WHAT HAPPENED TO THE FIVE YEAR PLAN?

All the dems and global warming scare mongers can talk about is their ten year plan to fix shit. The communists in Russia and China never needed anything more than a 5 year plan.

Why are American communists and socialists so freaking incompetent that they need 10 year plans?

On the gripping hand, none of those communist/socialist 5 year plans amounted to anything but ruination and destruction.

ALL THE OLD-NEW FBI DOJ BOOBS STILL IN CHARGE SUCK

One of the things I find most disturbing about the FBI/CIA/NSA/NID is their total focus, to the exclusion of terrorists intent on attacking America, on what the putative ne'er do wells in the Trump campaign might have done that doesn't come close to rivaling what Obama or Clinton did in the service of the Soviets/Russians and terrorists. It's kind of hard to see why we tolerate this kind of malfeasance and vincible ignorance and total stupidity. But the left does and so does the media and perforce, so do we.

For 2 years lawyers on the special prosecutor's team and the dirtbag in charge have been doing their damnedest to turn up evidence of any crime at all that President Trump committed and they're stuck, like a dead rat in the trap with their nose not a fraction of an inch from cheese. But there is no cheese there.

In the meantime the highest echelons of what passes for our Intel Community have been utterly wrapped around the axle of denouncing President Trump and shouting aloud in glee how he is guilty guilty guilty guilty. They don't hear it themselves but southern lynch mobs had nothing on democrats and the top echelons of CIA/FBI/STATE/Media who find guilt before evidence.  Oh, wait, lynch mobs/democrats, I repeat myself. My bad.

Yep, the top floors of the FBI are and have been convulsed with finding a thing that isn't there and who cares about another bunch of 9/11 types who gain free access into the country over unsecured borders when they all know they have the TSA searching baby's diapers for dangerous liquids before they're allowed on the planes even if they miss 99% of the carry-on guns, knives, acid, bombs, etc.

I'm afraid that overseas I used to work hand in glove with the country teams (State, CIA, FBI, DIA), for the worst of these sources of terrorists and I always thought they were some of the dimmest bulbs. Honestly?

If they really really liked you as a young and upcoming anti-terrorist fighting, crime-fighting top echelon agent-wearing-black, would you be in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, UAE? For us in the Navy, it was the cutting edge and tip of the spear on the war on terror. We knew what we were doing and labored under a bureaucracy that swished need-to-know across our lips and ears whenever they knew that CIA and State were hiding information that mattered. It got really old about the 2nd time they did it. Deploying mobile units again again in response to I&W got old and then it got expensive.

Give it a thought. How much time do you imagine the top echelon of the Intel/FBI/DOJ spend on terrorists and terrorism and how much of their working day is devoted to taking down or concealing their role in trying to take down a duly elected President?

HOW JUSSIE SMOLLET AND COHEN ARE ALIKE

There is no lie they won't hesitate to give voice to in order to tarnish President Trump and both of them are just about equally credible to the fools in Congress.

OH SURE, OK FOR THEM BUT NOT FOR YOU

Those of us who used to watch a Navy that believed firmly in applying the paint to the hull often and repeatedly, still find ourselves a little shocked at what our dismal running-rust abortion of a Navy is turning into. That ship is blackened by its own engine exhaust but God Forbid you try to light up onboard. I'm sure that's a super healthy vaporized metal filled ship because somewhere on that dingy hull are the air intakes that supply 'fresh' air to the crew.

It was named after one of the fairest cities in America and look at it now

EVER WONDER WHO THE PATIENTS REALLY ARE?

I've spent a number of my hours in hospitals over the last few months while visiting. Basically, since Christmas, I've been in hospitals in Latrobe and Pittsburgh and several here closer to home. One of the things I have slowly come to accept is our new lords and masters getting a special ride in all the hospitals in the US.

They snuck up on us so slowly I'm sure most people haven't realized how common it is now to see the most exalted operatives hauled around the hospital on their very special mobility devices.

Remember when they used to push patients around in the hospitals?

NO THANKS

Thanks but no. I will get my news from reputable sources. They are few and far between but they still exist and, more importantly, they're the news and not some inflamed lesbian's idea of what is news.

LONG AGO IN A FARAWAY PORT

As we made our way to San Francisco after departing our home port of San Diego we received a very long radio message. The RMs brought it to me on the clipboard with the rest of the message traffic and I initialed it. It was a comprehensive list of all the really mean and shitty things the Admiral on Treasure Island would do to me if I spilled so much as one drop of fuel or lube oil into Mayor Diane Feinstein's pristine bay.

