CLEAR AND SIMPLE AS THE TRUTH

 We won’t actually have men and women representing us in Congress until Epstein’s client list sees the light of day and we can see just how many of our elites in Congress and among the names of those that pull their strings have their names as prominent guests of pedophile island. Things like the aborted Continuing Resolution can only happen when the congressmen and senators feel more terrified of the blackmailers than they do of losing their plush seats in DC. Also, think how many names of the Deep State are on that list and why nobody has ever even leaked the list much less just published it as a public service.

It’s most unlikely that your congressman is your representative at all.

UPDATE

I guess we can figure out who was a guest of Epstein now, can’t we?

BRAINLESS ODDITIES

 It’s obvious to all of us that massive amounts of money changed hands as the secret Democratic lapdogs drew up the lists of names of scumbags who were pardoned or had their sentences commuted by dismal joe Biden in his last months of sentience. Do those idiots really think we’re going to just ignore that and not hound them into Hell for their criminal behavior? They do know they’re dealing with Donald Trump don’t they?

NOBODY WOULD BELIEVE IT

 The Deep State used to be as feared as the Nazgul and they used to be feared for good reason but they stepped out of the shadows a bit and showed us their hand and now we know them for what they are. On the gripping hand, it is kind of hard to believe that they are showing us all these killer drones night after night and making the point that nobody appears to be able to follow them to their landing sites, disable them in the air, shoot them down or interfere with them in any way and my won't every one of us be surprised when they or something just like them turns up at the inauguration and there is an unfortunate event outside Trump's former post office as he takes the oath of office. You know just exactly as the SS totally failed to stop a blatant in your face assassination attempt in Butler, PA.

As I said earlier, it will be interesting to assess the effects of frangible ammunition impacting all over the District of Columbia, Arlington and Alexandria. You must ask why is nothing being done, again, about the drone issue other than having that idiot Kirby come out and boldly declare that the operators and purpose are unknown to him or US but "they are not a threat!!!!!" 

Me? I think I'll thank Donald for the invitation to the Second Inauguration and stay home that day. He'd be well advised to phone it in too. The Enemies of the State have made it very clear that they want him dead.

FALL FROM GRACE, OR A PUSH?

 I don't even have to look and yet I know there are memes of AOC giving Pelosi a little help in Luxembourg because who doesn't want to help such a fine upstanding citizen who has devoted her life to stealing every dime possible from decades of public service. She gives life to the expression, "knows where the bodies are buried," because she probably supervised their disposal. All of them. 

I wonder if she has anything like the kill ratio the Clinton's racked up among their friends, lawyers, business partners and acquaintances. As far as I know, nobody still alive ever looked into it.

Still, as the ruin that is Biden slowly oozes out of office it is nice to know that Nancy will soon follow.

ALWAYS GERMANE IS THE WORD

I encourage the reading of Spengler because he is a man of great insight and knowledge. This is from 12 years ago but just read it and read it again.

“We are a bit confused about Syria,” I began. “Its leader, Bashar al-Assad, is slaughtering his own people to suppress an uprising. And he is allied to Iran, which wants to acquire nuclear weapons and dominate the region. If we overthrow Assad, Sunni radicals will replace him, and take revenge on the Syrian minorities. And a radical Sunni government in Syria would ally itself with the Sunni minority next door in Iraq and make civil war more likely.”

“I don’t understand the question,” Richelieu replied.

“Everyone is killing each other in Syria and some other places in the region, and the conflict might spread. What should we do about it?”

“How much does this cost you?”

“Nothing at all,” I answered.

“Then let them kill each other as long as possible, which is to say for 30 years or so. Do you know,” the ghastly Cardinal continued, “why really interesting wars last for 30 years? That has been true from the Peloponnesian War to my own century. First you kill the fathers, then you kill their sons. There aren’t usually enough men left for a third iteration.”

“We can’t go around saying that,” I remonstrated.

“I didn’t say it, either,” Richelieu replied. “But I managed to reduce the population of the German Empire by half in the space of a generation and make France the dominant land power in Europe for two centuries.

“Isn’t there some way to stabilize these countries?” I asked. Richelieu looked at me with what might have been contempt.

“It is a simple exercise in logique. You had two Ba’athist states, one in Iraq and one in Syria. Both were ruled by minorities. The Assad family came from the Alawite minority Syria and oppressed the Sunnis, while Saddam Hussein came from the Sunni minority in Iraq and oppressed the Shi’ites. It is a matter of calculation – what today you would call game theory. If you compose a state from antagonistic elements to begin with, the rulers must come from one of the minorities. All the minorities will then feel safe, and the majority knows that there is a limit to how badly a minority can oppress a majority. That is why the Ba’ath Party regimes in Iraq and Syria – tyrannies founded on the same principle – were mirror images of each other.”

“What happens if the majority rules?,” I asked.

“The moment you introduce majority rule in the tribal world,” the cardinal replied, “you destroy the natural equilibrium of oppression. “The minorities have no recourse but to fight, perhaps to the death. In the case of Iraq, the presence of oil mitigates the problem. The Shi’ites have the oil, but the Sunnis want some of the revenue, and it is easier for the Shi’ites to share the revenue than to kill the Sunnis. On the other hand, the problem is exacerbated by the presence of an aggressive neighbor who also wants the oil.”

“So civil war is more likely because of Iran?” “Yes,” said the shade, “and not only in Iraq. Without support from Iran, the Syrian Alawites – barely an eighth of the people – could not hope to crush the Sunnis. Iran will back Assad and the Alawites until the end, because if the Sunnis come to power in Syria, it will make it harder for Iran to suppress the Sunnis in Iraq. As I said, it is a matter of simple logic. Next time you visit, bring a second bottle of Petrus, and my friend Descartes will draw a diagram for you.”

“So the best thing we can do to stabilize the region is to neutralize Iran?”

“Bingeaux!” Richelieu replied.

“But there are people in the United States, like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who say that attacking Iran would destabilize everything!” “Such fools would not have lasted a week in my service,” the cardinal sniffed. “Again, it is a matter of simple logic. If Iran’s capacity to build nuclear weapons is removed by force, upon whom shall it avenge itself? No doubt its irregulars in Lebanon will shoot some missiles at Israel, but not so many as to provoke the Israelis to destroy Hezbollah. Iran might undertake acts of terrorism, but at the risk of fierce reprisals. Without nuclear weapons, Iran becomes a declining power with obsolete weapons and an indifferent conscript army.”

......

 Honestly, I wonder if he really did consult the ghost of Richelieu. The CIA should have a lash at it.

LEFT BEHIND

 It’s always surprising when vandals and thieves leave behind the most valuable thing in a room but still a surprise when ‘educators’ do it. Just think how much learning follows from simply reading and understanding history.

KICKING AND SCREAMING

 President Trump is a change-agent or perhaps an Agent of Chaos. This is widely known or suspected. It was said that only Nixon could have opened China to the United States because he alone of all politicians had the chops for it. What if by the same token Donald Trump opens the road to Cuba during his second administration? The last simmering pesthole of the COMINTERN. They are a fetid and dismal place but they don't have to be and the way things have been going on that island lately they would leap at any chance to get out of the trap their idiotic communism/socialism has mired them permanently in. No big offers of foreign aid or assistance, nope, we simply announce to the world and investors that interested parties can now see if they can come together on some way of enChining* the little island hermit oligarchy. It will naturally come over the howling objections of the commie sympathizers in the West. It is always strange how it works out that way, isn't it?

