THIS IS TO JOSIE

Are you still there? 

IT HAS BEEN A LONG NIGHT

Reading a hard bound book. Walking down the mountain path, picking up my very first walking stick and holding it in the palm of my hand and meeting the admiral running to the top of the mountain I was walking down. My day, in Korea. Sometimes, I just read what I wrote at the time.

Did you ever find a walking stick?

DIDO LIFE FOR RENT

 It is the most peaceful and tranquil album that I have ever owned. There was a thunderclap detonation when I got home this morning. It was an explosion but origin unknown.

I had an epiphany just now. Listening to the album. I suddenly realized why I had stopped flying. The planes I flew were small but even when I was invited to the flight deck to fly a C-130 to Dahran or a C-141 over the Grand Canyon, it was cramped. Every cockpit, every flight deck was cramped. It was the same on the C-5 with all the SINS in the way.

Last night we watched a breaker in the northern ice. I remembered when the Polar Sea or Polar Star pulled into Todd shipyard next to us and how they lost a crewman to death. The ship was hit by a rogue wave just outside the Strait of Juan de Fuca and was laid on its beam ends and he flew across 90 feet of bridge and didn't land well. Suddenly level was 90 feet straight down. About 8 stories of falling. They knew it could happen. It was why they had a cable stretched across the length of the bridge. The Harry W. Hill had no such thing. One would only fall about 10 feet before crashing into something hard.

GOOD

I followed this at the outset. It was egregious.

https://reason.com/volokh/2022/10/24/decision-on-boeing-737-max-case/

FEEL THE HATE

https://youtu.be/mNGsZ5I2juA

WHO KNEW?

I've had the CD for about 10 years. I got it at the library for a dime. Dido. She sang the music for the end of all that you loved. I had it from you tube. I heard white flag more than a time or two but I didn't have the album until a few years ago and then I had nothing I could play it on since I leave Douglas Adams on in both cars. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy makes for mostly peaceful drivers. The music .....well maybe, its been a long time since I listened to the music. 

WAKING DREAM

There was only so much food and The Lord told me to go and eat and with me mine and there was only food for the 170 that were mine and the rest starved. "Go thou," said the Lord, "and eat". I have never been commanded so before in my dreams. It brought me right awake.

The Lord doesn't usually talk to me.

THE MUSIC

 My college room mate had a stereo and 3 Genesis albums and Breakfast in America by Boston. My next college room mate had a stereo and an album by the Byrds. I finally bought a stereo as a 25 year old lieutenant. It was big. I had 3 records and a CD. Almost 40 years later I bought another stereo to replace the one that went down in flames long ago. Turns out I have exactly one music CD, Dido.

It is amusing for me. I remember pre-wedding that I would come back to my beach place and the very first thing I always did was turn on the stereo. Always. Perhaps my inner soul knew I didn't want to be alone. You know, you're allowed regrets but then when you meet the little girl now grown who is an assertive little piece of you, well, you can look back and tell Oregon to go fuck itself. Their very last letter to me this week told me that we were done and over and perhaps two guys named Moe armed with shotguns would pay a call on me.

In the meantime, listening to Dido's album is enough.

and I can deal with any Moe that shows up.

 

MARKING THE DAY

Went for a walk this evening. It was good. Came home and found a stereo on the porch and I just now put it together. Put in a  CD and listened to something old that I hadn't heard in over 15 years. I sat down, got up picked up the old journals I wrote back when I was just a young starting out officer of the naval service. Every new ship or command I would write down the names of the officers and guys that worked for me. I looked at them tonight and I could not put faces to some of the names. People I'd lived with, worked with sailed with and the name told me nothing about them or called an image to mind. That was the whole point of writing them down, to remember. On the gripping hand, many of them were unforgettable. Just last night I talked about Seaman Recruit Fontain and his buddy and pal, Pyscho Wilson. I hadn't told a real honest sea story in years.

On the other hand, as I wrote about the places, they were called to mind right away and I can smell the breeze that was in the air as I walked down that one street during late night Ramadan as families were out picnicking as they broke their fast in my old homeport, Manama.

I started writing them almost 40 years ago. They are transcendent. There were just a handful of photos but those were lost long ago. All that remains are the words and the memories.

