ALL OVER THE MAP

When I was 10 I read Exodus by Leon Uris. I've never read any of his other books. At the age of ten it generated a world view I found productive. Every single one of the screaming raging fanatics since then have their place neatly catalogued in my mind.

I would like to write that antifa and blm have their hate filled bs from a book but I don't know what book. If it exists? I won't be reading it. 

I'm gonna go with the pizza conspiracy guys and say that we have an enemy out there who is determined to bring down western civilization.

It won't work since there is a solid cadre of places it simply won't work but there might be an interregnum here. If so I find that OK with me. What none of the ones bringing down an interregnum realize is that they will be the first against the wall. 

It's a sad thing when you realize that the dark will rise and you really can't do anything to stop it. Historically, in the West, it has always failed but the dark has truly prevailed in muslim countries. They don't tolerate dissent.

When you finally know what islam is you start to begin to know. It kept almost half the world in a dark that will never see the light. There are the 5 pillars and the rest is banished. It is impossible to make a civilized world if one banishes those that wonder.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the middle kingdom because they do their best to banish learning but they are enormous and hold vast sway over the most productive part of the world. The engine of their economy is the impetus of many economies near them. They also send their brightest into the West to learn at our universities.

We will see.

A NEW VIEW

I didn't really grow up with religion. We did Sunday services for a few years when my folks were trying raise us right but then we stopped until about 20 years later when he retired and my mother joined a church. Became a deacon, whatever that is.

I was tempted to join churches several times in my life. I did attend one for a couple of years only to find divorce in the end of that imbroglio.

I sought out a minister of God a couple of times in my life. I'm glad we have them.

That said, it looks like the mainstream churches destroyed themselves; the Catholics with pedophile priests they refuse to punish or make accountable and the mainstream protestant churches by their endless desire to give in to whatever moral depravity is the rule of the day. I wouldn't be caught dead in a church today.

On the other hand, I can count the number of times I appeared in church in my first 18 years on the finger of one hand. As a teen I was utterly smitten by a chaplain's daughter. It happened again when I was a LT, all without ever visiting any church.

Some say that we are reaching the end of history. It might be so. As a student of history I know what drove it forward through the ages even if it sometimes took a step or two back. It wasn't some stupid myth about democracy, limited government, economic vitalism. It all boiled down to just one thing.

I live in what the coastal twatwaffles call middle america as if it's the last remaining slur in america that they allow anybody to use. There's a church at the end of the street but across the street there is a large elementary school, a large middle school and the town's only high school. There is another church not that far away and more beyond them but one of the things I first noticed when I moved here was the utterly magnificent churches/cathredrals built by the immigrants that made middle america the arsenal of democracy.  All of those people? Gone. None are left beyond a few Greeks. The magnificent churches are shuttered or repurposed.

The Church did that in about a century after 2000 years of holding the line and avowing to what was right, decent, moral and Godly. They stopped doing that about the time I was born and without the moral compass they used to have they mostly withered and died. The new churches seem to thrive but all the old religions have drained away in a sea of indifference and death.

I read about the new ministers of George Washington's parish church, a church he drove 10 miles to every Sunday in his carriage to attend service along with Martha where new priestesses decided to dishonor everything about the church, it's history and sunder its history by throwing it all away under the domination of its new focus on social justice and feminism.

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods."^[4]

Haul down the bridge, Sir Consul,
With all the speed ye may;
I, with two more to help me,
Will hold the foe in play.
In yon strait path a thousand
May well be stopped by three.
Now who will stand on either hand,
And keep the bridge with me?

When you read history and you can quote Horatius at the Gate and you know just what the church brought about both good and ill it still seems to hurt that they are almost entirely gone even here in middle america. The fabric remains but the soul has left the building.

From timewaster. The fabric of an almost but not quite Techno civilization.  Nobody today would know a Roman God if it bit him on the ass. It won't be long before the modern churches can say the samei

1. Roman villa mosaic found beneath vineyard in Negrar, Italy.

At a certain point they were building for the ages but mostly I think they built what they liked.