From left to right: Premier Zhou En-Lai, translator Tang Wensheng, Chairman Mao, President Nixon, and Henry Kissinger

 

*new word of the day stands for doing to Cuba what opening China to the West did after Mao got sick and Chou En-Lai started running things in typical imperial fashion.

ON NEW YORK

 It says a lot about how far New York has fallen from the haunts of civilized Americans when one considers that up until an hour ago I had real doubts that Daniel Penny would be found "not guilty" of the crimes that New York charged him with simply for riding the subway and doing the "right" thing. I pass through the Empire State from time to time but the last 5 years or so it has given me the same feeling that driving in the Kingdom or UAE did. I would ask myself if it was really necessary and yet there is only one way to Maine that makes any sense and that one involves New York.

SECOND ANSCHLUSS

 It will be interesting to see if the Chinese anschluss happens anywhere near as quickly and as thoroughly as the German anschluss. Can the forces of Taiwan stand up against the famously liberal and progressive, not to mention overwhelming power of Red China or will they roll over just as quickly as the Austrians, Afghanis and the Syrians did when their friends and neighbors came knocking at the door?

I've often been wrong in my predictions but I wonder if anyone will even fire a shot if China sends a few cruise ships stuffed with uniformed tourists to Taipei or Keelung and they just walk ashore, form up in ranks and march off to invite the government to step down and bow to the will of Heaven.

Perhaps it's time to reread, The Diamond Age.

THAT INFAMOUS DAY

 When you look at the broad sweep of history you kind of point to the 7th of December 1941 and say that perhaps the greatest mistake Japan ever made was attacking the United States at Pearl Harbor. Then you turn around and see that not to be outdone, Adolph Hitler stupidly declared war on the United States 4 days later and you scratch your head and ponder the sheer bloody stupidity of your real fascists and socialists and you feel better that the Lord has just given us little fascist squirts like Pelosi, Biden and Harris to worry about. We are truly blessed.

Honor the memory of all those who perished on this day in 1941 and sacrificed everything they had to give in the war that followed and while you're at it, keep the men and women out there right now in the Red Sea and all around the world serving in the United States Armed Forces in your thoughts and prayers. They are engaged in a great struggle that you seldom ever hear about and yet it is every bit as real and dangerous as a Sunday morning in Pearl Harbor all those years ago.

ASH HEAP OF HISTORY

 It has been so for a long time but it looks like now everyone can see the final demise of the United Arab Republic many long painful years after it was swept away by the forces of nationalism and military discontent. It's kind of amusing to see the first fruit of arab nationalism swept away by the new islamic caliphate. I don't think the new caliphate will last much longer than the the UAR. It's always better to be the caliph then the second deputy under-assistant caliph and frankly, these people don't play well together.

I don't actually know what will bring about the dissolution of the new caliphate and since I don't have any family or interests in that end of the Mediterranean or even in the larger Middle East, I don't really care. The flames have only started to leak out of the catastrophe we ignited in Iraq when we destroyed the Baathist Party and all its leaders in our effort to get rid of Hussein. It was men like Hussein that actually kept the damned caliphate at bay and with the men like him, Pahlavi, Qadaffi, and Mubarak gone there is really nothing to keep the lid on the islamic caliphate nuts and everyone in Persia and the Ottoman Empire is urging them to unite under the black and green banner.

That of course means direct conflict with the Keeper of the Two Holy Mosques and that doesn't really mean as much as it used to because despite the man's competence at many things the one thing the Kingdom lacks is any sort of military power at all. It literally could not stop one of our BLTs from taking Mecca or Riyadh, if, of course, we still had anything like a Battalion Landing Team or Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The current rulers of the Gulf Cooperative Council know that their options are few and they may in fact be out of them. Historically they looked for muscle to places like Pakistan but I'm afraid Pakistan is pretty far down the road towards islamania and I don't think I'd trust the Pakistanis with machine guns if I was ruling the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain or Qatar. The ruler of Qatar thinks he's riding the tiger and leading it on the path he has chosen. I have bad news for him.

What's the bad news you wonder. Well, the same kind of mind and mindset that undertook destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan are running the show now however much the people at al Jazeera wish it wasn't. We literally have 8th century barbarians running amok throughout Asia Minor and the Middle East and the strong men that once held them in check by throwing their leaders into prisons or killing them have all been struck down. Let's be honest, young Assad is no match at all for his brother or father and frankly, I'm surprised Dr. Assad has survived as long as he has. 

I am impressed at how all these various rebels, takfiri, terrorists, islamists and so forth all seem to be able to get their hands on an inexhaustible supply of weapons and ammunition. Any other military in the world runs out of ammo and weapons the instant we turn our back on them but the really evil people in the middle east and Africa always have plenty of both. Who is giving them these guns and ammo? Why does the supply never dry up? What cargo ships call at these ports in Eritrea, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon and always seem to be stuffed with free ammunition?

Well, I suspect the fine hand of Viktoria Nuland and all of her little friends in the CIA and USAID are responsible for a lot of it and then there's all the playful little spymaster gurus in Britain, France, Italy and Germany that like to play on the world stage but haven't had a military or foreign heft up to the task since they bizarrely created the Suez Crisis of 1956. And let us not forget the one people and ruler that we have deliberately antagonized almost from day one when he took over as President of the Russian Federation. 

There is an old old saying that runs, never leave a live enemy behind you and never do a terrible injury to someone and leave him alive in your wake, and never ever corner a man with no way out and no options.....or you know, words to that effect. People keep persisting in seeing our problems strictly from our singular point of view. It's how the news media became so useless in this country and the West; they always look out for number one and hide any of their crimes and misdemeanors under a blanket so you can't really see what is going on. We really need to maintain a focus on how the other side sees the thing. We used to call it open source intel and it was helpful because it did let you see how other's think.

Imagine watching as the liberal left explodes and runs away to hide from anybody telling them what they don't want to hear or to believe and you see where governments can fall into the same trap. All too often, the information was there to see in plain sight but nobody was interested in looking. The real events in the middle east may simply be leading to a period of heightened tension and make the place uniquely inviting to the idiots that proselytize the faith among islamists or want to ride a bicycle through the streets of Palmyra. We don't have to look or care what happens to them unless we want to. We could always just leave it alone to simmer for awhile. 

Still, I'll be curious to see how the Kurds resolve their Turkish problem......

ON DUBAI

 It sometimes occurs to me to wonder what so many people see in going to Dubai. I know it is now the new playground of the extremely rich and their sycophants but I have been there, a lot, albeit 35 years ago when it was not yet the playground for the rich and famous it is today. Those who have not been there cannot conceive of just how hot and humid it can get there most of the year. They literally have no idea because nowhere else on earth experiences that kind of heat and humidity. 

Back when I was visiting there it was a soulless tyranny ruled over by men unchanged since the 8th century and if you think that has changed just because they are now extremely rich then you are willing to believe anything. The Emirates are utterly blind to the rule of law and yet they go out of their way everyday to conceal that from everyone. The emirs running the place are not subject to the law in any way shape or form.

