MISSING TOP GEAR

It's funny. I don't remember this episode at all.



It was a wonderful show. I sometimes wonder if the BBC execs really thought that May and Hammond would stick around after the BBC fired Clarkson. If they did they were really very stupid and ill advised.

RENT FREE

It's kind of amusing to watch President Trump use a few lines of twitter prose to live rent free in the heads of every democrat, every media outlet, every SJW and snowflake in the land. I read an item last week about how his spokeswoman is incompetent or something because she doesn't stand up every day in front of the media to answer dumb and vicious questions from the White House press corps and I asked myself, "why should she?" She doesn't have to contribute anything at all to explain or justify anything that happens in and around the White House. As director of communications her job may just boil down to target selection and then pointing the President's twitter at it.

The Twits running twitter must be pulling their hair out, screaming and rolling around on the ground in agony as they see a master manipulate the press, the pundits, the snowflakes, the democrats and politicians everywhere with just a few well chosen words.

Covfefe anyone?

Maybe next we'll talk about the Commandant's new amphibious policy which makes an awful lot of sense to me. Those big amphibious ships are about as helpless before the onslaught of a missile storm as the media and democrats are against President Trump's twitter feed.

WHO YA GONNA CALL?

I came across New York Post item while reading a different story about conman Al Sharpton. I hadn't seen any reference to it elsewhere. Thugs basically dumped buckets of water on the heads of police officers in New York City as they arrested one person and while they were walking away and the usual diversity crowd was there to jeer and scream abuse.



The images/movie look very bad and anybody who watches it must wonder to themselves, 'why would I call these usual clowns that cannot even protect themselves?' "What would they be able to do for me even if I did call for them?"

THE NEW INTEL RUBBER ROOM

I remember reading several articles about the New York City schools and their complete inability to fire any teachers because of their union contracts which essentially forbade the administration from firing any teacher for any crime short of murder and even then, it probably had to be murder with exceptional circumstances. As a result the city school administrators turned up with the idea of rubber rooms where worthless and useless teachers were sent everyday for the full duration of the school day and where they had zero interaction with children. They couldn't be fired but they could be corralled, contained and kept from doing any more harm.

With President President Trump firing the National Director of Intelligence, I see the possibility of just such rubber rooms coming into effect in the various organs of national intelligence at every agency under the NDI ranging from the NSA to the CIA and who knows, maybe even to the State Department's little intel cell.

As many of you know, it is just about impossible to fire any civil servant unless they're found guilty of murder and even there I think there are still civil servants in jail that are still drawing their full pay and allowances. If I was the new NDI I would take all the useless, lying, conniving, scheming dirty rats and give them an ultimatum. It might run along the lines of, "produce every document you have worked on for the last 5 years, turn over your undamaged cell phones, laptops, computer drives and any other electronic media you have used during that time and include all your text messages and email files including the ones you don't think I know about. You have until next Monday. If they're not on my desk by next Monday, you will be relieved of your duties and the civil service will start processing you for termination."

The termination process takes months to years so while that's dragging on they are entitled to their full salary and allowances but there's no reason to keep such talent idling in Washington, DC while they await their fate so I'd order them to our embassy in Tripoli to assist the staff there with threat assessments while they wait for the decision of the civil service. I'm sure they'd be welcomed with open arms by the staff. It could be just like that wonderful story about wikileaks founder Julian Assange who spent 5 years living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

As a matter of fact, anybody involved in hiring those thieving clowns who stole all that data should probably be sent to Libya to 'serve' while they await termination from the civil service and with them should also go all the people involved in covering up the theft and the OPM clowns that signed off on their security clearances.

Voila! A start on draining the swamp.

ARMY BORESITED ON THE ENEMY

I think it's amusing that whenever I see the Army pull out its artillery at either Fort Myer or the Pentagon, the guns are always aimed at Washington DC. I wonder if any of the dignitaries from Congress who take part in the ceremonies ever observe where the guns are pointed.

NOWADAYS THEY RUN AWAY

This is from a fairly famous poem by a lesser known author. It dates back to when the audience had some familiarity with history and people actually fought for their civilization and didn't run away and pretend to be refugees.

To be honest, the Captain of the gate would have a place anywhere of honor. Some of you see them today at the VFW.

Watching the debacle as the royal navy intercepts a tanker near Gibralter and watching the Persian Empire retaliate by taking two Britishish tankers knowing that England isn't the power it once was but still appears to think it is: priceless. Short of nuclear weapons, everything that Britain could throw at Persia would perish in a short while. Most people think of Persia as 3rd world state. It isn't.

Give the British ruling class extra marbles for a forlorn hope but take away the marbles for their failure to realize that the Royal Navy is a shadow of what it was in the Falklands War or in the centuries before. There is no there, there. The mullahs have masked and largely negated the power of that people but it is still there and let us just say, it is steeped in conquest and evil.

More anon. It's a subject worth exploring.

