SOMETHING FOR VETERANS

As I mentioned earlier, I spent a portion of the day of Christmas Eve in the VA clinic in Metroparkcentralis. I had just had the MRI and was waiting for the Ortho and was sitting in the cafeteria having a late breakfast/early lunch when this lady came up to me and handed me a little paper bag.

This was in it. She gave a little paper bag to everybody in the cafeteria and then she vanished. I know the Church. It means I'll have to head over there soon and give back.

May you all have a very happy new year.

EASY OUT

It looks like President Trump has struck again in the way that only he has employed successfully. I won't mourn the loss of Iraq to islam. They were heading down that road now for a long time and the only way back from that is blood and better theirs than ours. The thing the government of Iraq and our State Department wallahs fail to understand is pretty simple to grasp. If the Iraqi government who this embassy has spent 19 years aiding, fails to assist in repelling the attackers? We will walk away. We may even whistle and dust our hands as we do it. You see, the government of Iraq has an obligation; we have a gravely faltering momentum that has waned to non-existence now and 90% of Americans don't care if Iraq goes totally islamic theocracy. It's no skin off our nose because we don't care anymore.

The Marines we launched out of Kuwait to safeguard the embassy in Bagdhdad are just time killers while the embassy staff burn the dross of 18 years of failure to embrace the overwhelming nihilism of islam. All that stuff needs to burn but you can be sure the State Department fools will fail to burn the files containing the names and addresses of every Iraqi who ever aided the United States of America. It's what they do.

When Iraq's government fails overwhelming to protect the Embassy and the Green Zone, Trump will approve air strikes in direct support of the Embassy Marines and then when we've glassed the zone and massacred the attackers Iraq wouldn't stop, he'll decide enough is enough and we'll leave Iraq to ISIS and Iran and perhaps the new no-fly zone will be, "nothing out of Iraq" and there will be no more air service to or from that dismal Hell on earth.

THE TWENTIES, CLOSER THAN YOU THINK

I like this picture of young rebellion. I vastly prefer them to the current crop of rebellious youth.

I was also reminded that we are coming up on the 20th anniversary of one of the nation's most forgettable wars, The Y2K war came to a resounding fliffle on 1 January 2001. We at SPAWAR struggled mightily in your defense for almost a year to ensure that come January first there would be no news of note other than holiday celebrations that went bad. It wasn't a big problem for me since my program was purely the Inshore Boats of the USN and their only connections with the rest of the world were thoroughly covered by the serried ranks of the GPS boffins and the radios were also the purview of legions of carers who made sure that the radio spectrum would continue unabated as the new decade, century and millennium crashed over us. It goes without saying, we won.

FALLS CAN BE DANGEROUS

I see from Ace that this is a particularly dangerous time of year for falls. They can be far more hazardous than we tend to think. Let's be careful out there.

ON BLOGGING

I've been a little off the game for the last week or so as life collided with me. I'm better now but was really hammered flat for awhile and while I came back into battery mentally the physical was somewhat harder to get back. It all started about 5 years ago when I went and looked at some debris left behind in San Diego. It amounted to some tons of debris and like an idiot I shifted through the wreckage looking for anything I wanted to salvage. It was while looking through all that stuff I tore the hell out of my knee causing it to swell up to roughly twice the size of the other knee. At that point I stopped looking, threw my golf clubs and some uniforms over my shoulder, boarded a plane and came home after turning all the rest over to a friend to get rid of however he wished.

That knee keeps coming back to bite me. The pain and swelling return out of the black without warning and it can be really quite painful and leads to an inability to sleep without disturbing people down the block when I move the leg in response to dream stimuli while I'm sleeping and scream. It doesn't make for restful nights. A plan of action and milestones was called for.