OTHER THINGS I FIND AMUSING

I'm currently coping with a vision problem. I've had them since forever but only learned that I had a real problem when I was busted in Algebra class by the teacher convinced that I was mocking her. It was a different time and Alabama but I was sent to the principal's office and my mother was summoned to take me away. Duckface Davis was convinced I was making sport of her by using the tricks I'd learned to be able to actually see what was written on the chalkboard behind her. At any rate, I just saw this online and thought it was a marvelous bit of idiocy.

Who exactly would combine the use of inches and centimeters and not think it is stupid? Pick one or the other and be done with it.

SOMETIMES

Sometimes you see something and it makes you laugh out loud. Ran across this tonight....

This about a war that happened over 3000 years ago but was well documented.

NEITHER CONFIRM OR DENY

I was looking back and reading what I wrote and it called to mind the old days when we would neither confirm or deny if we had nuclear weapons. It is a peace of history (sic) that our answer to an enormous threat we could not beat was to arm our ships with nuclear tipped missiles. The terrier BTN was scrapped long before we got rid of ASROC. We used to have two person integrity in two places on our warships. I seldom went to the ASROC magazine. Nobody else could get into Radio and the vault was sealed even to me. The commo was the other custodian and he had the vault door combo and I had the ones for all the safes inside. There was a third layer. Some of the safes had interior safes.

One of the reasons I'd let that dirtbag out of prison if he is still alive is I'm pretty sure reading our radio traffic convinced the Soviet Union to stop. They beat the shit out of Germany from a cold standing start and I'm pretty sure they thought they could beat us too until they started to read our most secret conversations.

Individually the ships weren't that unbeatable. My job as FCO wakened me to the fact that  if any of the Russian ships cut loose first we would be dead. After seeing them demo their new series of missiles from the Black Sea fleet, I would take them very seriously indeed. 1200 miles to fly and kill an enemy of the new tsar is a remarkable performance and not one we can match at sea. It's not a Pershing II but then we never went to sea with Pershing II.

Our fleets, such as they are, have largely been defanged. I can't remember who said it but it was probably Heinlein, "if anybody had done to us our current education system it would be construed as enemy action. Vern Clark and his ilk defanged our Navy and with the sole exception, it is now, largely harmless. That tiny exception is still on patrol.

Let it never be another eternal patrol.

I FORGOT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svitEEpI07E

I THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE THE CASE

The navy is avoiding the complications of what it wrought at home. Which is a pity because it will happen again and again and again. And no I don't know anything about the sailor, not even his name but the point I was making was that we give berth and safe harbor to our enemies and we'll grow to regret it.

I figured a sailor burnt the ship. It's a terribly easy thing to do.

It's one of the reasons I don't mind not flying anymore. If you board a plane at the cost of your life and pocket change wouldn't you like to know if Muhammed Muhammed al Muhammed was not the pilot? No airline ever shared that information and they won't now. You just shut up and put your skinny ass in our teeny seats and say and do nothing that could be a micro aggression.

I have nowhere to go and no need to travel anymore.

Which is why I drive or take the train.

I don't plan on flying ever again.

SOMETHING TO BE SAID FOR SCARY LOOKING SHIPS

We used to have them.

FOR THE FIRST TIME

I truly don't care what the news of the day brings.

I used to care. The small wars were my wars. Long after I left that realm I still followed the news. Today was like a whole new day. I honestly don't give a damn about the news. I literally could not care less.

TITLED IN THE MIST

As seen on various blogs but I wanted to add my own because I totally agree. Scott knows all the words I learned as an 8 year old kid picking up paper and Playboy magazines back in the day. Do we even have paper drives anymore?

IT WAS A GIFT

I cannot bring myself to pay $14.00 for a new blank book to continue the writing. Moleskine wants more for a blank book than Tom Clancy wanted for Red October. I don't think so. Buy or buy not. I know which way I'm trending. As my dad kept his I kept all my green wheenies up until I had the fire sale. Somebody gave me the blank book of moles but I didn't write down who. Isn't that typical?

THE NAZI ELITE

Yes, you saw it here at CNN, a so called news doodaa. Damn those students retuning to campus.

And yeah, I dislike the stern hand of the nazi guiding the university on it's path down draconian.

