Saturday, October 22, 2016

I WAS WALKING AWAY

And then I saw this.



If you are a democrat and don't understand the enemy, this should do it. As Staff Sergeant Brooks told us, at a certain point, you've achieved the point where you can walk over and read their mail and eat their lunch. He was talking about Vietnam and he had been a sniper,  but I figure, we can go there...

On the other hand, if you are a democrat and don't understand the others, this should do it.

STYLE AND GRACE

The video I loved and which headlined the King of France's place appears to have been killed. I treasured it. The video showed an athlete at the very top of the game who smiled every inch of the way to totally blew away the other competitors and smiled. She reminds me of a princess I saw just the other night in film She smiled a great deal but she didn't turn back into the princess until the very end, after the musical affair on the barge in Rome where she used a stringed instrument on a man, twice.

It really is amazing how a genuine smile can make all who see it happy.

If you turn on the sound, you can hear these color commentators talk about a smile I have long admired. I have great disdain for the color commentators, who are jackasses.

This, I think, was where I added the category to my blog of "Style and Grace". She embodied it.

I'm sorry the original video is gone but you get the master video here.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

WORTH REPEATING

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

I'm rather amazed by the number of billionaires that find Hillary a more worthy candidate than Turnip. I suspect that all of us will regret it when she is elected by the dead and fled voters.

I may be in Scotland when that happens. It's sorry I'll be to miss the start of the Revolution.

THINGS

I used to be in favor of things and I had a lot of them. Now that I'm middle aged I am less enamored of things. Chaplain, if you're reading this I would like those little things you said you were going to mail me 2 Christmasses ago but, as anyone can tell you, I'm a very patient man. Whenever.

My folks recently downsized and moved out of the family estate there in Arlinton. They were the keepers of things. When I say the keeper, I mean that they were purely amateurs. They kept every single thing from before ever plus a selection from a few ancestors before that, but my little sister, she who had 67 chairs at one point when she lived in Maryland managed to get some more chairs.

I stopped by the struggling young author's abode the other day for to admire the bathroom up on the 3rd floor that she, 3 young college age males and one, perhaps exasperated, college professor, had been working on for the last 11 months. I peaked in and was pleasantly surprised. It looked very much like a bathing room from the 1920s. [It could have used a half dozen chairs] Toulousse LaTrec would have felt right at home. My grandparents would have felt right at home. I wondered where the jets were for the swirly tub and was kicked down the stairs but not before looking into the office of the lady whose next book is getting a solid 100,000 in the first printing next year. That's a lot of books. All both of you should buy one when it comes out next year. Her office had stacks on stacks of clothes, old bicycles and coffee pots and there wasn't an inch of vulnerable exposed floor space to step on. Even the little racoon hideout was stuffed.

So, this sister, neighbor, owner-of-vast-amounts of stuff brought over things my parents left with her to give me because I have an unexpected, unanticipated shortage of stuff.

I will now list the elements from selenium to proscineum. Nurnburg, Purdue, West Point, Fort Bliss, Fort Sill, Fort Leavonworth, Carlisle, Fort Riley, Annandale, Newport, Huntsville, Picatinny Arsenal, State College, Newport, Bahrain, Dam Neck, San Diego, Newport, San Diego, Seattle, San Diego, Oakland, Emeryville, San Diego, Solana Beach, San Diego, Encinitas, San Diego. and MetroParkCentralis.

Everything I own fits into a VW Jetta. I am, pure and simply, not a man of stuff.

Oh yeah, my landlords complained about the hundreds of books I used to leave behind when I moved but that was just minor.  I own thousands of books but they are electrons and, they're really super rugged NFL approved electrons. The lightest one of my fleet dropped into the tub the other night. It went all the way to the bottom. Must have been 5 or 600 feet down when I pulled it back out of the water.

It sat, ensconsed, in a plastic Chinese food container filled with cat litter, in the sun, soaking up the rays that make pure cane sugar and it dried out and it works again. I'm definitely taking it on the Lusitania next week when we head for England. Sucker's probably better than a life vest. I really didn't think it would or could roar back to life. It surprised me.

However, this was a screed about stuff. My sister brought over 3 little boxes of stuff that a concerned parent had left with her for me. My report cards, my diploma, and what must have been my first trophy. Je suis complete. (there is a way, must be a way to make that little Fench accent mark over the e but you won't see it from me. Look elsewhere my friend.)

On the Right! right there! A tiny little trophy from 1969
Oh, and the gleaming thing  next to my trophy came back from 98,000 feet underwater and returned, spontaneously, to life, as we know it.

I would show you a photo of the little treasure that my parents bought for all 4 of us for to store our report cards through the 8th grade to be used against us but I'll save that pleasure for later. Anticipate.

Monday, October 17, 2016

THE TWELVE GIRLS

These two manage to sound like them all alone.



But the twelve girls still own the sound of the strings. [Update: listen at the 2 minute mark.]



Yes this is the one.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

POWER

My grandparents grew up without it. Born in 1905 and 1907, electric light bulbs, telephones and aerial flight were new things.We found ourselves out last night wtih flappers. It's not all that often that one finds oneself out with flappers. One of them assured me that she had the de rigour fur coat in the limo. Yes, I asked her.

