FOR THE RECORD

 I just wanted to go on the record. 

Irish Lives Matter!

WORD TO THE WISE

 Spotted this in Mt. Vernon, Washington at the usual locale.

THIS IS WHAT PRECOLONIAL LOOKED LIKE

 All those ignorant tools bleating about colonizers and white man guilt miss the fundamental truth of recorded history. This is what most pre-contact “civilizations” were before colonizers dropped in for a visit. 

If you thought colonists dropping by for a few centuries is bad, consider how much more horrible it is when the barbarians overrun civilization. 

Think that won’t happen again? Optimist.

THE EMPTY FORGE

 As one reads through the shattered debris of Eastern Europe one is left with the overwhelming sensation that France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium and all the rest of NATO are willing to trickle a little aid into the frontline states that may engage in combat but that there is really nothing left to give or sell to those states. It's all gone. NATO's last 'pure' effort was to attack and destroy Libya which it did pretty thoroughly. Prior to destroying Libya and bringing about the complete collapse of all international borders inside NATO's European members it oozed into attacking Yugoslavia and then crippling Serbia. I don't think it could do either of those today.

Unlike Russia, which put everything left over from the USSR that it didn't need into storage or depots or simply left to rot, the West put nothing away from the salad days of European pan-empire sabre rattling. The US took most of its tanks and warships and turned them into reefs or scrapped them. God only knows what the Europeans did with their weapons but they for sure aren't stored waiting for call of duty. On top of that we left a lot of hardware in Afghanistan where I'm sure Joe's negotiators are telling the taliban that we'll gladly pay top dollar for return of our stuff FOB Khabul and leave it up to the Army and Air Force to figure out how to get any of it out of that shi'hole.

All this is going on and there is still absolutely no sign of urgency in fixing any of the US Navy's ships and submarines and heaven only knows how many of its aircraft can actually fly and fight in a strongly contested 5th generation airspace. Nobody is fixing anything at all and nobody is building any weapons with any sense of purpose.

There's a reason for all that of course. The PTB know as well as you and I do that there is literally no way to defeat Russia, or China for that matter. Defeat implies at a minimum regime change and there is no way on earth to make that happen with those two powers. Some of us still laugh a little at the idea that imbeciles in the US shipped 95% of all our steel, electronics and pharmaceutical industries to China, a country that we were still technically at war with since we never really got around to finishing off that whole Korean Police Action thing with a peace treaty.

There's not much of an Army here in the United States to send to Europe anyway. On top of that, there's not many ships to send even that tiny army overseas. The Army some of us remember is long gone and has been replaced by a collection of people that are in a swirl to rename things and re-imagine other things and trying to convince older soldiers to stick around despite the dearth of junior soldiers who aren't joining the Army to do all those tasks suitable for 18 year old men and women serving in the armed forces. We used to joke about too many chiefs and too few indians but that's what it looks like when recruits no longer show up to learn the duties and tasks of an army.

I don't see any evidence that any of the armed forces around here are observing and critiquing the ongoing war in Ukraine and there is no sign at all that they are adapting and adjusting doctrine and tactics that are now as woefully out of date as cavalry charges in World War II. It used to be the business of the professional officer corps to take note of reality, adjust their tactics, techniques, procedures, doctrine, training and equipment to deal with that reality. I'm not seeing any signs of that.

If I was still in the business I'd be alarmed that GPS spoofing is now widespread and it appears that some idiot hooked up inertial guidance systems to gps inputs thus corrupting the backups. The employment of true hypersonic weapons appears to have passed unnoticed by those whose principle concern should be missile defense of ships, battle groups and headquarters. The employment of light expendable warhead armed drones that are almost autonomous killing machines over the battlefield doesn't seem to have started any fires in the way we mean to deal with them. One can say the same thing for electronic warfare and I don't even want to talk about cyberwar because what's the point. The best minds are not engaged and even if they were the full details and working models would be in enemy hands by nightfall because our intelligence and C4I systems are more porous than a wet paper bag.

It would be nice if any of the 4 stars we have so many of would show up and tell us that they are burning the midnight oil and working round the clock 24/7 and have spun up acquisition commands, contracting and research and development but I know how it works. They farm the task out to the various military/government labs and then let the labrats slowroll every single damned thing in a pointless intellectual pursuit driven almost purely by the need to continue the funding to the labs in order to keep them all comfortable, forever.