SHOOT SHOOT LOOK SHOOT

No it's not a line from Denny Crane. It was what we were taught at RIM7 school at Dam Neck back in the days when the RIM7H was king of the destroyers and all the worthwhile ships had them until they were replaced by RIM7M. I wanted a real missile but that was all they had when we went into the yards and Raytheon Fountain Valley sent up the thugs and thieves to install it. It was new and shiny and then a drunk high crane operator pulling a skip off the ship using, oddly enough, a crane, managed to smash the brand new missile launcher and that was pretty much it. In spite of the thugs and thieves from Raytheon Fountain Valley, we got it to work and did the impossible. We didn't merely shoot down the drone virtually. We made skin to skin kill on the damned BQM-37. In one of my less memorable pre-shoot at shit talks to the CO and officers in the wardroom I specifically admonished them all to under no circumstances attempt to pick up any drones because hypergolic fluieds and shit. Naturally when the missile killed the drone the CO, OPS and First LT were all over hysterical about recovering the drone. It was the longest year and a half in my life.

Why did they instruct us to shoot shoot look shoot I hear you asking. Well, the missiles weren't all that good. About 47% of them never made it off the rail so you shoot two hoping one leaves the nest and then you look around and see if it actually hit what you shot it at and shoot another one, just for the hell of it.

My dad used to go out to lunch with senior navy guys who told him what naval aviation did back during the war. What they said is if you want a sea story, you'd shoot a sparrow missile at the Mig. If you wanted to kill it you shot it with a sidewinder. I had nothing but sparrows. Still, I did manage to kill a hard charging drone with one. I told the drone guys at PMR to shoot at us just as fast as possible. Doppler fire control, it needed some speed if it was going to hit anything.

TWO TIMES

It's wroth reading.

and yes, i wrote wroth.

https://www.takimag.com/article/the-good-fights/

srsly worth reading.

When I first began learning about the Greeks—my great-uncle was the foremost intellectual of his time and a brilliant pedagogue—I was mystified by the collapse of Athens and Sparta. Athens under Pericles reached its cultural peak, Western man was born, whereas in Sparta the martial state came into being. No state before or after has even come close to matching the martial readiness and spirit of my grandmother’s birthplace. Just imagine what those two, Athens and Sparta, could have accomplished together, but it was yet another Greek who managed it—conquered the known world, that is.

OH AND ANOTHER THING

Sarge has a delightful grandbaby. You should stop over and say hi there!

THERE, I SAID IT

Sitting out in the sun under an umbrella at a place masking desperately I was witness to the baby effect. Toddler-in-arms at some point tossed the entire fruit cup on the ground. As they were getting up to leave the dad got down and cleaned it up. Yep, I said it, "that is so white" but you know what? I'd have done that same thing.

"They" say there is racism. "They" don't actually understand what is going on when "THEY" say that. "They" never read Kant On the Beautiful and Sublime. That's OK, most people have not read it either. Traits, national characteristics. In that essay he captured an eternal truth. It's a largely unspoken truth these days but it's as true now as it ever was.

Just sayin and yes dammit, the radio was tuned to npr after I dropped her off at the uni and drove  home.

HOW THE NAMES WORK

How did I reach this ripe old age and never hear of Leanard Cohen? Well I've heard of him now. God, isn't it nice to pay no mind at all to the pronouns of people who don't have a clue if they are boys or girls....Yes it is.



One of the girls I sailed with at Penn State was a Marianne. My oldest friend's wife is named Marianne. Other than that they were scarce. Still, I know a girl whose secret name is Sabrina just because her dad liked it and those idiots brought the paperwork into the hospital room when whossname was sleeping it off and I somebody got to choose a middle name all by himself. We wrangled endlessly about Scooter's name but somehow never took it to the next, which is to say, the middle name.

You ever wonder that you seldom meet girls whose middle name is 'Shotgun?'

Ah well, most men know that they must sleep and all kinds of horrible things can happen in the dark. Restraint would be our middle name but we just agreed that some limits should be observed.

I'm probably the last generation of those that had parents prepped to name the newborn with a full set of boy names and girl names. 1961 was kind of the last gasp of mystery. Nowadays, we know way up ahead of time. We were working on Scooter's names after the first ultrasound and there was no doubt about which book we should reference since she was clearly going to be a little girl.