MetroParkCentralis is just full of surprises. We took our friends in to the Glass Bubble to meet the chicken since it was next to Mitchell's ice cream foundary.. Srsly, it's not everywhere you meet flappers and introduce yourself to a chicken.

Yeah, you could do worse.

A HEAD LIKE A BUTTERFLY

Some people see the weirdest things, and they take pictures. I probably over used the idea last night when I kept saying, on seeing awesome stuff, that I wish I had been able to find my iphone so I could take pictures of the full moon and any number of other things of surpassing niceness.

I liked this though. It's like the little fellow deliberately posed.


And nobody does smug with a toothy grin like a caiman.

ALMOST LIKE SCIENCE

Every time I think that the the whole universe (2 trillion galaxies) cannot get weirder, it gets weirder. What can one say about the nature of the magicians? Yes, a liberal student rejects science because it discriminates against witchcraft.

She talks pretty fast though.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

THEY COULD HAVE EVOLVED BUT THEY DIDN'T

Just typing that post headline brought to mind several officers of the Naval Service I worked for.

Pretty cool teaser I lifted from the Daily Time Waster's site.

STEPPED INTO THE CLEARING AT THE END OF THE PATH

On weekends I attend to the real news and so I stop and linger at This Aint Hell. I cue up the music and then I read. I would say that it is not an addiction but I've been wrong before. There's a dozen blogs that I don't have on my page that I attend to on the weekend.

In this house, we have only a few rooms that don't have bookshelves. I came here in a vw jetta of a certain blue color (now more blue colors) and I didn't bring more than a handful of books but the house is as full of them as any place I ever called home. I don't understand how people can live without books. They are my fleet. One of my trusty frigates suffered an irreperable injury. It fell all the way to the bottom of the tub. It's sitting in cat litter in the window in the faint hope that it will be ressurected and join the the 2 iPads, 7 kindles and the offshore squadron. I don't think it will make it. It looks pretty dead to me. Not pining for the fjords. Dead. If so it joins the other sony that was a favorite that didn't survive replacing the battery. The late sony was on its last elbows since it needed to be plugged in every day since the battery was fading away.

This is a post about one of the good men who just stepped into the clearing at the end of the path.

Master Sergeant Richard Pittman
While Company 1 was conducting an operation along the axis of a narrow jungle trail, the leading company elements suffered numerous casualties when they suddenly came under heavy fire from a well concealed and numerically superior enemy force. Hearing the engaged marines’ calls for more firepower, Sgt. Pittman quickly exchanged his rifle for a machinegun and several belts of ammunition, left the relative safety of his platoon, and unhesitatingly rushed forward to aid his comrades. Taken under intense enemy small-arms fire at point blank range during his advance, he returned the fire, silencing the enemy position. As Sgt. Pittman continued to forge forward to aid members of the leading platoon, he again came under heavy fire from 2 automatic weapons which he promptly destroyed. Learning that there were additional wounded marines 50 yards further along the trail, he braved a withering hail of enemy mortar and small-arms fire to continue onward. As he reached the position where the leading marines had fallen, he was suddenly confronted with a bold frontal attack by 30 to 40 enemy. Totally disregarding his safety, he calmly established a position in the middle of the trail and raked the advancing enemy with devastating machinegun fire. His weapon rendered ineffective, he picked up an enemy submachinegun and, together with a pistol seized from a fallen comrade, continued his lethal fire until the enemy force had withdrawn. Having exhausted his ammunition except for a grenade which he hurled at the enemy, he then rejoined his platoon. Sgt. Pittman’s daring initiative, bold fighting spirit and selfless devotion to duty inflicted casualties, disrupted the enemy attack and saved the lives of many of his wounded comrades.
President Johnson awarded him the Medal of Honor on May 14, 1968 and Pittman, born on May 26, 1945 in French Camp, San Joaquin County, California, retired from the Marine Corps as a Master Sergeant on October 27, 1988.
I doubt that a single Marine would agree with this but, Master Sergeants of Marines must be spectacularly rare.That, or they all hung out at Henderson Hall and I used to go there often enough when I went home because it had the even more rare NFCU ATM in the basement. I worked with the FAST, a lot and I worked with more gunnies than you could shake a stick at in places like NAVCENT and SURFPAC (combat cargo, yes they were Marines in the office next to mine at SURFPAC), ADAK, Camp Snoopy, Kuwait, everywhere. I never saw a single Marine Master Sergeant. I don't think they're real. They're like witches. You hear about them but you never see them.
I suppose if Mabus has his way with the Marines, they'll just be sergeants.
I think his uniform is instructive. I remember EN2 Anderson quizzing the commodore at captain's call and asking if we were likely to get any medals if we swept some mines in the Persian Gulf. He said, "I've been in the Navy for 6 years and I don't have a single ribbon or medal. I stood on the train platform at Euston to catch a train finding its way to Mildenhall AFB where I needed to be and the young man next me was fresh out of Air Force Bootcamp and already wearing two rows of ribbons. Me, I'd just left a ship where I had spent 12 months in a warzone, swept mythical mines in the Red Sea and had a grand total of two ribbons. (I learned about the third one about 20 years later.)
Hail and farewell Master Sergeant Pittman.

