdogan screwed up and if he now thinks Putin is friendly and decides that it's in his best interest to snuggle up to Russia, I have news for him. Russian autocrats only did that good pal/folksy thing to lure their enemies into knife range. Putin won't hesistate to order a decapitation strike on a non-nuclear power and his little Black Sea Fleet of ships and submarines has shown just how lethal a lilliputian vessel can be. (not ours of course, our's are quite worthless.)

A FAMILIAR PATTER

Courtesy of gCaptain.

These sorts of things are amusing to those of us who listened to the patter of 'expert' staff who talked about destroying a fully functioning object and converting it into something else that would be almost as effective at ten times the cost. It also sounds like the kind of training one needs if one works at State Department as they try to explain and justify actions that, on the face of them, are simply incomprehensible unlesss you accept the premise that they were designed to weaken America.

We really need to do something about weeding all the marxists, socialists, SJWs and communists out of the State Department. Lederer's book, The Ugly American, was spot on when it was published 58 years ago and applies even more ferociously today.

THE PARTY CAME THROUGH

Yesterday there were no campaign signs here in MetroParkCentralis East. The lawns were well groomed, as always, and the grass was mowed and there was no sign of blight. Today, the Party came through and every registered Democrat got a Killary/Tim sign on their front yard. God, there's a lot of them. These are the 'smart' people. All of them work at Case Western or University Hospital and it looks like all of them were proud to put a Killary sign on their front yard.

In the morning I put out my campaign sign. Won't they be afraid. My house is directly across the street from where the darling little children get off the school bus and out of their mommy's car in front of the elementary school.

I just have to get the right font.

SMOD 2016!

ah, perspective, that's where we lose focus and fall off the beam.

A BIT OF GOODNESS

I saw this last night and thought it was worth repeating here.

HOW INCREDIBLY IRRITATING

So, nothing to report today. BWI> off.

I'd be curious to see what the news reported about the incident with Hillary this morning, just not curious enough to watch the news. I doubt it made the news. As I watch the progressives shove the brain-dead Hillary down the voter's throats I wonder, who benefits from a brain-dead president of the United States? We've had 8 years of that and see what we got from that? Obamacare? Syria? Iraq? Libya?

I dare to say it is the enemies of the United States.

Hillary Clinton, Manchurian candidate of the 21st century.

HILLARY COLLAPSES ON TV

Her Imperial Highness, Saint Hillary, collapsed today in front of millions who were watching the commemoration of the 9/11 massacre in New York City. Press fails to notice. However, we have the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom that offers far better and more comprehensive news of America than any newspaper or media outlet in the United States.

Watch the video and weep for a nation of sheep who would elect this lying deceitful criminal harpy as president.

UPDATE: This explains matters to my satisfaction. Hillary has some explaining to do.

A DAY, JUST LIKE ANY OTHER

"Captain, how often does a little ship like this sink?" "Usually, just once."

-The Gismo, newsletter of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, September 30, 1944.

It's another anniversary and this time I see all of our brave diplomats hunkered down for the day and the night at the local Hotel Metropole as they wait for the fruit of their skillful diplomacy to roll over their embassies and consulates.

I used to work with the FAST Marines. I suspect every single one of them is on duty today and will be until tomorrow. Wonder, in the splendid diplomatic skills of a man and a department that loath America as the day of perpetual reckoning has drawn nigh.

We remember.

AND THAT'S THE TRUTH

Yep.

DRONE SNACK ATTACK

I can see the future now.

A young sailor or maybe even an older sailor operating in SOCAL or VACAPES is hungry or thirsty and dials up his favorite restaurant and a drone is dispatched to them from Little Creek or Del Mar with a nice tasty taco and some beer.

If you read the old books from before the War you recall warships moored in the Yangtze where the bumboats would come alongside and offer the sailors all kinds of novelties like tasty food.

It might take a couple of years but the sailors I worked with were the very first ones to buy cellular phones and take them to sea because, as I recall, one of my electricians ran a nursery on the side and since we spent a lot of time close in SOCAL he wanted to be able to keep in touch with his customers. The XO used to go down to the forward engine room and ask to use his shoe box sized cell phone to make calls to the navy port folks we were 'supposed' to deal with on arrival.

POUR ENCOURAGER LES AUTRES

As you can see from article at gCaptain, the Admiral commanding US Naval Surface Forces has ordered all the Littoral Crappy Ships to cease operations until they can get some really really good engineers aboard the ships that know how to keep their crappy engines running. They've got to make room for them but I never expected this,

LCS engineers are lined up for execution in front of the ship's gun. If they are very lucky it will work about as well as everything else on these ships and they'll live.