I saw the doctor and they were very very tricky about sussing out what caused the pain. The first one allowed as how it sure did look swollen and asked if it hurt. We had a chat about that. He got the 'attending' who came in, sat down in front of me as I sat there on the table and she touched one finger to just one side of my knee and asked if that hurt. Hell yeah it hurt! Not to be shouted down, she put the finger on the other side of the knee, roughly the same place and asked if that hurt. Hell yeah it hurt. She was touching me, not pushing and it was extremely painful.

Well, you all know what it is but it was news to me. While allowing as how in this case it was pointless they did want to resolve any other issues that might be part of the underlying problem and scheduled me for some x-rays while assuring me that what they suspected was wrong would only show up on an MRI. We did the x-rays and hoped for the best. I really am not fond of surgery. The MRI was done on Christmas Eve and I got the results this morning.

You know what gives one a warm fuzzy? Sliding toe first into an MRI with about 4 pounds of surgical steel holding one of your legs together with 13 increasingly 'iffy' screws. Nobody assured me that this stuff wouldn't come flying out once the magnetic field hit it so I can only assume that they knew it was non-magnetic. I guess they could read that off the manufacturer's label they saw when they examined the x-rays.

I have a visit scheduled with an orthopedist next week to go over things but for me the worst bit is that this thing comes and goes at random. I don't know what sets off each episode every year but whatever it is seems to be accelerating.

Plus I was sick.

Oh, and can't focus my right eye all that well. We'll see what Bates Eye Exercises do for that.

I'll probably drop a lot of posts here over the weekend, maybe, after we get back from the party. I've been taking notes but haven't turned them into words.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

We hope that you all had a Merry Christmas and holiday!

Give a moment or two to remember all those now serving overseas this Christmas and wish them well now and throughout the new year.

THE SELF DESTRUCTION

It is 2 a.m and I haven't ODd on the news of the day yet but I did see that the President boasted today. There is a reason I have El Jefe on my blog roll. It tends to keep me up to date on the 3 year coup as it plays out.

With so called progressives and democrats it really does look like Corbyn in America. President Trump will probably win between 49 and 50 states  in the next election just like Nixon and Reagan. Those guys just don't get it. I hope they never do.

Way back when I last talked on a radio our national assigned callsign was "Landslide" and we called out little boat Overslide.  I'm seeing both of those as very likely and yet you won't hear that from PBS, CBS, NBC or whatever they call themselves at the NYT or WP.

I live here in metroparkcentralis and party with the libprogs and one of the things that struck me tonight was that the libprogs are actually invaders here in these chosen lands. I have to get the book back from my mother (family are the most accomplished book thieves) but I did actually read it and the history of the Firelands and the Western Reserve. These were the historic lands of the people who learned nothing and forgot nothing. The democrats are charging hard down that path that the Greeks and Romans took. Once those civilizations were a light to the darkness and then they decided to re-embrace the darkness. If one thinks back, it was the democratic party that embraced and fought to maintain slavery. I think they're well down the road. Watching Collins school them like Gowdy used to do is amusing.

HOW EXACTLY DO YOU MAKE CEREAL

You put the box near the milk.

It was a wonderful show. I've been told that's too cryptic. Season 3 of The Good Place.

A PARTY

Went to the heart of the city today for a party in a professor's home. I barely knew him or anybody else there and had a great time. I probably spent 2 hours talking about flying with the guy next to me. I haven't flown since I was a student at SWOS in 1984. He is a newish pilot and has @120 hours and is already talking about getting his ATR and instrument rating.

It was a good fascinating chat and we both agreed that only foolish pilots fly at night or over water. OTGH, he flies out of Burke Lakefront Airport so water is in his future. Me? I just used to fly down the beach from Wildwood to Cape May. We both agreed that we'd land in trees before we crashed into water in a Cessna. Nobody walks away from a water landing in a Cessna.

THE MUSIC

I was just looking at Gunsmoke and Knitting and saw that she had up the Ashokan Farewell which I  took away from the Civil War Series by that Shelby guy and whossname. There are pieces of music that are timeless to me. YMMV. Ashokan Farewell is one, Sgt. MacKenzie another. There are a few others I know and treasure. I think music calls to most of us. Then there is Amazing Grace. I can hear a few chords and be lost in revery.....because I'm old. You guys keep your eyes on the road!

