THE CONSTANT NOISE

I live across the street from 3 schools. It just now struck me that I havent heard the voices of little boys in many years. I do, actually, find that a little terrifying. You should too. If you thought your silly incels were bad, wait for it. The last time men were disenfranchised in the West was ugly. People think society changes. It does not and never did.

OUCH

I don't know the man but I think this, in a proper world, would hurt the secnav. I cannot imagine how bad it has become to serve even the USMC in uniform. They were famous for staunch back in my time. yes, I watched his video several times. I know who he is. Sadly, the creatures in the Pentagon don't know a damning indictment if it bit them really hard on their ass.

HARD TO BELIEVE

I've now seen it twice. Read it twice. Biden is clearly demented but the vice president is Kamala Harris and she is just about as brain dead as Biden and then the next one that comes in the failure from the top chain of command is Nancy Pelosi.

Just what did America do to deserve to get this? I see the Marines did as expected and terminated with extreme prejudice the LtCol who dared to call them on their failure to pay the price for failure on a massive scale. Everybody knew that was the only way it would play out since they really don't have any choice on the matter. They still demand loyalty up the chain even if they have long discontinued loyalty down the chain of command and Scheller knew it.

And again, what did America do to deserve general milley and the rest of the joint chiefs of incompetence? I think in the old lexicon it came about because too many people refused to care and left things to the idiots and morons who believe in fairies and that the taliban are thugs of their word and you can trust them not to kill.....

Does anyone else share the sense that civilization is about to collapse again for the umpteenth time? Worldwide collapses of civilization have been rare but they happen.

For me? The truly scary thing? I no longer care. For the first time in almost a hundred years, no family skin in the game. I was the last.

If you haven't watched this before, I find it brilliant and wonderful.

SOME FINE AMERICANS

Some more good people who stepped into the clearing at the end of the path. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David Espinoza, 20, of Rio Bravo, Tex. Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole Gee, 23, of Roseville, Calif. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, 31, of Utah Army Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss, 23, of Corryton, Tenn. Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, 22, of Indio, Calif. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, 20, Jackson, Wyo. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, 20, of Norco, Calif. Marine Corps Cpl. Daegan William-Tyeler Page, 23, of Omaha Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosario, 25, Lawrence, Mass. Marine Corps Cpl. Humberto Sanchez, 22, Logansport, Ind. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, 20, of Wentzville, Mo. Navy Hospital Corpsman Max Soviak, 22, of Berlin Heights, Ohio

CLEARING THE DECKS FOR A POST ON OUR DISMAL

I am casting about for the words to describe our dismal failure. It looks like joe has outed himself. His handlers totally blew it. and because this just sounded, gratis

IT IS A SONG

And it happens to be how I got to Memphis. It was love. Memphis is a truly horrible city. One would only go there out of love or, if touched, the music. Music touched me once and died. I went for the other reason. It was just as they decided to demolish the ghettos and fully integrate the city. Hideous crime exploded faster than you can even imagine. Overnight the once safe neighborhoods were gone. I've been wondering of late if what civilization has done is to unleash vicious out of control thugs in the vain effort to get the rest of us to man up. We kind of see how that plays out where a black lt of cops gets to shoot and kill a white women and the rest of us get the shitstorm of blm over the death of scumbag george floyd. So yea, I went to Memphis with a 2 year old looking to maybe buy into the place. It was never going to happen. Unlike her, I've lived in the South. She'd last about 10 seconds and she was a rabid republican. She was simply unable to conceal her contempt for everybody. That's really not the path to happiness and goodness. After flunking out of Texas, Portland, Olympia, she has found a new home in the whitest city in America.

SAD

It was sad to see them fade away. I'm talking about the cruisers and the men who commanded them. The bar stools at the Main Brace had the ships names on them so that the men who commanded the cruisers always had a place at the NAVY bar located at pier 2. Yes, back in the day a JO could step in and shoot pool and hobnob with cruiser CO's. I can close my eyes and see that not happening so much these days.

Mind you, these cruiser CO's would be most likely to say, "screw this, let's go close down a real bar with girls." And off we would go.

NOT MAJOR MALAY OR THE FAST

You can safely sign me up with these guys. And no, we are the good guys. Always have been.

KILL

4 posts in under a minute. a new record

rule #17, don't blog angry.