The first visit I made there the Country Team from the US Embassy let us know in no uncertain terms that while drinking was legal in bars in the Emirate there was still an excellent chance that a taxi driver you hired to bring you back to the hotel or to the ship would take you instead to the nearest police station if he thought you were intoxicated and he didn't like that in you and he would get a reward from the police for taking a drunk off the streets.

What changed you may wonder? Well the Emirs cleaned up their act a bit and one of them just rocketed ahead of his peers in an effort to get richer. When I was there the old wealth was still concentrated in Abu Dhabi but Dubai was an up and comer with the port of Jebel Ali acting as a huge source of income to the emirate. The emir decided to start building luxury palaces and vacation resorts along the coast and when he started running out of coastline to develop he started building the great sand islands which were then packed with luxury villas for the extremely wealthy he could attract to his little blazing hot paradise. He got investors to build incredible malls and shopping experience and the most amazing airport you'll ever find.

The rest of the emirates just plug along and do what the Saudis have done for generations but with a twist. Saudis interested in a good time used to just go to Bahrain to relax and unwind in relative freedom from the madmen running the Kingdom and its religious police. Emiratees just drive over to Dubai for some frolicking and booze and then drive home. The Saudis cottoned on to the driving thing too and pushed through a causeway to Bahrain that allows them to drive to and from Saudi Arabia.

Still you must wonder why would anybody want to vacation, buy a house or live there. Well, this morning the answer became a little clearer to me.

Dubai is a country like no other. There is no urban predator underclass that preys on the middle class, the working class and especially the ultra-wealthy generational elites that used to like to have pied-à-terre in town where they could get on with the frolicking, raping, and other business that brings them to town. Dubai is a predator free environment and will be for the foreseeable future. It's as safe an investment as a nice great home in Long Island without the nasty side effects of living in the Empire State.

The really clever people have been seeing this great tidal wave getting ready to swamp the earth and they looked for and found a place to perch while the waters race in and destroy everything and the tide sweeps what is left away.

On the other hand, they don't think that the barbarians will drop in anymore either. I wonder what they think will stop them.....They think they’ve found a place free from barbarians. 

NOT LOOKING ALL THAT DEMOCRATIC

 It is interesting to observe that the ruler of South Korea just declared martial law because invalid reason. The UK government is a tiny minority of actual Members of Parliament and yet rules as if it has a mandate given by the people and the French PM just overwrote the will of the Parliament there and signed into force a new budget that did not have popular support. In Georgia the foreign born President is simply ignoring the democratic vote for a new government and has decided to retain power. Everywhere one looks at the so-called democratic West we see rot and ruin setting it. This is probably one for the ages since it so clearly defines who the enemies of civilization really are.

MAXIMUM PROFUNDITY

 Rome wasn't destroyed in a day or even a night. It took some time. I keep seeing references to how Rome wasn't built in a day as if that is some sort of profound statement but by the same token it wasn't really destroyed either. Sure the Republic was swept away by the Empire and then the Empire overrun by the Visigoths and then there are the usual pedants who point out that you can hike, bus, ride, drive or fly to Rome if you have the time, the money and the inclination.

I think what many of us would like to see is a sort of new Hercules carry out some of the labors needed in any Republic after a hundred years of sin and depravity has weakened both the civil and cultural fabric of the country. We are resigned to not getting it since there are always the dabbers who don't want to go too far or rush the fences or get their feet wet.... you know the type. They will timidly vote with their democratic counterparts to hold the line against change that would see the revitalization of the Republic and boldly pat themselves on the back for their wisdom and sanctity. I hate them already.

On the gripping hand, the point of the exercise was to maintain a balance. With the pending death of the main stream media in both print and over the public airwaves we will probably win some more seats in the next election when the dabblers and outright lying scumbags are turfed out. They are losing the marginal voters because there are fewer and fewer people too stupid to puzzle out who the grifters and thieves are that are controlling the government and high public offices.

Maybe next year. After all, I'm still waiting for the drones to make their deadly appearance on our shores and the CIA is always up to no good and since the rest of the world is turning to shit right in front of our eyes they may be able to free up some of their MKUltra types and other ne'er-do-wells and turn them loose on solving the "American problem." You do know that those people at the highest levels in government, the military and industry see us as the 'American problem,' don't you?

FOR THE PARTY

 Join me in the hushed rooms that the power elite slither into when they want to discuss grave and troubling matters like the good of the Party where we join the conspirators as they shake out their robes and rattles and breathe the Secret Words and bow down before the Dark Altar and signal their allegiance to the powers below and tell that idiot Joe Biden that he must not use his power of the Pardon to spare his son the punishment his acts have earned and he must refrain from doing so for the Good of the Party!

I guess addled and mean spirited and angry as Hell Joe wasn't going to think about the good of the Party after their rooting and backstabbing destruction of his 50 years of dark loyalty to evil men and evil deeds and decided that the Party could go hang itself. He'd give them the rope.

"Unexpectedly, President Joe Biden pardons his only remaining son of the tiny handful of crimes the Justice Department didn't let cross over the Statute of Limitations Event Horizon along with the vast bulk of his crimes and deviant behavior." Joe was heard to mutter darkly, "fuck 'em, we hates them all....."

U P D A T E - - -

Does anyone have eyes on Joe Biden's brother, the other major criminal in the partnership between Joe  and Hunter? I suspect he is hyperventilating about being left to pay for all the crimes they all committed over the last 30 years or he's already dead. I mean I didn't hear anything about a pardon for him, yet.

Y E T  A N O T H E R U P D A T E - - - -

Has anyone considered Hunter's take on his conviction? "Oh hey there dad, I just thought I'd call and let you know if you don't pardon me pronto I'm going to spill the beans on every single scam and scheme we have been a party too and every dime of money that you got from your 10%s on everything your administration sent to Zelensky. In short, if I go to prison, so do you!"

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

 

A TIME FOR QUAESTORS?

 I am sick and tired of the Special Council gotcha form of public deceit we have grown accustomed to as one administration tries to use law and courts to get to the bottom of the misdeeds and thievery of the previous administration but maybe we can have the Quaestors come again and with the power of the Executive Branch simply walk into any Public Office and demand answers right there and then. None of the normal bluster and delay but a simple demand for full and complete access to the books and the records and the people who work there all of whom must answer the questions asked or be fired on the spot. It's time to bring just a bit of honesty and integrity back to Government service and we can start on January 21st, 2025.

Go Cicero!

yes yes I know, the chances of finding a modern Cicero are zilch but you gotta start somewhere.

MARKET SATURATION

 I see that Newsom and California simply cannot help themselves from lashing out and ruining yet another good thing. I wonder if the pigbrains boggling along behind Newsom in California have looked into any forecasts on EV sales and perhaps considered that what was once a perfectly reasonable market place is now pretty much defunct. I mean, you and I know a defunct market when we see it don't we? Why yes, Comrade, yes we do. A defunct market is one that finds it is forced to SUBSIDIZE sales with government money in order to keep it afloat. Is there still a growing market for EVs in America or Europe and is it worth maintaining in the face of outright opposition and entanglement with the ruler of the State which hosts the one and only manufacturing plant that makes the THING?

Probably not.

Perhaps the Model T will be built in a state a little friendlier to business and the older models discontinued as who knows what happens. I mean at some point they're going to have to make their own version of the VW bus and you'd want to build that anywhere but California because for all it's problems it still remains the #1 place to drive a VW bus and the fun part is getting there.....Ask me how I know.