Cataracts. I don't feel old enough for those. On the other hand, we went to Akron for a concert and my knee with the loose screw was bugging the hell out of me trying to sit in tiny old theater seats. I'd have been fine if the theater was modern with those power lift comfy stick out your feet things but this place, while unbelievably beautiful didn't have power comfy seats. You didn't have to hear the music, you could feel it.

One of the things I could easily get used to in Ohio, it's where powered flight began and it was home to most of the great industrialists of the 19th and 20th centuries and home to many great theaters, is the music. The municipal fabric those men left behind still shines even after a hundred years and long before the engineers understood acoustics, the architects and builders did.

WELL DUH

SCHOOL

I attempted to read Peggy in the WSJ and found it very hard to do. I think there is a point where Trump Derangement Syndrome goes every bit as crazy as BDS did. Peggy made it over the Rubicon. She might conquer Rome but what's the point? The Goths, Visigoths and Vandals did that long ago. To be honest, nobody cares what a left wing hyperbolist thinks about anything. We're still waiting for them to wake up. Getting 'woke' does not reflect well on one's intelligence or IQ.

THEY NEED TO BE JAILED

REVEALED

The answer came this morning in a call from the hospital. It was my physician's nurse and she was calling to tell me that the 563 X-rays they put my leg through last week have been looked at by either a radiologist or a very highly trained monkey and the answer to the pain in my knee was revealed.

Yes, I'm going to string this out because why not. It's too ridiculous for words. However, let me reveal to you that I was in considerable pain in the right leg about 17 years ago and asked my then father-in-law about it and speaking as a doctor of nuclear medicine who really doesn't like radiologists, he took me in to his hospital and had me X-rayed to see if any of the screws holding that 15 inch plate in my leg had come loose. Not at that time.....

Now? Now they say one screw near the top has come out and is drifting around in there which explains quite a lot of the pain if not the swelling. The knee doesn't bend without considerable pain and mostly it prefers to sit fully extended and man-stretch; if you will. No, it doesn't go wide, it goes straight out in front of me where anybody can trip over it and earns nasty looks from people trying to walk by who don't know that it doesn't bend and just assume I'm being an asshole.

I just went looking online for a book I'm reading now because it turns out that I no longer like paperback books especially ones with really firm spines. I bought it first in 1980 and it's a little long in the tooth but well worth rereading. Lee Correy wrote some good stuff under that name. I was less impressed with the stuff he wrote under his own name. It came out in 1980 and falls well into the yawning gap of copyright malarky. It may not show up on digital format for another 50 years.

To this day I cannot throw in a semicolon without thinking back to how the Exile in Portales used to school us on the proper semicolon employment and grammar. I'll accept that I'll never learn.

PRESENT AT THE CREATION

I was there in a

sense. At no time did I or any other uniformed person think that the war in Afghanistan was winnable. Only idiots thought it was a war and that there was some way to power through and win. None of us were idiots.

We have not been well served by our generals.

A WHOLE DIVISION IS MISSING

When Army can't bring itself to send a whole division. Like we had any of those anymore.

The force deploying from the U.S. mainland will be the equivalent of a heavy division, according to Brig. Gen. Sean Bernabe, G-3 for U.S. Army Europe. The major participating units include soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division, 1st Armored Division, 1st Infantry Division, 3rd Infantry Division and 82nd Airborne Division, according to a slide presented at the Association of the U.S. Army annual gathering Tuesday. “The 1st Cavalry Division will serve as the primary training audience for both a command post exercise and a live wet-gap crossing taking place in Drawsko Pomorskie Training Area in northwestern Poland,” Bernabe said at the panel on Defender 2020. 

Jeebus, the quote even references a powerpoint slide of divisonary. It goes without saying that the missing army divisions in Europe are fully represented by staff and generals at the various NATO Headquarters.