HE HAD HELP

I read this on Instapundit today.

"Obama could hardly have accomplished more harm if he were trying to ruin America’s position in the world.

Excpet he didn't do it alone. He was helped every inch the way by the blundering morons at the State Department who started out 'overcharging' the Russians and went downhill from there. Who was the protocol officer who told our moron that he should give Queen Elizabeth a USB stick with his speeches on it or that a plastic toy helicopter was somehow an appropriate gift between heads-of-state?

Yeah, the guy pretty thoroughly destroyed Libya, Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan, Yemen, Mali, Chad, Somalia, Italy, France, Ethiopia, Germany and NATO.

I suspected he was a lightweight loser but I was mistaken. He has destroyed everything he touched from race relations in America to NATO and the EU.

Friday, October 14, 2016

THE REMARKABLES

I doubt that one in 100 Americans knows their names much less what they did but when you and I think about it, did we not have some of the most remarkable men in history at the helm when we most needed adult leadership? I'm not that old. Srsly, not even 56. A mere pup, but I recall the giants that put together a force that shaped the world for the last 70 years. Some can recall the man who dominated an entire generation. I don't care for him but I have not read his biography and mayhap I have figured him wrong. I can be mistook in my judgement and I'm the first to admit it.

Raymond Spruance. He turned around the whole of World War II at Midway.
Ike. I don't care what his detractors say, he was a genius.
George Mashall. He was the one that said OK to General of the Army because he didn't want to Marshall Marshall. He thought there might be a number of 5 star officers in the future. So far, we've resisted the temptation.

The list of them all.

 The following Americans have been promoted to five-star rank:
      •   Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy 15 December 1944
      •   General of the Army George Marshall 16 December 1944
      •   Fleet Admiral Ernest King 17 December 1944
      •   General of the Army Douglas MacArthur 18 December 1944
      •   Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz 19 December 1944
      •   General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower 20 December 1944
      •   General of the Army & Air Force Henry H. Arnold     21 December 1944 & 7 May 1949
      •   Fleet Admiral William Halsey, Jr. 11 December 1945
      •   General of the Army Omar Bradley  20 September 1950

Irregardless of your notions of merit, that was a remarkable group and they came along at just the right time for us. The men who followed them were made from entirely different cloth. The political crew we have had for the last 30 years are a bitter disapointment.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

WHO KNEW?


A STUNNING MOVE AT AIR FORCE

The recording secreatary has noted two things at the Air FORCE.

a. The Air Force d

Tonight she told me she sings in the Choir.

At that point, I decided to be happy. I can do that.

AMAZON PRIME

Amazon is no longer honoring it's 2 day free delivery since it teamed with the USPS which is a shame but it still has some things that can surprise us. I got a promotional from them that talked about their free book reading service and I went to it and found one book that I treasure. I have too little Calvin and Hobbes in my life and I used to own the megabook of them all. Nowadays I just get my hair cut at the same clip shop that Bill Waterson uses to get his hair cut. We say hi to each other and I might mention whatever special is going on at the Smithsonian.

If you're an Amazon Prime kind of person, you should find the free books and download The Essential Calvin and Hobbes. It's free......and essential.


IT WAS JUST A MATTER OF TIME

Women are leaping out of the attic to accuse a billionaire of 'touching' them and maybe even molesting them. The stories appear to be decades old and I'll be honest, even if I accept them as true stories there was the face slap. Where was the face slap? Srsly, this almost tempts me to go and lay my hands on attractive girls other than my pirates. OK, I'd do it if I wanted to die. Ohio is a well armed State and they'd likely blow my head off, particularly with the really bad haircut I got 2 days ago. I wouldn't blame them for shooting.*

Over and above all things I hate is the he said/she said decades later. It's impossible to refute. It's impossible to prove. It just hangs out there as the kind of thing that makes thought crime a real thing.

IT'S NOT!

*I only have the two pirates these days and the little one just moved to Olympia. She's the one I used to toss to the sharks.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

JADOTVILLE

I can't help but compare it to Mel Gisbson's movies. It did not work for me. I had hoped for more.

NO OFFENSE

I'm watching Jadotville and this is a running critque.

Sid "Vicious" Johnsten sent me with the Engineering Department Master Chief to rescue our two  n'eer do wells. We went to the office of the head of the Bahrain Self Defense Commander who was, perhaps, pleased to see us.

He stood up behind his desk when we came in and shook hands energetically with Master Chief Meisbrugger and said how pleased he was to meet the man who wears the stars. The Master Chief and I were both in uniform. I was the ship's legal officer, Master Chief Meisbrugger was the man with the stars.

The general pointed out what we already knew. Our two idiots had been latched with their hands in front and both of them decided to leap out of the BDSF jeep after they were apprehended doing wrong things in front of the InterContinental Hotel. They opted to leap from the jeep. They got a lot broken. Broken arms, broken jaw, etc.