LET US NOT FORGET

The lying liars who just lied their way into hell. Every single one of these former "intelligence" officers lied about President Trump and strained credulity to the limit. Nobody will ever again trust the liars that worked in the CIA or the domestic intelligence agencies.....you know, other than the fools who vote democrat because they KNOW Trump is a liar. I've never seen one yet who can point to a lie he spoke or wrote but they hate with passion and will refuse reason if offered it in a glass with ice. Needless to say, I no longer offer reason and simply move on and leave them to their own delusion. Heinlein et al were right, you can't fix stupid and while ignorant was once a challenge, here in America the fight is over and ignorance won.

I wanted to capture the image of the 51 calling Trump a liar from the NYT ad but it is hard to find. It calls to mind the time I smuggled guns into the Kingdom and told the CO that despite a huge cache of terrorist weapons found on the beach about 20 miles away just last week, the Kingdom would not permit our exercise participants to have weapons and thus, smuggling. While the mobile unit involved maintained the necessarily quiet nature of my efforts we had a trained police officer who was showing a young female LT something to do with weapon safety who fired a bullet into the ceiling of the coach's office about 10 minutes before I had driven over the causeway and made my way up to the Persian Gulf Fleet HQ and soccer stadium. It was one of those moments where you simply shake your head and walk away.

I don't think the liars should have that moment. They all of them lied their heads off about President Trump and they should be made to pay for that. Politics once stopped at the shore of this continent but the democrats are now expediting our descent into Hell and paving the overseas route here and they should be made to answer for that.

You can safely ask, what harm is done by their lies and yet the answer is right there in your news feed and in your face. Decent Americans of the 22% of Americans that are capable and eligible are no longer enlisting in our armed forces. We used to. Under Ronald Reagan the armed forces reached their Cold War peak. Now? Well, I wouldn't sign up in this armed force and I cannot blame anyone else for refusing either. You know the GI bill was a winner right off the top. But now, as a straight white male, would I want to sign up for college.....? The Liberal Arts schools are long gone to the toasty crunchy left and insane but MIT and CalTech are right behind them. Can you even imagine a nerd mathematician making it through the unpleasantness of woke academies today? 

I can see us falling into barbarism........ and can't you see the woke trying to explain that there are still all kinds of places to get a haircut. Me? I drive 20 miles to Burton for a haircut since there are really good Rachel sandwiches across the street and some nice shopping at a farmer's market on the way out of town and.....my Cleveland library card is still good for taking books out of their wonderful library.

ON TRUST

 It is all right there in the header photo. There is trust at just about all levels in the navy. The destroyers would trust that we got all the mines, in turn we would trust that they would deal with any air or surface navy threat. I sense that the trust is broken. Neither crew has given any room to doubt underlying incompetence in the other.

Oddly enough, that was the way it was in 1987. Little has changed. For starters, I wouldn't trust the MCM to find a mine and were I on a sweep I would expect mostly to get run over by a destroyer of my own navy or savaged by its anti-ship missiles when they lose the picture.

Ask me how I know.

MAKING IT DARKER

 The Clintons unleashed a chain reaction when they named the 4 stars that were sent to Congress for advice and consent. Each of those flag officers ruined the service they were the heads of and they also went on to ensure that all the 3 stars and potential 4 stars were Clinton men. Wesley Clark was the leader of the pack of dismal failure. He instituted the complete collapse of NATO and the post-communist relationship with the Russian Federation. If you had to pick the very worst men to lead the Army, Navy, Air Force, and even the Marines, they picked them.

The current crop were all selected by boards made up of officers selected by the same officers selected by the Clinton team and the Obama team and now we have a navy that is pretty much worthless and an army that can't fight its way out of a wet paper bag. The Marines have a boss who decided that the 911 force doesn't need a heavy entry capability and has cut the Marines down to it's original concept of the fleet marine force without actually having that many ships to embark them on because the amphibious ships burn readily in homeport and cannot safely approach the shore in any contested region. When I say that, I mean the amphibious ships are meat if they get within 200 miles of any enemy coast.

How exactly did the Russian Federation become our enemy? Why are we at war with them? Why is NATO at war with them? Think about it. Give it 5 minutes of serious thought. Set aside the wounded spirits and angst you feel at any war and just ask yourself. WHY THE FUCK ARE WE AT WAR WITH RUSSIA NOW? WHY IS NATO AT WAR WITH RUSSIA NOW?

NATO right now cannot compel the unarmed immigrants in their millions from invading their countries and neither can we.