MY CONTRIBUTION WAS THE LATIN

 Reading the raconteur is something I do every now and then. It is not an every day read because it really harshes the mellow and if I wanted that I'd actually read newspapers or watch broadcast or cable news and I don't any of that.

His guidance for President Trump and the baby ducks out there is on point. It is fairly easy to make things work if consequences are not something you fear. It might be time to go a little Nero or Caligula on them because, it's not like they did any better and they lost sight of the one important thing.

LITERALLY UP IN FLAMES

 If there is any truth at all to the rumor that President Trump will order the expulsion of all trans members of the military on Day One of his second administration, the idiotic powers-that-be better be notified a little in advance so that they can issue their own warning orders to make sure that those people are locked down before they can burn, purge and destroy the ships, aircraft and computer networks they have access to now. Will this happen? I don't think so but the damage that mentally deranged people with access to high explosives, root passwords and lighters can inflict on an unsuspecting and unprepared military cannot be dismissed. A handful of people could do more damage to the United States then the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor.

NOT A HOPE DASHER

 but, I see that there is some excitement and happy feels over some of President Trump's nominees for the various offices in DC. The problem that we will have once again though goes right to the heart of the people that own and operate the Deep State and they ain't us. It is nice to imagine that the new head of the Department comes in and orders things to go differently now and more in the ways spelled out in our Constitution for instance but that is not how the bureaucracies work. They know that they are the owner/operators and that the titular head is a powerless dweeb who can pontificate as much as they want and nothing will change because the pontificator has no power to fire subordinates who refuse to do the jobs they are commanded to do.

In the DoD it was once possible, even in my lifetime to fire insubordinate government functionaries and officers but not so much anymore. As I recall Bush the Younger got rid of an Air Force Secretary and general who failed to follow his orders to vastly increase the number of drones and then dropped the ball repeatedly on nuclear weapon security. That was 20 years ago and nobody has been fired or reprimanded or disciplined since and it has never happened in the Justice Department or FBI or CIA or NSA or any of the other Agencies.

I think this time I'll try to get a much closer look at the Executive Orders President Trump signs and see just how he plans to shred the enemies of civilization (bureaucrats) and keep every other damned jumped up judge from Hell from slapping a nationwide injunction on his actions. I think this time he might have a word with the Supreme Court and tell them the time has come to wrap their little fingers around the long necks of the subordinate Courts and tell them the days of imposing mandatory injunctions against legal government behavior and lawful actions has at long last, come to an end.

That will be a start.

HOIST ON THEIR OWN PETARDS

 It occurs to me as I am reading about how the media tried its usual gotcha game on one of President Trump's nominees that they opened a door that they really should have left closed. In fact it is a door they really forgot all about and I'm sure they hope nobody remembers how the military works at the upper levels. It's very simple, if the Commander wants a subordinate gone for any reason all he has to do is announce that he has lost confidence in that commander's ability to command and HE IS GONE BEFORE THE END OF THE DAY. Those are the wishy washy words they use now whenever an officer gets sacked from command. There doesn't have to be any valid reason since loss of confidence in him is all that is required to remove him. I imagine the Commanding General at West Point will be asked for the discipline meted out to the Public Affairs Officers that lied to the media and if his answer is less than forthcoming, I imagine that the Secretary of Defense will lose confidence in him/her overnight.

President Trump's new Secretary of Defense can walk into his office on his first day and simply declare that he has lost confidence in the entire Joint Chiefs of Staffs and they are done. I think he can put anybody he wants to into those billets right away as Acting CNO or Chief of Staff and that will work just as long it takes for President Trump to nominate officers for Senate confirmation....however many months that will be.

Admittedly, there may be something about the Deputy stepping up as Acting but a quiet word in the appropriate ears would see that they played ball or get the bat shoved up....well you know where that bat goes.

Along with all the pedophiles and spies Joe pardoned were men found guilty of violation of Article 125 of the UCMJ. I wonder if there really is anything at all that that man finds criminal. I imagine Sy Penland is tearing her hair out in a frenzy trying to get her convictions and sentence swept away by the scum surrounding Biden. She was just the second naval officer I worked with who was convinced that she was smarter than literally everybody else and also completely untouchable. She was wrong and so was the other guy.

IT IS SO VERY VRAIS

 

SNUFFING POWER IN REAL TIME

 There were stories written long ago about my favorite seagoing brigands, the pirate submarines that allegedly interfered with shipping bound into Spain during its Civil War. That was never proven and there was never any assurance as to who those pirates were but one thing that I remember from that reading was that the mere presence of "pirate submarines" obfuscated whether or not a direct attack on shipping belonging to a major European power was being conducted by a future enemy combatant.

Let us talk of drones and wide open borders. By launching direct attacks on Russia with our long range weapons many people have concerns that Putin and Russia might retaliate. The feeble minded immediately think that Putin will just counterattack with nuclear weapons but the one thing one can honestly say about Putin is that he can be both very direct and very subtle. I suspect most people never see the subtle parts because Putin is unusually blunt in delivering his warnings and discussions of consequences.

There is literally no defense against drones in the United States nor in Europe. Your clever clogs Russian agents or hired contractors simply buys a few dozen drones off the shelf in target country A-Z, fits them out with some very easy to import or manufacture high explosive with a really simple contact fuze and then flies them into every single aircraft parked on the ramp at the target airbase.

I wonder how far one can link the control signals for drones. I remember we used to put PRC-77s at high places in Alaska in retrans mode so they would retransmit our signals much longer distances. The signal would just hop from one radio to another. With a rig like that the agents could be flying drones into B2 hangers in Whiteman while the operators were sitting on a hotel balcony swigging vodka in St. Louis. 

The people running this country, whoever they are, seem to be a lot more concerned about what they can do to Russia than what Russians can do to us. Without fingerprints pointing very clearly back at Russia, any attack like this could easily be blamed on China, Russia, the Illuminati, disgruntled Democrats upset about the election, NorKs, white supremacists and aliens. Who can say since they're pirate drones.

I keep seeing reports about all kinds of wild drone activity around our military and naval installations and they can't all be seabats. I think that perhaps somebody has already walked the battlefield and prepped the drones. As usual with direct attacks on America, our Intelligence agencies will be able to tell us all about it in precise detail in the classified after-action report they come up with in 2031.

You know what is funny is the repeated rumors that Putin is a coward who goes to ground whenever Russia suffers a reverse. I'm pretty sure that is nonsense but the same people and drones that would turn a trillion dollars of war machines into flaming debris could also easily take out any public official who puts in an appearance anywhere in public. A man like Putin is all too aware of how the CIA has always favored decapitation strikes on its enemies and they have gotten pretty good at it since Kennedy mysteriously died of a cough or something while out for a drive in Dallas.

I kind of wonder what frangible 20mm ammo looks like as it rains down on Arlington but I don't really want to know. I also kind of wonder how much longer we are going to pretend that coming up with a real killer solution to the drone problem is a crash priority project like the original ICBM and that it needs to be developed and fully operational and fielded worldwide by summer of 2025.

That said, I think Putin will probably start with a demonstration of his unhappiness and probably hit something in Germany or France since they're essentially harmless. On the other hand he might start with Britain who also used its weapons to strike targets in Russia but there are so few meaningful targets left in Britain and who knows, he might take all those ATACMS personally and decide to go after the man who ordered them to attack. Who knows, maybe once Putin's agents kill him,  Americans will find out who was really running this country for the last 4 years.