The officer in charge of the Bahrain Defense Force told the Master Chief and me, that they had suffered enough and he gave them back to us gratis, so we could ship them home via the Navy Hospital in Rota.

It's hard to believe but neither of them were taken to Mast. They just went away one day and never came back. It used to be like that. It was a better navy back then. We took it as given that 10% of your people really were 90% of your problem and we took it for action. We didn't set out to hurt them, we just got rid of them. Bottom Blow was an unbelievable option.

Can you imagine if you could still do that today?

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

WE ALREADY KNEW

Courtesy of the the man from zed

Watching one traitorous fink after another decry Trump’s locker room talk from a decade ago, I was reminded once again that these people were never on my side. It was always a con, a grift, to fool otherwise decent people into putting down their weapons and surrendering to the Left. Buckley-style conservatism, whatever it was, is now just a tool of the managerial class to clear the field for nation-wrecking policies to benefit the ruling elite at the expense of the middle class. 
Last night, I was reminded of why Trump was able to obliterate the GOP field despite being out spent a million-to-one. He is not a pussy. Any other Republican faced with the dirty trick pulled on Friday would have gone into the debate prepared to grovel and plead, begging for a second chance. It is not all all inconceivable that he would have offered to step aside. Trump went into the debate prepared to deliver a counter punch designed to knock the old fat cow on her ass.


JADOTVILLE ON MY MIND BECAUSE DISTRACTED

Ripped off from Maggie's Farm,

The Montana Department of Employment, Division of Labor Standards claimed a small rancher was not paying proper wages to his help and sent an agent out to investigate him.

AGENT: I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them.

RANCHER: Well, there's my hired hand who's been with me for 3 years. I pay him $200 a week plus free room and board. Then there's the mentally challenged guy. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes about $60 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of Jack Daniels every Saturday night so he can cope with life. He also sleeps with my wife occasionally.

AGENT: That's the guy I want to talk to - the mentally challenged one.

RANCHER: That would be me.

Tis the humor of wry. We're going to need a bit of that over the next four years. Currently watching The Siege of Jadotville.

MODERN GLADIATORS ARE A BIT AGED BUT,.....

are you not entertained?

THE SIGNAL IS IN THE AIR

The oleaginous Paul Ryan has transmitted the signal. We've heard it before. Climb Mount Niitaka.

Paul Ryan is the Speaker of the House and the Rethuglican-in-Charge of the House. He's a minor noble in the House of Bush but he still has some throw weight. At this point, as with his late predecessor, it's measured in micrograms, but the man still thinks the GOP holds sway in all ways in the relationships of power, money and influence. He just decided that Hillary Clinton is a better Presidential candidate than anybody else. Joe the Plumber is a better candidate than Hillary. Only a corrupt jackass like Ryan would decide to throw the election to Hillary at this late date.

I'm not sure how one can be so obtuse as to fail to notice that the right-electorate overwhelmingly rejected the sly dishonesty of those who claimed to be different somehow from the democrats and went all in for a thug outsider who is prepared to pound both parties flat if elected. Paul Ryan doesn't get it that we are voting against the empire and don't really care what Trump does because it cannot possibly be worse than Hillary on her very best day in office.

Ryan is going to campaign for rethuglicans in lieu of electing a president that almost half the country think can lead them out of the permanent quagmire of bipartisanship where the people of the right are always ritually sacrificed by their representatives and slaughtered by the social justice warriors. 

By doing that, Paul Ryan is, in essence, voting for Hillary Clinton; a brain damaged, corrupt, vile, liar and scumbag who belongs in jail.

I don't think the GOP is going to survive this election. My 2 cents.

Monday, October 10, 2016

HOLLY GOLIGHTLY

Remember when if it was phrased just so, it was Romantic? Remember when they made movies about gold diggers?

I was out and about this morning and listening to the National People's Radio where they were consumed with outraging over Hillary's High Crimes and Misdemeanors Trump engaging in a personal conversation that eavesdroppers overheard and later made public when they figured it would maximally damage the other half of the country.

I enjoyed viewing a somewhat more romantic time and for merely writing that, most modern campus administrators and student bodies would cheerfully throw me into the outer darkness in the hopes that a Balrog would tear me to pieces forever.



Are you enjoying watching the entire left side of the political hemorrhoid go ape over a very simple equation that has been in place since evolution started? I accept that a certain percentage of people are not attracted like moth to the flame by the prospect of marrying or dating wealth but by the same token, a certain percentage of the population are driven by the prospect of marrying or dating wealth.

I mean, honestly NPR, there's a reason that ancient wealthy men marry 20 year old women. Let me rephrase that for the really slow appreciators of NPR, THERE ARE A NUMBER OF 20 year old women who are attracted to wealthy septuagenarians. They're mostly folding and green but also glittery and cold as the stars and the number of them is never appreciably diminished. There are more every year.

I think in the last 24 hours the media has spent more time on Trump's private tete-a-tete with a guy then they ever spent on Hillary's and her aides' actual crimes under the Espionage Act. Make no mistake, she belongs in jail and so does everybody who sent her classified information at her private email.