LOST

It's the New York Times so they never just come out and say it but here's a little clue. If you sail beyond the friendly horizon and go out into the deep water without any navigation tools, you are lost. Why they choose to perpetuate the myth that this guy had ducklike position location spells is beyond me. One of the last wonders of the world is that if one sails east to west or west to east, eventually one will find oneself on some continent or other. All one must do is endeavor to persevere.

In 1943, he earned a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the New Jersey State Teachers College at Glassboro, as Glassboro State was then known. After working as a schoolteacher and principal in Alloway Township, N.J., he earned a master’s in educational administration from the University of Pennsylvania.

Well, perhaps that says it all. Did he set out for a 3 hour sail or was it by design that he got lost for 513 days?

WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT

How many middle America homes have a nazi flag in them? I was just watching the PBS decade of the lead up to to the War and it struck me that the nazis had millions of nazi flags for their shit. I'm willing to bet a lot of our soldiers brought them home as souvenirs. A hard fought for, in many cases, souvenir. So there they are mouldering in a trunk up in the attic or a footlocker down in basement. You might see the same thing with Imperial Japanese flags or the various flags of the little wars after the Great War V.II.

So far as I know, there are none here. I certainly didn't bring any.

On that note, I remember going through the basic Surface Warfare Officers School in Newport and hearing about an Ensign that was sentenced at a court martial because he had stolen a Greek flag. Imagine my surprise after moving into my stateroom on the luxurious flagship of the Middle East Force and finding a 20' Greek flag on top of one of the lockers.  That ship had certainly passed through Hellenic waters while returning from a year in the Philly shipyards, to resume duties as flagship in the Middle East and perhaps that flag was part of the apocryphal story told to us all back at SWOS. Who knows?

I traded it to the MPA of Greek heritage because he wanted it and it meant nothing to me. I was still decades away from seeing My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

THEY CEDED THE CITIES TO THE MOB

The powers that were elected and enthroned in the cities have all ceded their cities to the mobs. The mobs are small and any decent police force worthy of the name could have ended the riots in 2 days but the citizens elected squishes of the left and so ceded their cities to the mob. The mob can have them.

Bonaparte knew how to deal with the mob. He knew he could use cannons on them and the citizens left would care nothing for those blown apart on the ramparts just as nobody cares if every single member of anti-fa or blm was blown to bits by cannon. Sadly, there are few kings left anymore, no more Terror, and no more of the great midwesterners who really give a damn if any or all of the cities fall into ruin.

Most of the cities that were once great in America are but pale shadows of what they once were and now we'll add to that list that includes Detroit and Cleveland, the named polities of San Francisco and New York. All the civilized cities in New Jersey vanished decades ago. I was there for that bit.

It's interesting that there are no great cities of the south and never have been. The great ones got their impetus during the industrial revolution. It never really happened anywhere in the south. Still hasn't and now it never will. The next generation grew out of little places nobody ever heard of in places like Redmond and Stanford or Palo Alto and skipped over the rest of the country before skipping the country altogether and going to China.

As Tech grew it outpaced the available pre-industrial, industrial labour in the formerly great cities and headed west until it reached Silicon Valley and there it stopped briefly before jumping far to the west and landing in China and Vietnam. It leapt lightly over America's western outposts in the Hawaiian Islands, Marianas and on to Japan and then Korea and Indonesia before settling ultimately in China.

All of the large cities in America are bankrupt now due to their handling of the Wuhan Flu. None will ever get well. They're all bound down the same path followed by Detroit, Cleveland, Memphis, St. Louis and Minneapolis.  Few of the 'connected' generation will miss their fall. I certainly never noticed any lack by no longer going to NYC or San Francisco after I left them in my wake. What I wanted was largely found in Marin or Sanoma after Borders collapsed. Baghdad By The Bay was always just a couple miles away but most of what I wanted was in Emeryville or Berkeley or TI and I didn't need to go to San Francisco all that much and most of my time there was in the Golden Gate or Presidio. Old places, not much brushed with the feathers of hatred spawned by the likes of Feinstein or Willi Brown much less Newsom.