The truth must lie in the facts.

            –– Judge Learned Hand

AMUSING

 I saw the shape and color which is identical to some very nice little trucks we picked up at the Blue Goose and thought, I'll take a look at the advertisement. That is when the price hit me.

Long ago I was tasked with program management for a small but vital part of the military industrial complex. I remember one of the Commodores we sort of worked with who demanded to know why we were spending over $85,000/HMMWV to equip the mobile units with mobile sensor platforms when, "the damned things don't even come with a CD Player?!!!!!" It was one of the more arcane meetings of the Transition Executive Working Group.

Seriously, they want $169,000 for an old red truck that runs on batteries. I swear last year they cost $11.00.

GOOD NEWS?

Did you ever wonder how you would have acted or behaved if you found yourself on the streets in the Weimar Republic in 1932? Well here's your chance! As far as I can tell, the only detectable difference between ANTIFA / BLM / Palestine supporting scumbags and your actual NAZIs is that the NAZIs believed in the value of hard work.

Why has our civilization let them take over the streets in the major cities of this country? Well sure, I know why and it is for a reason I support but still what the Weimar accomplished with their libertine sense and what we do with our freedom of speech needs to be re-calibrated. Rioters and Demonstrators who break the law need to go to jail and learn better.

BORN SAD, TURNED BAD

 Every couple of weeks I see some blogger or even those at instapundit who lament that an awful lot of good blogs that were enjoyed by many readers simply succumbed to the rot that is facebook and what was twitter and the owner/operators simply stopped writing them or shifted to the new medium. I never went down the rabbit hole of either twitter or facebook and held off any efforts to get me to engage my social network 24/7 on facebook or hammer them with tweets. Heck, I didn't really start using texting on my phone until last year.

I see something like this nightmare or this horror and see that a lot of former power bloggers have gone in for substack and youtube in a big way and they want us to subscribe and perhaps pay money for the privilege of reading and viewing their daily raving. Imagine you were crazy enough to go to the first link above and listen for a minute and then take a gander at the comments and then ask yourself, "did the devils in the democratic party learn nothing at all from the last election?" 

It is a closed loop, a self-licking ice cream cone and a feature of modern politics and international diplomacy. They only listen to THEIR side of any spiel. No effort is made to find out what the untermenschen think about their proposals or outright insanity. They must really think that everyone is just as stupid, ignorant and dimwitted as they are and that is sad. I mean, I know some of them and they don't always appear to be raving lunatics but by their politics and behavior can you perceive them as anything else?

It's always been interesting to me how the winds shift and sometimes for perhaps just a brief moment the light of actual intellect will shine on them and they will be moved enough to change. You can see that today with the likes of RFK Jr, Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk and dozens of others but it also happened to people like the author of Little Green Footballs. He was actually quite entertaining to read after he was part of the complete internet destruction of Dan Rather and 60 Minutes. Then he slowly reverted to type after a few months and went back to sipping the sweet sweet cool-aid.

I believe that the one thing that pushed the election over the edge for President Trump was Elon Musk's purchase and reform of Twitter. Without that real time insight into EVERYTHING it is possible that people would have just written off the election as a waste of time and stayed home. It's kind of sad that things never end well for the hero. On the other hand, this isn't a movie.

OLD REFRAIN

 It’s reading things like this that bring to mind the courtier who told the King that the people were becoming restless and perhaps the King should trim his military spending. “Ah,”said the King, “when the revolution comes, I’ll be ready.” 

One wonders how even Chicago cannot get by on over $17 billion in spending and that’s not even including what a poor job they’re doing at it. 

WAITING FOR THE BOMBSHELLS

 You know it's just a matter of time before the Intel Community declares that it is impossible to give President Trump's nominees the necessary security clearances. Some things about those people never change.

KNOWING WITHOUT KNOWING

With the military giants we have running things in the Pentagon can we just make some fundamental assumptions about our coming war with Russia? As the readers know I think everyone who is not a member of the military or former member of the military believes somehow that despite not paying anywhere near enough to sustain such a thing, every red blooded American liberal just knows that we have military bases and ammo stocks all over the place and so stuffed to bursting they just naturally ooze bullets and avgas into the surrounding environment. We know this isn't so but they don't and I suspect even their twits in Congress think that they are sitting on a robust Army/Navy/Air Force of millions of men thirsting for blood manning the finest killing machines ever forwarded for battle.

As the tide turns and the garbage military leaders we have now are replaced by a suddenly more truthful, honest, forthcoming and better looking bunch, do you suspect that the truth will slowly leach out of the Pentagon? Yeah me neither.

Where do you think all of that artillery and artillery ammunition came from that we shipped to Ukraine? Yes I know some of you really do think that it was shipped from the Arsenal of Democracy which is somewhere down the road in Kansas or Alabama but I suspect that it was shipped from the war reserve stocks of such things that we used to have so much of in Germany. It was shipped with the predicate that it would, of course, be replaced immediately. You know that never happened. In fact boffins that care can look deep into the Budget and see the line item for replacing all those 155mm rounds and the HIMARS and even the blank spot where the ATACMS replacements are not listed.

Well I hear people wonder, if there is no enormous force backed up with megatons of arms and ammo how are we ever going to get the Russians to leave Ukraine? Wait for it,......

I think if we ask them politely to stop fighting they could be persuaded to call it a day and stop fighting without us putting so much as one of her feet on the ground in Ukraine. 

It was a war that didn't need to happen and which should not have happened and for which the people who enabled it and funded it long after the point where it would have ended without their interference will never suffer enough for their crimes and for killing and maiming a million men and destroying industrialized Ukraine for nothing. In a just world there would be war crimes trials for the people that made this war happen and continued it long beyond the point where it had any meaning.

HAPPY VETERAN'S DAY

IT OCCURS TO ME

When I was young and still going to school and living at home, it was the first and second grade but who is counting, I remember that the television was sometimes rolled along into the kitchen doorway between the kitchen and dining room (there was no room in the kitchen) and it would sit there in the on position while we ate dinner between tornadoes and other exciting things incident on living in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The TV never made an appearance in the kitchen again until my father retired long after we had all grown up and left home.

I remark on this because it seems to be everywhere all the time and it wasn't always that way. Now I see that people who dine together at home are accused of bringing their devices to the table lest they miss out on some exciting new development while they're dining in company with the family. I laughed at the idea of this in a young family today (I don't know anything about young families today since they're darned scarce around here) but it occurs to me in retrospect why the TV made its first appearance so long ago at the dining table of the family gathering in the year 1968.

Yea, my father the Captain had just returned from Vietnam and he was at the Command and General Staff College as a student alongside such future luminaries as Colin Powell and the one and only way a young Captain who had spent a lifetime fighting in Vietnam could keep up with what was going on in a place so critical to his life was to watch the damned news and when did the damned news come on? That's right. The news comes on at Dinner Time.

Well it's not like that anymore is it?

A TRUTH FOR ALL TIME AND ALL PEOPLE

 One of the greatest things about the internet and world wide web is that everyone can finally go to the source and see what the ground / real truth of the matter is. In this case the ground truth that is available now is pretty hard to find but it is still out there. All one needs to do is to trace back to what your enemy actually said himself.