Something tells me that General Austin and the new AFCOS have a very different set of priorities. I think it's safe to take them at their word and simply say that the first priority is making DIE the premier activity in the Department of Defense and the Air Force and that the Navy isn't that far behind and I've lost track of what the USMC is up to but it didn't look good going by me a couple of years ago. Also, it's never a good sign of a strong leader to nearly expire of a heart attack while out for a jog. Maybe that's why the old military/navies were filled with portly generals and admirals....

I'd like to think that something like Deep Blue is still out there churning out good stuff for the highest echelons of the Navy but I doubt it and even if there is still an office with that name and someone answers the phone there, it is unlikely to have anybody of the caliber of Admiral Stavridis running it and it looks like the highest echelons of the USN have been completely divorced from any and all aspects of warfighting, planning or preparation.

Good news though for all those guys not doing their jobs in the military! Nobody gets sacked for miserable terrible performance of duty as long as there's no hanky panky or racial rumors. You can get away with massive, epic, insane disasters that will rank right down there with the British experience fighting in Afghanistan and suffer no harm or blight to your ongoing and future career prospects!

Go Navy, Beat Army

LET'S REVIEW: PRESIDENTIAL KNIFE FIGHT

 I posted this ages ago but I ran across it yesterday while looking back and thought it was time to repost the story. In a mass knife fight to the death among U.S. Presidents who would win and why?

1) George Washington – Commanding presence, strong physique, military training, viewed as a hero by everyone asked to shank him: He makes Top 10 without question. Of the guaranteed top three (I’m going to call them the Holy Trinity for the purposes of this rambling rundown), my money is on Jackson being the one who murders him; he wouldn’t blink, either. They were closer in age, and the hero myth wouldn’t be quite as firmly set. Besides, I’m pretty sure Jackson didn’t blink when he sneezed…

2) John Adams is going out early. Nothing against the man, but portly well-spoken lawyers bring lampoons to a knife fight. It doesn’t end well.

3) Thomas Jefferson. I’d like to say he’d make a good show of it, but he was a bit of dandy… Middle of the pack, but his dying words would be incredibly quotable.

4) James Madison. He’s just too short. I’m sorry: You need reach in a knife fight. The bravado of the philosophy behind Manifest Destiny only gets you so far. He’ll die early, and his small corpse will be one of the least important tripping hazards as the battle wears on.

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Get the real rundown on each President's knife fighting chances. It's an amusing way to spend a little time.

GOOD DAY

 Best wishes for a happy and peaceful Thanksgiving. 

Some very nice pictures of the year at this place.

WHEN THE GLOVES COME OFF

 It will be interesting to see what the post-meddling billionaire world looks like after rulers like Putin decide to put down the busybody billionaires that are making the policy and decisions for our moron in the White House and the other morons in the West who don't seem to be at all concerned in any ways at all with the welfare of their own people or countries.

Russia has shown an awesome talent for making wealthy men dead of mysterious causes ranging from the sudden urge to take flight off a tall building to simply fading away from some rare form of poison or difficult to synthesize radioactive material that somehow ended up in their tea.

I think the world would be better off without many of the billionaires now roaming it and can't help but wonder if my favorite, the pirate submarines, will make their return to sink a few yachts that may disappear and be supposed to have succumbed to icebergs, fire, flooding and disease (darn zombies are everywhere....).

It's easy enough to drone them out of existing by simply hitting all their properties with missiles from a thousand kilometers away or simply taking them out with special forces although perhaps the easiest way would be to simply post a bounty on them.

It's pretty clear that these are the people behind the foolish insanity in Ukraine and every other place you find gibbering madmen doing crazy and insane things to other people at any cost to themselves. 

I may sound in favor of a policy like this but I am tired of the insane global warming hysteria that has replaced science and I'm sick of people thinking we should eat bugs and live without electricity while also demanding the conversion of all energy in the developed world to the irrational and stupid green scam of solar and wind. All you have to do is look and see what the World Economic Forum is supporting and you'll find the source of the madness sweeping the world. 

When people say things again and again about what they intend to do to you it behooves you to take them at their word. They and the billions of islamists want to wipe away the world we live in today and replace it and they are moving mountains to make that happen.

FRIENDS?

 It escapes just about everyone in America that nations/states don't have friends, they have interests. I keep seeing things like this:

Where and when did Ukraine ever demonstrate that it was our friend? When did Israel? Jimmy Carter got the peace at Camp David but it was not a peace between friends and it wasn't a real peace. It was more of a cease-fire and acknowledgement by both Sadat and Begin that war between Egypt and Israel over something as barren and worthless as PLO terrorists and their enablers in Gaza and the West Bank was a waste of resources and money and there was Carter to sweeten the deal and offer enormous amounts of money every year forever to both Israel and Egypt simply for signing on the dotted line and not warring anymore against each other. 