I'm sure that her aide ran it through a cleaner routine that weeded out 99.999% of the marked classified material and what caught her in the end was the obvious fact that some of her aides routinely deleted the classification markings from SIGINT and SCI/SAP material and just forwarded her the copy and pasted paragraphs that ended up embroiling her in an FBI sham investigation despite her cunning best efforts to delete the 33,000 emails that were marked as classified.

FLIES ARE ATTRACTED TO CORRUPTION

Flies seem to hang around the most corrupt and dishonest politicians. You never saw them on Ike or Ronald Reagan or even the Bush branch of the Grand Old Party.



I just find it amusing that they linger around Obama and Clinton.

A FALL OF FLAMINGOS

This tiny flock fell in upon our yard one morning before the sun came up. I bought them for my father's birthday a few years ago and when he moved to his new home my parents quietly gathered them up from the yard, stuffed them into their car and brought them to MetroParkCentralis when we got together to celebrate my father's 81st birthday last month and they arranged to have my sister get up awfully early in the morning to pose them here in the yard as a surprise for Anne Bonney on her birthday the following week.

As I understand it, they have to be rewired so they are illuminated from the inside much like the blimp that used to fly over San Diego many years ago as the sun set and still it lingered high in the sky well into the dark.

Natural Republicans coming home to roost at my home

AN EVENING OF MERIT

Last night we attended the annual awards dinner for distinguished alumni of the local high school who were selected to join the ranks of the Hall of Fame. I heard from the President of the society that there were over 35,000 graduates of the school and less than 200 had been inducted into the Hall of Fame since it started in 1986. It was a cheerful evening and I enjoyed it, as usual.

I am a man of no small accomplishment but I sat at a table with seven other people, all of whom were introduced because, accomplishment/achievement. Not me. Had you asked me if I ever expected to routinely sit down at table with the high school principal or the superintendent of the school district I can assure you that the answer would be no. Nevertheless, such is my fate, year after year.

I was surprised to find that we are now on our second superintendent and third principal in just the five years  that I've been attending these affairs. I had not realized that there was such a jostle for upward mobility in the life of school administrators. I had thought it a fairly placid and event free life where one could look forward to swatting a few lazy students, feuding with the Board of Education and generally working from 8 to 5 in a quiet office. I didn't really think it was the life of Mr. Rooney in Ferris Bueller's Day Off but I could be mistaken.

Actually, I should have known better. In Southern California, education got to be a blood sport and nobody was happy unless they got to wheel out the old guillotine and lop off the head of a principal or the bloody minded retired navy admiral that had been hailed out of retirement to help turn a failing school district around. They never lasted. The teacher's unions are implacable and their behavior frequently puts one in mind of Rudyard Kipling's advice to soldiers:
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
We made it home with time to catch some of the debate and didn't even try. Neither candidate is likely to sway the implacables of the other party and as for the idiots and morons who cannot tell the difference between an utterly corrupt incompetent boob and a loud-mouthed obnoxious troll who is at least, not a complete criminal, kleptocrat, liar and assassin, they're too stupid to mock much less to vote.
We watched an episode of Limitless and called it a night.

Thursday, October 6, 2016

SYRIA, IN OMAR BRADLEY'S WORDS

As I watch John Kerry hurl himself into supporting ISIS in Syria and attacking the duly elected government of Assad I am struck by how all this resembles another 'police action' a long time ago when the USA tried to lead a coalition of countries to expel and repel the communists from South Korea. My post yesterday included the words at the link but as I read the New York Times today and it's secret recording of Kerry explaining 'diplomacy' to terrorists and friends of terrorists in the Netherlands I hear General Bradley's words ringing in my ears.

"The wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy."

You would think the Winter Soldier would know that after his searing experiences in Cambodia.
I would like to talk to you a little bit about what the result is of the feelings these men carry with them after coming back from Vietnam. The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned With a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped. 
As a veteran and one who feels this anger, I would like to talk about it. We are angry because we feel we have been used in the worst fashion by the administration of this country. 
In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart. 
We are probably much more angry than that and I don't want to go into the foreign policy aspects because I am outclassed here. I know that all of you talk about every possible alternative of getting out of Vietnam. We understand that. We know you have considered the seriousness of the aspects to the utmost level and I am not going to try to dwell on that, but I want to relate to you the feeling that many of the men who have returned to this country express because we are probably angriest about all that we were told about Vietnam and about the mystical war against communism.
You just have to despise the kind of traitorous little turd who, as a young man, believed war was immoral and wrong and as an old man can't find any problem that a good little war  and the use of military force won't solve.
The New York Times acquired the taped conversation between the US Secretary of State and two dozen Syrian civilians from education, rescue, and medical groups working in rebel-held areas, during a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
The leaked recording reveals how angry John Kerry really is about being unable to topple President Bashar Assad by military means. 
“I've argued for use of force. I stood up. I’m the guy who stood up and announced we’re going to attack Assad because of the weapons, and then you know things evolved into a different process,” the Secretary of State said in the tape. 
He told the civilians that “you have nobody more frustrated than we are (the US)” that the Syrian issue is now being solved diplomatically.
Syria demonstrated the wiley perfection of Chicago crime organizer Obama and the ignorant  and intolerant ingenue Clinton, neither of whom ever managed or supervised more than a dozen slaves. Working together they deliberately unleashed disaster after backing the muslim brotherhood takeover in Egypt, totally destroying an unaligned Libya, and attempting to destroy a neutral Syria in the name of the United States.