I figure, with trigger control and some deep breathing exercises I can probably make it out of the next 3 years.

We were watching Enola Holmes tonight. It is a wonderful movie for those with some finger discipline issues.

I don't think I'd put money on the first statement. I only just started reading the news.

GONE

Anybody who has been there could see it coming. Entry control is for dead men walking. Only Biden and Milley could screw it up enough to kill 12 American Marines at one blow.... give credit to the new Marine commanders. I'm sure they're as steeped in stupid and dumb as the new Army generals generated under the watchful eye of democrat dumdums. Seriously, did those idiots think that the afghan trait of suicide bombing was in abeyance? What kind of moron thinks that? Oh yeah Milley I know you do and so do your buttsisters that you picked for LTGEN and General.

JOE GALLAWAY

Another good man has stepped into the clearing at the end of the path. He was linked with another good man and a thousand others. We will not see his like again.

THE LAST CENTURION

I watched Chris Wallace interview Blinkin and ask him very simply if the president was aware. Blinkin failed twice to answer the question. It suddenly reminded me of The Last Centurion by John Ringo. In that book, the protagonist is stranded behind enemy lines with an enormous arsenal that was abandoned by the US Government as it flooded back to the United States to deal with a global pandemic and "global warming". The story is good and it is surprisingly on target as it brings up the mentally deranged, idiot president who reacts by turning more and more tyrannical.

A good read for the times.

DEAD OR ALIVE?

I just watched the white house spokething declare that there are no stranded Americans in Afghanistan and that the dumbie is going to bring all of them home. It was probably just me and hundreds of thousands of other Americans all wondering at the same time if she meant dead or alive. She was not channeling HAL Moore. She was being remarkably stupid. But then, her voter base is remarkably stupid.

A DEEP READ INTO MILITARY DECEPTION

The Taliban have totally outed themselves now. They are everywhere and in plain sight. Is it possible, conceivable, that the deep strategy of our buffoon leadership both military and civilian, was to cause these trolls to take up their places in palaces where they can be struck instantaneously by huge flocks of Tomahawks?

Naaaah.

We're talking about these guys.

KILL THE WOKE

Congress should act to terminate all programs that offer officers higher level degrees outside the Naval Post Graduate School. No more officers should be paid to attend Tufts, or the Fletcher School or Harvard or Yale. They are nothing more than woke assholes treated as special because they have higher ed decrees. Yeah, decrees. Bite it. Let's end that fake education scam now. The worst LT I ever knew attended a Ph.D program at navy expense and ended up as COS to CNFJ or the losers in Okinawa. We need to end that run around the failure to meet the most basic minimums of officer standard. Taking yourself out of the line of command and consequence to attend a civilian college is worse than a sick joke.

THE AFTER AND BEFORE EFFECTS

KILLER DISEASE

How is it that I know noone who even caught this deadly killer non-disease sparked by communists playing with fire at the behest of the American cdc? It's been out there gutting the first world now for well over a year and half and still, nobody I know has even had a sniffle. Oh sure, this is where the wise say, "YOU FUCKIN IDIOT! YOU JUST TEMPTED FATE! Except, somebody has to end this madness.

Just when did all Americans give in and surrender to fear? I really despise the people that took the place of the greatest generation and gave up liberty and justice and the Constitution because some stupid crooked quack said, "bark like a dog!"

BACK WHEN I PLAYED WITH FIRE

I was just reading a writer who made the comment about Biden's feckless evacuation from Afghanistan. It struck a memory chord and brought back those feckless wonderments of the Middle East Mine Countermeasure staff under the Commodore (east coast Mineron 2 guy) who assured us one and all that the moment he knew which 3 ships would be pulled out of the Gulf to head home that he would share that information with us. He stood right in front of me and the crew and told us this, repeatedly.

So one day I was in the office of the supervisor of shipbuilding and construction, Naples Det, having a beer with the two guys from Naples and they showed me their copy of the Khaleej Times and right there on the front page it said that the Navy had announced it was withdrawing three of the six mine sweepers from the Persian Gulf and it appeared that they were the 3 ships from the west coast of the United States. I used their machine to make copies of the article and went back to my ship, crossing the deck of the USS Fearless to get to mine which was moored outboard of the Fearless. I dropped off a copy of the Khaleej Times article with the quarterdeck watch and went aboard my ship, knocked on the skipper's door and gave him a copy. He was somewhat dismayed. I didn't figure the powers that be were really going to pull the 3 working ships out so I was simply amused by the whole thing.