These ships are an absolute tragedy. Those two Riverine boats that surrendered to Iranians in canoes and punts are almost as heavily armed as the LCS and about as reliable. The LCS was supposed to be an all-in-one ship kind of like, oh, I don't know, a Destroyer? Some genius in the Pentagon decided that it would be cooler if they were more 'flexible' and could swap out mission modules so if they were out mine hunting with that module and the Iranians came over the horizon and decided to sink them they had no weapons to respond with because that's a different module and it's 9000 miles away undergoing repair at the contractors's facility.

Not one of these ships has loaded a single functioning module except for the 'unplanned module' which is the berthing module they decided they absolutely had to have in order to get the crew size up to sufficient strength to get underway and hopefully, bore holes in the sea since that's about their only achievement after 8 years. The latest one broke down catastrophically on it's maiden voyage. Brand new, and it couldn't make it. On the other hand, not one of them hasn't suffered a catastrophic engineering casualty that laid it up for months of patching.

There's something about NAVSEA. They really need to get out of the shipbuilding business because they suck at it.

TOXIC AND REFRESHING

As a young man I tried to follow the news of the world. It used to matter to me. I would travel overseas with a shortwave radio and tune to the BBC or the other world services at night and listen in back in the days before internet and personal phones at sea. The SPS-10 scarcely bothered the signals at sea but the SPS-40 was an every minute blast of static lasting 10 or 15 seconds. It was hard to follow the news at sea. Ashore, it was an easy matter. Lie in the cot at night in the tent and use the ear plugs to tune in.

On the rare occassions I was not in the field, I stayed in hotels and they usually had a decent news service or BBC on TV. Later on they had the awful CNN international. I'm at home now and I don't watch what passes for news. I try to listen to NPR but they are now stuck on laming Al Trump as much as they can. They do it every single show, all day long by having talking heads come on and discuss the Trump position (racist, brutalist, thug, rapist, warmonger) and Sainted St. Hillary the Blessed Virgin of Purity and Light and Reasonableness.

NPR invariably has 3 talking heads and a moderator so in the bag for Hillary they froth at the mouth when singing her praises and somebody like Al Gore to explain the Republican and Trumpian position. It's gotten beyond old. I didn't start writing here to be a dyed in the wool cynic or a shill but it is getting to the point where it's hard to refrain from pointing out the obvious.

Of course, it's obvious to me but I don't write here to be a partisan. I write for humor, deflection, for the education of one who never reads this and never will. I write here to enjoy and celebrate life and if some of that is the observation that life has many fools, I don't mean to ascribe foolishdom to those who disagree. My kind of fools are the kind that go shark fishing with a snorkel wearing a bikini. They're the ones that buy an entire class of warship that cannot fight submarines, airplanes, missiles, other ships, mines or anything beyond a rowboat and at this point, I'd give odds on the rowboat winning.

I've given up on the idea that smart people cannot see beyond the sickly light in the windows into the Clinton soul (if they indeed have one). I don't care about Trump except to say that he is not the most corrupt, lying, criminal, inept, sickly, worthless politician in this country's history.

So, I haven't been blogging of late. I thought it would be nice to blog about something nice. I've been waiting for something nice to come along. (At this point any male blogger would put up a picture of some supermodel.)

NPR Venting About Trump

I didn't promise a beautiful supermodel, just the Supermodel of the Set of NPR voices.

I sure as Hell don't want to end up like that. I mention that because I live in MetroParkCentralis where Hillary just went into unstoppable paroxyms of coughing up a lung while the media entirely, once again failed to notice. It's getting irritating and I've decided upon a whole new course of blogging. I'm not going to blog when I'm irritated.

HOW DID I MISS THIS

I actually know why I missed it. I was out of the country when it came out and they move in and out of theaters with the  speed of either summer lightening or arabian stallions. I'll have to check my sources to be sure. It is sublimely ridiculous

Oh, and blame this dude who I have ruthlessly stolen it from.

THE ONE RING

I keep it in a lockbox by the side of the bed and there it nestles alongside 6 silver dollars and a pair of .45s. The markings on it are not so much cryptic as celtic. I don't and won't ever put it on my finger again. It stays locked in a box for a reason. I can't share the reason but it is there.

It remains. An enduring and indestructible symbol of something that died.

The only other thing in the box is the spare car key. I had to open the box to get them a couple of years ago. I barely noticed the ring. I had forgotten about it. I thought it was gone with all my stuff when I left California behind and headed east. I thought I gave it away with all my other things.

I held on to the second ring though.That one is much older and it's from a different era. It was family. It was my great uncle's and he got it from his dad. When my dad was in Vietnam we lived in Carlisle and I must have been all of 4 when he and I stood and watched the Doughboys march past us in their old uniforms. Everybody stood. It was 1967. There weren't a lot of them as they paraded in their uniforms on Veteran's Day that day but I remember. Carlisle is home to the Army War College and yet you would never know it was there. It is, mo debinately, not a military town.

That's the second ring. It's the one that matters. I gave it to the woman I love.