AGAIN WORD

ON THE HOUSE

I too k a lot of time today to listen to the radio on impeachment and then to watch Nadler's committee et al on the topic. I know where I stand on the issue and no amount of testimony would change that and I see that this is so with the House. I'm OK with that. And this is why, by and large, we're an armed country. Whenever the feelings get too inflamed there will be a call to arms. Not by me of course. And the ones first to leap to the megaphone and demand it are also the ones most urgently wishing us to be disarmed.

It went back and forth between men and women of good will and democrats. The tyrants toyed with the truth but then they lost it when they asserted the power of them over the 3rd branch of government and pushed hard on the other branch to uphold them. They assume an authority that they don't have and presume to lecture us to heed them.

I don't think so. YMMV.

WE ARE NOT GOING TO REVEAL

At this point,

GOOD MEN AND TRUE

You can find them everywhere. The Armed Forces are thick with them. You just don't find them in Canada.

My mother always wanted a picture of me in uniform. I held off for obvious reasons. I mean, one could not die or get killed if there was no picture. Needless to say, she found my reasoning specious. I didn't cave but I did have reason to have a picture taken when the Navy decided, in its wisdom, that the only way to prove to a promotion board that one was not fat was a photo in the record of recent vintage. I had my brother do his worst with the hasselblad he loved and you, gentle reader, can still see it to this day, over there, on the right.

One should always be armed. It seems like only yesterday

I FOUND THIS A GOOD MOVIE

I DID IT AND I'M SORRY ALREADY

It was me. I was an LCDR on the NAVCENT staff in Bahrain and I'm the one that broke the uniform code. It was me. I'm sorry. I shared an office with the staff SEAL, the staff EOD and the other MCM guy, a captain. He was way senior to us but a good guy and someone I knew from the Mobile Units. He was in fact, the CO of the little bunch of us that were the Failaka Field Force back in the day, after Desert Storm. He replaced Captain Tom Fridgeon who was also a very good man and first leader of the plucky MCMs sent to serve forever in Bahrain.

 But, as I said. I'm the guy. We cats and dogs (SEALS, EOD and Me) had our own trailer next to the Marine's and down the walk from the MET guys in their trailer. We weren't quite as upscale and near to the throne as the Flag Commander whose trailer was closest to the throne. I was a mobile unit of one. I was titled N361 working with N36 and sharing an office with N37 but unlike them I had one full set of mobile unit equipment in the Banz Warehouse and it needed to be cycled and started if it was to work when called upon. I had no minions so it was up to me to start the generators and run them and then start and drive the 5 tons and deuce and a halfs around the Banz every week and because it could be dirty work, I wore my desert camouflage uniform.

I just wanna say, at least I had an excuse to wear the lightweight breathable suitable for desert climates uniform. I was almost a maintenance tech. So there I am, staff LCDR at NAVCENT HQ wearing the desert khami and before you know it everybody else on the staff, except the N6 bunch, was wearing it too. Even the admiral broke down and wore it.

 Still and all, there's no excuse for this guy. You are a chair commando and you need to dress for it. Nobody with a Pentagon office and official car and driver should wear that uniform.

A LITTLE GROTESQUE

Why did Horowitz need 2 full years to write a report on an investigation that should have been concluded in something under one week? Gonna say that same thing about Durham's report when it comes out. Aye, they're lawyers and bill by the hour but this is just ridiculous. I tend to agree with Al Pacino on this.

FINALLY

The people named should be indicted for crimes, they should be tried and then they should be shot. Why fool around with jail? These people were running a coup and they got caught. To quote the Vogon captain, death's too good for them.

Nothing is ever final in Washington....

All’s well that ends well. Even James Comey was happy, dashing off an oped in the Washington Post touting his and the organization’s vindication. 