I stepped out of the captain's cabin and one of the radioman grabbed me and dragged me into Radio where we listened as the outraged skipper of the Fearless was babbling at our commodore over MCM Admin (red radio) that he was holding a copy of the Al Khaleej Times and it was saying the 3 west coast ships were going and what was that all about!!!!!!! Dammit!!!! He went on to say that the commodore had assured him that it was the 3 east coast sweeps heading home. It was side splitting listening.

For the next 2-6 weeks while all three of us were on task up in one of the old mine fields we read the daily situation reports from the missing 3 ships who seemed to be conducting daily 'tow and be towed' exercises and practicing in-stream astern refueling and proceeding to and through the Strait of Hormuz and then rounding the Omani coast and heading north into the Red Sea and then proceeding to the Suez Canal.....with the commodore embarked. We never heard a peep from that guy. He just sailed away with his 3 ships and left us there to rot for another year. Once they entered the Suez Canal they changed operational command from Middle East Force to Sixth Fleet and we heard from them no more.

It was about then, as I recall, that I began codifying the rules. They're right up there near the header under "On Navy Leadership". Rule #1, Trust no-one.

Watching the debacle in Afghanistan is sobering. You really would have to turn over just about every single rock to find leaders as shitty as the ones now leading the armed forces of this country. From the Secretary of Defense down they are nothing but scum in the Army, Navy and Air Force. I don't know anything about the Commandant except that he is reputed to have told that idiot Austin where to shove his mandatory vaccine policy. Other than that, the man's a mystery. Oh, and of course he's carrying on the Marine project to return to the permanent emphemeral warrior status and get rid of tanks and sustainment stuff that isn't needed by the nation's 911 force. I'm pretty sure they had the idea that this would reduce the Marine footprint in shitholes far from the sea such as Afghanistan. Ha!

MARCHING ORDERS

CNN got theirs and now they defame the imbecile they fronted. One of the best reporters wondered earlier why they changed their tune. I think I know why. Their owner just got around to putting Harris in the bag and made it real clear to her (actually, her handlers) how she now works solely for him. I wonder what names were just added to the list the SS has of people who are always granted immediate access to the throne.

Biden's days in office are numbered. He can no longer be regarded as one of Heinlein's "honest" politicians, ie, stays bought and doesnt trim the sails to get more and better bribes from the others. There simply isn't enough left of him and DR Jill isnt smart enough to see it. She thought to play Edith to President Wilson and run this country as unelected queen. That game is over and she is probably the one who destroyed 20 years of effort in an unthinking instant.

GAIN OF FUNCTION

Somebody (people) decided that there was something to be gained by spending vast amounts of money in Communist China studying gain of fucntion research to translate animal virus into something to overwhelm and kill human immune systems. Just why have we left those people alive?

OFT EVIL WILL SHALL EVIL MAR

For some reason I am amazed at who wrote those words. It almost sounds biblical. It is not.

These girls have a deeper understanding of what drives the taliban and a better grasp of tactics and strategy than our entire national security team of buffoons and the experts with post graduate degrees in queer and gender studies that make up the top ranks in the Pentagon and State Department.

The adults left the room again and let the teens with angst and hate run the show and look what we have to show for that.

BLOODY MINDED

I can't help but wonder how many A10s are up there now, 24 hours a day, circling over and around Kabul waiting to pounce when one of the Muhajadeen decides to fire a Stinger missile or other AAW man-portable missile at the various jets and cargo planes flying in and out of Kabul International. It's hard for me to forget that the Russians have always had a weakness for shooting down both civil airliners and unarmed reconnaissance aircraft and they are the distilled essence of evil turned into a State. The Taliban are wannabees but just as ruthless and bloody minded as any other worshipper of Baal or Moloch. If you wonder why we keep feeding troops into that inferno, it is with the hope that they can control enough of the flight path when aircraft are most vulnerable to ground fire on take-off and approach.

THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENED

As I watch the unfolding debacle in Afghanistan it strikes me just how the United States abandoned its own fighting men in Vietnam. The scramble to end the war and get out with whatever dignity remained was all that mattered to the politicians and those wearing 4 stars even if it meant that they knew that they were leaving their own men behind. The final words of so many of the 'leadership' of that war reek of failure and breaking the faith with the men who followed orders or were simply drafted and sent off to wage war throughout Indo-China. I suspect that all those men knew that the leaders in Korea and World War II did the same thing and knowingly left men behind either in the hands of the enemy or simply in the hands of the Russians which amounted to the same thing for about 45 years.

It's hard to read the memoirs of those men who knew they were prosecuting an indifferent war with no hope or chance of victory since none of them from beginning to end was tasked with the goal of achieving victory and beating the enemy to death as we did Germany and Japan. If the purpose of the military is to fight and win the nation's wars then our leadership, training, doctrine, military strategy, shipbuilding and weapons acquisitions need to make drastic changes because losing a war to 7th century tribesmen after spending 20 years imposing all of our doctrine, training, strategy, tactics, weapons and warfighting spirit failed in every single particular in Afghanistan and it take s special kind of idiot to fail to see the damage this inflicts on the other reason for the United States military, which is to act as a deterrant to our adversaries. It's not much of a deterrant when the tribesmen demonstrate how utterly useless all of that is in the face of a determined enemy.

The Secretaries of Defense and State need to resign. They are useless and worse than useless. If it's true they knew this would happen if they followed the Biden plan than their failure is double because they were to useless to convince a brain dead loser who has been wrong on every single foreign policy decision since 1975, to reconsider and do the smart thing. For all of me, he can fill both positions with Dr. Jill. At least she gives the illusion that he is smart and gets away with it because the brain dead moron does everything she tells him to.

We also need to have the resignations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For starters they're incompetent paper-shuffling politicians with only the loosest attachment to reality. They make this clear every day in every way as they continue to stand by and support and defend the insane stupidity of the weapons acquisitions and strategy of their predecessors. All of them need to be replaced. This is another time when we're going to have to dig deep to replace them. We don't need the second service bananas in each service to simply step up to the plate. We need officers with integrity and intelligence and a lot of experience in both battle and acquisition. It is still possible.

In the days of yore, any excellent officer did duty with troops and commanded a battalion. After that came specialization or further duty with troops but at the end of the day we had officers in the Pentagon who knew war up through the battalion and regimental level and then became the officers who brought about HELLFIRE and other hugely successful weapons programs. Their peers went on to command regiments, brigades, divisions and installations. We need to look at the one and two star guys now to lead the services and get rid of all the political appointees we have running our systems commands, fleets, armies, and air forces.

ALL IN VAIN FOR NOTHING

At least all of our diplomats, you know, the ones resonsible for this debacle, made it out of Kabul alive.

What do you say we learn from this and stop the endless fruitless efforts to make the rest of the world like America. You can take that either way you like, both will result in 100% guaranteed failure. Bernard Lewis summed up our results in Afghanistan years ago,

America's Afghan policy, from 1921 to 2021 - and, in defiance of the usual trajectory, first farce, then tragedy. A decade or so back, I quoted Bernard Lewis:

I was on a panel with the great Bernard Lewis a couple of years ago - actually six or seven years ago - and Bernard said that the danger here is that America risks being seen as harmless as an enemy, and treacherous as a friend... It's a very dangerous lesson to teach the planet.

"Harmless as an enemy, and treacherous as a friend": a devastating indictment, and entirely correct. But it neglects the ultimate reality: the bungling superpower can inflict defeat only on itself.

AFGHANISTAN

All the usual ignorant pond scum in the media and government are marveling at how quickly the rigorously trained Afghani army disappeared and how the Taliban has swept back to power in 11 provincial capitals so far this week. It's like they never understood how terror works and how those truly steeped in terror make it work for them. The Taliban is a pure terrorist organization the likes of which the IRA could only dream about. Their religion is their guiding principle and nothing stands in the way of making their new Hell on earth because they know Alla is on their side.