When the skipper asked me if I was going to include fuel in the logreq (logistics request message every navy ship sends to its next port of call), I said, nope. I'll send some of the lads over to NAS Alameda to bring back a couple hundred gallons of 9250 lube oil in 55 gallon drums. And so I did and so they did. They pretty much maxed out/destroyed the springs in that little Toyota pick up truck but at least I wasn't going to have face the totally going to happen burps from my 1954 fuel oil system. Nope, not taking on fuel in San Francisco. My class of ship had unrefueled ranges of over a thousand miles and San Francisco was just 500 miles from home.

Admittedly, as we were passing through the Santa Barbara ship channel with a very nice view of California on my port and charming little waterless islands on my starboard, I was a little bit surprised when my LCPO and engineering guru approached me on the bridge where I had the deck. It had never happened before and never happened again.

"Sir," he said, "We have a little problem."
"What could that be," I asked.
"We only get water out of our last fuel tank."

I approached the CO who was lounging in the CO chair on the bridge and asked if he would mind taking the deck and the conn while I went below to look into a minor little problem in the engineroom. Captain Smarthearing told me he had the deck and the conn and to give him advance warning before we ran out of fuel.

Like all of my peers I have a thousand million stories that would amuse and do, but I like this one. I have known hundreds of Chief Petty Officers but this one, he was the best of them. The rotations of the Mine War destroyed the old established regime where one knew what happened to the men you knew and served with. I never knew what became of him after he and I rotated to Esteem in different rotations. He was gone before I got home. I suppose, now that I think about it, it was our Vietnam. Thousands and thousands of good men serving with other good men in a war zone and never saw them again thanks to the draft and the personnel strategies dreamed up by men.

Of course, reading that as written, that last sentence. I think back to the readings of my life on WWII and the replacement companies which 'filled the need' of 20,000 man divisions in the war that would lose 13,000 men to death and wounds in Europe. As usual, history isn't what you know. It's what you think you know.

REPOSED AND RESTFUL

Every now and again I head over to my sister's page for a little repose. She's supposed to be writing but she is the slowest writer on 5 continents.

THE VOICE

Back in the days of PARKHILL there was a problem. HF encrypted was voice attenuated. When the voice was in the upper registers, female, it dropped synch. It always dropped synch. Within a word or two it dropped into garble and you were left there in CIC saying again and again, "dropped synch." As I think about it now I'm pretty sure that this was assumed as sexism and yet nothing could be further from the truth. When PARKHILL dropped synch you didn't get almost english, what one got was pure garble. HF was an unforgiving medium for voice. Anybody in the early days of radio knew that. Encrypting it just made it profoundly worse.

ANDVT and VINSON was a lot clearer but then, it wasn't HF. Once we all started talking on satellites and gave up HF it became easier to talk to people with somewhat higher pitched voices.

On the other hand........ who on a ship at sea wants to have some tool tell them what to do? I watched, in akin to awe as a CDR CSO in the Blue Room, In the Bunker at COMROKFLT told his lackeys that the 2 ships under his control were not to so much  as put a boat in the water without his approval. He'd have lasted about 2 seconds with any of my five favorite MSO COs. I enjoyed LCDR command a lot even when some of them proved to be less than worthy. It was fun and sometimes, it is good to be the king.

BLACK NAILS IT AS TREASON

The wheels on the tumbrell are finally coming off. It's about time and it's also about time to hang shits at FBI, DOJ, CIA and NSA who pushed this lie on us for 2 years. They didn't misunderstand or get misled, they lied and lied and lied again. Clapper and Hayden should get a short drop but then, so should all of them and since the wheels came off maybe they should be hitched to a bumper and dragged to Philadelphia.

The most immense and dangerous public scandal in American history is finally cracking open like a ripe pomegranate. The broad swath of the Trump-hating press that has participated in what has amounted to an unconstitutional attempt to overthrow the government are reduced to reporting the events and revelations of the scandal in which they have been complicit, in a po-faced ho-hum manner to impart to the misinformed public that this is as routine as stock market fluctuations or the burning of an American flag in Tehran.

For more than two years, the United States and the world have had two competing narratives: that an elected president of the United States was a Russian agent whom the Kremlin helped elect; and its rival narrative that senior officials of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and other national intelligence organizations had repeatedly lied under oath, misinformed federal officials, and meddled in partisan political matters illegally and unconstitutionally and had effectively tried to influence the outcome of a presidential election, and then undo its result by falsely propagating the first narrative. It is now obvious and indisputable that the second narrative is the correct one.