Just contrast these idiots with George Bush (DCIA), George Bush II (two time governor of Texas) and Colin Powell (4 star general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and Condoleezza Rice (6 years Provost and Chief Academic and Budget Officer, Stanford University). The neo-cons have much to answer for.

You have to admit, whoever you are, that the Democratic Party just doesn't have a very deep or meaningful pool of talent. They have one dud after another and it showed in the primaries when a socialist who isn't even a Democrat was the only one to vie for the nomination against a dud who has never done anything in her entire life that was good, honest or ethical and never managed or led any project, business or great enterprise. In fact, even her supporters can't point to any achievements  accomplished by her over a lifetime of hanging on to Bill's coat tails. Contrast with the 17 characters who vied for the Republican nomination

ANYONE TRUST THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL?

A sad story about a little boy from Congo who died on a plane from Dubai as it flew to Chicago. He may or may not have been dead before the plane landed.  You see, we also don't believe CBS news anymore either. 
Dieme was taken to Presence Resurrection Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. 
The CDC spokesman said it had been determined that the child did not have a disease that posed a threat to public health. If more information comes forward that results in contacting passengers, action will be taken.
Does anybody trust the Centers for Disease Control to be accurate, forthcoming and honest or do we simply expect that their every initial pronouncement about anything is either a lie or an enthusiastic burst of optimism that overwhelms their scientific credibility?
So we do expect, unfortunately, that Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands could have many infections with the Zika virus, and we will certainly see U.S. travelers returning with Zika infections, just as we saw travelers returning with dengue and chikungunya infections. We could see isolated cases and small clusters of infections in other parts of the country where the mosquito is present. But from the information we know now, widespread transmission in the contiguous United States appears to be unlikely.

REMEMBER THE MEDIA'S 'UNSCRIPTED' INTERVIEWS WITH DEMOCRATS?

There is some expression of doubt that the media machine didn't feed the Hillary campaign the questions that were going to be posed to the candidates during the last presidential debate. The media leaped to deny the very idea that they would be such low-down dirty rotten scoundrels.



And why wouldn't we believe them? Surely they are as honest as the democratic politicians they service.



Watching the ObamaCare scheme going down in flames was terribly predictable. The government is like Amtrak. Only a government run monopoly that charges $9 for a hamburger on a train could go broke selling food.

Democrats – teaching Americans to despise their government.

SWIFT UPDATE

It appears that the ship was destroyed but not sunk. gCaptain reports that the ship is still afloat and the pictures below are from the Emirates News Agency. It's odd that there doesn't appear to be a mention of the attack in the Al Khaleej Times and only the briefest mention in the Gulf Daily News.




This was the missile strike seen in the video.
I have no idea what kind of missile does that kind of damage. I inspected the hole left in the hull by an Exocet or Harpoon missile that struck a tanker during the Tanker War in the Persian Gulf and it left a little round hole equal to the diameter of the missile where it passed through the hull before detonating in the cargo. The only sign of exterior damage was the hole.

One remarkable fact is that the hull is still afloat. All the damage was above the waterline since this ship was built to commercial standards and does not have the watertight compartments of warship designs. Hit below the waterline and it will flood the hull and sink.

I'm amazed they managed to put out the fires but then, this ship had a fairly awesome sprinkler system installed to cope with fires.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

ALAS, POOR UKIP

It seems that the new leader of UKIP, Diane James, has stepped down as leader of the party after being attacked by some vile little left-wing scumbag at Waterloo Station. Nigel Farage is back as interim leader until new elections are held. I found the slanted and arch questions of the presenter to be an interesting reflection of the absolute lack of bias in media in the UK. It's like the media are bound to be unbiased all over the world, in the same direction.



I had regretted that we would no longer be hearing from Nigel. Every time he speaks, he puts to shame the ignorant tongue-tied pig's ears we have for politicians. The contrast with Obama, Kerry, Clinton, or any current politicians, is astonishing.

UPDATE 10/6/2016

From bad to worse as it is alleged that one UKIP MEP knocked down another who later collapsed. The Party is self-destructing before our very eyes.

Steven Woolfe, the favorite to become Ukip leader, collapsed at the European Parliament building in Strasbourg after being punched by another MEP at a 'clear the air' meeting.

ALL THEY HAD TO DO TO SAVE THEMSELVES

I overheard NPR yesterday while driving and, ok, I admit, I tuned to NPR like I used to and listened to Terry Gross and an official of the local Case Western Reserve University discuss how the Republic came to have somebody like Donald Trump as the Republican nominee this year for President. Neither one of them even came close to figuring out why we got Trump. The guy from Case kept bleating about how conservatives disdain Trump almost as much as 'we' do and said even Fox News hates the guy and the only real voice of advocacy he ever had is that horrible, awful, disgusting, mean Ann Coulter, who, he said, was the first to announce that Trump would win and she did that the second he threw his hat in the ring.