BOLO MK 1

Wow! and there's a family connection too. The Army really is rolling out the first bolo.  It's time to be afraid. I think Laumer trusted the people to do the right thing with autonomous weapons but after my  experience with these, me? Not so much. Every night my father would come home with not one, but two briefcases of crap he had to read and respond to about fielding the M2 and M3 Bradley. A lot of it boiled down to an idiot Air Force Colonel in the Pentagon who thought it was a tank and a bunch of other people who thought it was too big, too small, too little firepower, too much firepower, weighed too much, couldn't float, etc. Hell, they made a movie. It's been doing its Army thing now for 38 years and if there is a planned replacement I haven't read about it.

BOLO MK 1

Some day I'll tell you about being an acquisition professional and Program Manager buying patrol boats for the Navy. You would think that would be easy and you would wonder, where did the acquisition professional community go wrong. I can tell you.

What the old man saw was what any Army guy saw; the best was the enemy of good enough. Once you finally get the thing into production and rolling off the assembly line you can fine tune it but the first goal is to get the thing into production. The system is set up to allow the user to complain or offer suggested improvements. It's not like the Navy's worthless LCS paddleboats where there was absolutely no fleet input for over 15 years.

DID YOU EVER

Did you ever see an ugly weather girl on the news?

IDIOSYNCHRATIC

I'm quite enjoying watching Sharpe of the Rifles. I really enjoy that he has fought his way over Portugal, Spain and France without losing a single button off his hundred button uniform. I couldn't cross the street without losing a button off one of mine. I like how they keep the show in an order I can enjoy. One of the very very few instances where I read the books before seeing the film and somehow the film carries the same gravitas as the books and I like the both.

Bit of a quandary. Go out and buy all the books again or go for the DVD collection.......

IT IS A LITTLE HARD

With things like the EU parliament it's hard not to see them step inexorably into 1913. As I said I don't plan to visit the old ones but I might have visited the new ones. With what Merkel and her ilk did, it's going to to be really unpretty. What the north did will bring a rendezvous in human destruction when the rest figure it out. They made a mistake that they cannot recover from.

As usual, those useless bastards will turn to us to help them out and this time, not going to happen.

THE ACTUAL RETURN OF OLD POLITICS

He nailed it. The names he mentions are the only ones the media notices and they love them. I can only see a handful in the south or midwest voting for democrats for another generation. The democrat and 'progressives' love for antifa and the rest of the hate crime in this country pretty much poisoned the well.

I'd say too bad but then, I don't like them, I don't like their policy, I don't like their economic suicide plans and I just don't much care for them personally. It says just about everything about a culture when the most rabid losers all swarm into cities built by other people, take them over, run them into the ground, steal the pensions of the city workers and then leave town claiming victory and run for President.

What I like about this president as with Reagan is the glib and intelligent way they can speak candidly on a dime. I think obama went 3 or 4 years without holding a single press conference because he is about as smart as a brick. Trump wades into them, levies broadsides, strolls out of them and we have such a polluted media culture that all they can do is carp about what he didn't say.

THE OTHER BAD NEWS

Sure and certain of my commission and future employment, I read this entire series in college along with every other thing Sir Charles Oman wrote.

To be honest his offering here was not the best of his writing but then, the authors divvied up history between them and you know how that can be. He wrote spectacularly good history. Up there with Thucydides.

Short of losing the Sovereign, it's odd how much political history doesn't change all that much from generation to generation. I'm sure some famous Greek or Roman wrote about it. It would be my luck if it was Juvenal.

I URGE YOU TO RECONSIDER

I learned how to kill Soviet hardware. Kill it all was the mantra we breathed. "Oh go and kill some of the green things in the garden," she said and it almost sounds like a plan. Of course, to me, they're all green. I will take a mower to the garden without remorse but it doesn't feel quite right. She wanted some of them to live. She, for some reason, still believes I know which ones.

The Green thumb is not an inheritable trait. Two of my great grandfathers were great nursery men who supplied the grand estates in the Hudson Valley and NYC with plants and green things. They owned plant farms. Not one iota of that rubbed off on me. I inherited the military stuff from the other side. Point me at a gardening problem and I'll ask for a flamethrower.

It is taking her awhile to figure that out. We'll have plenty of daylight when we get home tonight. I'm OK with killing plants but I'm gonna need some terminal guidance on which ones need to be destroyed. Sheesh, fall in love with a biologist.

HEADLINE WRITERS IN THE MEDIA

Hey dumb dumb, I used to fly with an underage girl too. She is cute and smart. Although she did vomit all over me when she was 2. You guys need to work on your word craft skills because you suck at it.

They couldn't bring themselves to say what was really going on because he's one of them and they don't out each other unless it's painfully obvious that guilt isn't just assumed, it's practically hereditary and tattooed on the face. I'm pretty sure any one of us could eat a handful of iron filings and puke a better press and news service than what we have today.

srsly it took you guys 14 years to notice?