The authors, accomplices, and dupes of this attempted overthrow of constitutional government are now well along in reciting their misconduct without embarrassment or remorse because — in fired FBI Director James Comey’s formulation — a “higher duty” than the oath they swore to uphold the Constitution compelled them. Or — in fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s words — “the threat” was too great. Nevermind that the nature of “the threat” was that the people might elect someone he and Mr. Comey disapproved of as president, and that that person might actually serve his term, as elected.

BIGGEST NO BRAINER OF ALL TIME

The USN admirals are scratching their collective bald heads and wondering how to get Destroyers through the hands of the greedy grasping desperate shipyards faster.

Duh, cowboy. You incentivize them to get off their lazy dead ass, hire workers and perform to contract. In other words you fire the shiftless lazy f#cks at SupShip and start rewarding the shipyards that do meet their obligations with more work and stop sending ships to the crappy shipyards that don't perform to specification. Duh!!!!!

I remember the Navy when I got commissioned, that towed my first ship, USS Connole out of a failing shipyard in Boston in spite of the shipyard trying to use cranes to blockade the ship in their yard. They underperformed hugely and finally the Navy grew a pair and towed their ship out and sent it to another yard. I got more and better quality work done in a 10 day Dry Docking SRA in Bahrain or Jubail then I did in a 10 week Dry Dock SRA in Southwest Marine in San Diego or in a 9 month DSRA in Todd Shipyard, Seattle.

There is a huge difference between people who do work for industry where time is money and those who do "work" for government where time doesn't matter and overruns are just part of the business of low-balling bids.

And for those who think we need to preserve the defense industrial base, no we don't. We are way better off letting the crap stick to the wall and dry in the sunlight of total exposure. If you doubt me, look at what happened after NASA was jacked up and space flight got true competition. We also saw it in WWII. When the regulator swings a big stick, compliance follows and everybody profits.

It is probably time to refocus the courts and teach them their responsibility again. They are skating very close to the edge where any sane elected official is just going to invite them to rally their tank divisions on the National Mall and go head to head with the elected government. One judge in one state does not have the right to overturn the actions of the government or the President.

THE SPIN OF THE MANDELA

When I blog I try to be the man I mean to be. Sometimes the writing alone is enough to bring me back to the beam but other times one post will follow another and another and there is a hiatus. I don't really mean to blog about politics and I cannot tell myself that what I write is the product of deep thought and painful attention to all detail if it's about politics since we have agreed to accept disagreement. On the other hand there is the old drill of Lewis Carroll and one can find oneself saying,
    
       Leopards have spots
      Therefore all spotted things are leopards.

I suspect, from time to time, that not all things with spots are leopards.

I set out tonight to write about the recent visit of a friend. It got lost somehow in the tangle of words.
Civility is probably not in general usage anymore. It is rapidly becoming one of those dead words that nobody ever heard of and certainly doesn't understand. It seems to have passed out of favor back in the late 60's and early 70's. Fortunately for me, that was when I was raised and so it still means something to me beyond a word from the depths of time. It's totally lost and foreign to the current generation of snowflakes.

Our last visitor is a very interesting man with a fascinating history. He and his family made it out of Hitler's Germany in the late 30's and he spent the war in London and underwent 2 years living in and out of air raid shelters during the Blitz. He always puts me in mind of my very first ship CO on USS Connole. Captain Serge Yonov  who was on one of the last ships out of Riga before it was overrun by the Red Army. He was a Latvian refugee who landed in Danzig and made his way overland to Berlin and ended up after the war in Austria for a time before his remaining family moved to America by good fortune and the Orthodox Church.

He joined the Navy after a stint at the Colorado School of Mines. He was one of the best skippers I ever worked for. He told me that for a short while he was inducted into the Hitler Youth because that's how the State worked back then. Can you imagine that man surviving in this day and age with that hanging over his head?

SERGE YONOV

When men were men and women were strong enough.

QUITE PROFANE BUT STILL, VERY FUNNY

This is really very funny if you like our robot overlords. Naughty language warning.

Robot Overlords

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

The truth about the real crimes of the last 10 years is out there and most of it is already in the hands of various law enforcement and intelligence agencies but it will never see the light of day and they wonder why we mean to keep fighting for our second amendment rights.

IT'S CALLED TREASON

The top levels of the Justice Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency and CIA conspired to remove President Trump from office. At a bare minimum they are guilty of treason and they are clearly guilty of conspiracy.