It is now the nature of what passes for the news to put words in their enemy's throat and then crow about the very evil thing they attribute to him. When one looks for this quote directly from the man who allegedly said it one always finds that it is either made up or quoted out of context. It's really that simple. There are zillions of people who hate Trump not for what he said or what he did but because his enemies throughout the press and media and entertainment attribute things to him that he never did or said.

If you are stupid enough to care enough to debate with someone on any of the examples that instantly spring to mind you will find that they always go to their reliable source. It doesn't matter that you have asked them to go to the actual source of the quote they hate. Nope, they will instantly tell you that they got it from MSNBC or CBS and that they don't lie and only a conspiracy theorists thinks that they do.

You all are easily smarter than to argue with a convinced and dyed in the wool enemy of civilization but it has to happen somewhere or there wouldn't be the occasional conversion such as Tulsi Gabbard and JFK Jr et al. On the gripping hand, I have no idea at all what motivates retired generals to spew hatred of Trump. One of the profound lessons of our history was that it was best if the military leadership eschewed all politics. There was an oft heard rule of the Wardroom Mess in the Navy that we pretty much observed everyday for over a hundred years even after President Eisenhower, no discussion of politics, women or religion. There was literally nothing to be gained by doing so and only friction as a result of it.

There is a lot of happy talk about unification and hopeyness but I really want to see the people responsible for the disaster that was our COVID Campaign tried, convicted and sentenced to long jail terms and fines and the same for those who weaponized the FBI, CIA, NSA and all the rest against American citizens. The only deterrent to such behavior in the future is the knowledge that those who behave like that get punished and punished severely.

TWITCHY TAKES THE BISCUIT

 I was attempting to read an article linked by the instapundit and it led me to Twitchy which then demanded that I consent to every kind of monitoring, advertising, uploading, sideloading, info sharing and mind-bending they could/can/will think of and I was curious so I tried to find out which way the slider positions they wanted me to use worked to keep their crap out of my systems and lo and behold there is no way on earth for me to determine which way moving the slider will affect the consents they want and I don't want to give them and then came this little winner.

I   think Buck would have laughed at that sentence. That's a runon for sure. I'm pretty sure he would have joined me in inviting Twitchy to get lost.

LIMITED NON-WAR SORT OF

 I would be fascinated to learn who President Trump selects this time for his national security staff and hope that a few of them are students of history and war. One of the things he can do right off the bat without exciting any fanatical opposition from the sane left is to announce a complete air and sea blockade on Yemen until they stop their attacks on all shipping. We'll get played of course but I think President Trump is in a playful mood now so we'll see how that works out for Yemen and Iran. And of course if we have to shoot down any Iranian planes we'll just say it was an accident. We've done that before so there is precedent and Iran knows it.

I think the President can probably end the war in Ukraine by simply stepping up and announcing the Zelensky memorial Nobel Peace Prize and by calling in that little weasel and telling him that the current front-line is the new eastern border of Ukraine, that Ukraine is effectively cut off entirely from every form of weapon and ammunition the US provides and that the War is Over. One of the things us sane people know for a fact is that Putin does not want anything out of Ukraine except what was agreed previously by all the Powers and he wants NATO to stay the fuck out.

I think President Trump might also send in some forensic auditors to find out just exactly who the Ukrainians have been bribing with the billions of dollars we gave them and how many of our people they bought and then prosecuting the hell out of all of them and wrecking their lives forever. A million dead men killed in a particularly stupid and savage war need some justice.

I honestly don't think that President Trump will do much to reconstitute the old Cold War Army/Navy and Air Force because it is not needed or wanted and if we leave something like that lying around again the damned neocons will undoubtedly find some war to plug it into just to make a little profit. No, there is no great concern about China taking China since all have been in basic agreement since before reunification of Hong Kong that there is One China. It has always been a matter of time for when it pulls itself back together and guess what peeps? China doesn't want Indochina and it doesn't want Thailand, Singapore or South Korea. What it wants is oil, gas and its supply lines to Africa and Australia intact and barring a complete domestic collapse the only country that China is a threat to lies to its north. There is no reason on earth for the United States to go to war over any resources lying on the bottom of the China Sea. It's not our Sea and they are not our resources. If ASEAN want to fight for them, let them build their own power and use it to scare China into sharing. Our Navy doesn't work for the Philippines or even Japan.

I have no real solutions to cleaning the fouled houses of the Bureaucracies, Intelligence Agencies and Military. Those were seeded with utterly corrupt left wing fanatics who have spent the last 30 years self-selecting themselves and their ilk for promotion and they now control every level of the Bureaucracy and military. Every general, every admiral is a product of selection boards that met and considered officers for promotion without regard to merit but with only a measured and critical eye as to how steeped in the new evil they were. The ones wearing stars now are all of the evil variety. You can take it to the bank. Ditto the Senior Executive Service, Senior Foreign Service and every Agency based in DC.

Those people are long overdue for transfer to their new offices in Lawrence, Kansas, Montgomery, Alabama, and other idyllic spots like that.  Hell, you can put them all up in Oahu for all of me. That would be far enough away unless we throw in Guam and American Samoa. That supreme idealism that sees so many young and upcoming patriots thirst to lap up the public service spirit is mostly based on getting their butts to Washington, DC and I suspect it will fall off in direct proportion to how far away they are from their goal.

We're going to need a good man running the Senate but I'm afraid we'll get another squish. The uniParty is always in control even when it looks like the more evil side has fallen on its sword. Still, there are a number of things a President can do despite the uniParty and the squishiness of our Congressional servants.

When you think about these the United States and you consider the last batch of candidates do you think what we were offered comes anywhere close to our best and brightest? Feel free to hate the men but the people I saw supporting the Trump campaign were some of our better and brighter people. I cannot say that about the Dems.

I live in the midwest now in a town stuffed with doctors and lawyers and professionals of every type and any one of them on a bad day is a better American than what was offered us by the uniparty this time or the last time or the time before that. What is it going to take before real Americans start standing up and taking back the Parties from the pirates and thieves running them now?

A WONDERMENT

 I'm sure we're all fascinated in learning what happened to the missing 17 million democrat voters that seem to have vanished from the Earth after they pulled the lever for Biden. I've heard the Rapture came along and we missed it. I heard they were abducted by aliens. I've heard they were turned into pet food in secret factories in China. I'm kind of surprised that the entire world is not wondering where all those morons went. It is significantly more people missing then from Covid or from the war in Ukraine or even shot in Chicago last week although nobody really cares about that all that much.

Where did they go?

NEWS OFF THE FLOES

 Surprised by the lack of tears this morning at the local coffee shop. Did overhear a conversation next to me from two democrat party organizers who were lamenting the results but the really amusing part was listening to the two of them attempting to wrestle with the why? republicans voted the way they did and coming up with dunderhead reasons. I was tempted to suggest that the drop back and punt and just ask a republican but no, that isn't why I go to coffee shops.

This was amusing from A Large Regular: 

"... If you doubt that a butterfly flapping his wings in Texas can cause a storm in Asia just remember this all started by Obama making jokes at Trump's expense and Biden not inviting Elon to an EV summit at the White House. Neither picked this fight and were both Democrats at the time..."