Naturally they had to blow off Ann as an idiot troll of the first water and neither of them spent even a second contemplating that perhaps Ann Coulter has a way better handle on what the people of the rest of the country are feeling about politics then any of the talking heads, pundits, politicians or media clowns. She's a populist who knows what real people think. Yeah, she's figured out democrats but she is unique in having figured out what the Tea Party is. It was a movement, not a Party and the movement remained strong and vital even after the media drove a stake through the heart of the Party.

The Republican leadership put Trump where he is today. We the People elected them and elected them to serve us. We gave them an overwhelming majority in the House and the Senate and what did the Republican leadership do with that majority? Nothing. Not a damned thing. They didn't lift a finger to repeal ObamaCare and they didn't lift a finger to rein in the out of control Executive agencies like the IRS or EPA or DOJ.  THEY DID NOTHING.

We tried to express how deeply unhappy we were with this state of affairs when the voters of Ohio repudiated John Boehner, the actual Speaker of the House, and kicked his slimy worthless ass out of Congress because he never did a single damned thing for us. Would you believe that none of the rest of those scumbags got the message? The majority of the voters had to signify their contempt for business-as-usual Rethuglicans and kick them to curb by voting Trump.

You know what the rethuglicans actually in Congress had to do right? It isn't hard. They merely had to put up a fight on our behalf the way the democrats fight on behalf of their masters. I guarantee that Boehner would have remained in office and the Rethuglicans would have been overwhelminingly voted for by a pleased group of GOP voters if they had voted to repeal ObamaCare. No, they didn't have the numbers to overcome a presidential veto but that isn't the point. They never understood that so they never even tried.

If the House had voted to repeal ObamaCare and slashed 50% funding from DOJ, IRS and EPA it would have sent a message. If Mitchell had copied Reid and simply used the nuclear option on Cloture and the Senate voted to follow the House then we would have "our" representatives doing what 'we' elected them to do but they couldn't be bothered. Mitchell wouldn't retaliate with a nuke or two of his own and Boehner wouldn't take to a vote anything that wasn't veto proof. Well, sucks to be them.

If they had played honestly with us, we would have entertained the idea of electing one of their 'wise old birds' but they didn't. They should have passed a repeal bill every single time Obama left the country on one of his vacations or boondoggles. They should have put him and the rest of the democrats on record again and again as supporting that abortion known as the Affordable Care Act where people are now required by law to pay whatever the price is irregardless of the service or details in order to get health care insurance even if it is now a monopoly in their state and only one company offers a plan that meets the law's requirements.

We'll never know if that would have brought out the voters for a Cruz or Rubio because the elected Rethuglicans who actually sit in Congress didn't lift a finger to act like the Representatives of the people who sent them there.

ON GENERAL MACARTHUR

If you ever wondered why the war in Korea proceeded as it did and why a Congress thirsty for the blood of Truman backed off using his relief of General MacArthur to beat him to death, you might be interested in reading this article from Smithsonian Magazine.

I found it fascinating.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

SPACE DOG

Found and stolen from daily timewaster. It's too good to pass up and I wanted it here too.  Scroll down very slowly.


Whoever did this is a genius. Thanks.

THE END OF THE SWIFT

I see in my latest update from gCaptain that the SWIFT was completely destroyed by Yemen rebels in the Bab al Mandeb. I spent a lot of time there back in 1984 and I have never seen such heavily armed islands or patrol boats.

UPDATE: Video of the attack



One of the little peeves I enjoyed with my long service with the navy was the incredible naivety of the office clerks that run the Navy. The bean counters convinced them a long time ago that logistic ships didn't require any weaponry whatsoever and that, in fact, weapons just got in the way and cost money that needed to be saved so that sailors could attend LGBTQ training seminars in Norfolk or Washington, DC. The ships that had weapons went into the shipyard to have them removed.

HSV2 SWIFT, Look Ma! No guns!
Oh, and for you bean counters at NAVSEA who thought speed = life? I guess the Swift just wasn't fast enough and of course, it's as fast or faster than the Littoral Combat Ships.

Interestingly to me, one of Jerry Pournelle's sons was the XO of Swift when it was providing relief supplies to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Monday, October 3, 2016

UNFARCING BELIEVABLE

The people of Columbia rejected a ridiculous 'peace' deal with the FARC. It was only by a small majority but the majority refused to accept a peace deal that caved in to every single FARC demand which included automatic elevation to the government, retention of all arms and money stolen from the people, no reparations for the kidnapped victims or those murdered by the FARC over the last 50 years and no punishment for the atrocities they committed. In short, this wasn't peace, it was surrender.

The peace deal would have resulted in something like Chavez taking over the government of Columbia because that always works so well in Latin America.

It's hard to believe that the FARC has been revolting in Columbia since Gemini was in space. Fifty years is a long time to live in the jungle. Somebody is supporting that revolution to this day. I wonder who it is behind the FARC. It's also hard to believe that Gemini XI flew 3 times higher than any other manned American spacecraft other than Apollo. We haven't  made it out of LEO since then.