Faces of Treason

The highest echelons of the FBI, NSA, CIA and Department of Justice conspired to overthrow the President of the United States in a coup.  They really need to go to jail.

Yesterday would be soon enough to find all of them locked up and I include the liars who ran the National Intelligence Directorate, CIA and NSA and when you think about it for two seconds and know that they record every single phone call and every bit of internet traffic then you know that they had the information at their fingertips to disprove all the bogus allegations made by the Clinton re-election forces and Fusion GPS and they didn't lift a finger to stop the hysteria and lies.

They all need to be charged with conspiracy to overthrow the President of the United States and then go directly to jail forever.

A GREEN TRANSPORTATION NETWORK

I'm sure that our communist/socialist leadership have considered the benefits of sticking to the old ways when it comes to carbon reduction and facilitation of transportation of goods and people. Who could possibly be more green than that great benefactor of the people, Joseph Stalin. Oh sure, he followed where better men had gone before but if one simply steps back a century or two there are all kinds of ways to eliminate the climate destroying transportation networks of the modern era by, wait for it......building canals and using mules to draw the barges up and down the canal networks. Nobody ever talks about mule farts so they're OK and therefore won't be contributing to the greenhouse gasses that are killing our planet.

Bernie and Alexandria and all the never Trump people think that the people who voted for Trump could best be employed in digging those canals, by hand and it would almost certainly lead to full employment although a lot of people will be missing when they decide to take our guns away, for the children, in the name of the People.

FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE

It's about time.

TRUMP’S NATIONAL EMERGENCY ORDER TEXT:

Office of the Press Secretary FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 15, 2019

DECLARING A NATIONAL EMERGENCY CONCERNING THE SOUTHERN BORDER OF THE UNITED STATES – – – – – – – BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION      The current situation at the southern border presents a border security and humanitarian crisis that threatens core national security interests and constitutes a national emergency.  The southern border is a major entry point for criminals, gang members, and illicit narcotics.  The problem of large-scale unlawful migration through the southern border is long-standing, and despite the executive branch’s exercise of existing statutory authorities, the situation has worsened in certain respects in recent years.  In particular, recent years have seen sharp increases in the number of family units entering and seeking entry to the United States and an inability to provide detention space for many of these aliens while their removal proceedings are pending.  If not detained, such aliens are often released into the country and are often difficult to remove from the United States because they fail to appear for hearings, do not comply with orders of removal, or are otherwise difficult to locate.  In response to the directive in my April 4, 2018, memorandum and subsequent requests for support by the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense has provided support and resources to the Department of Homeland Security at the southern border.  Because of the gravity of the current emergency situation, it is necessary for the Armed Forces to provide additional support to address the crisis. NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 201 and 301 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), hereby declare that a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States, and that section 12302 of title 10, United States Code, is invoked and made available, according to its terms, to the Secretaries of the military departments concerned, subject to the direction of the Secretary of Defense in the case of the Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.  To provide additional authority to the Department of Defense to support the Federal Government’s response to the emergency at the southern border, I hereby declare that this emergency requires use of the Armed Forces and, in accordance with section 301 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1631), that the construction authority provided in section 2808 of title 10, United States Code, is invoked and made available, according to its terms, to the Secretary of Defense and, at the discretion of the Secretary of Defense, to the Secretaries of the military departments.  I hereby direct as follows: Section 1.  The Secretary of Defense, or the Secretary of each relevant military department, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, shall order as many units or members of the Ready Reserve to active duty as the Secretary concerned, in the Secretary’s discretion, determines to be appropriate to assist and support the activities of the Secretary of Homeland Security at the southern border. Sec. 2.  The Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and, subject to the discretion of the Secretary of Defense, the Secretaries of the military departments, shall take all appropriate actions, consistent with applicable law, to use or support the use of the authorities herein invoked, including, if necessary, the transfer and acceptance of jurisdiction over border lands. Sec. 3.  This proclamation is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fifteenth day of February, in the year of our Lord two thousand nineteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-third. DONALD J. TRUMP It looks to me like he is planning to use the military construction and engineer units to build the fences along the border. I can only hope he gets a more responsive and willing response from them than I ever did when I tried to get Prime Beef or Red Horse to lift a finger and build stuff in Korea or anywhere else on the planet. OTOH, the two Naval Construction Battalion Centers are in Port Hueneme and Gulfport so they're pretty close to the border and I've found that one can actually get See Bees to build stuff in a timely fashion if you ask right. I'm not sure about Army Engineers. 30 years in and I never saw them anywhere. I spent a week at Fort Leonard Wood once on my way to Korea the first time and I don't recall seeing any Army engineers there either which is odd when you know that Fort Leonard Wood is home to the Army Engineer School. OTGH, I spent that week dealing mostly with the Transportation Corps and the rolling wheel of shame. A full week endlessly doing the same thing over and over again until their CO figured they'd got it right. We were just fodder for the mill.