And now I'm off to see if it is possible to buy in this benighted former swing state a rat trap of the size and killing power that were so freely available to me back when I lived in Encinitas but don't seem real anymore. I've had a rat that muscled past the bars and locks and is roaming the basement eat the kibble right off the killing charge plate 3 times without so much as twitching. I need something with 50,000 volts.

THAT DRONING SOUND

 I keep seeing in the places I look for this kind of news an almost total absence about any meaningful weapons research that the United States is carrying out on anti-drone warfare. It is kind of important now and growing more important every day and yet we haven't even begun to codify the law on the use/employment of anti-drone technology and tactics around our vital national interests. Any stranger can fly a drone over any military base or government building in this country and it is no harm/no foul. (Don't try to fly a kite on the beach at NASNI or in the shipping channel between NASNI and Point Loma because the base cops et al really hate that). OTGH, they can't do anything about it but insist that you stop doing it since they lack the means to stop you.

Should Trump win I don't doubt but that there will be a huge explosion in drones directed at the White House but that isn't even the most critical installation, not by a million miles. It is after all, just a house. Nobody really thinks Governing takes place there anymore and certainly not after all those rats scum and other generals erupted out of the Trump administration. It is even more true given the obvious fact that the current president is just barely adequate as a figure head and hasn't had a geo-political  or military thought straight in his head since 1976.

The infrastructure of the country is vulnerable everywhere. Think of true partisan warfare along the lines of what was going on against the German army in places ranging from Stalingrad all the way down to Rome. The Germans were left with bloody reprisals which obviously won't work here. The partisans are already out there ready to go.

Antifa fascists were just warming up 6 years ago. They are getting much much more dangerous and one splendid reason for that is that as usual, we have given Russia and like minded anti-globalists every reason to hate and fear us and they can thus see no end to the goodness of giving a little fiscal support to our internal domestic enemies of civilization so that they can strike out at America with impunity. Good job Soros and democrats everywhere and those feeble minded progressive/liberal morons that dwell in Suburbia in great numbers.

You literally don't have to go to far out of your way to think how this plays out if the Bad Guys win. Imagine the chagrin of all liberals everywhere if somebody simply went around in one night and cut down and made off with every single EV charging cable. I hear that there is a lot of copper in them and it seems nobody, especially the police everywhere, takes much interest in scrap metal like that showing up at scrap yards in the perfectly ordinary way where the scrap merchants simply weight it and pay the thieves owners who are selling it. 

It will be fascinating because the people I know have poor impulse control already are about to be goaded into madness by the media. And keep in mind that the people who hunted down and killed P'nut are out there and they're both excitable and gullible.

AN OLD PHRASE FROM MY SAILING DAYS

 I read a headline like the one copied below and I almost immediately think back to the days of racing small boats at Annapolis and their coach out on the water with us in a Boston Whaler riding up to the various losers in last place in any one of the 9 or 10 races of the day and shouting loudly at them using a loud hailer for maximum effect that, "Your position has been established." It was the signal for that set of losers to head back to the starting line so we could start the next race rather than let them finish.

I suppose if you work for the State Department it is safe to say of you if you ever find yourself working in Mogadishu at our embassy there that, your position has been established. You probably won't be rising to the top at any time in the future.

SORT OF CURIOUS

 I keep running across things like this on Instapundit and I wondered to myself if anybody actually watches Bill Maher. I never did and don't know anyone who ever watched him and I think he's just an invention of the Left who got away with creating phake celebrities for decades after they discovered the Kradashians.

On the other hand I never really thought anybody read People Magazine until I used to find well thumbed copies of it stuffed into the soundproofing in After Steering.

SPENGLER

 As I've said before, you can learn a lot from reading Spengler. He's on X and still writing for Asia Times.

I don't think there's even the remotest chance that the named parties will refrain for even an instant from being psychopaths. It's what they are.

I DON'T THINK THEY UNDERSTAND

 I'm catching up reading about the decisions taken at the top at the Washington Post and LA Times to not endorse any candidate for President this season. The Bulwark and a number of the other more anxious and stupid columnists raving about the why and wherefore read an awful lot like press releases from The Shining Path, or the in-depth Vatican explanation about why all the child raping priests were carefully concealed from you for hundreds of years if not longer and also much like IRA's explanations about why they put that particular car bomb in that particular market on that particular shopping day.

Nobody cares about the explanations.

The old days of the all powerful VOX is over and done now. The worldwideweb killed it and it will stay dead as long as there are men like Elon Musk around to do the right thing. All the gasping for air from the media drones who still think they can gaslight the public by making up the reporting about what actually happened are all done to grisly death by anybody who can actually watch the video of what happened on X. You and me can actually see the lying bastards lying right to our faces and thus we no longer care for their 'news' or their 'explanations.'

It's over.

EITHER WAY, IT IS TIME

 I see in the Commentary articles today that the usual pundits are welcoming the increased arc of America's alliances with mighty powers like Sweden and Finland and bragging about some sort of ARKAUS thing in the Pacific alongside some sort of Quad alliance thing over there as well and describing how America's interests lie in propping up every stinking country on earth forever and ever.....against our adversaries.

I wonder just who our adversaries are. It can't be China. We offshored almost 100% of our heavy and high technology industry to China starting over 30 years ago with no sign that it is ever coming back. They are high up there in the list of our Major Trading Partners. It is kind of inconceivable that we would wage war on China over any thing or cause. It's not just the total lack of laying out any strategic objectives that would lead to winning such a war and cessation of hostilities, it is the lack of any meaningful ability to inflict any kind of crippling injury on China. Pushing Russia and China together to form the largest Economic and Trading bloc on the planet doesn't look terribly smart in hindsight.

When they talk about our "allies" I'm always put in mind of the runty little punk that starts really pissing off the entire football team at high school because he has an "ally". WTF wants to be that ally? NATO is dead as a meaningful alliance of any kind and has been for decades. It will never come back. The BOAR and the giant German Army/Air Forces are gone. The AUKUS initiative where Australia pays our thoroughly awful shipbuilders billions for nuclear submarines it will NEVER find crews for or deploy from their berths in distant Australia will never come to the assistance of anyone.

One way or another it is time for the adults to start criticizing our overall strategy and policy. Lining up more and more dependent vassal states of no meaningful use or ability is pointless. Propping up endless African dictatorships for whatever prestige that gains us is stupid. Trying to pay power games against an enormous land power armed with potent anti-naval assets is stupid and counterproductive.

The neocons and their predecessors tried to tie the world together into an interconnected and increasingly networked and deeply entangled web of economic alliances that were beneficial to all. The problem is that the people implementing the policy all graduated from Yale and Harvard, never worked a day in their life and failed to realize that by giving away 100% of productivity they have pissed away the last dregs of the former Arsenal of Democracy. There is nothing left to counter soft/economic power and that is blazingly obvious to anybody watching Putin putting together an entire world alliance of like-minded people tired of and the useless sanctimony of the West and the West's obvious intention to keep them impoverished forever by claiming Global Warming ties their hands, or that they lack representative democratic governments in lands that are still almost entirely tribal.

I really don't know who the adults would be. That part is a bit of mystery. Outside the Hoover Institute all we get is more of the same dismal failures like Victoria Nuland, Robert Kagan and the entire faculty of Yale and Harvard along with all the oh so clever former generals and leaders of the intel communities. What that is is rather dismal prelude to revolution. 