A MINOR INCIDENT

I see that we are about to get a new ambassador to the Untied States from our famous friend and ally Great Britain. It seems that the existing ambassador was reputedly a trifle undiplomatic in his descriptions of the President of the United States. It seems somebody leaked some of his candid remarks found in diplomatic cables. I remember reading those for a year because for some reason COMUSNAVCENT was copied on every single dispatch from countries in the region and so we got to know a lot more about idiotic things than we wanted. Some of our ambassadors could be brutal in describing things in the countries the US stuck them in. If you labor under the illusion that our foriegn service and things like ambassadors are pleasant people with a mission to civilize, you'd be very wrong. I'm grateful I was out before Obama and Clinton took the jobs. I can only imagine how hideous that kind of job would be whilst working for the likes of them.

SOMETIMES, NOT OFTEN

She comes u[ o me in an non waking state and she touches my arm. It takes a while to get here. One tends to go into memory. That's what my books are for. The other books are special.  I could not do them ever. I draw with words and she draws wtih pictures. I need to look at quarry now. It's somewhere on the planet. I'll find it.

and oh, I meant to do that. I write this thing for an olderish girl now who will never see it. I leak hope like a rusty submarine. I'll stop when it fills with water. Till then? I can hope.

Because, Huntsville, the mall at the end of the road.

I WANT ONE OF THOSE

I WAS THERE

Even 40 years ago it was a corny song. OTOH, I was there back then and met and married in that city back then. I'm a 30+ navy man, son of a 30+ army man and I lived all over the US. I've lived everywhere but I still call this place 'the city'. And no, I lived 18 miles from New York City and I never refer to New York as the city. There was only one and no, it wasn't Topeka or Oklahoma City.

As with Paris and even London, I don't plan to go back. The City I remember is gone but good God was it good when it was there. I would BART over just to sit on the sidewalk cafe in Union Square to watch the women dressed to the nines walk by. I didn't really want one of them but God it was nice to sit there in the shade and watch them parade. There is nothing like it in metroparkcentralis.

ALMOST A STATE OF GRACE

I pontificate on just about everything. No subject is safe from me. I will happily opine about any damned thing. Mostly, I have to admit, you are spared but this time it was ineffable. The judges have been jumping off the shallow end head first for a little too long. They need to slow down and consider that what they feel isn't necessarily what the law is. You understand. In a Republic, the people have a right to say what it is and it isn't an almost but not quite right that some shallow bastard in a black robe can set aside on a whim.

It is probably time to invest in tar and feathers again.

Srsly, I spare you all a lot.

THE DEPLORABLES ON PARADE TODAY

Today is the day when the nation, roughly 49% of it, celebrates our independence day. On this day in 1776 the Continental Congress published the Declaration of Independence and told the world that we were prepared to make any sacrifice, pay any price for our freedom from Britain. It's worth a look for those who have never read the document.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

What they promised, they delivered, at a terrible personal and national cost. I can't imagine that those 13 states could agree on anything today. It is good that they acted when they did or they'd have been stabbed in the back by the ignorant fools that sway so much of American thought and public opinion today.

Happy Independence Day America!

IT'S STILL NOT A TANK

The President told the Army to send tanks to the Mall in Washington DC for the 4th of July. Instead, the Army sent a pair of Bradley Fighting Vehicles. They're still not tanks. They were not designed as tanks, they were not fielded as tanks and they are not tanks. They're most definitely tank killers but still, not tanks.

Bradley Fighting Vehicle

Still not a Tank

President Trump would be justified in firing the Secretary of Defense, Army Secretary and CoS Army at this umbrage. Be serious, all of us know we have just one kind of tank, the M1. That's a tank. The sad fact that the Army can't pony up a single M1 to send to the national mall for a parade on the 4th of July is worse than sad. It's outrageous.

We dumped tanks off the Carolina coast to make reefs after the first Gulf War. Hundreds of tanks went into the ocean for no particular good reason. The 4th Infantry Regiment could use a half dozen tanks. Perhaps the Army could find a few before they feed them to the ocean and set them up with the horses and the Old Guard at Fort Myer.

DESTROYING THE U.S. LEGAL SYSTEM

The judges are destroying the United States legal system one lousy judge at a time. A single judge in Washington State has decided U.S. immigration policy all by herself and sets herself at odds with the Constitution and the elected Representatives of the States. She has determined that only she can speak for illegal aliens and represent their 'rights' to America and order that the  President rein in the various organs of the Executive Branch.

The Supreme Court really needs to act now to prevent the President from simply deciding to ignore the judges beneath them. The Supreme Court either reins in their judges or they can expect the Executive Branch to order them to drop whatever they are doing to act immediately to control the excesses of the lower courts.

Given the proclivities of the country and the outrage of the left/liberal/progressives who find violence is justified by their feelings about anything, I'm surprised more judges haven't simply been shot or milkshaked to death. The pure violence and hate expressed by the left is well into the phases the later revolution in France experienced and while it will be nice to see them start to purge each other, I would prefer that they do that before they start by trying to purge people like me.

We need to end the days when a single crummy judge can stand national policy on its ear and order it stopped.