A MARTIAN OPPORTUNITY

NASA finally admitted that the Opportunity rover has finally, after 15 years of work on Mars, come to the end of the line. It was one heck of a good run.

ANOTHER VICIOUS MISS

I saw this while scouting around the internet this evening and I thought it was a clever thing to propose and perhaps a very clever thing to do.

On the other hand, they're all destructive parasites. This one simply has very little impulse control and is willing to blurt out her hatred for people she doesn't even know at the drop of a hat. OTGH, whenever I think about the handful of sick, twisted, vicious, loonies we have just like her in this country, I feel a little pity for Europe which is rapidly filling up with millions of 'refugees' just like her.

A LITTLE HISTORY IN MEDICINE

1922 The scientists went to a hospital ward with diabetic children, most of them comatose and dying from diabetic keto-acidosis. This is known as one of medicine's most incredible moments. Imagine a room full of parents sitting at the bedside waiting for the inevitable death of their child. The scientists went from bed-to-bed and injected the children with the new purified extract - insulin. As they began to inject the last comatose child, the first child injected began to awaken. Then one by one, all the children awoke from their diabetic comas. A room of death and gloom, became a place of joy and hope. Photo Credits- Library and Archives Canada

Insulin was first discovered by researchers in 1921 and was first used to treat diabetes in 1922. This is roughly 1 year from discovery to use as medicine. Imagine if they had in place back then the same sort of bureaucracy we have today. Insulin may well not have been used until some time in the 40's. One could say that much the same thing would have happened with the discovery of penicillin.

A SAD AND DAMNING INDICTMENT

No, this isn't about the nonsense being carried out by the special prosecutor and his team of Trump hating lawyers, this has to do with the truly sad state of American higher education. "The problem is real. It’s documented by George La Noue, professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, in his forthcoming book, Silenced Stages: The Loss of Academic Freedom and Campus Policy Debates."

 I will find and read the book but this one quote is all you need to see that liberals and progressive fascists have killed debate and reason at just about every institution of higher learning in America.

La Noue concludes that: “For most students in American higher education, the opportunity to hear on-campus debates about important public policy issues does not exist.” A few elite universities and law schools were somewhat better at sponsoring policy debates than the great majority of other schools, but although environmental and health policy were frequent topics, “immigration, abortion, government financing, international trade, speech, sexual assault, affirmative action, and even gun policies were almost never debated publicly on campus in 2014 and 2015.”

In my experience it is literally impossible to discuss any of those topics across political lines or across strongly held beliefs opposite to one's own beliefs. Again, in my experience it is the people who supposedly are liberal and progressive that simply will not hear a word spoken if it contradicts what they believe in and they don't use any absence of facts to deter them from attacking anybody who disagrees with them and not just a little attack. There is spittle flying from their lips and their gestures become frenzied as they attempt to make the point that they'll kill you before they'll listen to you contradict them and they believe that they are being reasonable and open to new ideas as they do this thing every single time.

From time to time I run into a like minded open-to-reason type of guy and we will converse quietly in a crowd and make statements contrary to the strongly held beliefs of those around us and they will start to close in and start hissing and then they get ugly. I remember one time at the library at the top of the hill coming up Washington Street from Shakespeare's Pub in San Diego that the girl standing behind me and the man I was talking to about tax policies on the ballot literally couldn't control herself. Practically every sentence we finished got a forceful HMMMMPPPPPPHHHHHH from her and they got louder and louder. I think the guy I was talking with finally decided to see if we could get her to scream in rage. Success!

I wouldn't spend a penny on anything except studies in STEM. The liberal arts are as dead as the Roman Empire.

OUR FAVORITE IDIOT

I find these irresistable. I know that the Democratic Black Caucus gives her a run for the money with their own unique ignorance and stupidity and as far as I know Ocasio-Cortez doesn't actually think an island can flip over if it is overloaded with too many Marines but still, she is dumber than dirt.