Well this surprises the scum that staffed the embassy there for the last 20 years and it surprised all the morons at the Council of Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institute for the feeble minded. They thought they were winning the hearts and minds and of course, training the hell out of a real army to stand up to a bunch of shiftless lazy terrorist fux. Any soldier could have told them over that same 20 year period that the Taliban was infiltrating every level of government in every province and the Army and basically running them for the Taliban. As soon as the gloves came off they quickly identified those who supported the West and killed them. Nobody talks about that or even mentions that the Taliban undoubtedly killed the believers in Western civilization in the most gruesome fashion possible (they're terrorists, remember?) and made films of it and made sure that everybody they need to has seen those films and knows what is about to happen to anybody (and their families) if they kowtow to the West.

I don't count Afghanistan as 'lost' like S. Vietnam. We never stood a chance in Afghanistan whereas we had won in Vietnam and everyone knew it....right up until the democrats in Congress forbade any funding for ammunition for the government and army of S. Vietnam. Without resupply they were doomed and knew it, at which point the army melted away.

My father wondered why I hadn't volunteered to go over. I pointed out that I had a job and was drafted nonetheless by the Navy for another 4 years but that I had no intention of offering my services to serve as leader of a provincial reconstruction team or deputy because I can't think of anything more useless than a Navy captain deep in Afghanistan or Iraq trying to build 'western civilization' in areas so wrecked by the Mongols a thousand years ago that they never recovered even the thinnest veneer of civilization in all that time and wouldn't in my lifetime if we poured $65 trillion into each country building schools, roads, power stations, etc.

The dumdums that never studied history always think alike. They think everywhere they go is just like America but less developed and they stupidly persist in thinking that everywhere they go the people there are just like the Americans that built this country. Nothing could be further from the truth and anybody who stepped into a 3rd world country or lived in one for any length of time would know it.

They are the kind of suburban idiot who believes in the justice of defunding our police. They think everyone is just like them and they cannot/refuse to conceive that 95% of muslims in the West still believe in honor killing and the death penalty for those who blaspheme muslim beliefs.

At least Trump dodged this bullet. There will likely be no inquisition into who lost Afghanistan because the people running it know already and don't want you to know. We had no business there after toppling the Taliban and putting our own dictator in place and should have left within the year of invading. We gotta find a cure for the idiots in DC and the democrat party who believe in 'nation building.' We can't get the damned Puerto Ricans to act enough like Americans to rebuild Puerto Rico and God only knows what they think they've done over the last 40 years in Haiti.

The illusions are beginning to slip away now. Our cities are in turmoil and it's only going to get worse and the people that could stop it the old fashioned way are both prevented from acting and deciding they've had enough and leaving. In a way it's very similar to what happened in Iraq and is happening in Afghanistan. The city cores are dying and nobody cares. The virus has led a lot of people to discover that they don't really have to go downtown anymore. A year or two without live theater and shows is enough to break the chain of habit of a lifetime.

I don't feel sorry for the Afghans. I miss the Lion of the North but the Taliban were careful to extinguish all hope first in the North before they turned on the rest of the Afghans. There will be no Ahmad Shah Massoud this time. The Taliban infiltrated his camp and killed him on the very eave of 9/11.

Make no mistake. Those people know who their enemy is and they will no longer be content to merely be left alone. They will bring their war and jihad to the West now and nobody is lifting a finger to prevent it.

A MOVIE METAPHOR

The rabbit is the United States of America. The hawk is the democrat plan for America. The deer is what Republicans need to start doing. All in one little video.

THE REAL WORLD

From those clever souls at Visual Capitalist.

HAVE SPACESUIT WILL TRAVEL

I worked for many years at a Systems Command where we farmed out research and development and procurement dollars to both industry and the government's labs. With industry we wrote a Statement of Work and held the contractor to it in so far as deliverables were concerned. The deliverables required the production of Test Articles or Low Rate Initial Production and Full Production items and included monthly, quarterly and annual progress reports, 50% Design Review, Critical Design Review, 90% and Final Design Review and an accurate schedule for the full phase of the period of performance with project milestones and everything else necessary for successful project management included such as procurement of long lead time articles, government furnished equipment, software, etc and the full range of required military specifications to be met/satisfied.

In contrast, we just forked over X$ every year to our government lab with none of the above and were unsurprised when they failed to perform, meet schedule and always went over budget on materials, manpower and everything else including travel. I thought SPAWARSYSCEN was bad but I never worked with NASA and their lab mindset, such as it is. Here is what they say about their inabiliity to land on the moon in 2024.