He even threw in a truly pointless biannual military exercise called Bright Star where a few hundred marines and 3rd Army elements take part with a bomber or two in a month long thoroughly scripted exercise that demonstrates interoperability or something between a force that fights for about 2.5 hours/day except Fridays and Saturdays and one that has nothing better to do and happens to be in the area. (USMC).

As I sit here in the dark, I cast my mind back and wonder what 'friendship' did Israel ever extend to the United States of America or even Americans in general? They pretty thoroughly poisoned the well with the USN when they deliberately attacked and re-attacked USS Liberty. The link takes you to the US Naval Institute history of the attack and aftermath. I am wracking my brain to think of any 'friendly' advances from our friends in Israel over the last 50 or 60 years and coming up blank. 

USS Liberty shot to pieces by Israeli Air Force and Navy

The Israel I remember had a towering reputation as a military power but it is important to remember who they were fighting against. They have first rate scientists but I can't recall any defense technology transfers that originated in Israel with them sharing or even selling high technology with the USA. They had an international reputation for ruthless and efficient spying but they also get caught a lot spying on the United States.

The liars who work in the media are now reporting that "some people" in the "administration" are urging the Israelis to speed up their dismemberment of hamas but I take that with a grain of salt. The "people" the press are talking about are the ones that had no trouble at all fully supporting and backing 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the very thought of any of those idiots urging the Israelis to hurry up and stick their generative organs into the hamas meat grinder is simply laughable and even more laughable that any military commander or even a political leader in Israel would consider the notion.

On the gripping hand, the leadership of the fickle is often very fickle and does things defying belief. I don't think anybody foresaw the man they knew as Ariel Sharon simply giving away all of Gaza lock stock and barrel. The arabs screwed that up as expected, elected hamas to rule them, exterminated PLO Fatah in Gaza and then got down to some serious digging and terrorism.

I get some amusement about all the usual alarmed TV talking heads chanting in lockstep now about genocide of palestinians but there doesn't appear to be any shortage of them and every TV cast now includes the fabricated death toll released by hamas that indicates to the ignorant that Gaza is almost entirely peopled by just women and children and contains only hospitals and schools. I suppose if one hopes for demonstrated incompetence it is better to keep it to things like genocide not like the ruthlessly competent Turks and Germans who know how to execute a good solid genocide at the drop of a hat.

I don't take Foreign Policy or read it anymore but I do wonder where the current version of Bretton Woods is going on and just who is there trying to set the stage for post-American hegemony. The gold standard is long gone, the national debts are astronomical and unrepayable, the ethnic jihad is just starting in Europe and will lead to unexpectedly severe friction in just a short while as the Europeans realize just what they did to themselves and the global south is a complete disaster (unchanged since any time in recorded history).

And finally, the United States and EU shattered the world that was created by the Bretton Woods Agreement when they fucked with Russia and Putin to the point where he picked up all of Russia's marbles and left the game to start his own with like-minded, sick of fuckwit American imbeciles ruining everything and created an alternative system that includes Russia, China, India, Brazil and the rest of the BRICS. Read it and weep.

SIGN OF THE TIMES

 Like America more than you hate Trump this time! 

WARSHIPPING WITH THE NEOPAGANS

 I caught this in a church in England. It appears to confirm my own belief that the global warming cultists have taken over every damned thing and are ruining it all in the name of gaia. 

Church of England today

I'm pretty sure that if there truly was an earth spirit it would scrape the global warming cultists off its shoe in a right hasty fashion and move on. 

Is there nothing the global warming cult cannot ruin? Srsly, watching the AP news headlines last night I saw that some batch of cultists in US government claimed that global warming was ruining every single place in North America and it left us all wondering, surely some places get better when it gets a degree or two warmer and how could anyone make that claim when the natural temperature swings from 100 degrees to 0 in a given location? 

Sadly, at the end of the day we'll have to make do with our "Nuke a gay global warming blue whale for Christmas" t-shirts and leave it at that.

SOME PEOPLE NEVER WAKE UP

 I see from my study of the media and close inspection of lifelong leftists that they still see nothing at all wrong with racism, intolerance, bigotry, evil and stupidity and they are 100% onboard with lying, disdainful and inept civil servants who abuse both the people and the law all so long as it is for any cause any leftist ever supported. In short, they are exactly the kind of people who can watch terrorists literally hunt down and kill children in their homes and feel sympathy for the terrorists who were driven to do it by the actions of some people they don't like.