Future Democratic Party Congresspersons

IT LOOKS LIKE HE'S RUNNING IN 2020

Others no doubt picked up on this before I did but this is the first time I've seen him write down that he plans to run for President. I didn't really think he wouldn't because that kind of power is hard to let go of once you get it in your grasp and it costs him nothing to try. Also, I think he really likes campaigning against the slow-witted buffoons the Democratic Party tosses up to run against him and if he has to slag a couple of Republicans along the way, he's OK with that too.

KEPLER RETIRES

Our planet hunting space-based telescope has shot its last frame shortly before it ran out of fuel after 9 and a half years and finding over 2,600 planets beyond our solar system. It was a remarkable achievement for a satellite designed to last just 3.5 years. I love when our space contractors design and fabricate incredible machines like Kepler and our Martian rovers, not to mention the Voyagers. I sure wish the Air Force would hire them and then get the hell out of the way when they design and build the satellites we use in space to study the earth.

A WINTER STORY

Have the global warmist gang ever wondered, “gee, we could completely reverse global warming with a thermonuclear war and the resulting fimbulwinter?”

Probably not. They like to have forever problems and never even try to fix anything.

You will laugh out loud at the Power line pictures of the week. So enjoy.

AMERICA'S CRAPPY ARISTOCRACY

I saw this obit last night and was impressed with how foolish NBC makes itself look whenever it puts it's thoughts down on paper or in pixels. They have most surely fired every single one of their copy editors.

Not every man is surrounded by his wife when he dies. That almost sounds like some barbarous custom from some 3rd world country.

Feb. 7, 2019, 9:18 PM EST
By Rebecca Shabad
Former Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the longest-serving member of Congress who played a key role in many pieces of landmark legislation, has died. He was 92. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer last year. 

"Congressman Dingell died peacefully today at his home in Dearborn, surrounded by his wife Deborah," the office of his wife, Rep. Debbie Dingell, said in a statement. 

"He was a lion of the United States Congress and a loving son, father, husband, grandfather, and friend," the statement said. "He will be remembered for his decades of public service to the people of Southeast Michigan, his razor sharp wit, and a lifetime of dedication to improving the lives of all who walk this earth." 

Dingell first arrived to Congress in 1955, taking over the seat held by his father John Dingell, Sr., who had died earlier that year, and the younger Dingell continued to serve in the House for more than 59 years. He announced in 2014 that he would not seek re-election and instead his wife, Debbie Dingell, ran for his seat and is now serving her third term.

I really despise these House Seats that become fixed in one house and one family. I despised the Kennedy's and all the rest who pass along their status as a representative of the people as some kind of legacy they are allowed to leave to their own family. That's more Roman Empire than a Republic and it doesn't belong in our civilization anymore than nepotism belongs in government hiring.

He sounded like a good man, if a little off the beam on some things, but I urge you to read the entire article. It doesn't take long. It looks like he might have been the last real man in the democratic party.

I MUST HAVE SENSED THIS FROM THE BEGINNING

Just about everybody has read the Harry Potter books except me. I bought them for my daughter and she loved them from a tender age but I never so much as tried to read any of them and I like the genre of the sort of books these purported to be but I just never got into it. I never saw the movies except I sometimes glimpsed a few minutes of them whenever I visited the Exchange at Yongsan Main Post where they were always on all the televisions for sale, year after year after year.

And now I know why.

LONDON, U.K. — In a controversial Tweet this morning, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling revealed that you, the reader, have been gay ever since the release of the best-selling children’s series.

“When writing, I always envisioned the reader as gay,” Rowling wrote. “This has been the case since the first page of Philosopher’s Stone, and as the dictator of canon, what I say is now established lore.”

It's an interesting admission for any author to make to her adoring fans over two decades after penning the first of the books read by millions. I really have no idea why she would feel the need to say it now unless she meant to be malicious.

HOW TIMES CHANGE SO VERY QUICKLY

Saw this at Wirecutter's.



They left out Castle Anthrax.



I can't imagine we'll see films like this again in my lifetime.

A LITTLE LIGHT WEATHER HUMOR

Found at Ace of Spades.  The only news I caught about his appearance was that De Blasio dropped the poor little guy in New York and zoo officials concealed that the drop killed the poor little groundhog. I guess this is what really happened.

CALLING DOCTOR PANGLOSS

It might be time to call for the doctor and read Candide again. Voltaire's joke about a degreed academic looking at the world through particularly stupid glasses is looking more and more prophetic. It's not now that they claim again and again that this is the best of all possible worlds but that they now declaim again and again that we are the worst country in history and the worst people ever. It's really getting old.