DARK DAYS

 It was right about 1500 when the lights went out here. I was relaxed enough that it didn't disturb me at all since it used to happen much more frequently years ago and we are now prepared for the fall of darkness. It was a cold, rainy, blustery day and darkness was had by all on this block and maybe the school across the street. I didn't bother to look. It was like a prelude for what I see Europe going through this winter and no, I don't think it will be a good winter in Europe this year. They elected leaders who pretty much ganged up to slit the throats of all Europeans and they will all get to suffer in the cold and dark and wonder why they no longer have jobs since much of their production was energy intensive. There won't be much glass blowing in Europe this year or the next.

Here at home the heat comes from gas. I could and did go on downstairs and put on a pot of coffee. Several years ago I found some single AA battery flashlights that are perfect for sudden darkness. They're in every room. As I recall, I bought 4 of them at a time for $5.00 at amazon. I bought a bunch. All of them still work just fine and we have lanterns and candles if we really want to keep on reading real books as opposed to a dozen mostly fully charged kindles. My kindles are not "connected". I buy the books, download them and then disconnect. It saves the batteries and it keeps amazon et al from goobering the software to keep me from enjoying my books. The goobering has affected the ipads and iphones though since they are connected.

I had a look just now at one of the last generation of kindles I bought. Unlike the earlier versions, the new ones no longer have the microSD slot. It doesn't matter. The old kindles all work just fine. I only bought so many because I literally could not resist buying a mini-ipad for $25.00 apiece. Srsly, they do everything an ipad that I use does and it cost me $25.00.  I bought another new one this week and it cost $44.00 and yet I heard the person I bought it from complaining that it cost too much. Srsly?!

I'm watching the latest hi-tech war and sometimes even listening to the morons on tv news talk about the things that Russia is doing in its defense and I contrast it with the same noises made when America was blowing the hell out of, well, you name it: Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Beirut, Iran and other places all over the world hit by drones courtesy of Obama, Bush and the dummy. I am kind of curious about what would happen if a nuke exploded over the Black Sea at a height above ground that did no direct damage but did employ the EMP we have been hearing about forever. I wonder if Starlink is EMP hardened? They're not long term satellites and in LEO they may even be orbiting below the Van Allen belt and deliberately have been left unshielded since the solar wind was not going to eat them alive. Perhaps we'll see.

It may well be time to enjoy once again, "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" We will look for the bright side of life!

REMEMBER WHO FAILED US ALL

It’s not hard for some of us to keep our eye on the ball. Others need periodic reminders.

TIMELESS

 I just saw this at Vox Day and he’s right. It still defines Europe then and now. Nothing changed over the last 70 years.

ON ALTHOUSE

 I read a lot. A lot of it these days is online but I enjoy reading. I noted this tiny sentence at  the blog of Ann Althouse  today and thought it was both trivial and amusing. She writes,

"The old gatekeepers are not in charge, and a person with a product people want can break through. That's very cool, I think, even though I have zero interest in reading Hoover's books. The last novel I read was "Slaughterhouse-Five.""

I happen to think that's hilarious. The cruel rulers of the schools extant when we were young liked to inflict horrible things like Vonnegut and Bradbury on young readers in the hope of turning them into illiterate proletarians for life who would never willingly pick up another book to read for the rest of their short brutish lives.

I WONDER IF RUSSIA'S NUKES WORK AT ALL

 I mean, when was the last time any military minion had to prove the nukes worked or even exist anymore? It was all a long time ago and in a very different environment. As we know here in the West, what doesn't get cycled and greased doesn't work on demand.

Did they even try to modify their modern rockets and missiles for tactical delivery over the last 50 years or did their scientists, engineers and bureaucrats merely "report that they had done the work?"

It's not an idle question. Even our vaunted Air Force mismanaged nuclear weapons on a massive scale after the Cold War ended and they stood down the Strategic Air Command and turned the oversight and management of our nuclear arsenal to idiots, morons and yes men who lost God only knows how many nuclear weapons.

The men charged with the development, production, storage, use and oversight of our nuclear arsenal were typical of the generation of scientists, engineers and management that put men on the moon in 1969. All those men are gone and the processes so long disused are all but forgotten now. You only have to look at the dismal Boeing Company and all of its divisions. It's vaunted aircraft division used to produce the best and most reliable commercial aircraft in the world and then Management decided to retire to Chicago and the money men running the company no longer had any input from their designers, pilots, mechanics, engineers, etc and it was soon reflected in the disastrous new 737. The 787 suffers from a design flaw that leads to solar radiation despoiling the paint on the tops of the aircraft that they now have to hold on with duct tape. It's not a surprise given that some call it speed tape.