The ones that want now to live in the brownfields of former manufacturing glory are welcome to them. I suspect that Federal aid to places like that will be drying up soon. 99% of the aid was lost to public corruption and most of us don't care anymore. Love Canal was long ago and a wakeup call for those who are truly 'woke'. These days, those who remain in the cities kind of remind me of those who stayed in Jonestown. A word of advice guys, don't drink the cool-aid.

VILE AND AWFUL BEHAVIOR

Why is it that any man can be kicked off campus when there is no evidence of any kind of crime but the universities tolerate every kind of intolerant, sick, outrageous and illegal behavior from their so-called students and nothing ever happens to any of them even if they light fires, rob, steal, vandalize, riot, take over buildings and destroy the image of the university? I think we might be getting back to the point where only people really interested in attending school will be allowed on campus because I expect to see scores of colleges close their doors forever as a result of the corona charade played out in this country since March. Those that remain aren't going to have deep enough pockets to be able to afford to extend a helping hand to all the socialists, freeloaders, rioter-in-training and the rest of that ilk. They're going to have to accept students who have the money to pay for college.

A lot of the schools were in financial trouble even before they kicked all the students off campus in response to a bug less dangerous to students than the usual annual flu. Having slit their own throats they found that it is impossible to get most of the kids to return in the fall and now some of them are finding their biggest source of income dried up when the NCAA encouraged participating schools to cancel their sports schedules. The bigger schools are going to lose tens of millions of dollars that they need to stay afloat. The state schools might make it because they figure the states have deep pockets.

One of the things all seem to not care about is the guys wearing the combat uniforms and blue or black union suits who carry guns, a.k.a the police. It's marvelous how all these moronic leftist city council critters have decided to cave in to the demands of the still vile blm and antifa who demand massive reductions in police budgets and we see cities like Seattle and Portland and others slashing their police budgets and laying off hundreds of cops. What the press never seems to mention as this goes on is how the cities are forced to find huge budget cuts because their revenue streams dried up as they chose poorly in their response to the corona challenge and slammed the door on business who paid all kinds of taxes to the city and state and find that without letting them have customers and buyers, that that enormous source of free money is gone. Their spending for homeless services soared as they decided it made some kind of sense to put the homeless up in hotels that charge $175/night and the cities pay without demur.

I doubt one in a hundred of the citizens running the cities gave a second thought to what the downstream economic effects would be on them if they shut down business and industry on a massive scale and vastly increased their social services expenses. Losers. 

EXPECT FIRE SHIPS AT THE NEXT ONE

I saw an article the other day about Trump supporters holding boat rallies on various lakes and rivers all over America and was struck by how many boats and boaters came out to show support for the President. One of the things that struck me was that these are rallies the vile BLM and antifa really can't affect with their bigoted antics. It's hard to block a lake or river. On the other hand, history does give us some instruction about blocking rivers which is one of the little things we did on the Hudson River at West Point and other locations along the river during the Revolutionary War.



One of the tactics I expect to see deployed for the next set of boat rallies is a return of the fire ship. These have been a staple of naval warfare for hundreds of years and if there is somebody stupid enough to try to employ them in the modern age that would be the morons of BLM and antifa. A boat with a motor is a bit more responsive then a massive warship at anchor or under sail. So even though the idiots treat fire like it's their friend, it isn't all that effective against small maneuverable motor boats and most boats have motors these days. The last time I recall the morons messing about with boats was when Sean Penn was getting underway in a skiff to go rescue the poor drowning victims in New Orleans and forgetting to put the drain plug in the little hole in the boat and having his boat slowly fill with water under him as he struggled to save a cast of thousands after the storm also there was that strange person who kept raving about New Orleans and kayaks. I was in Korea at the time but this was a staple of my breakfasts there since the mess hall had cable tv.

Putting antifa and blm in boats is probably an excellent way to get rid of both of them. It's not like playing in the street where most white folks will stop for their antics.  If they play those games on the water and go in the water I'll bet 80% don't know how to swim and there is "no duty to rescue" so hopefully the flotillas of Trump supporters will give them time to bathe properly before they rescue them and yes, we know that the kind-hearted people who support Trump will rescue them, dammit.

FIRE SUPPRESSION

This was interesting too. Somebody activated the fire suppression system in the hanger of the Minnesota National Guard and foamed all 10 aircraft in the hanger. I hope they were as foam tight as they are watertight but I wouldn't bet on since one of the things that often happens is people pull access panels off to get at the guts of the machine.