Except, within hours of the release of the report, along comes U.S. Attorney John Durham—who has been investigating much of the same territory but with a wider berth and prosecutorial powers— to spoil the occasion: 

“Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened,” 

Predication is, of course, the heart of the matter. Just why did the FBI open an investigation of Trump-Russia collusion that proved, after nearly two years, to be non-existent? Was there real justification somewhere, no matter how obscure, as the IG suggests, or was it a set-up, as implied in Lee Smith’s recent “The Plot Against the President”?

BLACK IS WHITE

Saw this in an article about the recent Supreme Court nothingburger. They decided to let stand a 6th Court decision and not take it up.

“This law is not only unconstitutional, but as leading medical experts and ethicists explained, deeply unethical. We are extremely disappointed that the Supreme Court will allow this blatant violation of the First Amendment and fundamental medical ethics to stand.”

I never really comment here about the triggers in America. We are all adults. This time, it is worth it just to show how far divorced from reality some people are. Read the quote above. Ethicists, whatever they are, agree that it's OK to slaughter the innocent. Oddly, that doesn't happen in a truly ethical world.

Words have meaning. They are the meaning. Ethical in that context? I don't think so.

NOW THAT I'M HERE

I should really take in a game.

HOODIE

I've reached the point where I think that anybody wearing a hoodie should be shot on sight.

HEADS NEED TO ROLL

The Navy is suffering from a rather severe leadership catastrophe and it seems to be accelerating in the wrong direction as it tears apart the Navy.  If this story is true the Navy needs to sack the senior watch officer, the duty section leader, the CO and the XO of the boat.

US Navy identifies sailor who killed 2 civilians at Hawaii base. MMFA Romero, 22, was said to be dissatisfied with his leadership, was undergoing counseling, and had a history of non-judicial punishment. 

He used his service pistol and rifle in the attack, which he was authorized to carry while providing security for the Columbia.

I have trouble believing that the submarine in question was stupid enough to give weapons to a man like Romero. You're supposed to know exactly who you can and who you won't ever issue weapons to and I don't like the thought that one of the latter category was even assigned to a submarine.

The leader's job is to keep an eye on the young and possibly crazy, not give them weapons. I'll be honest, I've served as senior watch officer and had no problem arming two sailors disciplined by an idiot at captain's mast but I had good reason to think they weren't going to kill anybody that didn't need killing. In Columbia's case, I don't think they had any right to assume that of a 22 year old loser.

God only knows what happened at Pensacola but it doesn't look good at all.

ON THE BORDER

I was reading an article about the inability to free a slave and this came to mind.

ON BROWSERS AND BLOGS

I hope you'll forgive the lapses of late in blog posting and replying. I lost everything Chrome when my Chrome browser was snapped up by some evil denizen of the net and while it's all backed up with Apple's Time Machine I haven't bothered to put it back to what it was. I wiped it all and reloaded just Chrome Browser and decided to build up from new there. It's kind of a relief getting out from under 22,300,642 bookmarks. Plus I tore one of the tendons in my knee, the power is on the blink in the kitchen, dining room and basement, I've got some painting to do and we're having guests to dinner tomorrow, going out with family on Saturday and hosting a dinner party on Sunday. Busy busy. One of the problems with my new browser, Brave, is that it doesn't recognize me and refuses to keep my identity up front where it can be seen when I comment on the brilliant and erudite blogs of others or even when I comment on my own blog. Brave has many other features I value so I'm sticking with it but it does mean I have to kickstart Chrome back to life every time I want to make a comment anywhere as me.

A SIMPLE MESSAGE

I thought it was time for a repost of one of my favorite stories. When I got back from my first deployment I attended the guided missile school in Damneck, VA where the CO had a policy that every person that reported aboard be issued a little paperback copy of a booklet by Elbert Hubbard. It made a very simple point very effectively.

You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office—six clerks are
within your call. Summon any one and make this request: “Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Corregio.”
Will the clerk quietly say, “Yes, sir,” and go do the task? 