The OIG conducted the audit because, "The development of new spacesuits is a critical component of achieving NASA's goals of returning humans to the moon, continuing safe operations on the International Space Station (ISS), and exploring Mars and other deep space locations," the report reads. In the audit, inspectors "examined the extent to which NASA is addressing challenges related to cost, schedule, and performance of the next-generation spacesuit system."

Spacesuits currently in rotation among astronauts on the space station were designed 45 years ago for NASA's space shuttle program, and it is critical that NASA develop new suits for the safety and efficiency of future space missions and programs, the audit notes. And so, for the past 14 years NASA has been developing this next-gen replacement.

However, obstacles along the way in developing these suits could put NASA's ambitious moon plans on hold; one main obstacle being budget.

"We reported in 2017 that despite spending nearly $200 million on extravehicular spacesuit development over the previous nine-year period, the agency remained years away from having a flight-ready spacesuit to use on exploration missions. Since our 2017 report, NASA has spent an additional $220 million — for a total of $420 million — on spacesuit development," the audit reads.

However, while NASA aims to invest $625.2 million more into the development of these suits, bringing the grand total to over $1 billion, the OIG still thinks that NASA cannot meet its current hopeful schedule of a 2024 lunar landing.

In addition to a multitude of budgetary concerns, the audit shows that this schedule includes about a 20-month delay in designing, verifying and testing the suits as well as creating two "qualification suits," a demonstration suit for the space station and two lunar flight suits.....

In the agency's proposed new strategy outlined in the RFI, NASA would be "shifting acquisition of the exploration extravehicular activity (xEVA) system to a model in which NASA will purchase spacesuit services from commercial partners rather than building them in-house with traditional government contracts," the statement reads.

In the final paragraph you see a reference to taking the matter out of the hands of the dolts in the lab who have probably spent $300,000,000 trying to figure out what color the suits should be before they move on to figuring out the tricky differences of working out the plumbing for all 93 genders who they expect to launch at the moon.

BLESS THIS INTERNET

I did something my machine and network didn't approve a couple of nights ago. It disconnected me from the network and it turned off my wi-fi in the computer. Nothing turned it back on. Using an alternate device I scouted the internets for a solution to my problem. As usual, there it was, carefully laid out and self-explanatory. Given how helpful it was tonight I'm almost tempted to search again for some way to end my use of html in blogging since I hates it.

I saw this morning that google kicked a fellow blogger off the networks entirely. He has a legion of evil lawyers who are probably going to file suit and I look forward to how that turns out. I am sick and tired of the leftist assholes canceling and deplatforming anybody and everybody who disagrees with them on anything. Nobody cried when the government broke up AT$T and noobody will cry when they break up google, twitter, and the rest of the commie bastards running silicon valley.

STUNNING INCOMPETENCE

I think everyone involved in promoting, funding, building and maintaining the Littoral Combat ships should be horsewhipped; Repeatedly. They deserve worse.
The U.S. Navy has decommissioned the 2010-built USS Independence (LCS 2), the first Independence variant Littoral Combat Ship. The Independence, which was designed to have a service life of 25 years, is being retired early along with the USS Freedom (LCS 1), the first Freedom variant LCS commissioned in 2008, due to budget constraints related to updating its systems to match other ships in the class. Freedom is due to be decommissioned later this year.

Right up until the end the Admirals push the lie that these ships had a crew of 9 officers and 41 men. In fact, each ship had 2 full crews. One was goofing on for 4-5 months while the other was nursing a crippled, broken, useless piece of junk.

Decades after they were sold to us as the modern replacement for the guided missile frigates they replaced; each of which was fully capable of conducting primary missions of surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare and anti-air warfare, the ships remain utterly useless because they're war fighting components were to be mission modules that would be bolted onto the hull to accomplish a single one of those missions and yet, not one single module has been developed and delivered since they were laid down. Yet we're still building these useless hulls.

They were also supposed to fill the vacuum created by the decommissioning of the Mine Counter Measure ships but that module didn't get built either. That's kind of funny to me because that's a module I deployed to the Red Sea with in 1984 to hunt for mines with special purpose mine hunting helicopters. You'd think somebody would know how to do that but it's the new Navy that designed and built a class of ships to replace real warships that was to fire its long-range guns from over the horizon except it turns out each shell cost more than a Tomahawk missile and was far less dangerous to the enemy.