Their space division is just a calamity and a disaster that will almost certainly happen if Artemis ever does launch. It's 5 years and billion of $ over cost and just got rolled back to the hanger for the 3rd or 4th time. NASA administrators have nonetheless not changed the planned deployment of the catastrophe and they will give Artemis one unmanned test flight around the moon on it's first mission and the second will be a manned mission to the moon. I think they are mad.

People are really sneering at the poor Russian military which is losing to 'plucky' little Ukraine. The Russians are not fighting Ukraine and haven't since the invasion. NATO has dumped enormous numbers of weapons into Ukraine and its new technical hands (hi-tech mercenaries from NATO forces). And let us not forget the utter fiasco of our running away from Afghanistan which was completely overrun by the Taliban even before the Army finished running away.

As I've said before, I'm glad my family no longer lives in the strategic targets of the Cold War. I mean, you don't really think the Russians would nuke McLean, VA do you? Half the people working there in the CIA Headquarters are Russian and Chinese agents.

PUTIN'S ORDERS TO RUSSIAN MILITARY

 "Make absolutely sure that when we retaliate against the West after they attack us with nuclear weapons that no harm comes to President Biden. He is by himself the equivalent of another 3000 megatons of nuclear death to Americans and Europeans."

THE EUROCRATS SHOULD BE AFRAID OF HER

I just saw this at Powerline in the comments to the Week in Pictures. The contrast between the dim bulbs fronting for our ruling class is almost indescribable.  

ON RUSSIA

 At this moment as we see Russia and Putin trying to end the war in Ukraine we have to ask ourselves as we watch the gas bubble up from the ruptured NORD Stream pipelines, WHAT EXACTLY IS THE FULLY SANCTIONED RUSSIA GOING TO LOSE if they simply decide to nuke Ukraine?

The old West is following the imbecile's lead as directed/led by the hand by Victoria Nuland. She is literally the death of the West.

NAILED IT

Simply copied out in its entirety. It hits the nail squarely.

 

FBI’S TERMINATION LETTER TO DISGRACED FORMER AGENT PETER STRZOK RELEASED AND IT’S SMOKIN:’

Strzok’s hatred of former President Donald J. Trump and obsession with the debunked Russiagate conspiracy theory that the ex-POTUS was in cahoots with the Kremlin clearly affected his judgement, resulting in anti-Trump text messages that were deeply embarrassing to the nation’s foremost law enforcement agency, leading to his firing in 2018, a steamy, adulterous affair with FBI attorney Lisa Page also didn’t help.

The firing letter which was written by David Bowdich who was the bureau’s deputy director at the time was released as a part of the FBI’s response to Strzok’s federal lawsuit alleging that his privacy rights were violated and that he was wrongfully terminated.

“While there is no doubt your 21 years of service to the organization cannot and should not be erased, it is difficult to fathom the repeated, sustained errors of judgment you made while serving as the lead agent in two of the most high profile investigations in the country,” Bowdich wrote in the letter which was dated August 8, 2018. “Though the Office of the Inspector General found no evidence of bias impacted any of your or the FBI’s investigative actions or decisions, your sustained pattern of bad judgment in the use of an FBI device has called into question for many of the decisions made during both the Clinton e-mail investigation and the initial states of the Russian Collusion investigation.”

“In short, your repeated selfishness has called into question the credibility of the entire FBI.”

“In my 23 years in the FBI, I have not seen a more impactful series of missteps which called into question the entire organization and more thoroughly damaged the reputation of the organization,” Bowdich wrote. “In our role as FBI employees we sometimes make unpopular decisions, but the public should be able to examine our work and not have to question motives.”

Earlier: Majority see FBI as Biden’s ‘personal Gestapo’ after Trump raid.

Were I again called to jury duty I would have to tell the court that I woudn't believe a single word offered in evidence by any representative of the FBI or Law Enforcement. They thoroughly poisoned that well. The FBI has done nothing in the last decade to even attempt to regain credibility. Sadly, neither have the police.

As a student of history all my life I know that this is actually how civilizations fall. When "no man's word can be trusted". I first read that in Thucydides. It was just how Athens fell and every republic after that.

LIKE

 Music and dance

I really like this. However, every time I see it I hear this tiny plaintive voice telling us what she wants for her birthday. She was 4. She really wanted a haircut. 

And this just because I like it and it came on next. It's always evocative. 

Goodness

CLOSER NOW

 I think the second nuclear war is getting closer and just like every war that preceded it a lot of stunned Europeans are going to glance up from their riots and ask, wait, how did this happen?