On your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye, and ask one or more of
the following questions: 

Who was he?
Which encyclopedia?
Where is the encyclopedia?
Was I hired for that?
Don’t you mean Bismarck?
What’s the matter with Charlie doing it?
Is he dead?
Is there any hurry?
Shan’t I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself?
What do you want to know for? 

And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the 2 other clerks to help him find Garcia - and then come back and tell you there is no such man. 

Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average, I will not.
Now if you are wise you will not bother to explain to your “assistant” that Corregio is
indexed under the C’s, not in the K’s, but you will smile sweetly and say, “Never mind,” and go look it up yourself. And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift, are the things that put pure socialism so far into the future. If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all? 

A first mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting “the bounce”
Saturday night holds many a worker in his place.
Advertise for a stenographer, and nine times out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate - and do not think it necessary to.
Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?

We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the “down-trodden denizen of the sweat shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employment,” and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power. 

Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to
get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long patient striving with “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned. In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues, only if times are hard and work is scarce, this sorting is done finer - but out and forever out, the incompetent and unworthy go. 

It is the survival of the fittest. self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best-those who can carry a message to Garcia.

And with that self-interest came pay raises as the usefulness of the employee grew and his or her value increased to the employer. The governments have been doing their damned worst to sever any connection between the labor value cost and the cost of labor.

Nothing about socialism has changed in the 120 years since Hubbard sat down one night and penned this little story. I see that our military intelligence professionals poo-poo the whole notion of a Rowan in the modern digital age and yet what they miss is that it applies equally well today. They imagine that since the digital realm didn't exist in 1899, that it therefore all lies outside the scope of what Hubbard intended when he wrote it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So you come to the Essential Man Theory of Everything. The weak ones won't. Nothing will motivate them to exert themselves. As with any endeavor, 75% of the organization won't be pro-active unless you light a fire under them. 

You now face the dilemma of most leaders. There's a guy you know. He could do it. He could tear into the guts of the machine and he could give you not just an answer, he could fix it. He's the guy you go to. 

He's a good man to have. You are truly blessed to have such a man who is willing to use the training and knowledge he has to solve your problem. Of course, if you go to him too often? He's going to reconsider the deal unless you sweeten the pot. You've also found yourself in the trap of the essential man. You need to get beyond this one guy.

In an ideal world you work in an environment stuffed with good people like this and never even think about it. I'm here to tell you that the rest of the world isn't like that and too frequently we get the guy who says it's not his problem.

I know which one I'd hire were I in the business of hiring. I'd hire the ones that know how to read, how to do basic math and make change for a $20.00. I'd hire the ones that pulled their pants up and knew what a belt was for and I'd hire the ones with a pleasing voice and personality. I'd hire the ones that didn't come with a sense of personal entitlement the size of the Hindenburg. While I'm willing to take on just about anybody and did, I preferred the ones like the young Andrew Carnegie.

IT NEVER STOPS

There is chat on the chat networks on the darkside about how just about every horrible person one can think of was a frequent flyer on the lolita express and a frequent visitor at Epstein's various underage brothels. No sane person thinks Epstein killed himself and there is a lot of room to doubt that his Deutche banker did earlier this year.

It's always amusing to me to see how the low level enablers of the Left seem to commit suicide or die suddenly and suspiciously at something like 150X the ordinary rate. A simple list of the Clinton's suicide connections is worth a review.

The compiled list of victims of Clintons grows longer every year. We can add the names of the nearly departed soon. I could have sworn Donna Brazile wouldn't have made it out of 2017 alive. One can contrast their list of victims with Trump's or just about anybody who isn't a member of a Mexican drug cartel. The left have always traded in lives for power. Nothing about that has changed since 1917.

LIKE THE POPES OF OLD

The democratic party really is a gigantic fraud perpetuated on the people, for the people by the peepul. A long time ago the Pope used to die and his son would get the job. For a celibate prelate, they had an infinite number of 'nephews' to call upon to serve as cardinals, etc. With the democratic party it is usually the blessed widow who bravely steps up to assume the family throne in Congress.

I'm a little tired of it to be honest.