We had some jerk deliberately activate the fire suppression system in the helicopter hanger on my first ship. We were enroute Karachi to Bahrain after a month in Karachi and the CO had agreed with the embassy to allow American citizens to use our post office to mail things home to America. I had 84 bags of mail stacked in the hanger waiting for transshipment to  the Fleet Post Office in Bahrain. They were all thoroughly foamed. That night the CO came on the 1MC just after lights out and said very clearly that everyone was looking for the guy who pulled the activator and if he was found he was simply going to be lost overboard. It sounded very sincere to me. The suppression systems cannot be locked since they're emergency equipment so anybody could do it and the activators were located in out of the way places throughout the ship.

THIS MAKES ME LAUGH

Biden picks a sure winner, for Trump.

STEPS INTO THE CLEARING

Another good man has stepped into the clearing at the end of the path.

General Scowcroft served his country for decades, beginning with his time in the Air Force in 1947. He served in various Pentagon posts, and, in 1972, accompanied President Richard Nixon on his historic trip to China while serving as Military Assistant to the President. He served as Henry Kissinger’s deputy national security advisor before assuming that role himself during the administration of Gerald Ford, and he became the only person to serve as national security advisor to two presidents, Ford and George H.W. Bush. His services were not limited to one party, as he was an informal adviser to both Republicans and Democrats, including President Barack Obama.

I'll ask the source tonight what he thought of the man. General Scowcroft served the nation before my time but he overlapped the source's time considerably.

CITIZEN JUSTICE

Just what mechanism is available to the citizen when the Court loses its mind and starts legislating? It's an interesting question. One can begin to sense why Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Sometimes one needs to cross rivers to cut the head off a monarch.

Not here of course, we have milkweed planted front and back for the monarchs.

ON MATH

As we tear into the third year of covid nonsense I found myself wondering. What math do you use?
I studied EE and math was part of the art arcane but I never used higher math in my whole life. I had to use geometry once to figure a launcher super-elevation that the missile launcher already knew. I simply had to calculate it for the required missile firing plan. That was it. 60 years and no math beyond high school geometry. Not even trig.

I'm beginning to think it was all a scam.

THE NEW MUSIC

I found the iPod of music tonight. The instant recall of memories were like a tidal wave.  In the long commute I drove from San Jose to San Diego in the deepest dark. Right around Camp Pendleton the dark was strong and was calling. At that point I slipped the Boys on Side into the CD player and safely made it another 35 miles to Encinitas. Found that tonight on the old iPod.

I didn't drag much out of the dark but it is nice to hear the music again. None of my CDs made it over the Ginnungagap. Oddly enough, none of the music carries loss from that time when I was 40. I find myself missing the ones from when I was 16. I must be getting old.

A LONG TIME IN HELL

I keep reading these stories and in every case the judge involved gave absolutely no consideration to the victims of the people they let out of jail to be spared an incidental chance of getting wuhan flu. Letting the criminals out so they can prey on the victims of their crimes should really start first with killing the judge. It seems that's the only way to justice.

Released from jail at height of pandemic, Virginia rape suspect allegedly killed his accuser

Ibrahim Bouaichi then shot himself as police closed in Wednesday, leaving him in critical condition

ME AND NEW

One of the things I got to handle on the staff of Naval Forces Central Command was the occasional diplomatic clearance to get certain ships into ports in the Middle East. The ones I handled were the explody ones. As I watched the explosion yesterday at the port of Beirut I was struck by the memory of putting into the works requests to foreign governments to play host/allow certain ships into their ports. The ships I had a hand in were the ones with something called Net Explosive Weight of roughly 1,000,000 pounds. The Marines were thorough and had a nice little graphic that showed the impact of a devastating explosion of more than a million pounds of ammunition so we could be sure to park these ships well away from the civilian infrastructure. You know. Just in case.

I find it hard to believe that the Lebanese authorities took 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate off a ship and negligently and stupidly stored it in their primary seaport for 6 years. That takes stupid to a whole new level. This violates all the rules, even my own. As I wrote elsewhere, you need to the know the rules and be especially vigilant and careful when you knowingly break them. That process broke down in Beirut and I think I know why. Nobody was to pay too much attention to what went on there so the Druze, muslims and christians would be able to meet their needs without some busybody poking their nose where it didn't belong with the result that nobody was responsible for the safety of the overall port.