People never ever think that Revolutions can happen again. They say, "oh that's so last century ago...." The fact that they come along every hundred years or so and overturn the Old World escapes them because they never study or read history.

I can almost hope for a hard left commie led revolution. They ALWAYS stand their brothers and sisters in arms up against the wall and shoot them first. Pinochet was the last good Revolutionary and look what it got him in the end. On that note, recall how the Junta in Argentina thought they could extend their grasp on power? That's right, they took a long look at the faded giant that was Great Britain and wagered that they could knock off a nearby piece of the Empire and make the masses in Buenos Aires happy just a little bit longer or at least until Galtieri and the rest could figure out a way to safely retire without all getting shot. The Royal Navy isn't even a shadow of what it was when Corporate went down. And that is the picture of the whole rest of the world. It's ripe for Revolution.

EXCESS PROPHETS

 As always now that I no longer live there, I am eternally amused by Californians.  They legislated themselves an energy desert and are calling it a victory. Yes!!! They exclaim, they are slashing the wicked oil companies excess profits and they are doing it by law. You and I know that always works out well so I'm kind of looking forward to Manmade Energy Disaster Part II. I admit I've been looking forward to it since they shut down perfectly good nuclear power plants and demolished them to make way for penguins.

I know one of my more enlightened readers has pointed out that the power generators external to California are not allowed for some reason to charge whatever the traffic will bear like the old California ISO and ENRON and so nixed my idea that every kilowatt sold into California would have an outgoing excise tax of 80% of the cost of production but!!!!! Open the Door to Manmade Crisis Part II. 

See below what Manmade Energy Crisis did the first time in California.

This is what happened when utterly corrupt government and industry collude to screw you

Is there anything that would force oil companies sending tankers loaded with gasoline and diesel to California ports to sell that energy to California at some CA set price? Could Phillips not send tankers to San Francisco piers (and only San Francisco piers) and tell the buyers State of California that it was $10.00/gallon FOB the pier in San Francisco?

The People seem to believe that the Industry has some sort of legal duty to sell to them whatever they want. There is some truth to that but usually only in a market where demand sets the price. When the government tries to set the price it really doesn't work out all that well.

The well known safest way to transport oil

REMEMBER WHEN

Remember the heady days of yore in 1984 when the earth was going to die in fire? Yeah, those were the days. 

 Heard on the radio coming home this morning from an epic drive in the country.

 

ATTENTION IS INVITED

I'm not familiar with the  Kiel Institute for the World Economy but if these numbers are to be believed there is nothing worth mentioning left of the formerly vaunted NATO ally known now as Germany. The current armed forces and projected armed forces of Germany wouldn't even be a speed bump in any clash with the Red Army.

Germany is little different from the rest of NATO with the exception of Poland. All the other members are shadow of what they were in 1991 and I'd have to agree with the pundits that money they've spent on "defense" since 1991 has largely been wasted on a social welfare project that has no return value. It's not just the lack of warfighting materials bur of trained and tested NCOs and officers and a similar lack of any kind of meaningful ammunition stocks. 

I think if NATO engaged in a shooting war of any kind in the next 10 years it would be out of ammo by the 3rd day. Somebody may finally be waking up to the idea that there is no substitute for ammo, no substitute for cadres of expert trained NCOs and officers and an industry that has kept up with the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs. 

They don't have the industry left to build any of the hardware much less the new drones, jamming systems, air defense systems and modern battlefield Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance needed to fight in the 21st century against something considerably more heavily armed and trained then Afghan tribesmen. 

The complete Kiel Report is found here. It's worth a look.

WASHINGTON POST TO MASSIVELY TRIM COSTS

 In a totally unexpected departure from insanity today it was proclaimed by the usual incoherent and fantastic sources that Bezos' Tissue of Lies was not going to publicly endorse the completely non-democratically selected presidential candidate who wriggled into the race despite not even running in the Primary and thus sets the stage for perhaps dozens of air-headed nitwits, neerdowells and other local losers at the national level to depart en masse while screaming curses and invective at the damned loser billionaire that owns the Tissue.

I really am amazed that Harris has gone 0 for 2 in critical nominations and that this is I think largely because Americans have been exposed to the true news now since Musk bought Twitter and returned it to the people who want to be able to believe what they read and hear about politics. By and large all anyone has to do to restore one's faith in the accuracy of the news is to simply let the bastards talk in public and tape it and and then present those exact recordings, unchanged, unedited to the people so that they can form their own opinions. I really despised PBS when they decided enough of us trying to get the various politicians and Ministers of State on tape saying and declaiming the news, we're just going to assign a fat incompetent moron who will tell us what the politicians and Ministers of government said that day and yeah I'm talking about the idiot on Washington Week in Review and other PBS fantasy tv.

I think both owners told the staff at both papers that they were not going to be allowed to rezero the credibility of the newspaper by publicly endorsing a complete incompetent and moron like Harris and I imagine the screams of outrage could be heard out to the Beltway and the 405.

Ha! At any rate I think a handful of top Washington Post Illuminati will walk out now that their days of running rampant across the owner have been brought to a sudden and humiliating end.

TIMELY

 I simply like it.

TIME WAR

 I'm thinking about sitting out this change off of Daylight Savings Time. What about you? I don't wear a watch, never look at a clock, don't watch regularly scheduled or any kind of TV and find that most restaurants around here close when it gets dark anyway. I do miss the 24 hour lifestyle I found in San Diego but at least some of the ice cream shops here in metroparkcentralis have cottoned on to the idea that people really do like to eat ice cream all year instead of just in the summer. Having instituted ice cream shop calendar reform, I've made a start on mastering Time.

I am the Leader of the Time Army! Join today. Tell those clockist bastards to shove it. 

Yeah I know, Jimmy Buffet got there a long time before I did.

STILL KIND OF AMAZING

 This is so last administration but the difference between one man and the next cannot be overstated. This man was actually more comfortable stepping into North Korea than his successor and the other fabulists were in taking office unless they were surrounded by hundreds of cops and National Guard and had high fences to keep the hoi polloi well back from their betters.

This was President Trump striding into North Korea at Panmunjom. I've been there and it is one of the most dangerous places on earth. Srsly, the North Korean hacked apart American officers as recently as the 1970's right there. Think about it though, he was actually safer in North Korea with zero SS around him or vetting the place then he was surrounded by SS in a little town in western Pennsylvania. Kind of sad isn't it?

There has probably not been an American President more attuned to Diplomacy and Statesmanship since Eisenhower.

I WONDER

 I arrived in the late afternoon on a train from Hendaye after some difficulty getting out of Spain and then into France. I threw my bag on my shoulder, checked that the money belt was secure and then took the metro up to Arc de Triomphe and got off there and popped back up at the top of the Champs Elysee. I found the Avenue Wagram, walked the two blocks to the hotel I had identified in my old copy of Europe on $10/day and got a room on the 3rd floor looking out over the Avenue and with a private bathroom with a very nice ancient tub.

I then walked down to the river and crossed and the very first thing I did was head to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was 1984 and I had just finished my first year in the Middle East and was taking leave enroute home and a new duty station in San Diego on a Destroyer. I wonder if every American who first arrives in Paris heads to the top of the Eiffel Tower too.

Effortlessly lifted from Timewaster a full minute ago