I see others on the right who believe that the actions of 9/22 and 20/7 were a "wake-up" call for the lefties who still worship Che and think Hugo Chavez was the Savior of Venezuela and who support everything any communist ever did as simply a reaction to racism, oppression, slavery, mean tweets, etc.

I didn't think I'd become so cynical but there you have it. This is also an admission that the so-called religion of peace (take your pick, it's a title they all claim and none honor) doesn't really believe in turning the other cheek. Everyone is gloriously familiar with what happens when you do that. That's right, a gang of youths stomps your head into the ground and kills you.

I wonder what motivates/drives school teachers these days. I don't really think it's the money or the respect they gain from their students and their parents and I don't understand how the Unions that allegedly represent them keep striking for more money and never ever is a word breathed that perhaps its time to cull the 10% of out of control violent and vicious thugs from the school rolls and send them to a place where they can do no harm like New York or San Francisco which treasures and cherishes the 'misunderstood' and 'under-privileged.' 

Srsly, if I was a teacher I'd have a few non-negotiable demands before I step foot into a school. I go armed to the teeth. Anyone who gets violent in class gets expelled-never to return and anyone too stupid to sit still and pass a written test gets a do-over just one time and then gets introduced to the wild and banished from school. I don't care if they get handed a diploma on the way out since diplomas are pretty much just as worthless as an illiterate thug.

THE CURRENT DIFFICULTY

 It would be nice to confess that I don't take the news but it wouldn't be true. I don't see any reason to expound on the events going on now around the formerly civilized world but I can't say I'd be disappointed if the various interested parties all jump in as is their wont and sink their teeth into something that they figure will finally offer a final solution.

For myself I don't find it a difficult choice. I won't even offer up the old platitude of offering to simply select the least evil choice. This is another one of those intractable matters that has only one solution. It's a binary solution.

I see that all the interested parties are on stage now and making the usual noises and emoting but I sense this time they might be encouraged to go a little too far although it is possible to see that the doors that were slamming open wide have now begun to slow considerably. All the evil things may not get out of the box and into the light after all.

It's kind of sad that this is just about the best that one can hope for now.

Any sane Western employer would be wise to take note of the names and degrees of the college/university people out there pushing for genocide in Israel. You really don't want people like that working for you in any capacity unless you're an exterminator.

CELEBRATED RETURN

 I was out of town and offline while off celebrating my mother's birthday and Veteran's Day with family. It was fun, interesting, and informative as we spent time with nephews I haven't seen for about 10 years and found out what their up to as they pursue adult life. 

I'll throw up some of the offline stuff later this evening if my freshly updated systems permit me to do that without giving google permission to rummage through all the files on all my computers and clouds.

NORMALITY IS RESTORED

 I found myself missing some of the old regulars that sort of dropped off the edge of the world over the last few years. Good news! One of them has returned and yes I spent about 30 minutes reading up on installation and architectures of pleasant things done well by others very far away that somehow give me reason to think my own efforts in this regard might some day bear fruit. It will be a really dangerous and menacing fruit but it could happen.

Sippican is back. 

Now if only Coyote could find his way back to the keyboard someday.

TRULY APOCRYPHAL NEWS

 Israel is attacked by terrorists on a massive and murderous scale and,

It is really very difficult to actually put words on paper and write something that people would find unbelievable about the vicious scumbags that run our government and all of our bureaucracies. Here we have a nation attacked by terrorists and the vicious State Department scumbags demand that no weapons we furnish to fight off terrorists should be furnished or made available to the people defending against terrorists.

On the other hand, I'm so inured to government lying about everything that for just an instant I don't know why the Israeli officials didn't simply assure the nice State Department vicious scum that 'of course none of these weapons would be allowed for that purpose! honest!' You know, sort of like every single ATF and FBI and Police scam that ends in tears because they sold weapons and explosives to 'bad' guys.

It has been clear for decades that the people running our government and the media (and they are the same exact people) think that the bulk of our citizens are low grade morons and by dint of serious hard work; hiring only the very stupidest, most venal and corrupt and most progressive teachers and professors for the last 50 years, they have achieved their desired end state.

The Babylon Bee has to work very hard to come up with any fake story or fake headline that doesn't look just like it was ripped from today's news.

I HEARD THE DEATH BEETLE

I read somewhere last week that some Chinese scientists boasted of being able to make tailored virus packages that could and would target only certain genetic mixes. In other words, the possibility of engaging in actual genocide against specific races was brought to the fore as the world teeters on the brink of collapse.

Wasn't that interesting?

WINTER MELODY

 It snowed last night and hailed on us as we drove this morning so a refreshing change up is mandated.