I did port surveys up and down the arab side of the Persian Gulf and North Arabian Sea and in each port I met with the Port Director who was accountable and responsible for all activity in the port. I don't think Beirut had that guy. Still, there is an enormous difference between 500 tons of munitions and 2750 tons of high explosive. What the hell was that guy thinking who knew about it and left it there for 6 years? Lebanon used to be the gold standard for allegedly civilized men not giving a damn about their fellow man but over the last 30 years they were brutally surpassed by the Serbs, Bosnians, Libyans, Chechens, Iraqis, Syrians, and of course the Iranians. Still, that war was over 30 years ago..... Or was it?

At this hour on this date I kind of wonder if that was Soros' stash and he was holding it for when he decided to put a ship up the Hudson or the East River.

You see the nature of the problem now don't you? We can have a 350,000 dead weight tonnage ship show up in any of our seaports and do this thing and you won't know it until it explodes. Imagine, 200,000 tons of ammonium nitrate showing up in Brooklyn. You probably don't want to be there. Did you ever ask yourself, just how do you stop a 300,000 ton ship? You're not going to do it with a machine gun. I kind of snickered as we deployed security teams to KAOT and ABOT. All they deployed with was machine guns and perhaps some grenade launchers.

TRUTH

I've been saying this since the beginning of the current farce.

It seems to me that an awful lot of really stupid people think that this is something that we will 'get over' and move on with our lives once again untrammeled by the vagaries of a semi-organism so tiny it takes a very powerful microscope to see. That's never going to happen. It is out and about now and it always will be from now until the ending of the world.

AND CLOSE YOUR EYES

OBSTACLES, I MISS THEM

Who knew? Funny how we went to look for the same America and got this. The first was Newport long ago, the second was also Newport about 10 years later. The last one was a lament for the America I knew.

BLACK LIVES MATTER BURNING KORANS IN PORTLAND

It's not everyday you see people willing to tussle with the islamic jihad but leave it to our betters in black lives matter to post images of themselves burning korans in a fire they made specifically for that purpose.

black lives matter burning korans in Portland

They figure they'll be OK because this is their new ride.

The anti-fa fascist mobile. No longer sponsored by Red Bull they reach out to their progenitors

TO EVOKE

I still find it amazing that one can evoke memory of anything simply by hearing the music. I used to think it was in reading the written word but I have all of those that I ever wrote for memory and although all the pictures are long gone I can still see it like it is in front of me the things I wrote but nothing calls up memories like the music. There is a close runner up -- the smells of youth. They are mostly gone these days but every now and again I meet someone who can take me all the way back. It's not an easy journey I think but perhaps mine is easier than most. I pack the memories by where I lived by and large. Everything but family changed every year or two. Memory pins the location to the date. Music does it too. A few pirated movies sometimes serve as an aide memoire.

All of my family remembers much better than me. I suppose it depends on what you chose to remember and put by. Me? I write it down. I can still see most of the pictures I left for Chaplain Harvey as clear as day even though I gave them away 10 years ago. I dare say, I can see all of them because I winnowed through them over the years as I moved. They started in 1984 when I told the USN Exchange in Rota I didn't give a rat's ass about their SOFA crap, I was buying an Olympus=OMF camera and screw their rules. I was on my way to MIDEASTFOR for a year and didn't really care about their BS rules. They relented and saw it my way.

Watching the real McCoy of video right now. The Dragon has landed and the astronauts are talking into the mike, sans mask. Sans peur et sans reproche.



I may be in trouble. I feel nothing but contempt for BLM. Every single aspect of it and SJW wokeness is contemptible. I could eat a handful of the dictionary and puke a better philosophy.

WATCH UPI MAKING UP MATH AND SCIENCE

It's kind of pathetic that they let this kind of crap hit the web and nobody caught the most fundamental math mistake a 3rd grader wouldn't make. If they wonder why only fools believe them this should inform them why the rest of us no longer pay attention to them. What they don't make up they simply get wrong.

Idiots.