I think of this era as the handful of years in the first decade of the 19th century when the modern Dreadnoughts were so overwhelmingly dangerous to the pre-dreadnought battleships that they could not stand in the line-of-battle anymore. The pre-dreadnoughts wouldn't ever even get into shooting range of the dreadnoughts and whole navies had to be replaced at inhuman speed. Germany and England did it but the rest of the world's navies were left behind except for one.

The other bit of stupid was at Maine Maritime Museum. Pity about that. We really enjoy that museum.

It's last outing was nearly its last. Most sailboats will automatically steer into the wind when the sails are overloaded. That's called rounding up and happens because naval architects always build boats with something called 'weather helm' which means they head into the wind without a firm hand on the wheel/tiller to keep them on course. The other approved method for letting the wind out of the sails is to simply let go the main sheets and let them blow with the wind instead of using it to propel the boat. In this case, either approach would have kept the boat from capsizing.

HE SPEAKS FOR ME

We will post it again and see.

OH, AND EPSTEIN DIDN'T KILL HIMSELF

Fascinating bit of news here.

A warden at a federal prison holding Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell was charged with murder this week.

Antonia Ashford, 44, of Jackson, New Jersey, was charged with murder after allegedly killing her husband, Roderick Ashford, inside their home.

Antonia Ashford was also charged with possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.

Prosecutors in Ocean County said Jackson Township police officers on Aug. 2 in the early hours of the morning responded to a 911 call about a man being shot.

Officers found Roderick Ashford, 47, lying unresponsive on the floor with a gunshot wound to his face.

Ashford died on the scene despite efforts to revive him.

It's getting quite insane in justice land. We should probably run everybody out of there and start from scratch. We could hardly do worse than the evil morons we have running the Justice Department, FBI and federal police agencies.

NICE VIEW

NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER

Peter has an excellent post on the downward spiral this country is taking starting with its armed forces. You can read it here.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is set to announce Friday that all 1.3 million active-duty US forces are required to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, a report said Wednesday.

The decision comes days after President Biden said federal employees must either get vaccinated against the virus or submit to regular testing and observe social distancing requirements, according to Fox News.

The Pentagon would join the Department of Veterans Affairs in mandating coronavirus vaccinations for key personnel as the number of cases surges nationwide due to the Delta variant.

Because none of the vaccines have received final approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Austin must request a waiver from President Biden to make the vaccines mandatory for active-duty forces.

OLD CALIFORNIA

It seems that nobody is safe anymore from the clutches of 'the people.' In California it takes on the usual rule by decree. I can see that they have a drought but it is a desert climate and you get long dry spells in the desert or it wouldn't be a desert. Now that they've shut down the Oroville hydro-power station for want of water behind the damn they also need to steal the water from the farmers with the oldest rights and entitlement to the water. Again, in an exceptional year that might be doable with compensation but they aren't talking compensation. Nope.

The old Governor Brown and the men before him established enormous reservoirs behind manmade damns to capture vast amounts of water to slake the terrible thirst of the new cities springing up in the desert but they haven't built a new damn in generations even as the California population doubled. Well the eco-freaks won a war nobody else was fighting and gutted all work on retaining water runoff and storing it for times of decreased rain and snowfall. I'm sure they had the best intentions but it's important to remember that they don't actually care about people.

These are the people who claim to understand the environment best.

KNOW NO FEAR

Still not afraid? The virus doesn't disturb you and you think global warming is a scam? Whatever happened to those murder hornets we expected this summer?

Don't worry! Science has the answer! Aug. 5 (UPI) -- A major Atlantic Ocean current system may be declining in strength, which could have consequences for weather systems worldwide, according to a study released Thursday.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, found evidence that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is approaching a collapse. The current system includes the Gulf Stream and circulates warm water to the ocean's surface that contributes to mild temperatures in Europe, according to a press release announcing the study.

Niklas Boers, an author of the study and researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Freie Universität Berlin and Exeter University, said in a statement that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is one of the planet's "key circulation systems."

CALIFORNIA, FAR ASTERN

I'm really glad I left that place.

From the news today, Let them eat soylent green. God knows the way they vote they'd lap it up.