Gemini XI 850 miles above Earth 50 years ago

PIPSQUEAKS AND POLTROONS

As I watch various 'progressives' as they maneuver to install a dictatorship in this country I am struck by one of the oddities of America. The pipsqueaks and poltroons caved to the monied interests and they have, all over America, imposed the most draconian requirements to get certified as hair stylists, lawyers, doctors but there are only 3 requirements to stand for the United States Senate. They are delineated in the Constitution but I'll spare you the necessity of looking it up for yourself. Here they are:
Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution sets three qualifications for senators: (1) they must be at least 30 years old, (2) they must have been citizens of the United States for at least the past nine years, and (3) they must be inhabitants of the states they seek to represent at the time of their election.
I think it is time to amend the Constitution to require that anybody who stands for the Senate or the House has to pass a closed book exam on the Constitution, Bill of Rights and all the Amendments including the predictably stupid and irrational 18th Amendment. Thirteen years of criminalizing human behavior. We do the same thing today, without the amendment, by criminalizing all kinds of drugs.

They also need to pass a test on basic Economics 101 and it wouldn't hurt if they had to pass the Professional Management test so they can actually understand what Measures of Effectiveness imply and mean. I don't think it would hurt if they also had to count $1,000,000 in singles so they get some idea of the value of money and time to encourage them to stop burning both when they pass laws to 'regulate' some industry or impose some new tax.

We don't care if you go home and get blitzed. We do care if you decide to go for a drive. That's where the penalties ought to be imposed, not at the point of origin or point of sale. One or two readers might object and argue for the 'sake of the children' but I have a streak of Darwin a mile wide and we have to accept that some people are too stupid to learn from the horrible examples provided by peers who never learned not to play with loaded guns or shoot drugs. (You don't want to hang out with the kind of 'friend' who plays with loaded guns or shoots drugs.) Life is a continuous learning experience.

How is it that the Senator from Rhode Island can spout off about 'criminalizing' the speech of climate skeptics? How can he not know that this is against everything this country stands for? He wanted to charge the fossil fuel industry executives under the RICO Act for defending the generation of electrical power in this country.

The Federal Election Commissions Democrat members have decided to eliminate the First Amendment because Progress!

The infamous New York abuse of the 4th Amendment goes on unabated. Cops are literally shooting themselves to keep the laws tough so the favored few at the civil rights violating gun license bureau can continue to get $6,000 bribes for each gun license they approve. The US Attorney for Southern New York was quoted as saying, “Gun licenses were issued to people who had no business having them." Does it strike you as odd that the US Attorney is reared up on his hind legs over the idea of permitting citizens to exercise their rights under the 4th Amendment? The myths New Yorkers wrap the 4th Amendment in are kind of silly when you look at this map.

All the Red States share reciprocity with Ohio's Concealed Carry License. Ohio is a 'shall issue' state
How is it that the yap and bay crowd can gleefully vilify Nixon for 18 minutes of missing tape and some kind of coverup and praise Hillary Clinton despite the vanishing and post subpoena destruction of her servers, computers, laptops, cell phones, blackberries and 33,000 missing emails after she lied and lied and lied and lied and lied? She got caught in every single lie. There is no doubt about what happened. The FBI even says she did it. It was, every bit of it, criminal.

How can our government dictate to Catholic Charities, Hospitals and Orphanages that they must comply with the unAffordable don'tCare Act and provide abortions and birth control when that violates the central tenants of their religion and flies in the  face of the Constitution?

I think it's time to remind these people that the Constitution is the governing law of the land.

Saturday, October 1, 2016

THE ZOO OF PAPER TIGERS

I think it's fascinating that his Imperial Majesty Barrack I (and oh yes, I know how to spell  the Imperial Hoheit's name) has, despite his "pivot to Asia" not made any effort whatsover to restore any interest in reviving the Zoo I sure that about .000005% of the reason for rejecting the idea comes from the Pentagon because His Somnolent Highness doesn't pay any regard at all to what comes from Arlington's 5 sided wind tunnel. I think it has to do with the fact that Barry is Indonesian and he figures that restoring SEATO would be worth about this much to the region.
In point of fact though, I'll grant that the countries on China's flanks survive at the mercy of China much the way Mexico and the Banana Republics survived ours during the early years of the Republic. There was nobody who could do anything to stop us and only our restraint served as a brake to continued expansion. The forces that drove us back then now drive China and I wish the former signatories to the Manila Pact every success in negotiating their independent paths to making a deal with China.

If it's any balm, the Chinese will probably have to first take out Vietnam and those people have shown themselves to be unbelievably, almost fanatically, stupid nationalists. They'll fight for generations if China attempts to impose by force what it fails to impose economically. While, ordinarily, that would give the other nations on the rim a chance to unite for the common defense, well, that's not going to work either.

Still, we are blessed now with rational leaders in China. The madness and insanity seems to have burned itself out for now. It's reassuring to know that the current leadership kept excellent records and know exactly how to respond to the very first sign of revolt. We might not look with favor on a government that massacres a couple of thousand people and throws several thousand more in jail but the last time the Chinese government slipped up and let a little revolt get out of hand, a hundred million Chinese died.